Thoughts for the Day: Wednesday 11 Nov. 2020

 

Has the gun (see last entry below)

New Pathways in Psychology

Colin Wilson

Later on Harlow and various of his students [performed] a brilliant series of experiments which showed that monkeys would work hard and persistently to solve simple puzzles without any external reward; that is, just for whatever satisfactions are inherent in the puzzle-solving itself.’

What implication does the above observation have for neo-classical (or neoliberal) economic theories?

New Pathways in Psychology

Colin Wilson

This is the real significance of spoiltness; it is nothing less than the human condition itself—another name for ‘original sin’. Kierkegaard saw that the basic problem is that all men are bored. First Adam was bored to be alone, so Eve was created; then Adam and Eve were bored, so they had Cain and Abel; then all the family were bored, so Cain killed Abel . . . Human history is seen as a flight from boredom, and from the low mental pressures associated with it. But boredom is another expression of spoiltness; it is a refusal to make any mental effort without the reward of an external stimulus. Adler’s analysis of spoiltness comes very close to the borders of a truly evolutionary psychology; but he halted there.

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

History in which all other branches of the humanities are comprehended presupposes a secure method of “hermeneutics,” the establishment of a science and art of interpretation. At the core of historical science as of history itself lies for him [Dilthey] the problem of understanding. . . . History becomes for Dilthey a series of objectified experiences which we can understand insofar as we can “re-live” (nacherleben, Hodges’ translation) them. Understanding, interpretation, hermeneutics are the art of deciphering signs of expression.

Does anyone else perceive shades of R.G. Collingwood in this quote, or am I seeing things again?

Compare the above with the following from Collingwood re Dilthey:

The Idea of History

R. G. Collingwood

[Dilthey] raises the question how the historian actually performs the work of coming to know the past, starting as he does simply from documents and data which do not by themselves reveal it. These data, he replies, offer him only the occasion for reliving in his own mind the spiritual activity which originally produced them. It is in virtue of his own spiritual life, and in proportion to the intrinsic richness of that life, that he can thus infuse life into the dead materials with which he finds himself confronted. Thus genuine historical knowledge is an inward experience (Erlebnis) of its own object, whereas scientific knowledge is the attempt to understand (begreifen) phenomena presented to him as outward spectacles. This conception of the historian as living in his object, or rather making his object live in him, is a great advance on anything achieved by any of Dilthey’s German contemporaries.

So am I imaging things? 

The Square and the Tower

Niall Ferguson

“For most of history, life has been hierarchical. A few have enjoyed the privileges that come from monopolizing violence. Everyone else has dug.” [The statement "Everyone else has dug" is a riff on Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad & the Ugly wherein Clint Eastwood, holding the only loaded gun, tells Eli Wallach that "in this world there's two kinds of people . . . Those with loaded guns. And those who dig. You dig."]