Sunday, August 26, 2007

Academic Twit Rebuked by Caveman

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1 comment:

My Frontier Thesis said...

This statement is a bit confused, in need of further clarification:

Westen begins by noting that recent research has shot holes through the theory of the dispassionate rational mind that emerged from the 18th-century Enlightenment. People rely upon emotion to drive the decision-making process and reach conclusions that make them feel good.

Reason and rationality, therefore, play a limited role in political decisions. “The dispassionate mind of the 18th-century philosophers,” Westen says, “allows us to predict somewhere between 0.5 and 3 percent of the most important political decisions people will make over the course of their lives.”

Clarification because an analysis of Thomas Jefferson's outgoing correspondence leading up to the Revolution revealed that he intensified his polemic towards the King and British Rule when writing to younger Revolutionaries. The Tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants from time to time. Stuff like that. To suggest that the Enlightenment thinkers didn't know how to talk to a variety of different people on their own terms is a bit, well, misleading. Ben Franklin also knew how to use language to convince this or that group or individual.

Academics are kind of funny these days with all their "New" studies.

8/27/2007 12:39 PM

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