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I have found, in the course of advocating for the idea that CHAT is
part of the tradition of Romantic Science, that antipathy to this view
comes mainly from those who value Kant most highly, and/or want to
retain Hegel in combination with Kant. Romantic Science was a
reaction against the Enlightenment, and for these people, it remains a
reactionary current of thought. As I see it, Romantic Science was a
reaction against the elements of Kant which were anti-humanist. In
particular, universalism in his conception of the human being, and his
readiness to break the individual up into distinct faculties. But to
Kantians, the negation of Kantian universalism is an attack on
universal human rights in favour of particularism, and leads to
nationalism, racism, etc., etc. In this respect, I found that in trying
to get my article on Goethe and Hegel published in German translation,
I had to cut out the section on Herder because the mere mention of
Herder produced such a negative reaction from Marxists in Germany! This
has a similar basis: people see Herder's interest in the roots of human
life in particularity as a step along the road to Hitler. In addition
to this, people who have a positivist and mainstream conception of
scientific practice take "Romantic Science" to be utterly non-serious.
Goethe himself suffered this verdict in his own day. Hope that helps. Andy mike cole wrote: Hi Larry- People have different ways of trying to combine insights associated with Vygotsky et al that we call CHAT. So I guess I don't really want to discuss is CHAT a Romantic science. Andy has done a ton of work tracing back lineages of Romantic science. A pretty long and diverse lineage. I specifically do not want to grant David's comment that "an even more important reason to reject the epithet of romantic science is that it assumes a very ahistorical and non-dialectical opposition between romanticism and enlightenment. I do not interpret Luria this way, so entering the discussion on that basis just doesn't attract me. Who among us would start out with that premise? Not David, not me. So, for me the discussion is to explore the varieties and choices and what we, ourselves, are seeking to do in our work/lives. Luria and Vygotsky spoke of will.self control as learning to control oneself from the outside. They sided with many who declare that "in the beginning is the deed." When you put those ideas together, how are they contradicted by Hazlitt? I was serious when I said that the quotation from Marx seemed apropriate. Luria was a clinician AND an experimentalist, often with the same individuals. In at least two famous cases, he interacted with individuals over decades. His version of Romantic Science was decidedly BOTH/AND not either/or and the crucible of practice was where the two, historically intertwined work views reveal themselves. I think David engages in this form of science, too. You see it in his ability to bring his academic knowledge of language, thought, and development to the practice of teaching as a second language. In another way he does it in his finest examples for great works of art and their analysis through Vygotskian thought. I am simply intellectually incapable of now adding more voices into the discussion without reaching some understanding of our presumed common starting points, to the extent to which such exist! (Which is one of the issues we struggle with always on xmca!). I beg you pardon for asking you to pause before moving on. I feel on too unsure a footing to follow at the moment. mike On Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 7:24 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:Good morning Mike and David THIS topic: Is CHAT a Romantic science? seems central to explorations of the yearning and desire to transform the world. David , your sharing Hazlitt's insight that volition and will are not retrospective, or focused on the present, but rather oriented to anticipating how to act in the future seems to be a wonderful temporal dimension to explore. Another way IN to this topic is your comment, It seems to me that an even more important reason to reject the epithet of romantic science is that it assumes a very ahistorical and non-dialectical opposition between romanticism and enlightenment. So, I would like to propose that "seeing through" THIS tension [or way of reading] the historical movement BETWEEN romanticism and enlightenment IS the narrative to explore. An analogy to Freud and Jung's ongoing conversation about dreams and where they come from and their function may be relevant to this topic as a way to show a dialectic within psychology as an _expression_ of psyche. Freud saw dreams as retrospective, memory traces, expressing the infantile wishfulfillment at the heart of the unconscious. Jung saw dreams as having a teleological function calling us into the future. Now both Freud and Jung constructed autobiographical myths where they positioned themselves as the protaganosists who were DISCOVERING this new realm of the unconscious. In fact, this conversation had been EXPLICITLY developing for at least a century as a RESPONSE within German Romanticism to the enlightenment yearnings for certainty. For example dreams as PROSPECTIVE and prophetic was a key notion of German Romanticism. These ideas were being developed and extended by authors such as Flourney as a deepening conversation between the enlightenment and German Romanticism. However, in the egocentric yearning for recognition of "I" as the author of a discovery, the HISTORICAL conversation BETWEEN Romanticism and enlightenment impulses [as the location of the development of the narrative] becomes lost. I wonder if this same tendency may be at play in the ongoing conversation in CHAT exploring the creative imagination and instrumental orientations? One further aside. Dreams and play were also being explored at this time for the common functions expressed in rehearsing the NEXT steps in the developmental process within dreams and play as analogus impulses. While I'm here, I want to add an insight from Zygmunt Bauman's notions of solid and liquid modernity in his discussion of Freud's book *Freiheit and Sicherheit* [translated as Freedom and Security]. Bauman calls our attention to an error in translation of this title as "sicherheit" is a much more complex term than "security" and expresses the UNITY of three English terms that are seen as autonomous concepts. Sicherheit as a notion expresses the UNITY of the terms security & certainty & safety which are viewed as autonomous concepts in English. Bauman suggests as we read Freud's writing we see he was exploring the themes of freedom [romantic notion] and sicherheit [security, certainty, and safety as enlightenment orientations]. Bauman's key idea is that historically we are in transition from a time of solid modernity to what he terms liquid modernity. Freud was writing at a time of solid modernity when the quest for sicherheit as ORDER and NORMS made the yearning for freedom vulnerable. Today, in times of liquid modernity, the trade off is now reversed. Individual freedom is in the ascendence but the prime consequence is the fragility of sicherheit AS ORDER and NORMS. Bauman writes, "In liquid modernity the dearth of risk-free CHOICES and the growing unclarity of the game-rules which render most of the moves and above all the outcomes of the moves - which rebound as perceptions of threat to SAFETY - first the safety of the body and then the safety of property - that space-body extension. The withdrawal into the SAFE haven of territoriality is an intense, desiring temptation - and so the DEFENSE of the SAFE home becomes the passkey to all doors which one feels must be locked up and sealed off to stave off the TRIPLE threat to SPIRITUAL and MATERIAL sicherheit" [Bauman, "social Issues of Law and Order" in The British Journal of Criminology, 2000, v.40, p205-221] Bauman's exploring the yearning for law and order as SAFETY would explain the tea party movement, etc. which he suggests is a GENERAL response to liquid modernity and its deep bias towards individual freedom. For Bauman, this pursuit of a romantic ideal has consequences of increased vulnerability to sicherheit. [which is displaced into the pursuit of SAFETY because security and certainty are existential human yearnings but governments can respond to safety concerns Mike, David, I hope the invitation to explore the hermeneutical historical conversation BETWEEN romantic and enlightenment will generate further responses. Opening this theme as a generative conversation within our Western history may make explicit the tension between freedom [romantic ideal] and sicherheit [enlightenment ideal] that is in play in our searches and researches Larry On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 6:30 PM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:Well it turns out that my prior message is relevant to this one from David. David - Kind of you to remind us that rust we must and thanks very much for the Hazlitt. I really do not like the notion of Romantic Science as you characterize it. Theme for a longer discussion. And thanks for that too!! mike On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 5:26 PM, kellogg <kellogg59@hanmail.net> wrote: |
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