Abraham Rotstein, Weekend Notes

Overview

This page contains question(s)
that we should discuss
in the Talk Page!

Part	Date	KPA
I	February 25, 1956	45/02
II	May 5, 1956	45/03
III	July 14, 1956	45/04
IV	August 25/26, 1956	45/05
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX	April 6, 1957	45/06
X
XI	May 25, 1957	45/07
XII	June 25, 1957	45/08
XIII	July 20, 1957	45/09
XIV	August 24, 1957	45/10
XV	September 14, 1957	45/11
XVI
XVII	October 12, 1957	45/12
XVIII	November 2, 1957	45/13
XIX	December 21, 1957	45/14
XX	February 15, 1958	45/16
XXI	March 29, 1958	45/17
XXII	April 27 - May 4, 1958	45/18
XXIII	June 30 - August 10, 1958	45/19
XXIV	August 23, 1958	45/20
XXV

Text in English to type

Text in English to re-read

I

• The Background of The Great Transformation
• Russia
• The Current Crisis
• The Reality of Society
• The U.S.A.
• The Market and a Theory of Nationalism
• Discussion oy My Letter of Dec. 17/55
• Remarks
  • "Trade and Markets" Book
  • Sievers
  • New Book
  • Sundry

II

• Parsons
• The Reality of Society [II]
• Politics and the Current Crisis
• The Institutionalists
• Background of the Great Transformation [II]
• The Exchange Triad and the Gold Standard
• The U.S.A. [II]
• The 1958 Book
• The Ford Project
• Remarks
  • The Trade Cycle
  • World Religion
  • Meaning of "material"
  • Questions
  • Sundry

III

• Religion and Revelation
• The Rousseau Problem
• Klages and History
• Beyond the Great Transformation
• Industrialism
• Modern Politics
• Background of Polanyi's Work
• The Russians and Chinese
• Art
• Psychology
• Remarks
  • Canada
  • Hesiod
  • Greece
  • The Quiet American
  • Nuclear Discoveries
  • Personal

IV

G[eorge] B[ernard] Shaw

[…]

[3] Every major thinker has two opposite ideas e.g. Marx, Hegel, Rousseau, and also Jesus and Paul state opposites in an indissoluble unity of temperament. That's why innumerable interpretations are possible on one line or the other: life and logos. There are always some who embody the life force. There is the creation of a baby, but the imagination is also conceptual. Conception is both biological and logical - body and mind.

[…]

The whole mystery of saints is that there are saints e.g. Joan is an obvious situation discovers the obvious - the French nation. But the Roman church can't have nations and so sh's burned. She was [4]supposed to work miracles but didn't. She was beginning to do what every Frenchman had to do. We describe these as miracles by pretending not to understand. […]

[5] Man exists on three levels:

• The body. If you kick or pinch it hurts.
• Psychological mechanism. You may hit him in hi vanity in a psychological or emotional sense
• Life is nourished from internal sources of faith and conscience which he can't contradict without destroying himself.

The secret of Shaw…

[6] P. once wrote on Shaw, just about fifty years ago in 1906, ”The Drama of the Economic Interpretation of History”. He read all that Shaw had then written.

Technology and Utopia

P[olanyi] doesn’t take Owen as Utopian. He was full of realism but in one of his sentences he said that there are limitations and these would have to be accepted. [23]

Rationality

[35] What are ends of the rationality movement? (my question)

The nearest to a philosophy of rationalism ever built was the Enlightenment. It was only a counterphilosophy to a theologically interpreted world.

The Encyclopedists via the Enlightenment represented rationalism. They claimed that the universe and existence can be understood and is in harmony with reason. It probably means the unaided mind does not seek support in revelation.

It may organize itself as humanism - man is the ultimate explanation and value. This got terrific secret

The Revelations

[37] (From P.'s discussion of the dangers of science, my comment of Eve's apple to Adam).

P. is not really thinking of the symbolic expression of reminiscences. Man awakened out of his vegetative soul to the consciousness of death which created what we call man. The knowledge is here a reminiscence of man as we know him, being born and reshaping his consciousness. But to P. these revelations have always had meaning. Revelation does not come in a special or specific way or we wouldn't know it. The importance is its truth and we must know our life is limited. There is no use denying that and therefore the emphasize is its consequences.

Everybody knows he can extinguish the meaning of his life by denying his inner nature and it wouldn't be in the same sense as physical death. Revelation only means the consequences which are irreversible and that is true of the reality of society.

We can't say who told you or how do you know? That's why we speak of revelation, because once there, its irrevocable.

That's why the Old Testament or Babylonian story meant something different, such as whether sex is a danger and contradicts man's nature by his being ashamed. P. is not keen on this side of the matter. Other people might be concerned with the structure of human consciousness and the way it is linked here.

Both sex and hunger have this awkward character about them [38] and every human society deals with them.

[…]

[38] The one sentence of Owen’s says that we cannot appeal to the reality of society for disregarding the Christian commitment until the we try to see if the reality of society is a limitation for equality and justice. The reality of society is the third horror we are confronted [39] with – being a number of society and not doing anything about it.

IX

Notes

Jews and Christianity

[28+57] The reason for anti-semitism is that Jews are rightly charged with having brought Christianity into the world and then evading the consequence. (P. thinks it is true). The Jew thinks that the Gentil is pretty silly to be saddled with the religion. It is an unbearable burden.

P. always thought so. The Nazis said that Bolshevism was Christianity all over again and the Jews ought to be destroyed because they are responsible for Christianity.

XI

"Freedom and Technology" - General Comments

[…]

[4] One of the things that P. might do is not to speak of Christianity but of religion. There is not a religion which doesn't deal with man's inner freedom. If he has religion, he has inner life and that is what the rest of life turns on. Religion is like metaphysics.

The Christians don't accept a deeper meaning to their position and you immediately get them against you. You are attacked when you say that something deeper exists aside from its content. […]

[14] In a way, it is not the individual who is fighting the condition - but the conditions which are fighting the individual with a delusion - until it bursts like an inflated ballon. P. wrote this 49 years ago and [15] called it the "Passive Drama". The individual tries to maintain his delusion but proves unable to do so. […]

Shaw argues that the indestructible character of society (the reality of society) allows the individual much more freedom than he thinks he has e.g. marriage, estate, God. Society is not based on his good behavior in following conventional rules of the day. He will still follow conventional rules but not of the day. Shaw shows ironically how conventionally he behaves when he imagines he behaves unconventionally. […]

[18] Owen said that human environment determines character. […]

[20] From Owen we jump to urbanization, central power, lighting, information and communication, telephone, telegraph, police, newspaper and railways. Then you get public utilities and public service and the danger to society that lies in that.

[28] The modern complaints occur with Freud, Nietzsche and Sartre. Marx was more of a liberal Christian.

Shaw's vitalism (the life force)…

[30] P. think that Jaspers is boring and confused stuff. It does contain important insights but, for example, Jaspers thinks that Russia is the end of everything. This is unphilosophical measuring, of using one red for one thing and another red for another. Why doesn't he say something clear, simple and sensible?

In Jasper's book he puts everything on the masses. So does Tocqueville and Maine (i.e. under liberty you never have progress because the masses -and this was Spencer's influence on him). […]

P. discovered his philosopher. Robert Owen was the only person we can point to. He expressed the thought that he didn't realize. It was his actions which proved that he realized it - what he did in the factory.

See also

• Presentation by Abraham Rotstein, published in McROBBIE (dir.) 1994, p. 135-140.