The idea of freedom is central to the way we live our lives. Some of us say we would die to defend it, and many have. To explain who and what we are, we first call ourselves “free”.
But for as often as we say the word, do we understand what freedom is?
We will explore the idea of freedom through the lens of philosophy, history, literature… and whatever else we can find to learn from. I hope you’ll join the conversation.
FOUNDATIONS: Reason & Imperialism 6; Civil Society, Imperialism, & Mind
In Season 2 - our FOUNDATIONS series - we’ll examine European philosophers from the 17th through the 19th centuries, to see how their views have shaped and defined our own… whether we realize it or not.
Having examined the mechanisms of imperialism and “mind-changing” more closely in the last three episodes, we’ll pan out a bit to understand these ideas in a larger historical and philosophical context. First, we’ll seek to understand what exactly Imperialist thinkers, like Mill, intended to occur in the course of these processes.
Next, we’ll discuss the relationships between Civil Society and Mind as two highly complex systems that ultimately come to define and craft one another, cyclically, and continually, over time. Accepting that symbiotic, mutually defining relationship, we’ll re-frame our conversation about how Imperialism “changes minds” to how it manipulates Civil Society as a means of changing individual minds across an entire society.
Finally, we’ll examine the similarities between Colonialism, Imperialism, and other seismic changes to civil society, including those experienced during rapid conversions to authoritarian government… and speculate a bit further on the longer-term effects of this spread of the European worldview via Imperialism, which we’ve likened to the spread of a noxious weed across the “intellectual environment” of the globe.
11 Aug 2022
FOUNDATIONS: Reason & Imperialism 5; Cohn’s Unintended Echoes of Imperialism
In Season 2 - our FOUNDATIONS series - we’ll examine European philosophers from the 17th through the 19th centuries, to see how their views have shaped and defined our own… whether we realize it or not.
Today, we’ll finish our look at Bernard Cohn’s COLONIALISM AND ITS FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE: THE BRITISH IN INDIA Cohn uses the critical style of Michel Foucault to examine how the English expressions of power in India often produced outcomes they did not anticipate - even, or especially, when their intentions were “good”.
We’ll begin with Cohn on the English effort to “clarify” law and legal codes in India. While they intended to do so in a way that “arrived at the truth” of Indian law, what they did was to make Indian law fundamentally English; fundamentally European. Thus, regardless of the English intentions, their activities cause another major change in Indian Civil Society, which, in turn, set the stage for ongoing changes to individual Indian minds.
From there we’ll look at some of Cohn’s contentions that are both not quite so well proven in the text (IMHO), and which, as with Foucault, it will be somewhat harder to know what to “do” with. But which are important and likely profoundly important questions, nonetheless.
All of which results in what will simply have to pass for a “rant” – a rhetorical rant, at that - by the bookish and retiring standards of AFOI, in which we explore what it means that, in the centuries since Elizabeth the First, many of us in the “western” (ahem) world have gone from being subjects living under a government, to data sets that factor (more or less) in the operations of government.
Don’t miss it!
8 Aug 2022
EPIPHENOMENA: The Language of Command in Imperial India
In Season 2 - our FOUNDATIONS series - we’ll examine European philosophers from the 17th through the 19th centuries, to see how their views have shaped and defined our own… whether we realize it or not.
Today, a brief treatment of a point made in Bernard Cohn’s COLONIALISM AND ITS FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE: THE BRITISH IN INDIA. Cohn talks about the way the English taught and used a hyper-simplified version of Indian language whose only purpose was to allow British Imperialists to give orders to “menials” under their command.
By teaching English nobility who were new to India a rudimentary series of commands – speech as simple as the ability to say “plate” declaratively, knowing that would pass for the more three-dimensionally human communication “bring me a plate” (or, perhaps, even “PLEASE bring me a plate”, but that’s likely asking far too much) - the vast majority of actual communication between the English and native Indian people was reduced to a purely functional form that allowed for little or no actual exchange of ideas, interests, or anything at all the required nuance or complexity.
Put differently, the practical structure of communication in India practically assured that neither the English nor the Indians could ever come to a point of understanding the other as compelling, intricate, real human beings. An attempt to facilitate communication ended up stifling the exchange of anything at all like actual meaning.
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