06 July 2019

On Worldviews (1900-1949)

“The systematic perversion and reinterpretation of the values themselves is much more effective than the 'slandering' of persons or the falsification of the world view could ever be.” (Max Schele, “Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen”, 1912)

"Theoretical philosophy aimed to discover the unity of experience, namely, in the form of some universal explanation. It strived to yield a world picture, one which is harmoniously integral and completely understandable." (Alexander Bogdanov, "Tektology: The Universal Organizational Science" Vol. I, 1913)

"Not ideas, but material and ideal interests, directly govern men's conduct. Yet very frequently the 'world images' that have been created by 'ideas' have, like switchmen, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest. 'From what' and 'for what' one wished to be redeemed and, let us not forget, 'could be' redeemed, depended on one's image of the world." (Max Weber, "The Social Psychology of the World Religions", 1915)

“Resignation as to knowledge of the world is for me not an irretrievable plunge into a scepticism which leaves us to drift about in life like a derelict vessel. I see in it that effort of honesty which we must venture to make in order to arrive at the serviceable world-view which hovers within sight. Every world-view which fails to start from resignation in regard to knowledge is artificial and a mere fabrication, for it rests upon an inadmissible interpretation of the universe. […] World-view is a product of life-view, not vice versa.” (Albert Schweitzer, “Kulturphilosophie”, 1923) 

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.” (Howard P Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”, 1926)

“Whereas the particular conception of ideology designates only a part of the opponent's assertions as ideologies - and this only with reference to their content, the total conception calls into question the opponent's total worldview (including his conceptual apparatus), and attempts to understand these concepts as an outgrowth of the collective life of which he partakes.” (Karl Mannheim, “Ideology and Utopia”, 1929) 

"A Weltanschauung [worldview] is an intellectual construction which solves all the problems of our existence uniformly on the basis of one overriding hypothesis, which, accordingly, leaves no question unanswered and in which everything that interests us finds its fixed place [...] the worldview of science already departs noticeably from our definition. It is true that it too assumes the uniformity of the explanation of the universe; but it does so only as a programme, the fulfillment of which is relegated to the future." Sigmund Freud, “New introductory lectures on psycho-analysis”, 1932) 

“It happens at times that a person believes that he has a world-view, but that there is yet one particular phenomenon that is of such a nature that it baffles the understanding, and that he explains differently and attempts to ignore in order not to harbor the thought that this phenomenon might overthrow the whole view, or that his reflection does not possess enough courage and resolution to penetrate the phenomenon with his world-view.” (Søren Kierkegaard, 1938) 

“It is natural to give a clear view of the world after accepting the idea that it must be clear.” (Albert Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, 1942)

“Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth.” (Simone de Beauvoir, “The Second Sex”, 1949)

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