(익명으로도 덧글을 남길 수 있지만, 구글 계정이 있으시면 "후속 덧글을 이메일로 보내기"를 선택해서 사이트를 다시 방문하지 않고도 전자우편으로 받아볼 수 있습니다. 구글이 다른 온라인사업자들과 제휴를 넓혀가기를 기대합니다)
2010년 1월 29일 금요일
2010년 1월 27일 수요일
Verstand...Understanding...오성?...앎
자료 1: 네이트백과
오성[ 悟性, Verstand ] (영)understanding: 이마누엘 칸트의 철학에서 감성, 이성과 구별되는 인식능력.
오성은 실재를 개념적으로 파악하는 인간의 능력이라는 점에서 이성과 동일하지만, 칸트는 오성과 이성을 엄격히 구분했다. 오성은 주관이 선천적으로 가지고 있는 형식, 즉 범주의 도움으로 감성의 대상을 사유하는 능력이다. 그에 반해 이성은 우주·영혼·신 등 초경험적 대상을 사유하는 능력이다. 칸트에 따르면 오성은 객관적이고 보편타당한 진리를 낳지만 이성은 오류를 낳는다. 일반적으로 오성과 이성은 감성과 구별되는 인간의 정신활동이라는 동일한 의미로 사용된다.
자료 2: Acro, 이상과 현실 사이의 공론장
덧글 1: 그전에 이글을 썼을 때는, 칸트의 오성(understanding)을 지성으로 번역했었는데, 여기서는 교정을 해서 오성으로 썼습니다. 스피노자의 지성 개선론에서, understanding을 지성으로 번역한 것처럼, 지성으로 썼었는데 말이죠... 칸트의 오성에서 오자는 깨달을 오(悟)입니다. 즉 자연에 대해, 자연이 어떻게 돌아가는지 깨닫는 다는 거죠. 십 몇 년 전에는 칸트의 오성이란 단어를 보면서, 다섯 오(五)의 오성인줄 알고, 칸트에게는 다섯 가지, 생각의 양상이 있나보다 했던 기억이 있네요... 고딩때였나 하는 생각도 드네요...
덧글 2: '오성'은 대부분의 학술 개념 용어들이 그렇듯이 일본에서 통용되는 것을 그냥 받아들인 것입니다. 불교에서 쓰던 용어니 일반인들은 알아들을 도리가 없죠. 하는 짓을 지칭하는 걸로 하자면 '오성'은 엉뚱한 번역어에 속하고 차라리 '지성'이 낫습니다. 칸트 것이든 아니든 (근대) 인식론에서 인식이라는 것은 깨닫는 것하고는 아무 관계 없습니다.
덧글 3: 칼도/님의 말씀에 고개를 끄덕이게 되네요. 《순수 이성 비판》이 제기하는 질문이, "나는 무엇을 알 수 있는가?"이니, 깨달을 오가 아닌, 그냥 알 지 자의 지성이라고 쓰는게 더 타당해 보입니다. 저렇게 간단한 understanding에 대해 다른 이들이 오성이라고 쓰니, 지성으로 쓰다가 오성으로 바꿨는데, 그럴 필요가 없었네요. 댓글 감사했습니다.
자료 3: 블로그 냠냠냠
칸트, ‘계몽이란 무엇인가’라는 질문에 대한 답변 (코니스베르크, 프러시아, 1784년 9월 40일)
IMMANUEL KANT, Beantwortung der Frage : Was ist Aufklärung? (An Answer to the Question: "What is Enlightenment?") Königsberg in Preußen, den 30. Septemb. 1784.
▣ 계몽이란?
인간이 스스로 초래한 미숙함으로부터 벗어나는 것(der Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbstverschuldeten Unmündigkeit, man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity)
▣ 미숙함이란?
자신의 오성(Vestand, understanding)을 다른 이의 지도 없이는 사용할 수 없는 무능함
▣ 언제 미숙함은 스스로 초래한 것이 되는가?
그 원인이 오성의 결여가 아니라 다른 이의 지도 없이 오성을 사용하려는 결단과 용기의 결여일 때.
▷ 그래서 계몽의 모토는 ‘Sapere aude!1 즉 ‘자신의 오성을 사용할 용기를 가져라!’이다.
▣ 미숙을 조장하는 후견인 계층의 형성
많은 사람들이 평생 미숙한 채로 남아있는 것은 게으름과 비겁함 때문이다. 같은 이유로 다른 이들이 많은 사람들의 후견인이 되기도 쉽다. 대신 이해하고, 양심을 대신해주고, 대신 음식을 정해주고 등등. 미숙하다는 것은 매우 편리하다! 남이 대신 해주니 자신은 노력할 필요가 없다. 생각할 필요가 없다. 친절하게도 감독하는 일을 맡은 후견인들은 곧 인류 중 가장 많은 수가 성숙으로의 전진을 어려울 뿐만 아니라 극히 위험한 것으로 간주하도록 만들 것이다. 이 위험은 그렇게 큰 것은 아니지만, 이런 종류의 예들은 사람들을 겁먹게 하며 더 이상 시도하지 못하도록 한다.
▣ 개인이 미숙으로부터 벗어나는 일의 어려움
이렇게 개인에게 미숙함은 제2의 천성이 되어 그로부터 벗어나는 일이 어렵다. 개인은 심지어 미숙함을 좋아하기조차 한다. 타고난 재질을 잘못 사용하는 데 쓰이는 기계론적 도구들인 도그마들과 공식들(Satzungen und Formeln, Dogmas and formulas)은 개인의 영원한 미숙함에 채워진 차꼬이다. 이것을 벗어던지더라도 자유로운 움직임에 익숙하지 않은 개인은 어떻게 해야 할지 잘 모르게 된다. 따라서 소수만이 스스로의 정신을 계발함으로써 미숙으로부터 벗어나서 계속해서 과감하게 자신의 길을 가는 데 성공했다.
▣ 대중의 계몽은 느릿하게만 이루어진다
대중 전체가 스스로를 계몽할 가능성이 [개인의 경우보다] 더 크다. 대중이 자유롭게 두어진다면 이는 실로 거의 필연적이다. 후견인들 중에서도 항상 스스로 사유하는 소수가 있을 것이기 때문이다. 이들은 미숙의 멍에를 일단 떨친 후에 개인의 가치에 대한 그리고 모든 이들이 가진 스스로 사유해야 하는 의무에 대한 합리적 존중의 정신을 퍼뜨릴 것이다. 그런데 여기서 주목할 점은, 후견인들에 의해 이전에 구속된 바 있는 대중이 후견인들 중 계몽이 불가능한 일부에 의해 적절하게 선동되면 이번에는 후견인들을 구속의 상태에 남아있도록 강제할 수 있다는 것이다. 선입견(Vorurteile)을 퍼뜨리는 것은 이렇듯 매우 해롭다. 선입견들은 그것을 처음 장려한 바로 그 사람들에게 복수를 하기 때문이다. 따라서 대중은 계몽을 느릿하게만 성취할 수 있다. 혁명은 개인의 전제(專制)와 (이익과 권력을 추구하는) 억압을 끝낼 수 있지만, 사유의 방식에서 진정한 변혁을 산출하지는 못한다. 새로운 선입견들이 스스로 사유하지 못하는 거대한 대중들을 통제하는 사슬로 기능할 것이다.
▣ 이성(Vernunft, Reason)을 공적으로 사용할 자유
이러한 종류의 계몽에 필요한 것은 오직 자유이다. 여기서의 자유란 모든 점에서 자신의 이성을 공적으로 사용할 자유(von seiner Vernunft in allen Stücken öffentlichen Gebrauch zu machen)이다. 모든 곳에서 ‘따지지 마!’(Räsonniert nicht, Don't argue)의 형태로 자유에 제한이 두어지고 있다. (세상에서 오직 한 명의 지배자2만이 ‘무엇에 대해서든 따지고 싶은 만큼 따져라. 다만 복종하라!’고 말한다.) 이성의 자유로운 공적 사용만이 사람들에게 계몽을 가져온다. 이성의 사적(私的) 사용은 종종 매우 좁게 제한될 수 있지만, 계몽의 진전에 부적절한 방해물이 되는 것은 아니다.
▣ 이성의 공적 사용의 의미
누가 되었든 전체 대중에게 말하는 학식있는 사람(Gelehrter, a man of learning)으로서 이성을 사용하는 것.
▣ 이성의 사적 사용의 의미
어떤 개인이 사회에서 자신이 맡고 있는 특정의 직위나 자리에서 이성을 사용하는 것.
▣ 이성의 두 가지 방식의 사용은 공존할 수 있다.
예컨대 성직자는 자신이 속한 교회의 교리에 상응하여 회중을 가르쳐야 하지만, 학식 있는 사람으로서는 그 교리의 잘못된 측면들에 대한 자신의 숙고한 생각들을, 그리고 개선안들을 제시할 자유와 의무가 있다.
▣무엇을 기준으로 ‘사적’이고 ‘공적’인가?
성직자가 성직자로서 대하는 회중은 가족과도 같은 국지적인 모임이기에 그것이 아무리 크더라도 순전히 사적인 집단이다. 이에 반해서 성직자가 학식 있는 사람으로서 대하는 것은 세상 전체이다.
▣ 비(非)자유와 자유
성직자가 성직자로서 회중에게 교리를 가르치는 경우는 성직자 개인의 것이 아니라 그에게 외부(교회 체제)로부터 부과된 이미 정해진 것을 가르치는 것이기에 성직자로서의 성직자는 수동적으로 가르치는 것이 되며, 따라서 자유롭지 않은 것이 된다. 이에 반해 세상 전체에 대하여 말하는 학식 있는 사람으로서의 성직자는 무제한의 자유를 가진다.
▣계약은 있을 수 없다
‘대중에 대한 후견집단의 지위를 확보하기 위하여 후견인 집단이 일단의 변경 불가능한 교리들을 서약으로써 지킬 권리가 있는 것은 아닌가’라는 질문에 칸트는 ‘그것은 참으로 불가능하다’라고 답한다. 이런 종류의 계약은 인류의 앞으로의 계몽을 미리 막기 때문에 비록 최고의 권력에 의하여 비준되더라도 전적으로 무효이다. 한 시대가 힘을 합하여 서약함으로써 다음 시대를 계몽에서의 진전이 불가능한 상태에 놓을 수는 없다. 이는 계몽에서의 진전을 그 원래의 운명으로 하는 인간의 본성에 대한 범죄이다. 후대의 세대들은 이러한 전대(前代)의 계약을 승인되지 못한 범죄적인 것으로 기각할 완전한 권리를 가진다. 어떤 법이 어떤 대중에 대해서 동의할만하냐 아니냐를 가리기 위해서는 그 대중이 그 법을 스스로에게 잘 부과할 수 있는가 아닌가를 묻기만 하면 된다.
▣ 계몽은 인간의 권리이다
사람은 개인적으로는, 그리고 일시적으로는 자신을 계몽하는 것을 지연할 수 있다. 그러나 자신에 대해서나 더욱더는 나중의 세대에 대해서 계몽을 완전히 포기하는 것은 인간의 신성한 권리를 모독하고 짓밟는 것이다. 국민이 스스로 부과하지 않을 것은 국왕에 의해서도 국민에게 부과되어서는 안된다. 국왕의 입법권은 국민의 집단적 의지를 통일시키는 것에 의존하기 때문이다. 시민적 질서(die bürgerliche Ordnung, civil order)와 양립 가능한 한 국민들이 자신들의 구원―이는 국왕의 일이 아니다―을 위해서 필요하다고 생각하는 것은 무엇이든 하도록 허용할 수 있다. 그러나 자신의 구원을 위해서 열심히 노력하는 사람들을 강제로 방해하는 사람이라면 누구든 중지시키는 것은 국왕의 일이다. 국민들이 자신들의 종교적 견해를 밝힌 저작들을 정부가 감시한다면 이는 국왕의 품위를 손상시키는 것이다. 또한 몇몇 폭군들의 정신적 전제주의를 지지하는 것도 그렇다.
▣ 계몽의 시대
우리의 시대3는 계몽된 시대(ein aufgeklärtes Zeitalter, an enlightened age)는 아니다. 인간 전체가 종교의 문제에서 외부의 지도 없이 자신의 오성을 당당하게 잘 사용할 수 있는 상태에 도달하기까지 아직 먼 길이 남아있다. 그러나 이 길이 지금 열리고 있으며 보편적인 계몽에의 장애물들의 수가 점점 줄어들고 있음을 보여주는 뚜렷한 징조들이 있다. 이런 의미에서 우리 시대는 계몽의 시대(ein Zeitalter der Aufklärung, an age of enlightenment), 프리드리히 대왕의 세기이다.
▣ 계몽 군주
종교적인 문제에서 국민들에게 완전한 자유를 허용하는 것이 자신의 의무라고 말하는 것이 자신의 위엄에 손상을 주지 않는다고 보는 군주, 따라서 종교자유허용자라는 주제넘은 이름을 받아들이기를 거부하는 군주는 그 자신이 계몽된 군주이다. 그는 인류를 처음으로 미숙함에서 해방시킨 사람으로서, 모든 사람들로 하여금 모든 양심의 문제에서 자신의 이성을 자유롭게 사용하도록 한 사람으로서 칭송받을 만하다. 자유의 정신은 프러시아의 경계를 넘어서서, 자신에 대해 잘못 이해하는 정부들이 부과하는 외적 장애들과 싸워야 하는 곳으로까지 확산되고 있다. 프러시아는 자유에는 공적 안정과 사회적 통일성에 대하여 걱정할 것이 조금도 없음을 말해주는 빛나는 사례이다.
▣ 인류의 잠재력
“인류를 야만의 상태로 유지시키기 위해 의도적으로 인공적인 조치들을 취하지 않는 한에서는 인류는 스스로 점차 야만의 상태에서 벗어날 것이다.”
▣ 종교를 계몽의 초점으로 제시한 이유
첫째, 지배자들은 예술과 과학의 영역에 관한 한 국민들에게 후견인의 노릇을 할 흥미를 느끼지 않는다.
둘째, 종교적 미숙함이 가장 해롭고 수치스러운 것이다.
▣ 계몽 군주와 공화국
그 자신이 계몽된 군주만이 ‘무엇에 대해서든 따지고 싶은 만큼 따져라. 다만 복종하라!’라고 말할 수 있다. 공화국은 감히 이런 말을 할 수 없다. 더 높은 정도의 시민적 자유는 대중의 정신의 자유에 유리한 것처럼 보이지만 더 극복하기 힘든 한계를 대중에게 부과한다. 반대로 낮은 정도의 시민적 자유는 정신에게 자신의 능력을 한껏 계발할 수 있는 여지를 제공한다. “자연이 이 딱딱한 껍질의 속으로부터 자연이 가장 애정을 가지고 돌보는 씨앗 즉 자유로운 사유를 향하는 성향과 자유로운 사유를 할 사명을 끄집어냈을 때 이는 다시 점차적으로 대중들의 성격에도 작용하여 대중은 이를 통하여 자유를 다루는 능력이 점점 더 높아지게 되며, 마지막으로 정부의 원리에도 작용하여 정부는 이제 기계들 이상의 존재인 사람들을 그 존엄에 부합되도록 대하는 것이 정부에 더 유리하다는 것을 알게 된다.” ♠
1. 영어로 직역하자면, ‘Dare to know!’이다. [본문으로]
2. 칸트 당대 프러시아의 프리드리히 2세(1712-1786, 프리드리히 대왕)를 말한다. [본문으로]
3. 칸트의 시대. [본문으로]
2010년 1월 26일 화요일
第二十八事, 神聚
第二十八事
神聚, 誠之不忘 二十四用
神 精神也 聚 合也
人之諸經部 神各守
肝役 肺不參 胃役 腎不參
但 於誠役 諸神聚合
無一則 不能成誠
***
聚모일/모을(취) , 肝간(간), 肺허파(폐), 腎콩팥(신)
Engelwood Review: The Craftsman
자료: http://erb.kingdomnow.org/featured-richard-sennett-the-craftsman-vol-1-31/
***
The monastic tradition of the Church, and particularly the Benedictine stream, has gifted the broader Church with a rich heritage that values working hard and working well.This heritage has also been reflected more recently in the writings of Wendell Berry and other writers associated with the new agrarianism. For those readers who are deeply rooted in this heritage, Richard Sennett’s new book, The Craftsman, is an eloquent gift. Sennett, an esteemed sociologist at NYU, sets out in this book to explore “the intimate connection between hand and head” (9). He notes, however, that in the Western world this connection has become strained. Sennett attributes this divide in large part to our use of technology that “we did not make for ourselves and that we do not understand” (7). In demonstration of this point, Sennett posits the example of CAD software. Despite its mathematical precision, CAD eliminates the intimacy that was had in previous generations between an architect and the space in which he was working. In this previous era, the architect would, through a cyclical process of drawing, walking around and experiencing the site, become intimate with the details of the space in a way that the standard use of CAD does not allow.Over the course of the book, Sennett explores the craftsman, the craft and the nature of craftsmanship. In the book’s first part, a reflection on the craftsman, Sennett introduces the contemporary problem of division of head and hand. His chapter on the workshop environment in which the craftsman works and in which the knowledge of the craft is transmitted from one generation to the next, is a crucial element in his understanding of the craftsman. In his chapter on machines, Sennett traces the rise of industrialism in the nineteenth century, the progress of which served to broaden the chasm between head and hand, and in the words of C. Wright Mills to turn craftsmanship into “an anachronism” (118). Sennett’s exploration of the craft itself is presented in poignant chapters on the mechanics of the hand, recipes and the communication of a craft, “arousing tools” and the struggle against the resistance of materials and the place of ambiguity in craft. In the book’s final section – on craftsmanship – Sennett explores quality and the ability to become a craftsman. The latter of these questions is of particular note because he argues persuasively that anyone can become a craftsman. Indeed, even in the play of children, they are learning basic skills that prepare them for the development of a craft: viz., the “dialogue with physical materials, the discipline of following rules [and] the advanced complexity of making rules” (273).
In the book’s conclusion, Sennett reiterates his intent in exploring craftsmanship: “the craft of making physical things provides insights into the techniques of experience that can shape our dealings with others” (289). Although I bristle a bit at Sennett’s notion of relational techniques, I deeply appreciate his sense that we are fundamentally relational beings and that our labors in the physical world assist us in relating to our fellow-humans. Although Sennett did not explore this point, one wonders also if our inability to relate to others (e.g., the sort of isolation described by Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone), is connected to the technologically-induced gap between head and hand that Sennett names at the book’s outset? Although he does not use this theological language, Sennett’s work here seems to reinforce the Christian notion that physical human work has an essential place in the story of God’s reconciliation of all humanity. The Benedictine tradition has been defined by its strong sense of humanity’s dual vocation to prayer and to work. It is easy to see that in prayer we are submitting to God’s reconciling work, but also in our call to work – if we take Sennett’s work here seriously – there is a sort of submission to God’s reconciliation. In other words, to cast Sennett’s thesis theologically, in submitting to physical work of our hands, we are learning the disciplines that help us live more peaceably with all humanity, thus bearing witness to God’s larger work of reconciling all creation.
Sennett’s work, offered in The Craftsman, is a valuable resource for the missional people of God. Not only is it a striking reminder of our call to work, but it also builds a convincing case that one’s diligence in pursuing a craft is intimately connected with his/her adroitness in relationships. I look forward to reading it again, and to savoring (and being challenged by) the fruit of Sennett’s own craft.
Related posts:
2010년 1월 22일 금요일
Some reviews: This Time Is Different
title of the book: This Time Is Different, by Reinhart and Rogoff
자료 1: Wall Street Journal
By Edward Chancellor, the author of "Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation."
..... (전략) Messrs. Reinhart and Rogoff are content to furnish the historical data on the cycles of boom and bust. As economists, professors at the University of Maryland and Harvard respectively, they recognize the challenge to their discipline created by the recent financial collapse.
- But they offer frustratingly little economic theory to accompany their findings. There is nothing here on the role played by loose monetary policy in fueling speculative manias, although this subject has been addressed by earlier generations of economists, most notably the Austrian School, of which Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek are the best known representatives.
- Nor is there any mention of the work of the late Hyman Minsky, whose "financial instability hypothesis"—suggesting that periods of stability encourage excessive risk-taking—explains why New Eras contain the seeds of their own destruction.
- The authors also ignore the role played by international exchange-rate regimes, from the gold-exchange standard of the 1920s to the U.S.-dollar standard today, in fostering global economic crises.
Despite these limitations, "This Time Is Different" is an important addition to the literature of financial history. It also issues a worrying economic forecast. Currently the markets are discounting a rapid and sustained recovery from the global economic meltdown. Around the world, governments are borrowing very large sums at very low rates—assuming that stimulus spending will generate future taxes to pay off the current debt binge. But Messrs. Reinhart and Rogoff's work points in a rather different direction: toward the potential for future national debt crises and rising inflation. Of course, this time may be different. But don't bet on it.
자료 2: The Economist
... (전략)
Recommendation:
Every so often, experts sucker people into bidding up the prices of stocks or real estate because they announce that the economy has fundamentally changed. As the aftermath of the real estate bubble illustrates, the basics of economics don’t really change, no matter what fantasies people come to believe. Economics professors Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff present a thorough historical and statistical tour of financial hubris through the centuries, a postmortem that will make you wonder how anyone ever believed “this time is different.”
- The staid tone, formulas, charts and somewhat confusing organization make this fascinating history challenging to absorb.
- Yet, the content, which sweeps ambitiously and carefully across centuries and countries, rewards the persistent reader with many insights and gems, like the nation-by-nation appendix of fiscal history low points.
- getAbstract recommends this analytical overview to history buffs, investors, managers and policy makers who seek perspective on “financial folly.”
When You Hear “This Time Is Different,” Don’t Walk, Run
Every few decades, the economy’s major players develop bulletproof confidence in the efficiency of markets and the health of the economy. Known as “this-time-is-different syndrome,” this unrealistic optimism afflicted bankers, investors and policy makers before the 1930s Great Depression, the 1980s Third World debt crisis, the 1990s Asian and Latin American meltdowns, and the major 2008-2009 global downturn. Conditionsdiffered, but the same mindset – a dangerous mix of hubris, euphoria and amnesia – led to each of these collapses.
In each case, decision makers adopted beliefs that defied economic history. In the 1920s, conventional wisdom held that large-scale wars were a thing of the past, and that political stability and economic growth would replace the volatility of the years preceding World War I. Events quickly proved the optimists wrong. By the 1980s, economists were convinced that high commodity prices, low interest rates and reinvested oil profits would prop up the economy forever. Before the 2008 recession, popular thinking said globalization, better technology and sophisticated monetary policy would prevent an economic collapse. Every time, fiscal leaders thought they had learned history’s lessons and that this time the economy was different.
The most recent financial meltdown centered on the U.S. housing market, which regulators allowed to inflate despite a series of cautionary red lights. In 2005 and 2006, U.S. home price increases far outpaced growth in gross domestic product (GDP). In retrospect, home prices were clearly in a speculative bubble. Yet, even as inflation grew, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan argued that the econmomic situation was different. He theorized that financial breakthroughs like widespread securitization made real estate more liquid and supported rising prices. He waved off concerns about the massive U.S. current account deficit. While cash from China, Japan, Germany and elsewhere flooded into the U.S. as a safe haven, American consumers borrowed like never before.
Other influential leaders also downplayed the current account deficit. Greenspan’s successor, Ben Bernanke, and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill argued that high savings rates abroad and low savings rates at home were part of the natural order. But, not everyone was as sanguine. Nobelist Paul Krugman predicted an abrupt moment when the foolhardiness and “unsustainability” of America’s profligate international borrowing would become widely apparent. The trends gave reason for pause. The ratio of household debt to GDP hit 80% in 1993, rose to 120% in 2003 and rocketed to 130% in 2006. In this easy-money setting, lenders threw mortgages at some borrowers who couldn’t afford homes. Subprime borrowers were trapped when their loans’ initial low rates soon soared to unaffordable heights. The cool-handed analysis of a few high-profile contrarians like Krugman couldn’t stop the party. This-time-is-different syndrome was in full swing from 2005 to 2007. It manifested in several beguiling arguments, which seem foolish now:
- The U.S. has the world’s largest, most sophisticated financial markets, so it can handle massive inflows of capital.
- Developing economies will keep sending money to the U.S., which is a safe haven.
- Globalization sets the stage for higher leverage and larger debt loads.
- The U.S. has the best monetary policy institutions and policy makers.
- Innovative financial instruments unleash a solid, new demand for housing by allowing previously untapped borrowers to take out mortgages.
In truth, the warning signals were coming through loud and clear. To see just how near the U.S. economy came to an implosion, look at the 20th century’s “Big Five” crashes in developed economies: Spain in 1977, Norway in 1987, Finland and Sweden in 1991, and Japan in 1992. These meltdowns shared some common themes:
- Capital inflows predict financial crises – “Capital flow bonanzas,” as in the U.S. in 2005, characteristically preceded the Big Five crashes and, later, the 2008 subprime meltdown.
- A wave of financial innovation often leads to crisis – The creation of new mortgagerelated mechanisms intended to reduce risk boosted the 2005-2006 housing boom.
- A housing boom often portends a financial crash – Prices can take years to recover. After the Spanish, Norwegian, Finnish and Swedish crashes, home prices took four to six years to hit bottom. In Japan, real estate prices remained low 17 years after the boom.
- Financial liberalization often precedes a crisis – Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, financial crises almost inevitably followed spates of loosened financial regulation.
Strikingly, large, sophisticated financial markets are as prone to crashes as smaller, less-advanced markets. No real differences in length or severity distinguish crashes in less-developed nations (Indonesia, the Philippines, Argentina, Colombia) from those in developed economies (the U.S., the U.K., Japan). This should alarm those who claim that conditions are different in advanced markets.
(중략)
Avoiding the Next Crisis
By definition, this-time-is-different thinking is so infectious that it saps the will of those who might dampen the party. Even so, two steps could help avert repeat performances:
1. An early-warning system – Because financial crises follow established patterns, the world’s policy makers and investors need a warning system that alerts them to danger signs. For instance, an unusual rise in housing prices reliably predicts a banking crisis. While such signals aren’t precise enough to predict a crisis’s exact peak, they
can give a general indicator. Of course, this-time-is-different thinking means many decision makers ignore clear signs of trouble.
2. A regulatory scheme with teeth – When this-time-is-different syndrome takes hold, capital crosses borders in search of the lightest regulations. And regulators turn a blind eye to rules regarding leverage. To avoid future crises, regulators must take an international approach to regulation and enforce the rules – even when everyone believes that the situation truly is different this time.
자료 3: New Statesman
Credit where it’s due
The credit crunch of 2007 became the financial crash of 2008 and the recession of 2009. But there has been much debate about the scale of this crisis, and how it ranks against previous events. Reinhart and Rogoff have produced the most detailed study yet of financial crises, going back as far as 12th-century China.
- This is a quantitative and statistical analysis;
- it does not attempt to provide a historical narrative of crises, but rather seeks to lay bare their anatomy, by systematically assembling all the facts known about them.
This book will be a vital source of reference in debates on the causes and consequences of financial crises. By cataloguing so thoroughly every known instance of financial crisis, it performs a significant service and opens up new lines of inquiry. In its first four parts the authors categorise different types of crisis and explore our varying historical experience of them. The last two parts are a self-contained exploration of what the authors call the "Second Great Contraction" - the sub-prime meltdown in the United States that began in 2007.
- The book contains some theoretical analysis, but that is not its primary purpose.
- It does not seek an overarching theory of financial crisis, and does not analyse the meaning of crisis in any great depth.
It also contains a number of very interesting insights into the present financial meltdown. Reinhart and Rogoff present a mass of data to show that the events of 2007-2009 constitute a global financial crisis equalled only by 1929-32. They argue that it has been a transformative moment in global economic history that is likely to reshape politics and economics, in the way past crises have done. The effects of this slowdown will be particularly far-reaching, they think, because it is truly global. All emerging economies have suffered historically from all forms of financial crisis, yet although many of the more developed economies have reached a stage where they are no longer subject to defaults on their external debts, no economy is immune to banking crises.
In every cycle, at the top of the boom, many market agents, regulators, journalists and academics persuade themselves that this time it will be different, but it never is. The book argues that the warning signs of an impending financial meltdown were there for anyone to see, in the US, Britain, Spain and Ireland in particular. For example, between 1996 and 2006, the cumulative real-price increase in the US housing market was 92 per cent, more than three times the 27 per cent increase between 1890 and 1996. Yet numerous commentators produced ingenious reasons as to why facts such as these, and the spiralling of US external and domestic debt, were of no concern. Top prize goes to the theorists who argued before the crash that US foreign assets must have been wrongly calculated and must be actually far larger than official estimates. Sophisticated models were devised to explain this "dark matter" and how the US could finance its deficits indefinitely.
Reinhart and Rogoff also make chilling observations on the aftermath of severe financial crises. Asset market collapses are deep and prolonged, and are accompanied by steep declines in output and employment. At the same time government debt explodes, not primarily because of the cost of bailouts, but because of the collapse of tax revenues. The difficulty of managing all these developments at once is the reason that the effects on unemployment, house prices and output can be so long-lasting, extending for years rather than months. So far, China and India have been recovering very fast and growing rapidly, but their ability to continue doing so will depend on whether they can continue to avoid the spillover effects from the contraction in North America and Europe.
As Reinhart and Rogoff put it, "When a crisis is truly global, exports no longer form a cushion for growth." They admit that there is very little experience of global meltdowns, so we do not really know what to expect next from this one. The worst has so far been avoided by the quick and decisive actions of governments around the world. But if this book teaches us anything, it is that the effects of this crisis are going to be felt for a long time to come.
Andrew Gamble is professor of politics at the University of Cambridge. His latest book is "The Spectre at the Feast: Capitalist Crisis and the Politics of Recession" (Palgrave Macmillan, £14.99 paperback)
자료 4: businessweek,
..... (전략)
To me, one of the most important findings of the book is that generations of economists, right up to the present, have misunderstood the causes of sovereign defaults (i.e., when a country fails to make payments on its foreign debt). It turns out, they say, that a country is much more likely to default on its foreign debt if it’s carrying a lot of domestic debt. No wonder: A country will try repaying its own citizens (who vote) before it worries too much about foreign creditors (who don’t vote and, in any case, tend to be stupidly forgiving).
OK, the importance of domestic debt may not sound too surprising. What’s surprising, rather, is that this factor was completely neglected in most economists’ work. One reason: Governments have not made data about the quantities of their domestic debt available to researchers. Reinhart and Rogoff compiled it and are planning to make it available to other scholars.
One footnote: The U.S. does not have foreign debt, in the way that Reinhart and Rogoff use the term. Instead, it has lots of domestic debt (like Treasuries) that happened to be owned by foreigners. To them, foreign debt is debt that is issued in a foreign jurisdiction, usually in that foreign nation’s currency.
The U.S. can still stick it to foreign creditors by inflating the dollar so much that foreign-held Treasury bonds become close to worthless. That is exactly what the Chinese are worried about lately.
2010년 1월 14일 목요일
[책] The Element of Investing
자료: http://as.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470528494,descCd-authorInfo.html
- 지은이: Burton G. Malkiel, Charles D. Ellis
- 출간일/출판사: December 2009 / Wiley
This is a short, straight-talk book about investing. Our goal is to enhance your financial security by helping you make better investment decisions and putting you on a path toward a lifetime of financial success and, particularly, a comfortable and secure retirement. Don’t let anyone tell you that investing is too complex for regular people. We want to show you that everybody can make sound financial decisions. But it doesn’t matter whether you make a return of 2 percent, 5 percent, or even 10 percent on your investments if you have nothing to invest. So it all starts with saving.
I. SAVE
Save. The amount of capital you start with is not nearly as important as organizing your life to save regularly and to start as early as possible. As the sign in one bank read:
Little by little you can safely stock up a small reserve here, but not until you start.The fast way to affluence is simple: Reduce your expenses well below your income — and Shazam! — you are affluent because your income exceeds your outgo. You have “ more ” — more than enough. It makes no difference whether you are a recent college graduate or a multimillionaire. We ’ ve all heard stories of the schoolteacher who lived modestly, enjoyed life, and left an estate worth over $1 million — real affluence after a life of careful spending. And we know one important truth: She was a saver.
But it can also go the other way. A man with an annual income of more than $10 million — true story — kept running out of money, so he kept going back to the trustees of his family ’ s huge trusts for more. Why? Because he had such an expensive lifestyle — private plane, several large homes, frequent purchases of paintings, lavish entertaining, and on and on. And this man was miserably unhappy.
In David Copperfi eld, Charles Dickens ’ s character Wilkins Micawber pronounced a now - famous law:
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.Saving is good for us — for two reasons. One reason for saving is to prevent having serious regrets later on. As the poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote: “ Of all sad words of
tongue and pen, the saddest are ‘ It might have been.’ ” “ I should have ” and “ I wish I had ” are two more of history’s saddest sentences.
Another reason for saving is quite positive: Most of us enjoy the extra comfort and the feeling of accomplishment that comes with both the process of saving and with the
results— having more freedom of choice both now and in the future.
No regrets in the future is important, or will be, to all of us. No regrets in the present is important, too. Being a sensible saver is good for you, but deprivation is not. So don ’ t try to save too much. You ’ re looking for ways to save that you can use over and over again by making these new ways your new good habits.
The real purpose of saving is to empower you to keep your priorities— not to make you sacrifice. Your goal in saving is not to “ squeeze orange juice from a turnip ” or to make you feel deprived. Not at all! Your goal is to enable you to feel better and better about your life and the way you are living it by making your own best - for - you choices.
Savings can give you an opportunity to take advantage of attractive future opportunities that are important to you. Saving also puts you on the road to a secure retirement.
Think of saving as a way to get you more of what you really want, need, and enjoy. Let saving be your helpful friend. ....................
2010년 1월 13일 수요일
2010년 1월 12일 화요일
How You Finance Goldman Sachs' Profits: An insider's view of Wall Street’s rebound
자료: MotherJones
Tue Jul. 28, 2009
By Nomi Prins
This is perhaps the most important thing I learned over my years working on Wall Street, including as a managing director at Goldman Sachs: Numbers lie. In a normal time, the fact that the numbers generated by the nation's biggest banks can't be trusted might not matter very much to the rest of us. But since the record bank profits we're now hearing about are essentially created by massive federal funding, perhaps it behooves us to dig beneath their data. On July 27, 10 congressmen, led by Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), did just that, writing a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke questioning the Fed's role in Goldman's rapid return to the top of Wall Street.
To understand this particular giveaway, look back to September 21, 2008. It was a frenzied night for Goldman Sachs and the only other remaining major investment bank, Morgan Stanley. Their three main competitors were gone. Bear Stearns had been taken over by JPMorgan Chase in March, 2008, Lehman Brothers had just declared bankruptcy due to lack of capital, and Bank of America had been pushed to acquire Merrill Lynch because the firm didn't have enough cash to survive on its own. Anxious to avoid a similar fate, hat in hand, they came to the Fed for access to desperately needed capital. All they had to do was become bank holding companies to get it. So, without so much as clearing the standard five-day antitrust waiting period for such a change, the Fed granted their wish.
Bank holding companies (which all the biggest financial firms now are) come under the regulatory purview of the Fed, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the FDIC. The capital they keep in reserve in case of emergency (like, say, toxic assets hemorrhaging on their books, or credit derivatives trades not being paid) is supposed to be greater than investment banks'. That's the trade-off. You get access to federal assistance, you pony up more capital, and you take less risk.
Goldman didn't like the last part. It makes most of its money speculating, or trading. So it asked the Fed to be exempt from what's called the Market Risk Rules that bank holding companies adhere to when computing their risk.
Keep in mind that by virtue of becoming a bank holding company, Goldman received a total of $63.6 billion in federal subsidies (that we know about—probably more if the Fed were ever forced to disclose its $7.6 trillion of borrower details). There was the $10 billion it got from TARP (which it repaid), the $12.9 billion it grabbed from AIG's spoils—even though Goldman had stated beforehand that it was protected from losses incurred by AIG's free fall, and if that were the case, would not have needed that money, let alone deserved it. Then, there's the $29.7 billion it's used so far out of the $35 billion it has available, backed by the FDIC's Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program, and finally, there's the $11 billion available under the Fed's Commercial Paper Funding Facility.
Tactically, after bagging this bounty, Goldman asked the Fed, its new regulator, if it could use its old risk model to determine capital reserves. It wanted to use the model that its old investment bank regulator, the SEC, was fine with, called VaR, or value at risk. VaR pretty much allows banks to plug in their own parameters, and based on these, calculate how much risk they have, and thus how much capital they need to hold against it. VaR was the same lax SEC-approved risk model that investment banks such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers used, with the aforementioned results.
On February 5, 2009, the Fed granted Goldman's request. This meant that not only was Goldman getting big federal subsidies, but also that it could keep betting big without saving aside as much capital as the other banks. Using VaR gave Goldman more leeway to, well, accentuate the positive. Yes, Goldman is a more risk-prone firm now than it was before it got to play with our money.
Which brings us back to these recent quarterly earnings. Goldman posted record profits of $3.4 billion on revenues of $13.76 billion. More than 78 precent of those revenues came from its most risky division, the one that requires the most capital to operate, Trading and Principal Investments. Of those, the Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities (FICC) area within that division brought in a record $6.8 billion in revenues. That's the division, by the way, that I worked in and that Lloyd Blankfein managed on his way up the Goldman totem pole. (It's also the division that would stand to gain the most if Waxman's cap-and-trade bill passes.)
Since Goldman is trading big with our money, why not also use it to pay big bonuses? It's not like there are any strings attached. For the first half of 2009, Goldman set aside $11.4 billion for compensation—34 percent more than for the first half of 2008, keeping them on target for a record bonus year—even though they still owe the federal government $53.6 billion, a sum more than four times that bonus amount.
But capital is still key. Capital is the lifeblood that pumps through a financial organization. You can't trade without it. As of June 26, 2009, Goldman's total capital was $254 billion, but that included $191 billion in unsecured long-term borrowing (meaning money it had borrowed without putting up any collateral for it). On November 28, 2008 (4Q 2008), it had only $168 billion in unsecured long-term borrowing. Thus, its long-term unsecured debt jumped 14 percent. Though Goldman doesn't disclose exactly where all this debt comes from, given the $23 billion jump, we can only wonder whether some of it has come from government subsidies or the Fed's secret facilities.
Not only that, by virtue of how it's set up, most of Goldman's unsecured funding comes in through its parent company, Group Inc. (Think the top point of an umbrella with each spoke being a subsidiary.) This parent parcels that money out to Goldman's subsidiaries, some of which are regulated, some of which aren't. This means that even though Goldman is supposed to be regulated by the Fed and other agencies, it has unregulated elements receiving unsecured funding—just like before the crisis, but with more of our money involved.
As for JPMorgan Chase, its profit of $2.7 billion was up 36 percent for the second quarter of 2009 vs. the same quarter last year, but a lot of that also came from trading revenues, meaning its speculative endeavors are driving its profits. Over on the consumer side, the firm had to set aside nearly $30 billion in reserve for credit-related losses. Riding on its trading laurels, when its consumer business is still in deterioration mode, is not a recipe for stability, no matter how much cheering JPMorgan Chase's results got from Wall Street. Betting is betting.
Let's pause for some reflection: The bank "stars" made most of their money on speculation, got nearly $124 billion in government guarantees and subsidies between them over the past year and a half, yet saw continued losses in the credit products most affected by consumer credit problems. Both are setting aside top-dollar bonuses. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon mentioned that he's concerned about attracting talent, a translation for wanting to pay investment bankers big bucks—because, after all, they suffered so terribly last year, and he needs to stay competitive with his friends at Goldman. This doesn't add up to a really healthy scenario. It's more like bad déjà vu.
As a recent New York Times article (and many other publications in different words) said, "For the most part, the worst of the financial crisis seems to be over." Sure, the crisis may appear to be over because the major banks of Wall Street are speculating well with government subsidies. But that's a dangerous conclusion. It doesn't mean that finance firms could thrive without the artificial, public-funded assistance. And it certainly doesn't mean that consumers are any better off than they were before the crisis emerged. It's just that they didn't get the same generous subsidies.
Additional research by Clark Merrefield.
Nomi Prins is an economist and frequent contributor for Mother Jones. Her most recent book is It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street. To read more articles by Nomi Prins, click here.
[이코노믹리뷰] 4인4색 美 전문가들의 금융위기 후일담
***
‘흥망성쇄’의 역사는 늘 뜨거운 관심의 대상이다. 20대의 나이에 한나라 황제의 정책 보좌관 격인 ‘박사’에 선임된 ‘가의’에게는 법가 사상을 통차원리로 삼아 전국을 통일한 진나라가 불과 2대 만에 몰락한 배경이 늘 불가사의였다. 이 청년 학자는 후일 불후의 명저로 꼽히는 《과진론》에서 이 문제를 파고든다. 요즘 미 경제계에는 이른바 준엄한 붓끝으로 이면의 진실을 파고드는 현대판 ‘가의’들이 봇물을 이룬다. 미국발 금융위기의 실체적 진실을 조명하려는 주인공들이 잇단 출사표를 던지며 ‘과진론’에 견줄 저서들을 발표하고 있어 관심을 끈다. <이코노믹 리뷰>는 리차드 포스너 등 이색 저자 4인방의 최신 저작을 집중 분석해 보았다. 〈편집자 주>
파블로 트리애나, 리차드 포스너, 앤드류 로스 소킨, 헨리 카우프만 (이하 생략. 위 자료 참조)
***
한편, 2009년 6월 금융위기를 진단한 다음 5권의 저작을 영국 이코노미스트지에서 평했다.
Philip Augar, “Chasing Alpha”
Gillian Tett, “Fools Gold”
Pablo Triana, “Lecturing Birds on Flying”
Andrew Gamble, “The Spectre at the Feast”
Stern School of Business, “Restoring Financial Stability”
이 서평 기사는 이들의 저작 모두가 때 이른 분석으로 문제의 핵심을 비껴갔다고 결론을 맺고 있다. 마지막 문장이 인상적이다. "갈브레이스의 걸작 《1929년 주가 대폭락The Great Crash of 1929》이 25년 이 지난 뒤에야 출간되었다는 사실을 기억해둘 만하다."
Some words and interviews on The Craftsman with the author
1. Question & Answer with the author:
Q: What do you mean by craftsmanship?A: Craftsmanship names both the desire for quality and the skill to deliver it. A nurse or a computer programmer can think about his or her skill as a craft to which he or she is committed, just like a potter. In my book I try to show in particular what the traditional realm of artisans, making things by hand, reveals about craftsmanship in this larger sense of “doing something well for its own sake.”Q: Why does craftsmanship matter today?A: Most individuals, businesses, and organizations would claim they are driven by the desire to do good quality-work, but you’d be right to be suspicious about this claim. In the book I show how and why many modern institutions produce mediocre work; I show how the education system can provide students only superficial skills and little sense of commitment. “Craftsmanship” names more a desire than a reality we know how to put into practice.Q: How does craft relate to art?A: There is no art without craft, no expression without technique. So, in my book, I focus on the musician practicing scales, the architect working with problems at a building site, the writer cutting excess words from a paragraph. I do not discuss inspiration.Q: The Craftsman is the first book in a trilogy; how do you think about the series?A: I want to make sense of material things and material culture in a different way than the Marxist writers of the 20th century did. They concentrated on power relations. I want to broaden cultural materialism to include the sensations and puzzles aroused by material things themselves; the ways in which abstract thinking and belief develop through practice and practical activity; the forms of social behavior which emerge from shared physical experience. The trilogy explores the crafting of objects, ritual and religion, and society’s relation to natural resources. I am by conviction a pragmatist and these books are my contribution to the pragmatist tradition in America.
2. An interview with the author: link
3. Another interview with the author: link
4. In a word, the book talks about:
Defining craftsmanship far more broadly than “skilled manual labor,” Richard Sennett maintains that the computer programmer, the doctor, the artist, and even the parent and citizen engage in a craftsman’s work. Craftsmanship names the basic human impulse to do a job well for its own sake, says the author, and good craftsmanship involves developing skills and focusing on the work rather than ourselves. In this thought-provoking book, one of our most distinguished public intellectuals explores the work of craftsmen past and present, identifies deep connections between material consciousness and ethical values, and challenges received ideas about what constitutes good work in today’s world.The Craftsman engages the many dimensions of skill—from the technical demands to the obsessive energy required to do good work. Craftsmanship leads Sennett across time and space, from ancient Roman brickmakers to Renaissance goldsmiths to the printing presses of Enlightenment Paris and the factories of industrial London; in the modern world he explores what experiences of good work are shared by computer programmers, nurses and doctors, musicians, glassblowers, and cooks. Unique in the scope of his thinking, Sennett expands previous notions of crafts and craftsmen and apprises us of the surprising extent to which we can learn about ourselves through the labor of making physical things.
[Times Online] The Craftsman by Richard Sennett
자료: The Times, February 15, 2008
Reviewed by Simon Ings
***
EXPERT VIEW: Craft, as Sennett sees it, belongs to the category of "social capital": knowledge and skill that are accumulated and passed on through social interaction, and which are easily lost when social customs change. Roger Scruton, The Sunday Times
***
Why does affluence generate so much day-to-day misery? Richard Sennett, a New York sociologist who lives in London, believes that the working practices that generate our wealth have stripped away our self-esteem.
What is to be done? However undervalued we are as workers, we still have to work. Sennett has been asking difficult questions about affluence since as long ago as 1972, in The Hidden Injuries of Class (written with Jonathan Cobb).
He argues that our sense of wellbeing is rooted in our craftsmanship. It is craftsmanship - rather than the promise of gain - that gets us out of bed in the morning. The world of work is hostile to craft. Fordism rules. For all that, craft practices persist. Authority and knowledge, obedience and learning, repetition and skill: these values pair off in the average office much as they did in a medieval workshop. Sennett argues that craft does not need to be reinvented. It needs to be recognised. (Seen through his eyes, the BBC sitcom The Office reveals its timeless appeal: a glimpse into the Guild from Hell.)
Sennett's chief strength is his willingness to criticise the craft mentality, enumerating all the many ways in which life as a craftsman can spoil your day, not to mention your life. Craft is not a panacea for modern ills.
By one common measure, it takes 10,000 hours to become accomplished at something. Little of the learning acquired in that time can be written down. Much is literally inexpressible. This is as true for surgeons and parents as it is for potters and cellists. Craft is something that is learnt by doing; it is essentially an adult extension of child's play. So how is Sennett to write about “the thousand little everyday moves that add up in sum to a practice” in a way that won't make him sound like a besotted father anatomising the eating habits of his children?
The pleasures of craft, like the pleasures of parenting, are as dull to relate as they are a joy to experience. You may as well tell people your dreams.
Much of The Craftsman is taken up with this problem, and a related, more intractable difficulty: how do you abstract craft into a political philosophy? At least one contemporary reckons that you should not even try. The Montana-based philosopher Albert Borgmann, surveying craft literature, has written that its failures usually “arise from attempts to gain some distance from the immediacy of nature; and from a desire to refer instead to some general value”.
Sennett sees - or he thinks he sees - an ethical lesson in craft. But he cannot grasp it. Ironically for a craftsman (an accomplished musician as well as a good writer) Sennett blames his tools. He says that the inability of language to express accurately the supple eloquence of a cellist's fingers, say, or a glass-blower's hips and lower back, may represent “a fundamental human limit”.
He may be right. Philosophy, however pragmatic and politically engaged, proceeds through language. Much else that we are, and can be, and should be, has nothing to do with words. If anyone could create a political philosophy around craft, it would be Sennett.
His failure (if that is what it is - The Craftsman is only the first of three volumes) is worrying. It suggests that, were we to reach for the good life through craft, we might have to do things in silence
2010년 1월 10일 일요일
Some papers on Diderot's Encyclopedia
자료:
- Heritage of Technology Education: http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/v6n1/pdf/pannabecker.pdf
- Diderot and Encyclopedic Order: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0006/000617/061777eb.pdf
자료 1: Diderot, the Mechanical Arts, and the Encyclopédie: In Search of the Heritage of Technology Education
- 지은이: John Pannabecker, Professor in the Technology Department, McPherson College, McPherson, KS.
- 출처: Journal of Technology Education, Vol. 6 No. 1, Fall 1994
(... 전략) This paper contributes to a history of technology education by focusing on one of the most ambitious attempts in early modern history to describe technological knowledge — Diderot's Encyclopédie (Diderot & d'Alembert, 1751-1772).[1] In Diderot's time, the idea of representing technological topics was not new, but Diderot's Encyclopédie was distinctive in several ways.[2] (....)
Purpose
The main purpose of this paper is to show what Diderot considered critical in systematizing and representing the mechanical arts in two-dimensional form. In so doing, he left an important heritage for our understanding of the development of technology, especially the ways it has been organized and represented for the purposes of dissemination. It is in examining such historical
precedents that technology educators today can gain a better understanding of how the historical “packaging” of technology has influenced our own educational “delivery systems.”
Some attempt will be made to show parallels between Diderot's concerns, problems, and frustrations and those faced by technology educators today. But the central focus remains Diderot's approach to representing the mechanical arts. (......)
The first section examines the historical context in which Diderot and his writers produced the Encyclopédie. The main section describes Diderot's work and four issues that are pertinent to the heritage of technology education: (a) conceptual framework; (b) systematic method of analysis and description; (c) theory and practice; and (d) technology and society.
Background
In the late 1740s to the 1760s, Denis Diderot (1713-1784) worked tirelessly to conceptualize and represent knowledge collected from craft communities, private and state industry, and existing documents to create a systematic understanding of the mechanical arts. But Diderot also emphasized the integration of the mechanical arts with the liberal arts and sciences. Darnton, a leading historian of French culture, noted that it was the mechanical arts that “constituted the most extensive and original part of the Encyclopédie itself” (1984, p. 198). (.....)
The method of describing each mechanical art grew out of Diderot's concept of a science, which he viewed as “a system of rules or facts relative to a certain object” (“Prospectus,” p. xxxvij). In order to organize knowledge of the mechanical arts, Diderot outlined in the “Prospectus” (p. xxxix) a framework which was simple in appearance and presumably applicable to all the mechanical arts.
Here is the method we have followed for each art and craft. We treated the following questions:1. The materials and the places where they are found, the manner in which they are prepared, their good and bad qualities, the different kinds available, the required processing before and during their utilization.2. The main products that are made with them and how this is done.3. We have supplied the names, descriptions, and diagrams of tools and machines, with their parts when taken apart and assembled; the section of certain molds and other instruments if it is appropriate to know about the interior design, their contours, etc.4. We have explained and represented the workmanship and the principal operations in one or several plates where sometimes only the hands of the craftsman can be seen and sometimes the entire craftsman in action, working at the most important task in his art or trade.5. We have collected and defined in the most accurate way possible the terms that are peculiar to a given art or trade. (Gendzier, 1967, pp. 39-40)
( ..... ) Diderot claimed that he and his contributors visited the shops, questioned the artisans and took dictations from them, developed their thoughts, and organized terms and facts into tables (p. xxxix). (See Proust, 1967, however, for a realistic evaluation of the extent to which Diderot immersed himself in the shops, which was probably quite minimal, pp. 192-195).
Apparently as a result of these visits, Diderot concluded that “most of those who perform the mechanical Arts have taken them up by necessity, & work only by instinct. We can hardly find one dozen out of a thousand capable of explaining clearly the instruments they use and the products they make” (“Prospectus,” p. xxxix). His experiences led him to express his editorial role as “the painful and delicate function of helping to give birth to their minds [or spirits], obstetrix animorum” (“Prospectus,” p. xxxix).
Thus Diderot sought to find exceptional people who could both understand thoroughly each art and describe it. According to him, one writer did not seem to know enough about his subject matter; another only grazed the surface, treating the material more as a man of letters than as an artisan; and a third produced a richer text which was more the work of an artisan, but which was too short, with little detail on machines and operations (“Prospectus,” p. xxxix). But he also acknowledged that space limitations imposed by his publication necessitated limiting the extent of detail (“Prospectus,” p. xl). ...........
[책] Diderot: french philosopher and father of the encyclopedia
자료: Google books
제목 Diderot: french philosopher and father of the encyclopedia
Philosophers of the Enlightenment, Leaders of the Enlightenment Series
저자 Sam Stark
에디션 일러스트
발행인 The Rosen Publishing Group, 2006
목차: Introduction, ... , Diderots Youth, ... , Diderot and Friends, The Final Years, ..
2010년 1월 9일 토요일
Discours Préliminaire of Diderot's 《 Encyclodédie》
자료 1: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=did;cc=did;rgn=main;view=text;idno=did2222.0001.083|
자료 2: ARTFL(University of Chicago), http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/node/88
1751
Jean Le Rond d’Alembert
translated into English by Richard N. Schwab[Part I]
1.
The Encyclopedia which we are presenting to the public is, as its title declares, the work of a society of men of letters. Were we not of their number, we might venture to affirm that they are all favorably known or worthy of being so. [1] But, without wishing to anticipate a judgment which should be made only by scholars, it is at least incumbent upon us, before all else, to remove the objection that could most easily prejudice the success of such a large undertaking as this. We declare, therefore, that we have not had the temerity to undertake unaided a task so superior to our capabilities, and that our function as editors consists principally in arranging materials which for the most part have been furnished in their entirety by others. We had explicitly made the same declaration in the body of the Prospectus, [2] but perhaps we should have put it at the beginning of that document. If we had taken that precaution we would doubtless have replied in advance to a large number of gentlemen—and even to some men of letters —who had unquestionably glanced at our Prospectus, as their praises attest, but who, nevertheless, have asked us how two persons could treat all the sciences and all the arts. [3] This being the case, the only way of preventing the reappearance of their objection once and for all is to use the first lines of our work to destroy it, as we are doing here. Our introductory sentences are therefore directed solely to those of our readers who will decide not to go further. To the others we owe a far more detailed description of the execution of the Encyclopedia, which they will find later in this Discourse, together with the names of each of our colleagues. However, a description so important in its nature and substance must be preceded by some philosophical reflections.
1.
L'Encyclopédie que nous présentons au Public, est, comme son titre l'annonce, l'Ouvrage d'une société de Gens de Lettres. Nous croirions pouvoir assûrer, si nous n'étions pas du nombre, qu'ils sont tous avantageusement connus, ou dignes de l'être. Mais sans vouloir prévenir un jugement qu'il n'appartient qu'aux Savans de porter, il est au moins de notre devoir d'écarter avant toutes choses l'objection la plus capable de nuire au succès d'une si grande entreprise. Nous déclarons donc que nous n'avons point eu la témérité de nous charger seuls d'un poids si supérieur à nos forces, & que notre fonction d'Editeurs consiste principalement à mettre en ordre des matériaux dont la partie la plus considérable nous a été entierement fournie. Nous avions fait expressément la même déclaration dans le corps du Prospectus*; mais elle auroit peut - être dû se trouver à la tête. Par cette précaution, nous eussions apparemment répondu d'avance à une foule de gens du monde, & même à quelques gens de Lettres, qui nous ont demandé comment deux personnes pouvoient traiter de toutes les Sciences & de tous les Arts, & qui néanmoins avoient jetté sans doute les yeux sur le Prospectus, puisqu'ils ont bien voulu l'honorer de leurs éloges. Ainsi, le seul moyen d'empêcher sans retour leur objection de reparoître, c'est d'employer, comme nous faisons ici, les premieres lignes de notre Ouvrage à la détruire. Ce début est donc uniquement destiné à ceux de nos Lecteurs qui ne jugeront pas à propos d'aller plus loin: nous devons aux autres un détail beaucoup plus étendu sur l'exécution de l'Encyclopedie: ils le trouveront dans la suite de ce Discours, avec les noms de chacun de nos collegues; mais ce détail si important par sa nature & par sa matiere, demande à être précédé de quelques réflexions philosophiques.
2.
The work whose first volume we are presenting today [4] has two aims. As an Encyclopedia, it is to set forth as well as possible the order and connection of the parts of human knowledge. As a Reasoned Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Trades, it is to contain the general principles that form the basis of each science and each art, liberal or mechanical, and the most essential facts that make up the body and substance of each. [5] These two points of view, the one of an Encyclopedia and the other of a Reasoned Dictionary, [6] will thus constitute the basis for the outline and division of our Preliminary Discourse. We are going to introduce them, deal with them one after another, and give an account of the means by which we have tried to satisfy this double object.
2.
L'Ouvrage dont nous donnons aujourd'hui le premier volume, a deux objets: comme Encyclopédie, il doit exposer autant qu'il est possible, l'ordre & l'enchaînement des connoissances humaines: comme Dictionnaire raisonné des Sciences, des Arts & des Métiers, il doit contenir sur chaque Science & sur chaque Art, soit libéral, soit méchanique, les principes généraux qui en sont la base, & les détails les plus essentiels, qui en font le corps & la substance. Ces deux points de vûe, d'Encyclopédie & de Dictionnaire raisonné, formeront donc le plan & la division de notre Discours préliminaire. Nous allons les envisager, les suivre l'un après l'autre, & rendre compte des moyens par lesquels on a tâché de satisfaire à ce double objet.
3.
If one reflects somewhat upon the connection that discoveries have with one another, it is readily apparent that the sciences and the arts are mutually supporting, and that consequently there is a chain that binds them together. But, if it is often difficult to reduce each particular science or art to a small number of rules or general notions, it is no less difficult to encompass the infinitely varied branches of human knowledge in a truly unified system. [7]
3.
Pour peu qu'on ait réfléchi sur la liaison que les découvertes ont entr'elles, il est facile de s'appercevoir que les Sciences & les Arts se prêtent mutuellement des secours, & qu'il y a par conséquent une chaîne qui les unit. Mais s'il est souvent difficile de réduire à un petit nombre de regles ou de notions générales, chaque Science ou chaque Art en particulier, il ne l'est pas moins de renfermer en un système qui soit un, les branches infiniment variées de la science humaine.
4.
The first step which lies before us in our endeavor is to examine, if we may be permitted to use this term, the genealogy and the filiation of the parts of our knowledge, the causes that brought the various branches of our knowledge into being, and the characteristics that distinguish them. In short, we must go back to the origin and generation of our ideas. [8] Quite aside from the help this examination will give us for the encyclopedic enumeration of the sciences and the arts, it cannot be out of place at the head of a work such as this.
4.
Le premier pas que nous ayons à faire dans cette recherche, est d'examiner, qu'on nous permette ce terme, la généalogie & la filiation de nos connoissances, les causes qui ont dû les faire naître, & les caracteres qui les distinguent; en un mot, de remonter jusqu'à l'origine & à la génération de nos idées. Indépendamment des secours que nous tirerons de cet examen pour l'énumération encyclopédique des Sciences & des Arts, il ne sauroit être déplacé à la tête d'un ouvrage tel que celui-ci.
5.
We can divide all our knowledge into direct and reflective knowledge. We receive direct knowledge immediately, without any operation of our will; it is the knowledge which finds all the doors of our souls open, so to speak, and enters without resistance and without effort. The mind acquires reflective knowledge by making use of direct knowledge, unifying and combining it.
5.
On peut diviser toutes nos connoissances en directes & en réfléchies. Les directes sont celles que nous recevons immédiatement sans aucune opération de notre volonté; qui trouvant ouvertes, si on peut parler ainsi, toutes les portes de notre ame, y entrent sans résistance & sans effort. Les connoissances réfléchies sont celles que l'esprit acquiert en opérant sur les directes, en les unissant & en les combinant.
6.
All our direct knowledge can be reduced to what we receive through our senses; whence it follows that we owe all our ideas to our sensations. This principle of the first philosophers was for a long time regarded as an axiom by the scholastic philosophers. They respected it merely because it was ancient, and they would have defended “substantial forms” and “occult qualities” with equal vigor. [9] Consequently, during the renaissance of philosophy this true principle received the same treatment as the absurd opinions from which it should have been distinguished: it was proscribed along with them, because nothing is more detrimental to truth, and nothing exposes it more to misinterpretation, than the intermingling or proximity of error. The system of innate ideas, which is attractive in several respects, and the more striking perhaps because it was less familiar, replaced the axiom of the scholastic philosophers [that we owe all our ideas to our sensations]; and after having reigned for a long time, the system of innate ideas still retains some partisans—so great are the difficulties hindering the return of truth, once prejudice or sophism has routed it from its proper place. [10] Of late, however, it has been almost generally agreed that the ancients were right, nor is this the only matter on which we are beginning to draw closer to them.
6.
Toutes nos connoissances directes se réduisent à celles que nous recevons par les sens; d'où il s'ensuit que c'est à nos sensations que nous devons toutes nos idées. Ce principe des premiers Philosophes a été long - tems{longtemps} regardé comme un axiome par les Scholastiques; pour qu'ils lui fissent cet honneur il suffisoit qu'il fût ancien, & ils auroient défendu avec la même chaleur les formes substantielles ou les qualités occultes. Aussi cette vérité fut-elle traitée à la renaissance de la Philosophie, comme les opinions absurdes dont on auroit dû la distinguer; on la proscrivit avec elles, parce que rien n'est si dangereux pour le vrai, & ne l'expose tant à être méconnu, que l'alliage ou le voisinage de l'erreur. Le système des idées innées, séduisant à plusieurs égards, & plus frappant peut-être parce qu'il étoit moins connu, a succédé à l'axiome des Scholastiques; & après avoir long - tems regné, il conserve encore quelques partisans; tant la vérité a de peine à reprendre sa place, quand les préjugés ou le sophisme l'en ont chassée. Enfin depuis assez peu de tems on convient presque généralement que les Anciens avoient raison; & ce n'est pas la seule question sur laquelle nous commençons à nous rapprocher d'eux.
7.
Nothing is more indisputable than the existence of our sensations. Thus, in order to prove that they are the principle of all our knowledge, it suffices to show that they can be; for in a well-constructed philosophy, any deduction which is based on facts or recognized truths is preferable to one which is supported only by hypotheses, however ingenious. Why suppose that we have purely intellectual notions at the outset [innate ideas], if all we need do in order to form them is to reflect upon our sensations? The discussion which follows will demonstrate that these notions, in fact, have no other origin. [11]
7.
Rien n'est plus incontestable que l'existence de nos sensations; ainsi, pour prouver qu'elles sont le principe de toutes nos connoissances, il suffit de démontrer qu'elles peuvent l'être: car en bonne Philosophie, toute déduction qui a pour base des faits ou des vérités reconnues, est préférable à ce qui n'est appuyé que sur des hypothèses, même ingénieuses. Pourquoi supposer que nous ayons d'avance des notions purement intellectuelles, si nous n'avons besoin pour les former, que de réfléchir sur nos sensations? Le détail où nous allons entrer fera voir que ces notions n'ont point en effet d'autre origine.
8.
The fact of our existence is the first thing taught us by our sensations and, indeed, is inseparable from them. [12] From this it follows that our first reflective ideas must be concerned with ourselves, that is to say, must concern that thinking principle which constitutes our nature and which is in no way distinct from ourselves. The second thing taught us by our sensations is the existence of external objects, among which we must include our own bodies, since they are, so to speak, external to us even before we have defined the nature of the thinking principle within us. These innumerable external objects produce a powerful and continued effect upon us which binds us to them so forcefully that, after an instant when our reflective ideas turn our consciousness inward, we are forced outside again by the sensations that besiege us on all sides. They tear us from the solitude that would otherwise be our lot. The multiplicity of these sensations, the consistency that we note in their evidence, the degrees of difference we observe in them, and the involuntary reactions that they cause us to experience —as compared with that voluntary determination we have over our reflective ideas, which is operative only upon our sensations themselves [13]—all of these things produce an irresistible impulse in us to affirm that the objects we relate to these sensations, and which appear to us to be their cause, actually exist. This impulse has been considered by many philosophers to be the work of a Superior Being and the most convincing argument for the existence of these objects. And indeed, since there is no connection between each sensation and the object that occasions it, or at least the object to which we relate it, it does not seem that any possible passage from one to the other can be found through reasoning. Only a kind of instinct, surer than reason itself, can compel us to leap so great a gap. This instinct is so strong in us that even if one were to suppose for a moment that it subsisted while all external objects were destroyed, the reconstitution of those objects could not add to its strength. [14] Therefore, let us believe without wavering that in fact our sensations have the cause outside ourselves which we suppose them to have; because the effect which can result from the real existence of that cause could not differ in any way from the effect we experience. Let us not imitate those philosophers of whom Montaigne speaks, who, when asked about the principle of men’s actions, were still trying to find out whether there are men. [15] Far from wishing to cast shadows on a truth recognized even by the skeptics when they are not debating, let us leave the trouble of working out its principle to the enlightened metaphysicians. It is for them to determine, if that be possible, what gradation our soul observes when it takes that first step outside itself, impelled, so to speak, and held back at the same time by a crowd of perceptions, [16] which, on the one hand, draw it toward external objects, and on the other hand (since these perceptions belong properly only to the soul itself) seem to circumscribe it in a narrow space from which they do not permit it to withdraw.
8.
La premiere chose que nos sensations nous apprennent, & qui même n'en est pas distinguée, c'est notre existence; d'où il s'ensuit que nos premieres idées réfléchies doivent tomber sur nous, c'est-à-dire, sur ce principe pensant qui constitue notre nature, & qui n'est point différent de nous-mêmes. La seconde connoissance que nous devons à nos sensations, est l'existence des objets extérieurs, parmi lesquels notre propre corps doit être compris, puisqu'il nous est, pour ainsi dire, extérieur, même avant que nous ayons démêlé la nature du principe qui pense en nous. Ces objets innombrables produisent sur nous un effet si puissant, si continu, & qui nous unit tellement à eux, qu'après un premier instant où nos idées réfléchies nous rappellent en nous-mêmes, nous sommes forcés d'en sortir par les sensations qui nous assiégent de toutes parts, & qui nous arrachent à la solitude où nous resterions sans elles. La multiplicité de ces sensations, l'accord que nous remarquons dans leur témoignage, les nuances que nous y observons, les affections involontaires qu'elles nous font éprouver, comparées avec la détermination volontaire qui préside à nos idées réfléchies, & qui n'opere que sur nos sensations même; tout cela forme en nous un penchant insurmontable à assûrer l'existence des objets auxquels nous rapportons ces sensations, & qui nous paroissent en être la cause; penchant que bien des Philosophes ont regardé comme l'ouvrage d'un Etre supérieur, & comme l'argument le plus convaincant de l'existence de ces objets. En effet, n'y ayant aucun rapport entre chaque sensation & l'objet qui l'occasionne, ou du moins auquel nous la rapportons, il ne paroît pas qu'on puisse trouver par le raisonnement de passage possible de l'un à l'autre: il n'y a qu'une espece d'instinct, plus sûr que la raison même, qui puisse nous forcer à franchir un si grand intervalle; & cet instinct est si vif en nous, que quand on supposeroit pour un moment qu'il subsistât, pendant que les objets extérieurs seroient anéantis, ces mêmes objets reproduits tout - à - coup ne pourroient augmenter sa force. Jugeons donc sans balancer, que nos sensations ont en effet hors de nous la cause que nous leur supposons, puisque l'effet qui peut résulter de l'existence réelle de cette cause ne sauroit différer en aucune maniere de celui que nous éprouvons; & n'imitons point ces Philosophes dont parle Montagne, qui interrogés sur le principe des actions humaines, cherchent encore s'il y a des hommes. Loin de vouloir répandre des nuages sur une vérité reconnue des Sceptiques même lorsqu'ils ne disputent pas, laissons aux Métaphysiciens éclairés le soin d'en développer le principe: c'est à eux à déterminer, s'il est possible, quelle gradation observe notre ame dans ce premier pas qu'elle fait hors d'elle - même, poussée pour ainsi dire, & retenue tout à la fois par une foule de perceptions, qui d'un côté l'entraînent vers les objets extérieurs, & qui de l'autre n'appartenant proprement qu'à elle, semblent lui circonscrire un espace étroit dont elles ne lui permettent pas de sortir.
........
[책] Preliminary discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot
자료: Google books
제목 Preliminary discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot
저자 Jean Le Rond d' Alembert, Richard N. Schwab, Walter E. Rex
번역자 Richard N. Schwab
에디션 일러스트
발행인 University of Chicago Press, 1995
***
Introduction
Of all the shorter works of the 18th-century ^philosophes^, the ^Preliminary Discourse^ to the Diderot's ^Encyclopedia^ is incomparably the best introduction to the French Enlightenment.[1] It ^is^ the Enlightenment insofar as one can make such a claim for any single work; with a notable economy and vigor it expresses the hopes, the dogmas, the assumptions, and the prejudices we have come to associate with the movement of the ^philosophes^. From the moment of its publication in 1751, many leaders of the Enlightenment recognized it as a masterful statement of their "philosophy," and even the men who were fearful of its implications acclaimed it for its lucidity and compactness. No less a judge than the great Montesquieu complimented d'Alembert on his work in the most flattering terms: "You have given me pleasure. I have read and reread your ^Preliminary Discourse^. It has strength, it has charm, it has precision; richer in thoughts than in words, likewise rich in sentiment--and my praises might go on."[2] Frederick the Great ranked it above his grandest military accomplishments: "Many men have won battles and conquered provinces," he wrote, "but few have written a work as perfect as the preface to the ^Encyclopedia^."[3] Toward the end of the century Condorcet eloquently summed up the judgment of the work shared by a substantial proportion of his fellow ^philosophes^: "The union of a vast extent of knowlege, that manner of viewing the sciences which belongs only to a man of genius, a clear, noble, and energetic style, having all the severity which the subject demands and all the pungency that it permits, have placed the ^Preliminary Discourse^ of the ^Encyclopedia^ in the number of invaluable works which two or three at the most in each century are in a position to execute."[4] Ever since the 18th century the ^Discourse^ has been cited repeatedly as the most representative work of its age.[5]
Indeed, the ^Preliminary Discourse^ could be regarded as the manifesto of the French Enlightenment, at least in the retrospective view of the historian. To be sure, it was not designed to be a pronouncement heralding or justifying revolutionary political action as were the Declaration of Independence, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the ^Communist Manifesto^, but it expressed the spirit of an intellectual and emotional revolution going on in the 18th century that in one way or another lay in the background of each of these. It breathed a confidence that man, through his own intelligent efforts, could transform the conditions of human life and that the beginning of that revolution could already be seen in the sciences and arts.
Compared with anything that had preceded it, the ^Discourse^ was unique. We have seeb its likes since, but one looks in vain throughout previous history for a declaration of principles that representedm as this one did, the views of a party of men of letters who were convinced that through their combined efforts they could substantially contribute to the progress of humanity. Francis Bacon(1561-1626) dreamed of the co-operation of scholars for the advancement of learning, but he had no grounds for hoping that his schemes might soon revolutionize society. His ^New Atlantis^ was a distant utopia. Descartes(1596-1650) wrote as a courageous, lone individual, seeking truth through the powers of his isolated intelligence, although he of course understood that the advance of knowledge depended on the mutual efforts of scholars. He spoke for himself in the ^Discourse on Method^, and not for a groupd of men of letters. The scholarly societies of the 17th and early 18th centuries, while hoping to contribute to material progress, were concerned primarily with the erudite and professional activities of closeted savants and did not dream of transforming the conditions of the world in a fundamental way.
However, by the end of the 17th century, the members of the European international republic of letters were developing an awareness that cumulatively they were a force in the world, and this birth of a self-conscious sense of power among the literati proved to be one of the revolutionary events of modern times. For the first time large numbers of people were coming to the bracing conclusion that the progress of humanity could be carried forward indefinitely in this world, and men of letters felt they were the prime movers of that progress. Rather than isolating themselves in their closets, certain scholars and writers conceived of themselves as being very much involved in the affairs of the world and believed that their intellectual activity, if it contributed to the progress of knowledge, inevitably served a social function. A capital feature of the great ^Encyclopedia^ of Diderot, for which the ^Preliminary Discourse^ was the introduction, was that it became the principal expression of the solidarity and power of that group of energetic and articulate men of letters in France.
As the focal point of the Frech Enlightenment, the encyclopedic project marked a critical step in the process by which intellectual forces and an ever more influential portion of the French public combined in demanding reform. We now view the ^Encyclopedia^ more as a major historical event than as an original contribution to any of the branches of knowledge. Its publication precipitated a prolonged controversy that clarified the positions of various amorphous factions in the intellectual and emotional world of the 18th century and squarely confronted them with one another. Those who ranged themselves on the side of the encyclopedists in effect formed a party, or the rudiments of one, which served as the spiritual predecessor for groups of reformers who were to preside in large measure over the transformation of the conditions of life in France and throughout the western world during the next generation. Thus, as the most perfect expression of the principles of the encyclopedists and their sympathizers, the ^Preliminary Discourse^ can be singled out by the historian as the manifesto of the Enlightenment in a fuller sense, perhaps, than d'Alembert or his colleagues might originally have intended to be.
The Background of the ^Discourse^
The ^Preliminary Discourse^ was the work of a young scholar, in association with other men of letters who were not quite angry but filled with an iconoclastic gusto and a confident dedication to what they felt were great and progressive ideas. Their engaing characters, their colorful and earthy eccentricities growing from an 18th-century atmosphere especially conductive to individualit and originality, give a special appeal to the study of that era. The 20th-century reader is surprised by the degree of compactness and intimacy of the lively universe that existed in Europe just before the vast mushrooming of population during the past two centuries. A very large perventage of the men of letters knew one other. The most able of them in France easily gravitated together in Paris. Thus it was possible that in the second half of the 1740's the possessors of perhaps the four best young minds in the realm knew one another and perhaps on occasion even argued, jested, and ponticated around the same table. These were Diderot, the Genevan Rousseau, Condillac, and d'Alembert, Rousseay recalled episodes of their early association during the years before 1750 in his ^Confessions^. Diderot, he wrote, became his intimate friend, with whom he had practically daily contact.
I had also begun to see a great deal of the abbé de Condillac who was, like myself, of no consequence in the literary world, but was destined to become what he is at the present day. I was perhaps the first who recognized his ability and saw his true worth. He seemed likewise to take pleasure in my company, and, while I was shut up in my room in the rue Jean-Saint-Denis, near Opéra, ... he would sometimes come to eat his supper informally along with me, just two of us. He was then working on his ^Essay Concerning the Origin of Human Knowledge^[1746], his first work. When it was completed the problem was to find a publisher willing to accept it. Paris publishers are always arrogant and harsh toward someone who is just beginning, and metaphysics, which was not very fashionable then, hardly seemed an enticing subject. I spoke to Diderot of Condillac and his work and introduced them to one another. They were made to suit each other, and so they did. Diderot induced Durand[6] the publisher to accept the abbé manuscript, and for his first book this great metaphysician earned--and that almost as a favor--a hundred ^livres^, which he might not have received without me. As we lived in quarters that were widely separated, all three of us met once a week at the Palais-Royal, and we dined together at the hotel du Panier Fleuri. These little weekly dinners must have been very much to Diderot's liking, for he, who nearly always failed to keep his appointment, never missed one of them. There I drew up the plan of a periodical called ^Le Persifleur^, to be written alternately by Diderot and myself. I sketched out the first number, and this brought about my acquaintance with d'Alembert, to who Diderot had spoken of it. Then unforeseen events got in our way, and this plan went no further.
These two authors had just undertaken the ^Dictionnarie Encyclopédique^, which at first was only intended to be a kind of translation of Chambers, somewhat like that of James' ^Dictionary of Medicine^, which Diderot had just finished. He wanted me to have some part in this second enterprise, and proposed that I should undertake the musical section of it. I consented, and executed it very hastily and poorly in the three months he had stipulated to me as well as all the others who were to collaborate in the work. But I was the only one who was ready at the prescribed time. I gave him my manuscript, of which I had had a fair copy made by one of M. de Faccueil's lackeys, named Dupont, who wrote very well, paying him tem ^livres^ out my own pocket, for which I have never been reimbursed. Diderot, on the part of the publishers, promised me some remuneration, a remuneration of which he have never spoken to me again--nor have I to him. [7]
At the time of the composition and publication of Diderot's ^Prospectus^ for the ^Encyclopedia^(1750) and of the ^Preliminery Discourse^(1751), these men, all in their thirties, were just beginning their careers. They belonged to the second generation of the ^philosophes^. The time came when they were lionized and wooed by the crowned heads of Europe and the influential in society as the foremost intellectual attractions of France; but these were their happiest days of relative obscurity.
Jean Le Rond d'Alembert(1717-1783), although he was the youngest of the four, was best known for some time because of his precocious scientific and mathematical genius. By the time he joined the encyclopedic group he had already begun to make the contributions in those fields that were to assure him a permanent and important place in the history of science. His origins were bizarre. He was the natural son of a soldier aristocrat, the chevalier Destouches, and Madame de Tencin, one of the most notorious and fascinating aristocratic women of the century. A renegade nun, she acquired a fortune as mistress to the powerful minister, Cardinal Dubois, and after a successful career of political scheming, she rounded out her life by establishing a salon which attracted the most brillant writers and philosophers of France. It is reported that d'Alembert was not the first of the inconvenient offsrpring she abandoned. In any case, he was found shortly after his birth on the steps of the Parisian church of Saint-Jean-Lerond. He was raied by a humble nurse, Madame Rousseau, whom he treated as his mother and with whom he lived until long after he achieved international fame. His father, the chevalier Destouches, was able to keep track of the boy and provided him with sufficient means for his schooling. While d'Alembert was yet a child he showed extraordinary promise which matured into genius. For a number of years the young scholar abandoned himself entirely to his passion for the physico-mathematical sciences and, largely without formal training, he succeeded in mastering these fields. At the age of twenty-six he published his ^Treatise on Dynamics^(1743), now considered a landmark in the history of Newtonian mechanics, and he continued to contribute significantly to mathematics, astronomy, and dynamics through the period of his greatest scientific productivity in the 1740's and early 1750's. During most of his life he was in intimate contact with the eminent scientists of his day through this correspondence, and as a member of the most distinguished scientific societies of Europe.
D'Alembert's gay and lively character, which shines forth in the famous smiling pastel of him by La Tour in 1753, his enthusiasm, and his brilliance won him the friednship of Diderot and several other excellent Parisian men of letters in the 1740's. At the same time he charmed his way into the center of the powerful salon of Madame du Deffand, who became his intimate friend and protectress. The publication of the ^Preliminary Discourse^ brought hime out of his obscurity as a poverty-stricken mathematician and launched him, in the public mind, as a ^philosophe^. He began to be considered a spokesman for the philosophic party, a role which he adopted with great gusto. Endowed with an inquiring and facile intelligence, he easily assimilated the most exciting ideas of the time. His collected works included essays on a remarkable range of subjects. Along with Diderot and Rousseau, he was fascinated by the musical theories of Rameau, as will be seen in the ^Discourse^. HIs ^Eléments de musique^(1752), based on the principles of Rameau, was an influential work throughout Europe, and has caused music historians to rate him as one of the leading music critics of his century.[8] A combination of virtuosity, ambition, agressiveness, and personal charm eventually won him a most honored position in the intellectual community of Europe. Among other rewards, it brought him the lasting friendship of both Voltaire and Frederick the Great, who engaged with him in a rich correspondence which lasted from 1750's throughout the remainder of their lives. ... By the time he joined Diderot as an encyclopedist he was deeply involved in the active and inventive world of the French Academy of Sciences, and that connection was a valuable asset for the encyclopedic project. His entry into the Académie Française in 1754 marked a major victory for the encyclopedic party. Eventually he became the perpetual secretary of that academy, where he followed the tradition of composing eulogies that had been established by Fontenelle when he was secretary of the Academy of Sciences.
The Background of the ^Discourse^
The ^Preliminary Discourse^ was the work of a young scholar, in association with other men of letters who were not quite angry but filled with an iconoclastic gusto and a confident dedication to what they felt were great and progressive ideas. Their engaing characters, their colorful and earthy eccentricities growing from an 18th-century atmosphere especially conductive to individualit and originality, give a special appeal to the study of that era. The 20th-century reader is surprised by the degree of compactness and intimacy of the lively universe that existed in Europe just before the vast mushrooming of population during the past two centuries. A very large perventage of the men of letters knew one other. The most able of them in France easily gravitated together in Paris. Thus it was possible that in the second half of the 1740's the possessors of perhaps the four best young minds in the realm knew one another and perhaps on occasion even argued, jested, and ponticated around the same table. These were Diderot, the Genevan Rousseau, Condillac, and d'Alembert, Rousseay recalled episodes of their early association during the years before 1750 in his ^Confessions^. Diderot, he wrote, became his intimate friend, with whom he had practically daily contact.
I had also begun to see a great deal of the abbé de Condillac who was, like myself, of no consequence in the literary world, but was destined to become what he is at the present day. I was perhaps the first who recognized his ability and saw his true worth. He seemed likewise to take pleasure in my company, and, while I was shut up in my room in the rue Jean-Saint-Denis, near Opéra, ... he would sometimes come to eat his supper informally along with me, just two of us. He was then working on his ^Essay Concerning the Origin of Human Knowledge^[1746], his first work. When it was completed the problem was to find a publisher willing to accept it. Paris publishers are always arrogant and harsh toward someone who is just beginning, and metaphysics, which was not very fashionable then, hardly seemed an enticing subject. I spoke to Diderot of Condillac and his work and introduced them to one another. They were made to suit each other, and so they did. Diderot induced Durand[6] the publisher to accept the abbé manuscript, and for his first book this great metaphysician earned--and that almost as a favor--a hundred ^livres^, which he might not have received without me. As we lived in quarters that were widely separated, all three of us met once a week at the Palais-Royal, and we dined together at the hotel du Panier Fleuri. These little weekly dinners must have been very much to Diderot's liking, for he, who nearly always failed to keep his appointment, never missed one of them. There I drew up the plan of a periodical called ^Le Persifleur^, to be written alternately by Diderot and myself. I sketched out the first number, and this brought about my acquaintance with d'Alembert, to who Diderot had spoken of it. Then unforeseen events got in our way, and this plan went no further.
These two authors had just undertaken the ^Dictionnarie Encyclopédique^, which at first was only intended to be a kind of translation of Chambers, somewhat like that of James' ^Dictionary of Medicine^, which Diderot had just finished. He wanted me to have some part in this second enterprise, and proposed that I should undertake the musical section of it. I consented, and executed it very hastily and poorly in the three months he had stipulated to me as well as all the others who were to collaborate in the work. But I was the only one who was ready at the prescribed time. I gave him my manuscript, of which I had had a fair copy made by one of M. de Faccueil's lackeys, named Dupont, who wrote very well, paying him tem ^livres^ out my own pocket, for which I have never been reimbursed. Diderot, on the part of the publishers, promised me some remuneration, a remuneration of which he have never spoken to me again--nor have I to him. [7]
At the time of the composition and publication of Diderot's ^Prospectus^ for the ^Encyclopedia^(1750) and of the ^Preliminery Discourse^(1751), these men, all in their thirties, were just beginning their careers. They belonged to the second generation of the ^philosophes^. The time came when they were lionized and wooed by the crowned heads of Europe and the influential in society as the foremost intellectual attractions of France; but these were their happiest days of relative obscurity.
Jean Le Rond d'Alembert(1717-1783), although he was the youngest of the four, was best known for some time because of his precocious scientific and mathematical genius. By the time he joined the encyclopedic group he had already begun to make the contributions in those fields that were to assure him a permanent and important place in the history of science. His origins were bizarre. He was the natural son of a soldier aristocrat, the chevalier Destouches, and Madame de Tencin, one of the most notorious and fascinating aristocratic women of the century. A renegade nun, she acquired a fortune as mistress to the powerful minister, Cardinal Dubois, and after a successful career of political scheming, she rounded out her life by establishing a salon which attracted the most brillant writers and philosophers of France. It is reported that d'Alembert was not the first of the inconvenient offsrpring she abandoned. In any case, he was found shortly after his birth on the steps of the Parisian church of Saint-Jean-Lerond. He was raied by a humble nurse, Madame Rousseau, whom he treated as his mother and with whom he lived until long after he achieved international fame. His father, the chevalier Destouches, was able to keep track of the boy and provided him with sufficient means for his schooling. While d'Alembert was yet a child he showed extraordinary promise which matured into genius. For a number of years the young scholar abandoned himself entirely to his passion for the physico-mathematical sciences and, largely without formal training, he succeeded in mastering these fields. At the age of twenty-six he published his ^Treatise on Dynamics^(1743), now considered a landmark in the history of Newtonian mechanics, and he continued to contribute significantly to mathematics, astronomy, and dynamics through the period of his greatest scientific productivity in the 1740's and early 1750's. During most of his life he was in intimate contact with the eminent scientists of his day through this correspondence, and as a member of the most distinguished scientific societies of Europe.
D'Alembert's gay and lively character, which shines forth in the famous smiling pastel of him by La Tour in 1753, his enthusiasm, and his brilliance won him the friednship of Diderot and several other excellent Parisian men of letters in the 1740's. At the same time he charmed his way into the center of the powerful salon of Madame du Deffand, who became his intimate friend and protectress. The publication of the ^Preliminary Discourse^ brought hime out of his obscurity as a poverty-stricken mathematician and launched him, in the public mind, as a ^philosophe^. He began to be considered a spokesman for the philosophic party, a role which he adopted with great gusto. Endowed with an inquiring and facile intelligence, he easily assimilated the most exciting ideas of the time. His collected works included essays on a remarkable range of subjects. Along with Diderot and Rousseau, he was fascinated by the musical theories of Rameau, as will be seen in the ^Discourse^. HIs ^Eléments de musique^(1752), based on the principles of Rameau, was an influential work throughout Europe, and has caused music historians to rate him as one of the leading music critics of his century.[8] A combination of virtuosity, ambition, agressiveness, and personal charm eventually won him a most honored position in the intellectual community of Europe. Among other rewards, it brought him the lasting friendship of both Voltaire and Frederick the Great, who engaged with him in a rich correspondence which lasted from 1750's throughout the remainder of their lives. ... By the time he joined Diderot as an encyclopedist he was deeply involved in the active and inventive world of the French Academy of Sciences, and that connection was a valuable asset for the encyclopedic project. His entry into the Académie Française in 1754 marked a major victory for the encyclopedic party. Eventually he became the perpetual secretary of that academy, where he followed the tradition of composing eulogies that had been established by Fontenelle when he was secretary of the Academy of Sciences.
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