Scholasticism as a Russian dance
December 4, 2009 1:49 PM Subscribe
Help me find a quotation critical of Scholasticism or Dialectical Argumentation that I thought I read in Peter Gay's 'Enlightenment'
It is to the effect that Scholastic argument is like a Russian dance, where the dancers jump around very impressively, but end up in the same place. I might be very wrong in thinking Peter Gay mentioned it, but in the back of my memory that's the connection I have.
Thank you kindly
It is to the effect that Scholastic argument is like a Russian dance, where the dancers jump around very impressively, but end up in the same place. I might be very wrong in thinking Peter Gay mentioned it, but in the back of my memory that's the connection I have.
Thank you kindly
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"Try to imagine a culture where arguments are not viewed in terms of war, where no one wins or loses, where there is no sense of attacking or defending, gaining or losing ground.
Imagine a culture where argument is dance, the participants are seen as performers, and the goal is to perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way.
In such a culture, people would view arguments differently, experience them differently, carry them out differently, and talk about them differently."
I'm not sure if this is what you're thinking of, though: it doesn't explicitly state that the interlocutors `end up in the same place', and is about a hypothetical culture, rather than scholasticism.
posted by James Scott-Brown at 8:31 AM on December 29, 2009