"here they are -- a baker's dozen of names, 13 men of thought who, in my judgment, will stand the test of time: Henri Bergson, John Dewey, Alfred North Whitehead, Jacques Maritain, Jean-Paul Sartre, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Nicolai Lenin, John Maynard Keynes, Arnold Toynbee, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin." Mortimer J. Adler, artigo escrito em 1966, prevendo os autores do século XX que continuariam a ser relevantes em 2066.
O pior não é tanto a lista, mas a justificativa para cada indicação.
"John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) was born in Cambridge, England, where he was also educated. He taught at the university until 1919, when he resigned to write The Economic Consequences of the Peace, a book as amazingly prophetic in its way as Tocqueville's Democracy in America. It predicted that the Treaty of Versailles would inevitably lead to a second world war. Keynes' most important work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), has profoundly affected subsequent economic theory and practice. It seems to me beyond question that his influence will persist for the next hundred years and, perhaps, beyond." Mesmo os keynesianos atuais, pelo menos os intelectualmente relevantes, já descartaram grande parte do instrumental keynesiano. A figura de Keynes é mais cultivada como inspiração paradigmática do que propriamente fonte de insights.
"Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889- ) was born in London and has been associated with its university throughout his adult life. (He was, however, schooled at Oxford.) A Study of History (in ten volumes appearing between 1934 and 1954) is probably the most controversial historical work of this century. Its qualities of scope, imagination and eloquence make it the bane of professionals and the darling of amateurs. Even if the professionals are to some extent right in their criticisms of Toynbee's scholarship, his Study of History remains, in my judgment, the greatest historical work of our time." A obra de Toynbee é um clássico erudito, da mesma forma que a obra de Will Durant. Mas nenhuma delas parece inspirar os rumos da moderna historiografia. Na verdade, me parece que os jornalistas cada vez mais ocupam a profissão do historiador, por uma questão simples: o historiador precisa alocar todo o seu estudo numa visão geral dos fatos e acontecimentos, enquanto que o jornalista aloca seu tempo no estudo de fatos e acontecimentos que permeiam a contemporaneidade. E num mundo no qual as coisas mudam cada vez mais rapidamente, a contemporaneidade parece possibilitar uma melhor leitura do que uma visão histórica de longo prazo.
"Nicolai Lenin (1870-1924) was born Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov in Simbirsk (subsequently named Ulyanovsk) and received his law degree from the University of St. Petersburg (now Leningrad). Along with Trotsky the chief moving force behind the Russian Revolution, he led a minority group which he named the majority (bolsheviki) and by this ruse, in part, gained control of the post-228 revolutionary government. He was both a man of theory and a man of action -- a far-ranging political thinker as well as a superb politician. Two or three among his many books are likely to survive even if Communism does not. If, as Khrushchev threatened, Russia buries us, then Lenin will be near the top of any list of great writers drawn up in 2066, and the books will probably be Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), The State and Revolution (1918) and "Left-Wing" Communism, an Infantile Disorder (1920)." A irrelevância de Lênin para os dias atuais nem precisa ser comentada.
"Jean-Paul Sartre (1905- ) is the enfont terrible of 20th Century philosophy. A Parisian, he was educated at the École Normale Suprieure, and published, with Albert Camus, an underground newspaper during World War Two. He refused the Nobel Prize in 1964. While not the founder of existentialism, he is the most forceful and eloquent exponent of that form of it which has rationalized the Angst, the despair and even the irrationalism so prevalent in our time. He has written many books on many subjects, philosophical, psychological, political and historical. He is the author of several memorable novels and plays, and has written penetrating criticisms of literature and of painting. His great philosophical work is probably Being and Nothingness (1943)." Sartre não é lido mais nem mesmo por aquelas pessoas que gostam de parecer inteligentes ou profundas. As razões podem ser as mais variadas possíveis, mas provavelmente a preocupação que atualmente nós temos com a saúde não combina muito bem com a idéia de sofrimento da existência que permeia e anima seus escritos.
"Jacques Maritain (1882- ) was born in Paris, was educated at the Sorbonne and taught philosophy in France and in this country for 50 years. A student of Bergson, he became a convert to Roman Catholicism and is the leading liberal apologist for that faith. He is a deeply religious philosopher who writes in the ecumenical spirit of John XXIII. While, like Santayana, he writes from the vantage point of perennial wisdom, his thought, as well as his life, is immersed in as well as engaged with the most pressing problems of our day. He was the French ambassador to the Vatican at the time the present Pope was its Secretary of State; and during those years he courageously defended the cause of the Spanish Loyalists. The books of his that I think will live as long as Catholicism remains a puissant force in the world are Art and Scholasticism (1920), The Degrees of Knowledge (1932), Freedom in the Modern World (1933), True Humanism (1934), The Rights of Man and Natural Law (1942), Education at the Crossroads (1943), Existence and the Existent (1948) and, most recently, Moral Philosophy (1960)." Maritain nunca foi muito querido pelos católicos tradicionalistas, e é execrado pela ala progressista da Igreja. Parece destinado a uma terra de ninguém.
"John Dewey (1859-1952) was a Vermonter who taught philosophy at several major universities, notably Chicago, where he established the Laboratory School, and at Columbia, with which he was associated from 1904 until his death. It is one of the supreme ironies that American education has been taken over in our time by men who conquered in Dewey's name but who failed to understand the central insights in his great and revolutionary book about education -- Democracy and Education, written in 1916. The titles of his other major contributions reveal the scope of his mind and the importance of the problems with which he grappled, in a way that engages the minds of other thinking men: The Public and Its Problems (1927), The Quest for Certainty (1929), Experience and Nature (1925), Art As Experience (1934), and Logic: the Theory of Inquiry (1938)." Os problemas tratados pro Dewey, embora importantes, são hoje melhor discutidos sob a luz da psicologia evolucionária do que por pedagogos.
"Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) was an Englishman who lectured on mathematics and philosophy at Cambridge University and at the University of London and became a professor of philosophy at Harvard in 1924. Learned in modern mathematics and perceptive of the philosophical significance of the revolutions that have taken place in 20th Century physics and biology, he transformed traditional conceptions to make the wisdom of the past conversant with the science of the present. His philosophical vision, compacted of insight, imagination and historical learning, is best expressed in Science and the Modern World (1925), Religion in the Making (1926), Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect (1927), Process and Reality (1929), The Aims of Education (1929) and Adventures of Ideas (1933)." Talvez seja um dos nomes que possa passar por um resgate. A previsão de Adler, no caso, pode ser confirmada, e mesmo que não se confirme não me parece tão descabida. Penso, no entanto, que uma certa dose de sorte ocorreu nesta escolha, que poderia ter sido bastante infeliz se um dos colegas de Whitehead tivesse sido lembrado em seu lugar: Bertrand Russell.
"Henri Bergson (1859-1941) was an Irish Jew who was born in Paris and became a naturalized Frenchman. A member of the Académie francaise from 1918, he did diplomatic work during World War One and won the Nobel Prize in 1927. His greatest works were published around the turn of the century: they include Time and Free Will (1889), Matter and Memory (1896) and Creative Evolution (1907). To these we must add a book he wrote late in life -- The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932)." A presença de Bergson é totalmente inadequada. A filosofia analítica reformada parece abranger bem os tópicos relevantes que Bergson considerava excluídos da discussão cruamente positivista do final do século XIX e início do XX.
Não discuto a permanência do trabalho das pessoas apontadas no campo das ciências naturais.
Excluindo este campo, portanto, faço a vocês a pergunta respondida por Adler: quais são os pensadores do século XX que pemanecerão relevantes em 2066?
Ah sim. Não posso deixar de de citar o comentário ainda mais infeliz feito por Adler no início deste texto: "Of the 74 authors included in Great Books of the Western World, only three -- Leo Tolstoy, William James and Sigmund Freud -- straddle. the line that separates the past from the present century; and of these, Freud more than either Tolstoy or James is truly a 20th Century figure. I would give heavy odds that any literate person in 2066, asked to name the great books of the 20th Century, would put Freud on his list." Mais um erro, desta vez que poderia ter sido totalmente evitado, acredito.
O pior não é tanto a lista, mas a justificativa para cada indicação.
"John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) was born in Cambridge, England, where he was also educated. He taught at the university until 1919, when he resigned to write The Economic Consequences of the Peace, a book as amazingly prophetic in its way as Tocqueville's Democracy in America. It predicted that the Treaty of Versailles would inevitably lead to a second world war. Keynes' most important work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), has profoundly affected subsequent economic theory and practice. It seems to me beyond question that his influence will persist for the next hundred years and, perhaps, beyond." Mesmo os keynesianos atuais, pelo menos os intelectualmente relevantes, já descartaram grande parte do instrumental keynesiano. A figura de Keynes é mais cultivada como inspiração paradigmática do que propriamente fonte de insights.
"Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889- ) was born in London and has been associated with its university throughout his adult life. (He was, however, schooled at Oxford.) A Study of History (in ten volumes appearing between 1934 and 1954) is probably the most controversial historical work of this century. Its qualities of scope, imagination and eloquence make it the bane of professionals and the darling of amateurs. Even if the professionals are to some extent right in their criticisms of Toynbee's scholarship, his Study of History remains, in my judgment, the greatest historical work of our time." A obra de Toynbee é um clássico erudito, da mesma forma que a obra de Will Durant. Mas nenhuma delas parece inspirar os rumos da moderna historiografia. Na verdade, me parece que os jornalistas cada vez mais ocupam a profissão do historiador, por uma questão simples: o historiador precisa alocar todo o seu estudo numa visão geral dos fatos e acontecimentos, enquanto que o jornalista aloca seu tempo no estudo de fatos e acontecimentos que permeiam a contemporaneidade. E num mundo no qual as coisas mudam cada vez mais rapidamente, a contemporaneidade parece possibilitar uma melhor leitura do que uma visão histórica de longo prazo.
"Nicolai Lenin (1870-1924) was born Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov in Simbirsk (subsequently named Ulyanovsk) and received his law degree from the University of St. Petersburg (now Leningrad). Along with Trotsky the chief moving force behind the Russian Revolution, he led a minority group which he named the majority (bolsheviki) and by this ruse, in part, gained control of the post-228 revolutionary government. He was both a man of theory and a man of action -- a far-ranging political thinker as well as a superb politician. Two or three among his many books are likely to survive even if Communism does not. If, as Khrushchev threatened, Russia buries us, then Lenin will be near the top of any list of great writers drawn up in 2066, and the books will probably be Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), The State and Revolution (1918) and "Left-Wing" Communism, an Infantile Disorder (1920)." A irrelevância de Lênin para os dias atuais nem precisa ser comentada.
"Jean-Paul Sartre (1905- ) is the enfont terrible of 20th Century philosophy. A Parisian, he was educated at the École Normale Suprieure, and published, with Albert Camus, an underground newspaper during World War Two. He refused the Nobel Prize in 1964. While not the founder of existentialism, he is the most forceful and eloquent exponent of that form of it which has rationalized the Angst, the despair and even the irrationalism so prevalent in our time. He has written many books on many subjects, philosophical, psychological, political and historical. He is the author of several memorable novels and plays, and has written penetrating criticisms of literature and of painting. His great philosophical work is probably Being and Nothingness (1943)." Sartre não é lido mais nem mesmo por aquelas pessoas que gostam de parecer inteligentes ou profundas. As razões podem ser as mais variadas possíveis, mas provavelmente a preocupação que atualmente nós temos com a saúde não combina muito bem com a idéia de sofrimento da existência que permeia e anima seus escritos.
"Jacques Maritain (1882- ) was born in Paris, was educated at the Sorbonne and taught philosophy in France and in this country for 50 years. A student of Bergson, he became a convert to Roman Catholicism and is the leading liberal apologist for that faith. He is a deeply religious philosopher who writes in the ecumenical spirit of John XXIII. While, like Santayana, he writes from the vantage point of perennial wisdom, his thought, as well as his life, is immersed in as well as engaged with the most pressing problems of our day. He was the French ambassador to the Vatican at the time the present Pope was its Secretary of State; and during those years he courageously defended the cause of the Spanish Loyalists. The books of his that I think will live as long as Catholicism remains a puissant force in the world are Art and Scholasticism (1920), The Degrees of Knowledge (1932), Freedom in the Modern World (1933), True Humanism (1934), The Rights of Man and Natural Law (1942), Education at the Crossroads (1943), Existence and the Existent (1948) and, most recently, Moral Philosophy (1960)." Maritain nunca foi muito querido pelos católicos tradicionalistas, e é execrado pela ala progressista da Igreja. Parece destinado a uma terra de ninguém.
"John Dewey (1859-1952) was a Vermonter who taught philosophy at several major universities, notably Chicago, where he established the Laboratory School, and at Columbia, with which he was associated from 1904 until his death. It is one of the supreme ironies that American education has been taken over in our time by men who conquered in Dewey's name but who failed to understand the central insights in his great and revolutionary book about education -- Democracy and Education, written in 1916. The titles of his other major contributions reveal the scope of his mind and the importance of the problems with which he grappled, in a way that engages the minds of other thinking men: The Public and Its Problems (1927), The Quest for Certainty (1929), Experience and Nature (1925), Art As Experience (1934), and Logic: the Theory of Inquiry (1938)." Os problemas tratados pro Dewey, embora importantes, são hoje melhor discutidos sob a luz da psicologia evolucionária do que por pedagogos.
"Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) was an Englishman who lectured on mathematics and philosophy at Cambridge University and at the University of London and became a professor of philosophy at Harvard in 1924. Learned in modern mathematics and perceptive of the philosophical significance of the revolutions that have taken place in 20th Century physics and biology, he transformed traditional conceptions to make the wisdom of the past conversant with the science of the present. His philosophical vision, compacted of insight, imagination and historical learning, is best expressed in Science and the Modern World (1925), Religion in the Making (1926), Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect (1927), Process and Reality (1929), The Aims of Education (1929) and Adventures of Ideas (1933)." Talvez seja um dos nomes que possa passar por um resgate. A previsão de Adler, no caso, pode ser confirmada, e mesmo que não se confirme não me parece tão descabida. Penso, no entanto, que uma certa dose de sorte ocorreu nesta escolha, que poderia ter sido bastante infeliz se um dos colegas de Whitehead tivesse sido lembrado em seu lugar: Bertrand Russell.
"Henri Bergson (1859-1941) was an Irish Jew who was born in Paris and became a naturalized Frenchman. A member of the Académie francaise from 1918, he did diplomatic work during World War One and won the Nobel Prize in 1927. His greatest works were published around the turn of the century: they include Time and Free Will (1889), Matter and Memory (1896) and Creative Evolution (1907). To these we must add a book he wrote late in life -- The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932)." A presença de Bergson é totalmente inadequada. A filosofia analítica reformada parece abranger bem os tópicos relevantes que Bergson considerava excluídos da discussão cruamente positivista do final do século XIX e início do XX.
Não discuto a permanência do trabalho das pessoas apontadas no campo das ciências naturais.
Excluindo este campo, portanto, faço a vocês a pergunta respondida por Adler: quais são os pensadores do século XX que pemanecerão relevantes em 2066?
Ah sim. Não posso deixar de de citar o comentário ainda mais infeliz feito por Adler no início deste texto: "Of the 74 authors included in Great Books of the Western World, only three -- Leo Tolstoy, William James and Sigmund Freud -- straddle. the line that separates the past from the present century; and of these, Freud more than either Tolstoy or James is truly a 20th Century figure. I would give heavy odds that any literate person in 2066, asked to name the great books of the 20th Century, would put Freud on his list." Mais um erro, desta vez que poderia ter sido totalmente evitado, acredito.
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