I’ll probably move this to the main blog once I’ve ordered my thoughts, which since I am incredibly tired at the moment probably won’t be today.
Ernest Gellner identifies a number of problematic questions arising from trying to connect his theoretical framework of primitive belief and thought, with the Terminus, ie where we are now.
In this, as elsewhere, Gellner identifies two big shifts, separating three main types of society.
The first is a shift from communities of people who have self-referential coherent systems of unchanging belief, which are touched by or touch the outer world, but not in a way that causes those beliefs to be updated or changed in any way. These communities do not easily allow for new people to join, they are shamanistic, and form part of a fragmented world. This is his so-called submarine and periscope model, and the belief system is multi-stranded and not unified. The shift is to a model where it is possible to have Ideal (Platonic) belief, and systems of thought that are abstracted and generalised across society.
The second shift is from that to a rational world, where the Ideals or rules, or realm of thought, is capable of being updated and changed by the outside world. It is a system of Reason.
The transition from unified concept affirmation to unified reference is not obvious or easy or inevitable: but it is far less of a leap than the first transition, from plural multi-purpose worlds to a homogenous ‘Platonic’ one. This second transition is easily imaginable. p79
One of the factors he identifies being a key mechanism in that first transition is the emergence of systems with a unique and jealous god. But where did this come from? He’s slightly glib here, suggesting the fear of religions in emperor or single-ruler worlds. Inventing the Individual by Larry Siedentrop looks at how, when the Greek cities fell under Roman rule, that was a fertile ground for Christianity, which is one supportive theoretical data point. (What of Islam? What of the Hebrew religion?)
For the second, it’s worth reconsidering Paul Hazard’s The Crisis of Conscience in the European Mind because he’s dealing with exactly that point of intellectual revolution, but also because he’s dealing with rather messy individuals, and does so in glorious, rather exuberant fashion, which is an extremely helpful real world antidote to Gellner’s heavily theoretical approach.
An important point about our current world is that values must be separated from fact, as fact is contingent on observation and exploration of the world around us, and is thus subject to change. pp65-668