ABSTRACT
The bourgeois world believed itself, for a time, to be in possession of a uniquely ‘rationalizing’ power. The scientific revolution provided it with a means to eradicate the ignorance and to subdue the errors corrupting less fortunate views of the world. Today, we are only too ready to congratulate ourselves upon outgrowing such rash optimism. Yet, for the most part, we uncritically accept the distinctions bequeathed to us by just such optimism. Science and reason can still appear as different expressions on the world’s benign face. Object and subject go their separate, unrelated ways. We unhesitatingly ‘explain’ isolated events within the physical or the psychological world with an appeal to universal principles and causal laws.
