HIST 121 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Existence Precedes Essence, The Grand Inquisitor, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Document Summary
Enlightenment and freedom: fedor dostoevsky, the grand inquisitor, brothers karamazov, 1880, argued that he inspired the dystopian novel (hunger games, as well as 1984, the matrix, main character is ivan, a rebel who abandons god for mankind. The devil, however, ofers power and freedom, which would end history. Enlightenment is just another form of power: whoever says they have the truth, is only seeking to dominate. Truth is nothing more than a construct: the structuralist detour. Existence precedes essence: people"s ideniies can change every day, claude levi-strauss. Enlightenment and secularizaion: max weber, secularizaion, disenchantment , charles taylor, a secular age (2007) There are other alternaives : we need to understand what it means to be secular. Living in the immanent is living in the secular, striving to live in the immanent: porous vs. bufered. A porous individual believes that the magical, spiritual, and transcendent have a reality.
