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Making It All Click
October 2009 
Today's Thought (Doug Noll Peacemaker)
Bryan
Doug Noll: Lawyer to Peacemaker
Doug Noll shares:
People fight and people make peace. Any other concept is an abstraction or euphemism disguising the truth. Therefore, peacemaking requires a multi-discplinary approach, starting with some fundamental knowledge. The knowledge base includes neuropsychology, listening, concepts of justice, maintaining inner awareness and a non-anxious presence, understanding the hard science of focused intention, and shifting away from the Enlightenment view of man as a rational being to people as emotional beings.
When we begin to understand the basic wiring in our brains, our basic needs, and the importance of emotions, the tools of peacemaking become more useful and available. Peacemaking goes far beyond conversations or improved communication. Peacemaking embraces the completeness of every human, acknowledges how similar we are all to each other, and sees differences as opportunities for bridges and connection. In this section of the site, concepts fundamental to effective peacemaking will be introduced. The choice of topics is based on experience with over 1,500 mediations and peacemaking assignments. This is what seems to be at the core in every dispute.
Join me in a candid and insightful conversation with Doug Noll about making peace through conflict--dispute resolution on many levels (Date to be announced)!
Access: Public
I agree with Noll but I add that the the Enlightenment view shouldn't be shifted away from, but augmented with the realization that we are both rational and emotional beings. I think we get into trouble when we see it as an either/or kind of thing…..
It's worth pointing out that there were strong voices during the Enlightenment that were not seduced by the Cartiesian view of “man as a rational being.” This may characterize the French version of the Enlightenment to a considerable extent, but by no means is an exhaustive characterization of the Enlightenment as a whole unless we exclude enormously influential thinkers.
Perhaps the greatest thread of philsophy emphasizing the intuitive side of humanity is the Moral Sense school exemplified by Adam Smith's work. It's true of Wealth of Nations, but the book more to the point is The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which was his most popular work during his life. Smith was influenced by his teacher, Ulsterman Frances Hutcheson who held the chair of moral philsophy at Glasgow University prior to Smith. Sometimes called the “father of the Scottish Enlightenment,” Hutcheson's pedigree goes back to Shaftesbury who famously took on Thomas Hobbes' egoistic interpretaton of morality and law.
Another thread is the “Common Sense” school of philosophy that took a more strictly epistemological standpoint, as opposed to an ethical one. It's founder was Thomas Reid of Aberdeen, who died in 1796. His phrase was later used by Thomas Paine for his famous Revolutionary War tract, and has come into the vernacular, though with a somewhat different meaning.
Reid owed much to David Hume, perhaps the greatest philsopher of the English-speaking world, who attacked the pretensions of rationalism. Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason was written in response to Hume, as Kant made clear in his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. Hume, Kant wrote, awoke the latter from his “dogmatic slumber.”
Another thread might be found in the political philosophy of British parliamentarian Edmund Burke, who fought against political rationalism, rationalism in practice. He fought in favor of the influence of the intuitive side of many in the practical and traditional approach to politics, as exemplified by the Common Law, which recognizes “custom and practice” and doesn't presume to re-engineer the legal framework of society on the whims of any given arrogant generation. As Burke famously said, “the individual is foolish, the species wise.”
Anyway, the point is that the above-mentioned philosophers are far from obscure. Their influence has been enormous and durable. It is true that the Rationalist thread of the Enlightenment has also had a very durable influence. In fact, it has been so successful that many observers overlook the other thread, despite the fact that it is so influental in politics and economics. The Rationalistthread has been far more influential in Europe and in the academy, the Moral Sense/empiricist thread has been more successful (for obvious reasons and otherwise) in the English-speaking world, and in politics (where it continues to struggle against Rationalism), economics (where it is predominant) and commerce (where it is supreme, but Rationalism has also made inroads).
In this as in so many things, there is a failure to appreciate the richness of our cultural heritage in general, and the variegated fruits of the period known as the Enlightenment.
Right. For me though, fresh out of a seminar (lead by a student of A. N. Whitehead) on Kant's Critique, I ran head-on into the logical positivists and quickly switched to geophysics….;-)
Two friends who stayed the course: One's a corporate lawyer, the other drives a bus.
I could see why you might have done that!
I can think of at least three of my former philsophy major buddies who are now corporate lawyers. I'm a writer. Good preparation, if you think about it.
A bus driver could at least benefit from what Boethius called the “Consolation of Philosophy”!
Heck, Buddha was a boatman, so there's another philosopher in the transportation business!
Exactly - all around! ;-)