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Originally Posted by peter12
Have you read the Canterbury Tales?
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I'm afraid not.
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Originally Posted by peter12
That's a completely fair question, by the way. We can read the literature of the past and we can know that the lives that produced such wonderful poetry and stories was just as vibrant and happy as our own.
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That is a highly relative statement. This was part of a point that I was attempting to make in another thread, when I asked you to consider the effect that riding a bicycle or eating a pint of ice-cream might have had on Socrates' contemplations. It appears to be a silly question, but precisely the point is that one cannot pull literature and ideas from their social and cultural contexts. The modern world has shaped much more than just the way that we think and do; it has had tremendous effects on what we think and do.
Furthermore, how much can you trust your own perception of the literature of the past? Does it provide a completely "accurate" picture of the past, or has it been socially conditioned, and how do you know? How much of the ancient representation of their own world has been idealized? I am skeptical with regards to how much we think we can come to "know" simply through an appraisal of literature, without the contributions of other disciplines such as archaeology, anthropology, sociology etc.
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Originally Posted by peter12
As for progress, you don't really believe that insisting progress is a fabrication is actually the other side of the coin, do you? That's preposterous. What a silly, linear understanding of history and human development.
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I disagree. "Progress" is merely a term used to distinguish the past from the present. The denial of progress is in practical terms much the same as endorsing it, in the sense that both positions are staking an evaluative claim to either the past or the present. As for linear thinking, whether it is "silly" or not, it is practically unavoidable. The mind has become hard-wired to view life and existence narratologically: "History" is no more than providing a narrative shape; developing a story of the past that subscribes a preset of methods and ideas. Whether you like it or not, we all do it.