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Oud 23 september 2008, 09:25   #23
lombas
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Goed, eindelijk, de Tweede Tekst: What is Authority van Bakunin.

Als opening stelt Bakunin een vraag:

Citaat:
What is authority? Is it the inevitable power of the natural laws which manifest themselves in the necessary linking and succession of phenomena in the physical and social worlds?
Verzet tegen zulke autoriteit is nutteloos. Twee en twee is vier, dat is een feit. We kunnen dus enkel die wetten voorwenden naar eigen gebruik. Bakunin spreekt over de "government of commom sense" (misschien moet Dedecker hem eens lezen).

Voor Bakunin is het duidelijk dat een overheid geen autoriteit heeft. Maar wat moeten we dan doen? De macht leggen bij wetenschappelijke academies? Die beschikken toch namelijk over absolute kennis van natuurwetten, die zeker autoriteit hebben? Hij gaat hier tegenin op drie punten:

Citaat:
Suppose a learned academy, composed of the most illustrious representatives of science; suppose this academy charged with legislation for and the organisation of society, and that, inspired only by the purest love of truth, it frames none but the laws but the laws in absolute harmony with the latest discoveries of science. Well, I maintain, for my part, that such legislation and such organisation would be a monstrosity, and that for two reasons: first, that human science is always and necessarily imperfect, and that, comparing what it has discovered with what remains to be discovered, we may say that it is still in its cradle. So that were we to try to force the practical life of men, collective as well as individual, into strict and exclusive conformity with the latest data of science, we should condemn society as well as individuals to suffer martyrdom on a bed of Procrustes, which would soon end by dislocating and stifling them, life ever remaining an infinitely greater thing than science.

The second reason is this: a society which should obey legislation emanating from a scientific academy, not because it understood itself the rational character of this legislation (in which case the existence of the academy would become useless), but because this legislation, emanating from the academy, was imposed in the name of a science which it venerated without comprehending - such a society would be a society, not of men, but of brutes. It would be a second edition of those missions in Paraguay which submitted so long to the government of the Jesuits. It would surely and rapidly descend to the lowest stage of idiocy.

But there is still a third reason which would render such a government impossible - namely that a scientific academy invested with a soverignty, so to speak, absolute, even if it were composed of the most illustrious men, would infallibly and soon end in its own moral and intellectual corruption. Even today, with the few privileges allowed them, such is the history of all academies. The greatest scientific genius, from the moment that he becomes an academian, an officially liscenced savant, inevitably lapses into sluggishness. He loses his spontenaity, his revolutionary hardihood, and that troublesome and savage energy characteristic of the grandest geniuses, ever called to destroy old tottering worlds and lay the foundations of new. He undoubtedly gains in politeness, in utilitarian and practical wisdom, what he loses in power of thought. In a word, he becomes corrupted.
Hieruit leidt Bakunin af waar een gewone overheid evenmin dan een wetenschappelijke overheid autoriteit kan uitdragen. Het systeem glijdt af naar het vormen van een politieke aristocratie, een oligarchie.

Wijst hij daarom alle autoriteit af? Neen. Hij had al uitgelegd dat natuurwetten intrinsiek een autoriteit bezitten, en exponeert dat nu op bijvoorbeeld de schoenmaker. Er is dus een zekere autoriteit door specialisatie maar, anders dan bij een politieke kaste, stelt die autoriteit zich niet (bizar genoeg misschien) boven de ander.
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