Alfred Lang

University of Bern, Switzerland

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Background and Perspectives

1999.00

 Last revised 99.02.14

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© 1999 by Alfred Lang

info@langpapers.org

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The following pargraphs have been written in a personal mood with the purpose of helping to bridge gaps that may hinder or endanger the relation between readers and the principal author of the langpapers. Due to surprisingly heavy demand I make them accessible in the present provisional state. As I often do in the interest of improving clarity, I shall complement these thoughts in a German version in due time and thereupon, hopefully, improve the English version.

 


In this page I want to help deepen understanding of what I am doing and why. There are people who feel disturbed by the often sharp criticism I direct at the modern sciences, psychology in particular, and also at the humanities or Geisteswissenschaften, philosophical anthropology and the cultural fields in particular. Some feel attacked and go into a defensive attitude and judge vaguely or clearly negative and deviant what I proffer. Others may have an experience of disappointment with the history of human self-reflexion similar to mine. This may or may not make them interested in finding out how I try to deal with some shortcomings of modern sciences in modern society. Because I like to ardently discuss I am often perceived as having a mission. I think my basic attitude is rather one of trying to find out. Not "the truth". Not how things "really are". It's much simpler. Whatever I fail to bring into a "coherent and realistic" whole of understanding my and my fellow's human condition does not let me rest. "Realistic and coherent" here are required complements: "realistic" means: trustworthy in circumstances beyond my making; coherent means: fitting thoroughly in itself and within the largest range of conditions accessible to my judgment.

This might appear to be my private problem. Or my circle's of relations. But I see so many people struggling with their and others' ways of understanding and of treating our common situation and there exist such a great plurality and diversity of proposals about what's really the case that I have to go some layers deeper into foundations of our cultural world. I cannot help but finding much problematic in most of our conventional ways of thinking and acting. Instead of collectively endangering our place and relations in the world, we might as well peruse of our competencies to make our self-understanding more beneficial. Humans have manoeuvered themselves into a deep gap when they confess at the same time to both an allegedly "objective" truth and certainty and ostensibly "subjective" My situation may best be described by Peirce's "the fixation of belief". This is not to say that I can fully subscribe to Peirce's concepton of the the "scientific method". Herder's insights into understanding the human condition may But, indeed, I am certainly impatient at times. I first try to make understandable

Years ago I have gained a tentative conclusion that things cannot be improved by further cosmetic. Thus I act from the conviction

 

 

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