Toynbee's A Study of History is this amazing attempt to understand many different cultural actions as attempted solutions to big, general problems. The actors on his stage are ideas and questions. Here's a sample:
"The social problem that awaits the creator when he returns from his withdrawal into a renewed communion with the mass of his fellows is the problem of raising the average level of a number of ordinary human souls to the higher level that has been attained by the creator himself; and as soon as he grapples with this task, he is confronted with the fact that most of the rank and file are unable to live at this higher level with all their hearts and wills and souls and strength. In his situation he may be tempted to try a short cut and resort to the device of raising some single faculty to the higher level without bothering about the whole personality. This means, ex hypothesi, the forcing of a human being into a lop-sided development. Such results are most easily obtainable on the plane of a mechanical technique, since, of all the elements in a culture, its mechanical aptitudes are easiest to isolate and communicate. It is not difficult to make an efficient mechanic of a person whose soul remains in all other departments primitive and barbarous." (304)
One thinks of Paul and the Corinthian community, of Wittgenstein and the philosophic hotshots around Russell, of Socrates and the young Athenian aristocrats -- all trying to bring about something more than a merely mechanical change.
Posted by shea0017 at September 8, 2004 3:52 PM