Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

A Rational Civilisation?

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Age of Post-Rationality

  • 268 Accesses

Abstract

The Western claim to global leadership and the legitimation of its dominance relies on the argument that the West is a rational, democratic, science-based civilisation. This chapter briefly traces the history of the Western claim to rationality, embedded in scientific inquiry and the development of secular democracy, both based in free critical discourse. The principle of quantification is the pivot of scientific rationality, as the development of the scientific method means switching from judging to measuring. Economic rationality is a derivative of scientific rationality, and its ontology of numbers is therefore difficult to challenge. The historical and ideological foundations of market-based capitalism are discussed. Finally, the use of GDP as a measure of progress of the affluent society is examined.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 69.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 89.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Usually defined as the period from the fall of the Roman Empire (476 AD) to the Renaissance and the ‘Age of Discovery’ that started in the fifteenth century.

  2. 2.

    The population of Florence is currently under 400,000. At its largest in 1971, the city was home to 460,000 people.

  3. 3.

    Cristobal Colon En Las Américas by Sicilian sculptor Ugo Attardi (1923–2006) was installed in Plazoleta Provincia de Tucumán, at the intersection of Avenida 9 de Julio and Avenida Santa Fé in central Buenos Aires on 12 October 1992.

  4. 4.

    For example, the US prison for terrorism suspects in Guantanamo Bay established in January 2002. In December 2014, the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released key findings and the executive summary of the 6000-page ‘Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program’ (covering the period 2001–06) revealing widespread use of torture (‘enhanced interrogation techniques’) on the detainees. During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump advocated the use of special interrogation techniques where justified. See https://fas.org/irp/congress/2014_rpt/ssci-rdi.pdf. Accessed 18 June 2017.

  5. 5.

    Scottish philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle (1850) wrote in a pamphlet of ‘respectable professors of the Dismal Science.’

  6. 6.

    The prize in economics is actually the ‘Sveriges Riksbank (Bank of Sweden) prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel,’ first awarded in 1969, and it is not directly linked to the Nobel Foundation.

  7. 7.

    Jevons is nowadays best known for the ‘Jevons paradox.’ Its meaning and contemporary significance can be illustrated by the case of the automobile in the US. The introduction of more energy-efficient cars in the 1970s did not curtail the demand for fuel because decreased costs led to an increase in driving and the number of cars on the road. Similarly, technological improvements in refrigeration led to more and larger refrigerators. In the capitalist context, improvements in technology do not lead to savings but to growth—an ever-larger productive output.

  8. 8.

    John Stuart Mill (1806–73) was a philosopher and economist, and also a member of the British parliament (1865–68), a philanthropist and one of the rare plausible male feminists.

  9. 9.

    The Road to Serfdom is the title of Friedrich von Hayek ’s (1944) book in which he argues against government regulation of economic affairs, and especially against centralised planning, which, according to him, inevitably leads to totalitarianism.

  10. 10.

    Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) was an influential Austrian-born economist. He worked in Austria and Germany before becoming a US citizen in 1932. He popularised the term ‘creative destruction’ to describe the process of continual renewal in capitalism .

  11. 11.

    More recently, Akerlof and Schiller (2009) have written extensively about ‘animal spirits’ in their book of that name.

  12. 12.

    Although GDP is the most quoted measure, two other measures are preferred by some analysts: per capita gross national income (GNI) and net national income (NNI). More details at http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/oecd-factbook-2011-2012/national-income-per-capita_factbook-2011-20-en.

  13. 13.

    Including the purchase of an existing property into GDP would lead to double counting since the property was included in GDP when it was first built.

  14. 14.

    The full speech is available at https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/RFK-Speeches/Remarks-of-Robert-F-Kennedy-at-the-University-of-Kansas-March-18-1968.aspx. Accessed 26 June 2017.

  15. 15.

    The HDI is based in the intellectual legacy of Amartya Sen.

Bibliography

  • Akerlof, George A., and Robert Schiller. 2009. Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why it Matters for Global Capitalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alderman, Liz. 2014. Sizing Up Black Markets and Red-Light Districts for G.D.P. The New York Times, 9 July 2014. Accessed 18 June 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/10/business/international/eu-nations-counting-sex-and-drug-trades-toward-gdp.html

  • Appadurai, Arjun. 2003. Illusion of Permanence: Interview with Arjun Appadurai. Perspecta 34: 44–52.

    Google Scholar 

  • Botton, Alan de. 2009. The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. New York: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Braudel, Fernand. 1992. Civilization and Capitalism 15th–18th Century: The Structures of Everyday Life. Berkley: University of California Press. First published in 1979 as Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalism, XVth–XVIIIth siècle. Paris: Armand Colin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brentjes, Sonja, and Robert G. Morrison. 2010. The Sciences in Islamic Societies (750–1800). In The New Cambridge History of Islam, ed. Robert Irwin, vol. 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burckhardt, Jacob. 1990 [1867]. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. Penguin Classics.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carlyle, Thomas. 1850. Latter Day Pamphlets, No. 1. London: Charles Scribner’s, 1901.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cummins, R.A., R. Eckersley, J. Pallant, J. Van Vugt, and R. Misajon. 2003. Developing a National Index of Subjective Wellbeing: The Australian Unity Wellbeing Index. Social Indicators Research 64: 159–190.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Galbraith, John Kenneth. 1977. The Age of Uncertainty: A History of Economic Ideas and Their Consequences. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hayek, Fredrick von. 2005 [1944]. The Road to Serfdom. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hobsbawm, Eric. 1962. The Age of Revolution 1789–1848. New York: New America Library (Mentor Books).

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1975. The Age of Capital. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1989. Politics for the Rational Left: Political Writing, 1977–1988. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huisinga, Johan. 1996. The Autumn of the Middle Ages. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. First published in Dutch in 1919 as Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jevons, William Stanley. 1866. Brief Account of a General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy. The Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, London, XXIX (June): 282–287. First presented to the British Association in 1862.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kahneman, Daniel. 2011. Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kahneman, Daniel, and Amos Tversky. 1979. Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk. Econometrica 47: 263–291.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keynes, John Maynard. 1936. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. London: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mackay, Charles. 1995 [1841]. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Ware, UK: Wordsworth Editions Ltd.

    Google Scholar 

  • Martenson, Chris. 2015. In Denial: We Pursue Endless Growth at Our Peril. PeakProsperity. Accessed 18 June 2017. https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/92776/denial-we-pursue-endless-growth-our-peril

  • Mill, John Stuart. 1970 [1848]. Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy, Books IV and V. Edited with and introduction by Donald Winch. Harmondsworth, UK and Baltimore, MA: Penguin Classics.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mises, Ludwig von. 1960. Epistemological Problems of Economics. New York: David Van Nostrand Company. First published in 1933 as Grundprobleme der Nationalökonomie: Untersuchungen über Verfahren, Aufgaben und Inhalt der Wirtschafts- und Gesellschaftslehre.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moore, Barrington. 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Boston: Beacon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-first Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. First published as Le capital au XXI siècle in 2013 by Éditions du Seuil.

    Google Scholar 

  • Popper, Karl. 1973 [1945]. The Open Society and its Enemies. Vol. II. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rostow, W.W. 1960. The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-communist Manifesto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schumpeter, Joseph. 2009. Can Capitalism Survive? Creative Destruction and the Global Economy. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sifferlin, Alexandra. 2014. IVF Babies Hit Record High. Time, 18 February 2014. Accessed 18 June 2017. http://healthland.time.com/2014/02/18/ivf-babies-hit-record-high/

  • Smith, Adam. 1993 [1776]. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Warwick. 2014. Do We Dare Question Economic Growth? The Guardian, 13 October 2014. Accessed 18 June 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/13/do-we-dare-to-question-economic-growth

  • Standing, Guy. 2011. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stiglitz, Joseph. 2002. There is No Invisible Hand. The Guardian, 20 December 2002. Accessed 18 June 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/dec/20/highereducation.uk1

  • ———. 2010. Freefall: America, Free Markets and the Sinking of the World Economy. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stiglitz, Joseph, Amartya Sen, and Jean-Paul Fitoussi. 2009. Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress. A report commissioned by the French Government. Available at http://www.stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.fr/documents/rapport_anglais.pdf

  • Thompson, Clive. 2010. Nothing Grows Forever. Mother Jones, May/June 2010. Accessed 18 June 2017. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/07/peter-victor-deficit-growth/

  • UN. 2016. United Nations (UN) Development Program, Human Development Index (HDI). Accessed 18 June 2017. http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi

  • Weber, Max. 1958 [1905]. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Scribner.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1978 [1921]. Economy and Society. Edited by G. Roth and C. Wittich. Berkley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilde, Oscar. 1912 [1891]. The Soul of Man under Socialism. London: A.L. Humphreys.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Val Colic-Peisker

  2. Heathmont, Victoria, Australia

    Adrian Flitney

Authors
  1. Val Colic-Peisker
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Adrian Flitney
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Colic-Peisker, V., Flitney, A. (2018). A Rational Civilisation?. In: The Age of Post-Rationality. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6259-9_2

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation