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Letters
Letters
Get The Drift • Tractatus Tunes • Determined To Be Free • Love and its Disappointments • Psychology, Science & Behaviour • Feyerabend and Nightmares • The Missing Month
Get The Drift
DEAR EDITOR: From reading your editorial in Issue 77, ‘Continental Tales’ I learned that I do continental philosophy, since like the continentals I tend to think in terms of the abstractions that govern humankind; that is, in grand narratives.
It began with my seeking an explanation for the collapse of communism. I wondered, was there a single, overarching imperative that brought about communism’s demise? And was liberal democracy’s triumph due to it addressing that imperative successfully? Hegel, the master of the grand narrative, led me to what I considered the answer.
While other thinkers in Hegel’s day were busy concocting grand narratives based on fixed entities like authority, religion and culture – only to see them shattered by churning world events – Hegel based his grand narrative on change itself. That to me is the main reason why communism didn’t survive: because its governance was inflexible, outdated, and inherently couldn’t adjust to the changing world.
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