If Morin is in good health, Tooze should do a zoom interview and ask him what it feels like to be the talk of Davos!
In case you are interested in my two cents, Tooze’s use of “polycrisis” reminds me of Morin’s EHESS colleague Marcel Gauchet’s thesis about “the end of finite history.”
Most of the cast of Tooze’s Deluge (Kurt Reizler and some German nationalists excepted) believed that history was heading towards some sort of end. Whereas we are in a neoliberal / postmodern “new world” that Gauchet dates to 1972, in which that belief has lost credibility.
The new world for Gauchet is still “modern” because it is characterized by self-conscious historicity, the “markers of certainty” of religious societies are farther gone than ever. But illusion of an end, which for practical purposes lets us hierarchically rank our different crises, is gone.
This move seems important because, as Tooze says, the idea that we live in a polycrisis today but didn’t in 1917 needs a strong philosophy-of-history defense.
Both Gauchet and Tooze are vulnerable to a Marxist critique, but I think you put your finger on a problem any Marxist critique would have to address. In recent Marxist writing, the best included, “capitalism” becomes so capacious it could almost be a synonym for Tooze’s “polycrisis” or Gauchet’s “modernity.”
I’m pretty sure the connection I'm drawing here is real - Tooze wrote a brief essay on Gauchet, and Gauchet’s fellow-traveler Johann Arnason wrote an interesting review of Crashed and Shutdown (https://karolinum.cz/data/clanek/9709/HS_13_2_0137.pdf).
This is great. Am not familiar with Gauchet, however will clearly need to read the review. Particularly this idea, "but illusion of an end, which for practical purposes lets us hierarchically rank our different crises, is gone." I look forward to your comments on the next installment !
Edgar Morin is still alive!?!
(great post, btw)
I believe he is! according to wikipedia at least...he's 101
If Morin is in good health, Tooze should do a zoom interview and ask him what it feels like to be the talk of Davos!
In case you are interested in my two cents, Tooze’s use of “polycrisis” reminds me of Morin’s EHESS colleague Marcel Gauchet’s thesis about “the end of finite history.”
Most of the cast of Tooze’s Deluge (Kurt Reizler and some German nationalists excepted) believed that history was heading towards some sort of end. Whereas we are in a neoliberal / postmodern “new world” that Gauchet dates to 1972, in which that belief has lost credibility.
The new world for Gauchet is still “modern” because it is characterized by self-conscious historicity, the “markers of certainty” of religious societies are farther gone than ever. But illusion of an end, which for practical purposes lets us hierarchically rank our different crises, is gone.
This move seems important because, as Tooze says, the idea that we live in a polycrisis today but didn’t in 1917 needs a strong philosophy-of-history defense.
Both Gauchet and Tooze are vulnerable to a Marxist critique, but I think you put your finger on a problem any Marxist critique would have to address. In recent Marxist writing, the best included, “capitalism” becomes so capacious it could almost be a synonym for Tooze’s “polycrisis” or Gauchet’s “modernity.”
I’m pretty sure the connection I'm drawing here is real - Tooze wrote a brief essay on Gauchet, and Gauchet’s fellow-traveler Johann Arnason wrote an interesting review of Crashed and Shutdown (https://karolinum.cz/data/clanek/9709/HS_13_2_0137.pdf).
This is great. Am not familiar with Gauchet, however will clearly need to read the review. Particularly this idea, "but illusion of an end, which for practical purposes lets us hierarchically rank our different crises, is gone." I look forward to your comments on the next installment !
Thanks for the kind words, I’m happy to have discovered your Substack and looking forward to Part Two.
In case you are curious, this is Tooze’s essay situating Gauchet (https://adamtooze.com/2018/02/09/notes-global-condition-democracys-twenty-first-century-histories-call-comments/); this is a good short introduction to MG’s work (https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/age-of-emancipation-marcel-gauchet-democracy-review).
these are excellent resources, thank you
Dang, this is so good
thank you !