Bi-cameral brains and Heidegger

[Joseph Tracy]

Yes he is aware of exactly your concern but he clearly feels so persuaded by the case that hemisheric differences play out as cultural and thus historical patterns that in the second half of the book he admits to opening himself to this critique and begins to trace what he sees as an historic overview of western development as influenced by hemispheric bias.  In my reading thus far ( I am just starting the second half, going rather slower as I try to absorb the material) find myself already leaning to the validity of and need for such an interpretation. It just feels more satisfying than a moral overview or a technological overview, both of which have been given considerable attention but which fail in my mind to describe certain self destructive tendencies in the internal dynamics of human societies and the western development. Isn’t it altogether probable that the tendencies of brain function would be a powerful shaping force for larger social patterns, and might speak more precisely and with a kind of dipassionate understanding to those patterns?


> On Feb 9, 2016, at 5:10 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I wrote a longer piece based on stuff said so far re The Master and His Emissary but the short version is: I am resistant
> IF it will be used in arguing something substantive about writers of genius. I'll make my cases then if necessary. 
> The author's explanatory connections between
> the bi-cameral mind and culture and history is one thing.........gonna be interesting to read.
> 
> But as we all know aggregate truths do not easily apply to individual human cases in meaningful ways. 
> This is simply akin to all the combinatory statistical truths we know yet all that giving us almost no predictive insight into 
> any singular example. 
> 
> On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 11:11 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> The Master and His Emissary  draws frequently on the work of philosophers. But he finds Heidegger particularly insightful about the nature of the brain and the corresponding struggles in the larger modern culture. I know there were one or 2 p-listers who hold high regard for Heidegger’s philosphical work so thought to mention it.
> 
> 
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