Friday, January 31, 2014

By dividing human thought into disciplines, what are we concealing from ourselves? The example I like to use is the case of psychiatry and religion. We are very confident that our society must simultaneously entertain numerous conflicting views on the health of the soul. But in regard to the health of the mind, we are confident that there is a privileged scientific view. The German word Geist can be translated as both mind and soul. If we call the distinction into doubt, we might begin to see questions that division of intellectual labor would otherwise conceal. When the health of the soul was established by a single state-sanctioned church, dissenters did not fare well. What happens to dissenters from our state-sanctioned scientific view of the health of the mind? My impression is, they fare no better.

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