Modern Rationality Research Articles

The Universal and the Hermeneutical Experience

(ProQuest Information and Learning: ... denotes obscured text omitted.) The current historical epoch, dominated by the process of globalization, seems to delineate a new, wider horizon for contemporary experience; it is a horizon that involves new challenges and new opportunities also for philosophical reflection. In this context the theme of universality demands renewed attention. It is the object of many discussions and, to my judgment, solicits a reflection that explores not only its possible applications on a practical terrain, but also its status and consistency on a theoretical level. In general, all interpreters and critics agree on recognizing the fundamental role played by economic and technological development in guiding the process of globalization. It is from recent developments in these two areas that the spur toward world unification has come and continues to come. The first phenomenon of globalization is the unification of the world in one sole market; the development and the planetary diffusion of new technologies go hand in hand with market unification, since on the one hand it makes it possible, and on the other benefits from it. The affirmation of such new transnational powers also has a direct effect at the level of politics, and calls into question the autonomy and full sovereignty of the states. Today the national state, which developed in the modern period and dominated the history of the last centuries, is progressively eroded in its power; such erosion is worsened by the assertion of local and regional entities, which claim in their turn autonomous powers and even independence from the state. The spur toward globalization has an important and complex effect also on the ground of culture. On the one hand, it accelerates communication among the various parts of the world, and contributes to their homogenization; it spreads everywhere not only the same products, but also the same lifestyles and the same models of behavior. On the other hand, precisely this tendency to homologation raises more or less forceful reactions, geared toward defending and valorizing local diversities, traditions, and identities. It is natural that in this path of retrieval and reflection religion provides an important point of reference, both for individuals and for groups sharing the same traditional identity. Thus religion returns to have public and political significance, and it exits the private sphere in which modern rationality had confined it after the religious wars. In this context the dialogue among different religions takes on a particular relevance. Moreover, within the Western world, the reflection made by theologians, philosophers, and all involved subjects on how Christianity may handle its relation with other traditions becomes important. Yet the world confrontation concerns not only religions, but more in general all cultures; it concerns everyone, and everywhere it involves the religious as well as the secular perspective. Among the issues that emerge here first of all there is the question of peace and war. On the one hand, it is a matter of finding a configuration of international right that is recognized by everyone and that enables the solution of conflicts without recurrence to war; on the other hand, it is necessary that a way of thinking develops that takes conflicts seriously, that evaluates their reasons on the background of the global horizon within which they are situated, and that may suggest ways for their possible appeasement. Another urgent issue is that of human rights, which especially in the contemporary epoch are so often violated, and on which it is necessary to find consensus among different cultures. In general, today the question of ethics appears to be decisive: one asks whether one may find, if not an ethics valid for all, at least a set of criteria and norms that enjoy a generalized consensus, on the base of which different nations and cultures may face together the problems concerning all those who inhabit the Earth. …

Viral Noise and the (Dis)Order of the Digital Culture

Viral Noise and the (Dis)Order of the Digital Culture

Meaning and function of Mannheim's sociology of knowledge: A new interpretation

In the article author offers a new interpretation of Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge given in his Ideology and Utopia (1929). This is demonstrated contrary to well known critical works so far, especially from Marxist perspective. As a paradigm of unsuccessful critique due to ideological blindness author points out the works of authors from Frankfurt School (Horkheimer, Marcuse, Adorno). Then author gives analysis amid to provide argument in favor of necessity to formulate new concept of ideology, after expansion of ideology on the typos of Mannheim’s general total concept of ideology wherefore sociology of knowledge ought to arise. After that topic of analysis is epistemological neutrality as a condition of objective investigation in the history of ideas. Both topics provide the ground for new look at ideology with two special traits: first, ideology could contain truths, therefore it is no more "false consciousness" (Marx); second approach of sociology of knowledge to any idea does not mean to discredit it but to analyze it objectively with the aim to obtain wider knowledge. In concluding part author pays attention to the elements of Mannheim’s program that were skipped in literature so far, namely question of our self reflection, and freeing ourselves of social determination of our knowledge as much as we obtain better knowledge about it. Author concludes with remarks that Mannheim sociology of knowledge on the point of universalisation of ideology amounts to three problems: 1) problem of reenacting of radical skepticism (nothing is truthful), as a principle of modern rationalism; 3. return of modern Enlightenment to its initial principles (beside skepticism, there is also problem of prejudice); 3) necessity of self reflection of Enlightenment as a condition to complete constitution of sociology of knowledge understood in Mannheim’s sense as a epistemology of the social sciences. These three problems were completely neglected in literature on Mannheim’s concept so far.

The Ground of Solidarity in Post-Metaphysical Polities

The contemporary order, with its globalizing regime and communication facilitating technologies, has effectively broken open all cultures and continuously forces them to confront one another. These confrontations, sometimes allowing for celebration of heteronomy, sometimes facilitating hegemony, inevitably bring to awareness multiplicity of rationalities that define human civilizations. Confronted with this multiverse of rationalities that claim legitimacy, building of just social orders that respect otherness becomes essential. Thus, some of more important social philosophers, particularly John Rawls and Jurgen Habermas, have focused much of their work on understanding ground of social solidarity in a post-metaphysical order We borrow idea of a postmetaphysical order from Habermas. In his works that reflect on effects of modernity on Western civilization,1 he notes how modernity allowed for emergence of a post-metaphysical or post-traditional order. Marked by a loss of innocence with regard to truth of religious and metaphysical worldviews, shift to a modern rationality brought about questioning of all-encompassing ground of meaning and unity for western civilization. This is in agreement with Max Weber's observation that advent of contemporary western civilization was tied to a process of with religious-metaphysical worldviews.2 With advent of modernism, Western man lost his faith in traditional certainties. He no longer believed that metaphysical knowledge or religious worldviews could provide a true representation of of world; of universal, necessary, and eternal features of reality as such.3 Such a painful did have great repercussions in processes. To say least, it demanded a rethinking of social solidarity and governance of polities. One could say that loss of Western humanity's grounding in essence of world signaled loss of metaphysical ground to social solidarity. With such a loss, foundations of norms of justice and idea of good society were placed into question. If Western man had lost capacity to tap into ultimate foundation of all things, if humanity could begin to doubt that what is known to be reality has an essential truth, what remains to ground our sense of how we ought to be? What binds individuals in a society to a way of collective becoming if there is no one vision of society, no binding ethical worldview, no one theory of what societies ought to be? In an age of innocence, when religious and metaphysical worldviews remained unquestioned, human societies could with naivete claim to be ordered in a way that mirrored cosmos as it was ordained by Being or Divine Being. When peoples of could still accept without question worldviews founded on cosmic unity posited by metaphysics and religion, peace was founded on solidarity of a people who believed that truths that ordered their were acceptable, for they were ordained by a higher order. However, modernity brought about a serious questioning of foundations of these religious and metaphysical world-orders. With modernity came a world-historical process of disenchantment with dissolution of meaning-giving, orienting powers of holistic worldviews.4 With modernity's celebration of autonomous subject arose modern societies that became embodiments of a subject-centered reason.3 This left religio-metaphysical world-orders unjustified before subject who demanded justification before acceptance. Such a de-traditionalization brought about a loss of the features of familiarity, transparency, and reliability that had once been able to absorb all contingencies.6 This loss could be attributed to emergence of modern subjectivity as self-reflective and constantly obliged to justify its choice of models according to its own standards, and create all its normativity from out of itself. …

Signifikansi Masyarakat Kitab Bagi Dialog Antariman: Telaah Eksploratif atas Konsepsi Mohammed Arkoun

This paper tries to discuss Arkoun's thought regarding the genuine concept of Revelation. His concept begins to elaborate Revelation in the history of al-Qur'an and Muslim Tradition. From historical background of Ahl al-Kitab (People of the Book) has been founded the same task and tool in history of salvation (HP). Beginning from decisive issues of Ahl al-Kitab, Arkoun works out the concept of "The society of the Book". He uses a deconstruction method to find vocabulary, methods and intellectual attitudes relevant to the presentation of Revelation with: a. the requirement of modern historical analysis; b. the philosophical evaluation of the implicit or explicit postulates of teaching and; c. the benefit of modern rationality and scientific thought. From these views, the writer tries to elaborate the significances of Arkoun's thought as a basic need of dialogues and the development of discourses in multi-faiths and multi-religions societies.

Being after Rousseau: Philosophy and Culture in Question (review)

Reviewed by: Being after Rousseau: Philosophy and Culture in Question G. Felicitas Munzel Richard L. Velkley . Being after Rousseau: Philosophy and Culture in Question. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Pp. x + 192. Cloth, $40.00. Paper, $18.00. In this collection of essays Velkley realizes a dual achievement: a penetrating scholarly analysis of a familiar topic, modern philosophy's on-going criticism of rational Enlightenment as a "project aiming at progressive rational mastery of nature and the human situation" (60, 3), and an exemplary presentation of philosophizing as a self-reflexive activity in which the "know thyself" is posed to philosophy itself. The focus is on the German Idealist tradition, taking its origins from Rousseau and Kant to "reform, not simply to reject," but still to "overcome earlier modern accounts of scientific reason as abstract, mechanistic, and narrow, and as failing to do justice to the concrete wholeness or richness of nature and human experience, thus impoverishing our conceptions of morality, political life, and human aspirations toward the noble, the sacred, and the beautiful" (93). Velkley's scholarly interpretation identifies Rousseau as the pivotal figure who is the source both of the modern philosophical effort to achieve "human wholeness" by recovering an "original prediscursive or prerational unity" (an account that is the further source of the distinction between culture and civilization [12]) and of the "bifurcation in the ways to reach such wholeness," the ways of "citizenship" and "natural freedom" (13-14). The essays argue for an "important connection between Rousseau and Heidegger, through Kant and Schelling" (6). [End Page 345] While other thinkers are treated (for example, Pufendorf and Nietzsche), the essays primarily examine the writings of these four thinkers to elucidate "the persistence of a set of problems and a way of questioning" particular to modern philosophy (8). Velkley points out that Rousseau's critique of modern rationality is far more subtle than it is usually read. Granted, "through its introduction of self-reflectiveness into the previously 'innocent' and prereflective human situation," reason is perceived as the "true origin" and not the means for overcoming human ills (53). However, the "prereflective origin is nowhere to be found," it is an "imaginative construction," and it is a "mistake to take at face value any apparent assertion that natural man was merely an animal with only instinct and sensation" (37, 41). Because of his distinctively human awareness of time, natural man, "far from being mere animal," is "the only being whose openness to being exposes him to the nonbeing of death" (48). In short, "some 'bondage' to reason" is inescapable and "Rousseau's various plans for the reform of politics, education, the family, and the philosophical life" should be read as "ways of making the most of that bondage" (33). In the case of Kant, Velkley's emphasis is on the critical effort to resolve the dialectic, to correct the rational self-ignorance "so that the striving of reason for totality will not turn into a nihilistic rejection of reason" (112); or put another way, Rousseau inspires Kant's quid juris question, the issue of the "justification of reason as a whole," specifically the legitimacy of the categories (50-61, 101). Schelling, together with Kant's other Idealist successors, seeks a "greater unity, integration, wholeness, and concreteness than Kant provides" (113). The two main aspects of Schelling's project that Velkley discusses are (1) the discovery of the true human self in nature, the "hidden infinite unconscious self beneath the apparent finite conscious self," a "self whose objectification by the finite categories of discursive reason is quite impossible" and which thus discloses an "infinite contradiction" (115); and (2) the affirmation of the error of earlier philosophizing as belonging "essentially to philosophical inquiry" and being the very "precondition for finding truth" (125). From the philosophical attempt to correct reason's fundamental error, to its reading of "being in error" as an ineliminable step in the historical progress of reason and philosophy, Velkley turns to Heidegger's effort to step behind traditional metaphysics altogether and to move "forward into a new thinking beyond metaphysics" (142), from speech about Being to language as a power of disclosure of Being that overpowers the...

Thinking and the Art of Furniture

This article argues that furniture has been a source of ontological curiosity and an object of epistemological significance for some of the most important and formative modern intellectual traditions. Drawing on J. J. Gibson’s theory of affordances, the article shows how furniture has afforded a variety of intellectual meanings and can be seen as something of a worldly context giving shape and sense to what many modern intellectuals have understood by “the world.” Drawing on analyses of the way in which modern empiricism, rationalism, experimental science, and contemporary discursive psychology have “wondered” about the nature and significance of furniture, the article suggests that these intellectual endeavors have taken furniture as the primary disavowed object of their inquiries, and in so doing they have been tacitly complicit in confining modern intellectual life to the indoor realm. The article also discusses the extent to which the increasingly technoscientific nature of contemporary furniture poses some profound—and possibly unanswerable—questions as to how the modern philosopher can make intellectual sense of this indoor world. The article goes on to argue that popular science and science fiction writing are superior to philosophy in this respect and can be usefully seen as potential heirs to the modern philosophical tradition, and that if philosophy is to remain interesting and relevant in the present time, it must return to its ancient “outdoor” peripatetic roots.

Philosophy as Political Engagement: Revisiting Merleau-Ponty and Reopening the Communist Question

In this article, I revisit the work of the French political philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. A colleague of Sartre's until their quarrel, he sought to combine existentialism, Marxism and phenomenology. I begin by considering why Merleau-Ponty thought it was important, in confronting the problems of the present, to reconsider past ideas as well as political regimes. I also develop his distinctive methodology of dialectical engagement, his view of politics as a strategic field of forces, and his insistence that philosophy and political action are severed at our peril. In order to illustrate and flesh out all these claims, I return to Merleau-Ponty's treatment of the communist question, placing it within a broader context of his antipathy towards modern rationalism: something he found exemplified by liberal as well as communist regimes. In the course of the discussion, I consider Merleau-Ponty's critiques of Kant, Hegel and Marx as well as his ideas about political agency. However, I also allude at key points in my argument to the relevance of his thinking for our contemporary international situation.

Civilización y participación política: una aportación temprana de Tocqueville

Tocqueville conceives early his concept of political participation, within a particular philosophical context: the theory of civilization elaborated by his teacher, Guizot. In that context, Tocqueville outlines his theory of aristocratic civilization, in connection with the Germanic sense of liberty. His concept of democratic civilization is actually an analysis of the several layer which compose the European idea of democratic liberty. The American sense of municipal liberty keeps some traces of the aristocratic political civilization. It is a rare result of history, which clashes with modern rationalism and its universalistic tendency.

農村青年の都市文化受容についての一考察

The object of this paper is to show how farm youth adopted urban culture in the nineteen-thirties. We use a diary covering the 1930s kept by one young man born in 1915.According to his diary, he read newspapers and magazines, listened to gramophone recordings and the radio and watched films very often. Further, he traveled to Tokyo once a year. As a consequence, he had a well-developed notion of the nature of urban life. He had a deep longing for urban life as it represented modern rationality to him. However, he strongly objected to the remark theory by men of culture in the city that the farm village life was wonderful. Because the actual arm village life was to be painful.We conclude that this 1930s farm youth held two images of the city: the frivolous and objectionable.

Traditionalism and modern subjectivity: Enlightenment and conservatism of Edmund Burke

The issue of traditionalism versus modern subjectivism in the light of the conflict of Edmund Burke`s conservatism with the Enlightenment as the ideological basis of the French revolution was not discussed or studied sufficiently in our political and philosophical theory. In this paper we are reconsidering a theoretical debate between arising modern rationalism of Enlightenment and European traditionalism. The text further explains on the reasons for choosing this subject and course the research will take subsequently. An overview is provided of the most important topics as well as a preliminary conception of the problem structure in this research. Considering the importance and overwhelming influence exhorted by French revolution it is only logical that the event of such magnitude met not only with approvals but with challenges and disputes as well, and all of it contributed to the theoretical considerations of the historical sense and purpose of this event. The aim of the project is to provide explanations and evaluations of the origins Enlightenment on one hand side and theoretically reconsidered traditionalism on the other. Looking at the dawn of modern era and evaluating these events would cast sharper light on the spirit of times of this crucial moment of history, and it would provide new basis for reconsideration of the achievements and implications of the fundamental ideas of Moderna.

Playing Language Games and Performing Rituals: Religious Studies as Ideological State Apparatus

AbstractThe Wittgensteinian philosophy of language games in the service of "religion" is circular and closed from criticism, and this generates the illusion that "religion" is compellingly universal. Also some historians, while attempting to uncover the specific and localized origins of the modern category "religion" in early modern Europe, simultaneously and unwittingly reconstruct the assumed universality of the category by uncritically using the problematized word in a description of societies in which the modern category, according to their own research findings, did not yet exist. These techniques suggest an unacknowledged ideological field lying behind the usages of the category. I argue that "religion" is one of a pair, the other half being "non-religion" or "the secular". The formation of the modern notion of religion needs to be seen initially in relation to privatized Protestant piety and the separation of church and state, whereby an apparently demystified human nature and fully rational modern civil society was made possible. But the application of the religion-secular distinction to an increasing number of colonies has resulted in "religion" becoming a catch-all container for indigenous institutions and practices that impede progress (i.e., impede realization of secular rationality by the natives). Debates about the logic of the religion-secular category can only become fruitful when we analyze the way in which they each construct their other half. However, the way "religion" is institutionalized and investigated in the academy elides its function in the invention and legitimation of the modern Euro-American secular, for it is treated as though it stands alone, either as a category in its own right or as a natural reality corresponding to that category.

Leviathan as Myth: Michael Oakeshott and Carl Schmitt on Hobbes and the Critique of Rationalism

Michael Oakeshott and Carl Schmitt are two of the most prominent critics of rationalism in politics. They also both draw heavily on the work of Thomas Hobbes. This paper connects these themes and indicates that Oakeshott's and Schmitt's concerns about rationalism are reflected in their writings on Hobbes, especially in their use of the idea of myth. Notwithstanding certain connections between their understanding of, and concerns about, modern rationalism, comparing Oakeshott and Schmitt through their readings of Hobbes helps to elucidate the more important differences between their political theories as a whole. Using Oakeshott's own terminology, this paper suggests that the differences between the two theorists can be understood as a difference between a ‘politics of faith’ (Schmitt) and a ‘political of scepticism’ (Oakeshott). Where Schmitt turned to Hobbes to find a political theology to combat the forces of liberal scepticism and ground the practice of modern authority, Oakeshott drew from Hobbes the idea — often associated with liberalism — that authority arises from a scepticism about the possibility of finding such a foundation. The paper concludes with the observation that the risks attending the politics of faith, as Schmitt's experience attests, are more severe than those of scepticism.

Социализм, Постсоциализм и Нормативная Модерность: Размышления об Истории СССР

SUMMARY: In his article Ronald Suny takes aim at a critical examination of relationship between modernity and the Soviet experiment, ideology and analytical apparatus employed for exploration of Soviet history, placing that examination in the context of historiographic discussions in the US Slavic field. The author takes as a point of departure the recent book by J. Scott and combines the analysis of Scott’s argument with a scrutiny of major interpretative models used in American historiography for Soviet studies, namely the “Totalitarian” and “developmentalist” ones. He differentiates between the modernization trend, which focuses on processes of social change in Soviet society, revises the image of the 1917 revolution and the nature of the soviet political regime, and modernity trend, which emphasizes the legacy of enlightenment and modern rationality in the Soviet experiment, stressing the revisionist impact of both on the historiographic image of the Soviet history. However, the author notes that the collapse of the Soviet Union has reversed the balance between the “Totalitarian” and “developmentalist” interpretations of Soviet history to the advantage of libertarian perspective on modern state and society, which now necessitates a reconstruction of relationship between soviet socialism and European modernity. Identifying modernity as a normative discourse, Suny analyzes the interplay between modernism and antimodernism, asserting that soviet socialism was not an alternative to modernity but rather an alternative within the range of historic variations of modernity. He then reviews in detail two major contributions to Soviet history by US historians of Russia, M. Malia and S. Kotkin. While welcoming their approaches to the Soviet Union as a variant and modification of European modernity, he criticizes their way of reducing the Soviet experience to the Bolshevik ideological blueprints, offering instead an understanding of Soviet ideology (socialism) and politics as a dynamic, contingent, and eventually evolving discursive process.

Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism

Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism

NEW ESSAYS ON THE RATIONALISTS

Introduction PART I - MATTER AND SUBSTANCE 1. Space and Subtle Matter in Descartes's Metaphysics 2. Descartes on Nothing in Particular 3. If a Body Meets a Body: Descartes on Body-Body Causation 4. Descartes's Extended Substances 5. Spinoza's Extended Substance: Cartesian and Leibnizian Reflections 6. Leibniz's Constructivism and Infinitely Folded Matter 7. Locke and Leibniz and the Debate over Species PART II - FREEDOM AND NECESSITY 8. Descartes on Spontaneity, Indifference, and Alternatives 9. The Range of Leibnizian Compatibilism 10. The Necessity of Finite Modes and Geometrical Containment in Spinoza's Metaphysics 11. Spinoza's Necessitarianism Reconsidered PART III - MIND AND CONSCIOUSNESS 12. A Spectator at the Theater of the World 13. Distinctness 14. Causation and Similarity in Descartes 15. Teleology in Spinoza and Early Modern Rationalism 16. For They Do Not Agree In Nature With Us: Spinoza on the Lower Animals 17. Leibniz on Consciousness and Self-Consciousness 18. The Illusory Nature of Leibniz's System Bibliography Index

Veda on parade: revivalist ritual as civic spectacle

An analysis is presented of a month-long Vedic ritual performance undertaken in 1992 by holy man Ranganath Selukar Maharaj in rural Maharashtra, examining its ritual structure, the rhetoric of religious reform and national welfare (including the influence of Arya Samaj doctrine, Hindu nationalism, and Marathi Vaishnava bhaktti on him), and the appeal made by both the ritual's organizers and its opponents to the authority of science and “modern rationalism. ” The analysis of the event's ritual structure introduces the concept of “spectacle,” which is defined as a form of public, ceremonial action that frames the ritual actions and thus endows these fixed, “classical” elements with a local and contemporary significance. The spectacle, besides arousing public interest, makes explicit the ideology implied in the present ritual performance and dramatizes the social alignments between the ritual agents and the other participants.

Veda on Parade: Revivalist Ritual as Civic Spectacle

An analysis is presented of a month-long Vedic ritual performance undertaken in 1992 by holy man Ranganath Selukar Maharaj in rural Maharashtra, examining its ritual structure, the rhetoric of religious reform and national welfare, and the appeal made by both the ritual's organizers and its opponents to the authority of science and «modern rationalism». The analysis of the event's ritual structure introduces the concept of «spectacle», which is defined as a form of public, ceremonial action that frames the ritual actions and thus endows these fixed, «classical» elements with a local and contemporary significance. The spectacle, besides arousing public interest, makes explicit the ideology implied in the present ritual performance and dramatizes the social alignments between the ritual agents and the other participants.

“No House Building without Garden Building!” (“Kein Hausbau Ohne Landbau!”): The Modern Landscapes of Leberecht Migge

All too often when one brings up the subject of modern architecture between the wars, the relationship to the landscape is assumed to be irrelevant, or worse, even antithetical, to modernist concepts. Two images by Ludwig Hilbersheimer of his ideal modern city are often misrepresented as symbols of the inability of modern architects to deal with the landscape in a humane manner. Not only are such images taken out of their original conceptual context, in fact “landscape” as variously defined played a crucial role in competing versions of modernity. One set of responses to the problem of the modern landscape has been introduced to contemporary readers by Dorothee Imbert in her book, The Modernist Garden in France (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993). She discusses works by French designers between the wars, ranging from the jewel-like garden compositions of Gabriel Gueverkian to the more abstract minimal landscapes of Le Corbusier. Judging from Imbert's survey of the French scene, the general situation in Germany appears to have provided much more fertile ground for rational approaches to landscape design and management, with which Le Corbusier himself was arguably more sympathetic. This essay is intended to introduce the subject of rational modern landscape design in Germany between the wars to an English-speaking audience through one exemplary landscape architect, Leberecht Migge. Fundamental concepts of the period as defined by Migge are also presented for possible consideration within the discussion of sustainable design.

Resisting the Discourse of Modernity: Rationality Versus Emotion in Hazardous Waste Siting

One community's resistance to the projected siting of a hazardous waste facility provides a case study of clashing discourse between modernity's champions and its sceptics. The events and outcomes of this case raise questions about the widespread assumption that science, reason and rationality are necessarily the bases for good decisions in society. This study highlights the contemporary citizen, deeply sceptical of the rational state and modern business practice, and fearful that personal and communal identity will be threatened by forces over which local residents have no control. In this case, site developers and community members engaged in numerous rhetorical exchanges. The developers conducted their side of the discourse according to the tenets of reason and rationality. The community, however, imposed emotional interpretations on the situation, thus radically undermining the possibilities of communicative rationality and challenging the tacit `rules' of modern discourse. The public debate between the protagonists revealed emergent themes of identity disruption, mistrust and polarization.