Texts:1974 Diderot: Difference between revisions

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When the great dreams disappoint, reductive analysis becomes a saving panacea. One discounts the disappointment by retrospectively destroying the dream. To do this, the analyst shows that the dream was not truly dreamt. His technique is in part ad hominem: The revered dreamers were false exemplars, flawed, self-interested persons who are unworthy of reverence. His technique is in larger part ideological: The dream really masked a crass reality; ulterior motives moved events; appeals to principle concealed the shrewd selfishness of the powerful. Thus the reductive analyst avoids the disappointment of seeing good will and good works historically frustrated by showing the previous pretenses to good will and good works to have been nought but pretenses, ones by which malevolent interests molded the multitudes.

Such reductive analysis has become endemic among those disappointed by the great dream for education. The dream was not as it had seemed to have been from the common school through the medical school. The rhetoric of enlightenment through education cloaked more sinister policies. Educators who preened as the servants of the people's future worked really to perpetuate the positions of those who had won power in the past. Mass schooling was not a form of liberation, but a medium for social control. And on examination, the motives of the great reformers prove seriously suspect: At best, their professed love of humanity turns out to be a love for humanity structured in a very particular way, one in which the reformers' self-interests worked out to be well served.

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	<p>When the great dreams disappoint, reductive analysis becomes a saving panacea. One discounts the disappointment by retrospectively destroying the dream. To do this, the analyst shows that the dream was not truly dreamt. His technique is in part <i>ad hominem</i>: The revered dreamers were false exemplars, flawed, self-interested persons who are unworthy of reverence. His technique is in larger part ideological: The dream really masked a crass reality; ulterior motives moved events; appeals to principle concealed the shrewd selfishness of the powerful. Thus the reductive analyst avoids the disappointment of seeing good will and good works historically frustrated by showing the previous pretenses to good will and good works to have been nought but pretenses, ones by which malevolent interests molded the multitudes.</p>		<p>When the great dreams disappoint, reductive analysis becomes a saving panacea. One discounts the disappointment by retrospectively destroying the dream. To do this, the analyst shows that the dream was not truly dreamt. His technique is in part <i>ad hominem</i>: The revered dreamers were false exemplars, flawed, self-interested persons who are unworthy of reverence. His technique is in larger part ideological: The dream really masked a crass reality; ulterior motives moved events; appeals to principle concealed the shrewd selfishness of the powerful. Thus the reductive analyst avoids the disappointment of seeing good will and good works historically frustrated by showing the previous pretenses to good will and good works to have been nought but pretenses, ones by which malevolent interests molded the multitudes.</p>


	<p>Such reductive analysis has become endemic among those disappointed by the great dream for education. The dream was not as it had seemed to have been from the common school through the medical school. The rhetoric of enlightenment through education cloaked more sinister policies. Educators who preened as the servants of the people's future worked really to perpetuate the positions of those who had won power in the past. Mass schooling was not a form of liberation, but a medium for social control. And on examination, the motives of the great reformers prove seriously suspect: At best, their professed love of humanity turns out to be a love for humanity structured in a very particular way, one in which the reformers' self-interests worked out to be well served.</p>		<p>Such reductive analysis has become endemic among those disappointed by the great dream for education. The dream was not as it had seemed to have been from the common school through the medical school. The rhetoric of enlightenment through education cloaked more sinister policies. Educators who preened as the servants of the people's future worked really to perpetuate the positions of those who had won power in the past. Mass schooling was not a form of liberation, but a medium for social control. And on examination, the motives of the great reformers prove seriously suspect: At best, their professed love of humanity turns out to be a love for humanity structured in a very particular way, one in which the reformers' self-interests worked out to be well served.</p>