A lasting crisis

The cuts in education expenses, as a measure against current financial crisis, is a sign that the way out of it is not even near.

The despotism of instrumental rationality is still in charge, I am afraid. In a recent article in El País Paul Krugman explains the idea of the Homo economicus, "whose preferences can be expressed mathematically". The world’s view that has driven our lives in the West for almost the last two centuries is based in the negation of the internal contradiction of human nature. Orient has taken the lead in that sense.

For avant-garde artists art is the solution of human internal contradictions in a satisfactory way: the three coordinates of reason, desire and feeling (Ozenfant). I am convinced of the necessity of understanding artistic way of thinking as a way of re-funding humanism in the 21st century.

Only through education our mentality will evolve. If we do not learn to respect emotions, we will never have a truly model of human behavior and no reliable economic and political planning would be possible. In the webpage of Krugman there are lots of his best articles for free.

Formalism and reflexivity in Economy, not in Architecture

Krugman, by Alan Cordova, Flickr

Georges Soros, adam kesher2000, Flickr

A good thing of current global financial crisis is that it promotes attention to how the world is ruled. Last century John Maynard Keynes said that "little else" than Economy and Political Philosophy does (General Theory, 1936).

It has always been obvious to me that Art and Aesthetics is lacking in this list. Actually, I find surprising that "formalism" and "reflexivity" are terms of great interest in economical debate. Brand new Nobel Prize Paul Krugman and George Soros defend each concept in that arena.

At the end of his book "The Enlightenment´s Wake", John Gray bases his hopes for the future of "western cultures" in the introduction of "some varieties of poetry and mysticism" in modern modes of thinking. Wouldn´t be easier to re-shape our idea of modernity and to include the third aspect of human constituttion Kant discovered in his third Critique: the aesthetic autonomy againt reason and ethics?