[PEN-L:9729] Re: Re: Mumford

[Peter Dorman <dormanp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I should say a little more, I think, about what I like in Mumford and
what makes it difficult for me to "use" him.  Mumford gives technology
an extraordinarily political reading; he thinks through the implications
of technical choices for human liberation and healthy lifeways (which he
sees as linked).  Reading him can change how you look at the world.  As
an environmentalist, he is a precursor of the perspective of Cronon and
the rest of the Uncommon Ground crew: for Mumford, technics has an
ecology which it shares with the natural world -- for better or worse.
All this is wonderful.

Unfortunately, lurking behind his analysis is an uninterrogated reliance
on the notion of objective human needs, a sort of human flourishing
perspective.  There is much to be said for this approach (Sen and
Nussbaum have been saying a lot of it), but its great flaw is that it is
fundamentally paternalistic, and therefore politically sterile.  This is
true even though I think many of Mumford's personal judgments as to what
is healthy and what is not are compelling.  (He can also be simply
eccentric.)  I suspect that this paternalistic stance lies behind his
tendency to pontificate, which I mentioned in my last post.  In his
later writings, this tendency was given full reign.

By the way, here is a Mumford gem: His books often contained pithy
annotated bibliographies.  About Wilhelm Reich, Mumford said (I
paraphrase, but only a little), "Yes, we know orgasms are important, but
they're not *that* important."

Peter