Last week I discovered no fewer than 3 books I needed to add to Just Words? A sceptic’s glossary – with the hyperlinks, that adds a couple of thousand pages you can now access to the dictionary. The books are -
The Palgrave Dictionary of Political Thought by Roger Scruton (1982 3rd
I had forgotten that Ralston Saul had produced The Doubter’s Companion (1994) which he sub-titled ”a dictionary of aggressive common sense” and introduced thus
In the humanist view, the alphabet can be a tool for examining society; the dictionary a series of questions, an enquiry into meaning, a weapon against received wisdom and therefore against the assumptions of established power. In other words, the dictionary offers an organized Socratic approach.
The rational method is quite different. The dictionary is abruptly transformed into a dispensary of truth; that is, into an instrument which limits meaning by defining language. This bible becomes a tool for controlling communications because it directs what people can think. In other words, it becomes the voice of Platonic élitism.
Humanism versus definition. Balance versus structure. Doubt versus ideology. Language as a means of communication versus language as a tool for advancing the interests of groups.
John Ralston Saul’s “Voltaire’s Bastards – the dictatorship of reason in the west” (1992) was already there – with its stunning portrait of Robert McNamara first as a bean-counter whizz-kid at General Motors, then as an infamous “body-counter” in the Vietnam War and finally as the ruthless head of the World Bank who inflicted “Structural Adjustments” on poor countries.
Fleming 2016. A curious endeavour from an ecologist with the full list here and random entries available belowhttps://leanlogic.online/glossary/anarchism/
https://leanlogic.online/glossary/community/
https://leanlogic.online/glossary/lean-economics/
So if definitions are your thing, click on….
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