Historical Roots of Modern Problems

In 1985, Paul Feyerabend gave a lecture at ETH Zurich in which he argued that we can understand many problems of the modern world better if we trace them back to their historical roots in the intellectual world of ancient Greece. His audience, a majority of which had a background in science, was not disappointed. In a deliberately anti-professorial performance peppered with brilliant provocations and anecdotal digressions revealing the profound breadth of his knowledge, the enfant terrible of the philosophy of science sharpened his famous critique of occidental rationalism once more.

In particular, he took aim at the monopoly position of scientific-technical reason with its ideas of progress, truth, and objectivity, taking them to task for their complicity in the troubled state of the world. As an alternative, Feyerabend suggested that an epistemological and political pluralism would be better suited to dealing with the »modern problems« of his time: the nuclear threat, the destruction of non-European civilisations, social upheavals, and the looming ecological catastrophe. But what about our world today? This rousing journey through the political landscape of the 1980s shows that plenty of yesterday’s problems are still at the top of the agenda.