Merkur
2008-09-15
Summary of Merkur 9-10/2008
Curiosity. On European Thinking
The new is eternal and everywhere. But in Europe during the Renaissance arose the avarice for the new, the systematic search, the desire to find and invent. That was something new and markedly different than in China, where we know gun powder was invented -- and yet created no innovative dynamism.
The new and the addiction to it can be found at the start of modernity and therefore at the start of Europe's world conquest, which in the meantime has found its end and now is also being questioned in its extended "Western" form. In any case, Europe has mentally bid farewell to its aggressive curiosity; instead it turns to the humane model of retention and preservation against the destructive capitalism of Anglo-Saxon coinage. What we should make of China's and India's entry into the global dynamic -- whether the new, in the empathetic sense, will arise there -- we will have to wait and see.
Curiosity is a principle motif of European thinking; the new is modernity's figure of thought.