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Nature, freedom, and assertion: The philosophical foundations of organizational reform
Abstract
The dissertation explores a postulate common to both Max Weber and Hans Blumenberg that modern organizations gain their intense motivational power from the anxieties created in the modern era by the disenchantment of nature and the death of God. The doctrine of omnipotence gave rise to a modern theodicy problem, experienced as an anxiety that the conditions of goodness must henceforth be self-consciously created by the self-assertion of large associations of interdependent people. This self-conscious forsaking of omnipotence carries with it a high price. In the work of Immanuel Kant natural law ethics and economics are no longer available and our associations tend to be bureaucratic. The dissertation follows the thought of both practical reformers and philosophers in developing this characterization of modern organization. What emerges, alongside their positive accounts of the relation between freedom and organization, is a darker picture of profound anxiety and melancholy. Particularly instructive is Kant's interpretive text on Cain and Abel in which modern people are identified with the brother who murders. Kant's insights are followed by those of Soren Kierkegaard, Rene Girard, Elton Mayo, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and others to explicate the structure of mimetic desire as it operates in modern large-scale organizations. These intense mimetic structures do not mean that freedom in large organizations is a myth, but it does mean that the self-conscious assertion of freedom involves a profound spiritual struggle which can result as easily in demonia as in release. Thus the final chapter employs a Weberean typology to show how freedom in its various organizational guises has so far remained elusive while the champions of freedom have tried to embody it in ever more inclusive organizational structures.
Subject Area
Political science|Public administration
Recommended Citation
Howe, Louis Edwin, "Nature, freedom, and assertion: The philosophical foundations of organizational reform" (1990). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9110154.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9110154