Talk:Theodore Roszak (scholar)/Archive 1

Archive 1

musings about Roszak and his influence...

I first got in contact with Theodore Roszak through his "Anthology of Contemporary Materials..." named "Sources" (Harper & Row, New York, 1972). That was during the 70s, and the general psichological climate of the Earth was different from today's.

I wonder what the current news have to do with what we felt at that time. What is the correlation between what we FELT reading about VietNam then and what we FEEL reading about the American Airlines passenger who was killed by "air marshalls" today.

"Sources" represent a good example of what was going on our minds at the time the anthology was edited. We talked about contemporary issues as all being "humane" issues. Earth, environmental problems were seen as naturally related to Man, not only as an actor, but also as a subject. Whereas today's papers and TV news are incredibly disconnected from that "humane" factor, even though stories are told around Man's tragedies.

I believe that that is the difference of times (a surprisingly narrow gap), then and now. We became callous and aloof; we do not recognize the responsability for, or ability to, change. "That's their business", we say, "we cannot cope with this other one".

And as we become removed from ourselves, so is social science moving from being interdisciplinary to become more and more specialized. Social scientists from one field do not even look to their neighbors from another branch.

At the end, I think that the greatest contribution of Theodore Roszak's was his dramatically radical perception of knowledge as a TOTAL endeavour. Or better, a process of aiming at the whole using all the aparatus of what we may call Social Sciences -- from Linguistics to Urban Planning. And maybe even beyond that...

Now reaching 2006 I see the pressing need for the Renaiscence Man that Roszak and others from the same generation once were! Ricardo Moraes-Pinto 12.08.05 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.255.52.51 (talk • contribs)

Roszak at Stanford

Roszak was my teacher at Stanford in an advanced freshman class of the standard History of Civilization course or whatever it was called in the 1959-1960 terms. So he was at Stanford for at least a year before this article says, probably as a graduate student doing a little teaching on the side as a section man. Hayford Peirce 00:30, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

NPOV?

This article seems unduly adulatory. Roszak is probably a very sharp fellow, but I would recommend word-choice changes in order to come closer to the encyclopedic tone. This reads more like an enthusiastic book review currently.