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3:26

(In »The four paradigms in the history of metaphysics«)

The capitalist and industrialist paradigm was taken to a whole new level when Napoleon’s army tore across Europe in the early 19th century. No one personifies the World Spirit (in German: der Weltgeist) – which Hegel seeks in his magnum opus Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) – with the same force and clarity as the ruthless Napoleon, who the year before had plundered and ravaged Hegel’s own home town of Jena in eastern Germany. Napoleon’s army becomes the emblem of the literally murderously effective and finely honed organisations constructed by the literate masses – compartmentalised into productive hierarchies, where both responsibility and authority are extremely clearly defined – with the capacity to receive and pass on written instructions on an industrial scale and over distances that had previously been overwhelming. Soldiers and factory workers who can read and write are quite simply dramatically much more effective at carrying out their orders than illiterates. Not just because they can assimilate and relay information and knowledge in a totally new way, but also because they can express and clarify their own situations and teach it to others much better within the system at hand. This escalates the accumulation of information and knowledge dramatically.