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3:6

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

The French historian Fernand Braudel quite correctly describes the art of writing as the definitive technology. Both the Enlightenment and the Reformation were built on the printing press revolution; they both rest heavily on words and text, which had of course suddenly became available in cheap, mass circulation. The cost of producing a single book fell from tens of thousands of pounds to just a pound or so per copy, converted into today’s money value. Thus the Enlightenment and the Reformation exploited the advantages of the printing press to such an extent that they transform words and text per se into metaphysics. The book, the newspaper and the banknote as well as the later electronic, one-directional printing press derivatives for communicating, namely radio and television, acquire a fetishistic status under capitalism.