Ivan Illich, in his 1994
Schumacher lecture on the wisdom of Austrian economist
philosopher Leopold Kohr, said,
“Kohr was an eminently unassuming man. I would even go so far as to say that he was radically humble, and this aspect of his thought and character tends to disqualify him from inclusion in textbooks. It may also have contributed to the fact that so few have grasped the core of his argument: the prominence he gives to proportionality [...] But not many of those who applauded him understood the depth of his opposition to current axiomatic certainties [...] Diffidently, he asks you to step outside of what passes for commonly accepted perception [...] To consider what is appropriate or fitting in a certain place leads one directly into reflection on beauty and goodness. The truth of one's resultant judgment will be primarily moral, not economic.”

Kohr's contribution is to be found in
his social morphology, says Illich. There, two key words reveal his
thought: proportionality or, more precisely, the appropriateness of a
relationship. The second is "certain," as when one says,
"in a certain way." Taking both "appropriate" and
a "certain place" together allows Kohr to see the human
social condition as that ever unique and boundary-making limit within
which each community can engage in discussion about what ought
to be allowed and what ought to be excluded.
This discussion happens within
families, villages, towns, and regions, not nation states which are
too large and heterogenous. Globalization in particular explodes any
possible framework of appropriateness.
Each place has its own culture, and
each culture has its own sense of proportions. We arrive at measures
through following proportions. A simple example are the historically
different lengths of one mile or one cubit which depended on the
different proportions of the human body in different ethnicities.
Another example are the different dates
for the start of the new year which most often depend on geographical
locations and their specific seasons and crop cycles, but also their
religious beliefs (14th April in Tamil culture, 11th September in
Ethiopia,...)
This notion which has pervaded
basically everything from music to cookery to politics to
architecture to medicine became extinct through the rationalistic
movement that started in the Renaissance. With the victory of
Enlightenment in the 18th century it has been completely replaced by
absolute sizes and values. Here lies the foundation of modern
economics.
Kohr's point is that a good life is not
to be found using absolute figures and values but through seeking
appropriateness, ie. the right proportions, or the right
relationship, and that this can happen only locally, or regionally at
largest, because the definition of ethical values (or rather
qualities) and their ranking may vary from culture to culture and
from case to case.
Kohr knew that not any inclination but
a certain awareness and feeling, a certain sensitivity to the
appropriate, is the necessary condition of friendship. He knew that
the historical loss of this knowledge fosters the emergence of social
mutations that can be recognized now as monsters.
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