Don't put Descartes before the bourse? Shouldn't that be, "don't put the cart before the horse?"

Another article appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, originally from the New York Times. It is entitled "Don't put Descartes before the bourse, French told." The story was written by Elaine Sciolino in Paris, July 23, 2007.

We all know France as the country of Charlesmagne, King Louis XIV and Napoleon plus fine champagne, great philosophers, painters and the like. France also produced the Age of Enlightenment where Descartes wrote: "I think, therefore I am." So what is this idea of getting to work rather than spending too much time on thought? Wouldn't thinking things through logically be preferable to doing things blindly because someone told you to do it said so? The Government of Nicolas Sarkozy would seem to think otherwise. But what would one think otherwise of a rightist government?

The new President is said to have told a television interviewer last month: "Oh, I am not an intellectual! I am someone concrete!" Sounds more like someone set in their ways than one that is open to new ideas and ways of doing things, in my opinion anyway.

Here is a quote from this story: "This is the sort of thing you can hear in cafe conversations from morons who drink too much," said Bernard-Henri Levy, a philosopher-journalist. "I'm pro-American and pro-market, so I could have voted for Nicolas Sarkozy, but this anti-intellectual tendency is one of the reasons that I did not."

To read the full article in the Sydney Morning Herald, please go to: http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/dont-put-descartes-before-the-bourse-french-told/2007/07/23/1185042950482.html

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