Chapter 21 10/27

In this chapter, Johan Huizinga’s ideas on the Middle Ages are discussed. He feels that people in this time found significance and meaning in everything because, from their perspective, everything was connected to God. Even if a person wasn’t sure God existed, symbols were still very important, as they connected people to the unconscious ideas in their minds. It is because of this reason, Huizinga suggests, that we need social scientists to recognize the significance of unconscious actions taken by people. I agree with this statement from Huizinga because if people realized the significance of their unconscious actions, the actions would have less meaning as they would not be unconscious. The chapter goes on to give an example of the unconscious actions taken by people and breaks it down into two functions, latent and manifest. Huizinga defines the manifest function as the reason a person gives when they are asked why they did something. The latent function is the unconscious reason we do something. The idea of transcendentalism (simple objects can have a powerful emotional effect on people) is also discussed. Huizinga argues that the most simple objects do a better job of revealing the character of an age than a philosophy. Part of me agrees with this statement, as many times philosophers go so deep into something and often overlook or overanalyze some of the more simple things that may give away something about the character of a person or place.