ETHICS AND POLITICS IN QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

Abstract

The Enlightenment mind clustered aroundan extraordinary dichotomy. Intellectualhistorians usually summarize this split in terms of subject/object, fact/value, or material/ spiritual dualisms.All three of these are legitimate interpretations of the cosmology inherited from Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. None of them, however, puts the Enlightenment into its sharpest focus. Its deepest root was a pervasive autonomy. The cult of human personality prevailed in all its freedom. Human beings were declared a law unto themselves, set loose from every faith that claimed their allegiance. Proudly self-conscious of human autonomy, the 18th-century mind saw nature as an arena of limitless possibilities in which the sov-ereignty of human personality was demonstrated by its mastery over the natural order. Release from