The Enlightenment - classic or dud

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The Enlightenment always sounds like a good idea - all that casting off old superstitions and adopting a new rationalist approach to the world.

Yet it seems to be only righwing cockfarmers like Conor Cruise O'Brien who bang on about the Englightenment, leading me to think that it might be a bit rub.

What do you think, fellow intellectuals?

― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 31 December 2002 12:28 (twenty-two years ago)

'intellect' should be the next to go. Once there's no intellect AND no superstitions then the human species will have progressed.

― dave q, Tuesday, 31 December 2002 12:40 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh whoopee let's all dance around our new god, Science. He (for only it can only be male) will explain everything in a rational way, teaching us that everything is down to the cognitive. (hmmm)

― nathalie (nathalie), Tuesday, 31 December 2002 13:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Ever noticed how men only start using the words "logic", "logical" and/or "rational" when they're highly emotional?

― toraneko (toraneko), Tuesday, 31 December 2002 15:24 (twenty-two years ago)

yeah, then and in maths and sciences discussions.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 31 December 2002 16:31 (twenty-two years ago)

voltaire was the only thing that made any sense to me.

― dog latin (dog latin), Tuesday, 31 December 2002 16:59 (twenty-two years ago)

As a response to the inquisitions and puritanism which preceeded it, I'd have to say classic. Ideas like liberty, equality, and, er, democracy probably wouldn't be around without it after all.

― Aaron W, Tuesday, 31 December 2002 17:07 (twenty-two years ago)

The reason why right-wing cockfarmers bang on about the Enlightenment is because during the Enlightenment everyone knew their place. Said cockfarmers stubbornly attribute every thing they like about the 19th and 20th century to the lingering effects of the Enlightenment. Whatever they don't like, they conveniently toss the blame for it onto Romanticism, socialism, Nietzche, Einstein, Dada and all such newfangled stuff, such as can only fit into the Tory worldview as whipping boys.

― Aimless, Tuesday, 31 December 2002 18:51 (twenty-two years ago)

This all raises the question: democracy, C or D? Let's think beyond civics class and give this one a try eh?

― Amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 31 December 2002 18:55 (twenty-two years ago)

The Enlightenment occurs within each of us with every passing moment. We just generally ignore it.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Tuesday, 31 December 2002 18:57 (twenty-two years ago)

Amateurist, democracy has been very good to myself, to my family, to my country and to the world. This is an undeniable fact of history. Without democracy my family could never have raised themselves out of poverty and ignorance. It is impossible to institute universal education and a meritocracy without power-sharing. Paternalism was never enough to get the job done, since the basic interest of paternalism is self-interest.

― Aimless, Tuesday, 31 December 2002 19:10 (twenty-two years ago)

I was just trying to bait Dinesh D'Souza. He still hangs out on ILX right?

― Amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 31 December 2002 19:31 (twenty-two years ago)

X X X X X X X X X X

That's your lifetime allocation of democracy. Try not to use it all up at once, won't you?

OK, that's anarchist sloganeering, but there is some truth in it. Most people engage no more with our democratic machinery than that, and the votes of any individual are probably irrelevant. I don't have some perfect alternative in mind, but something that genuinely connects more with people would be good.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 1 January 2003 20:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Classic. I don't see any plausible argument to the contrary, unless it rests on eg. the vitality of the Elizabethan stage.

Actually, Dud in this respect: humanity's Modernity eventually wreaks catastrophe on the surrounding environment and other species.

(In other words, perhaps a replay of that nabisco thread re. Do You Believe In Progress? or whatever it was, c. 8/01, I think.)

― the pinefox, Thursday, 2 January 2003 16:43 (twenty-two years ago)

Re enviro-damage - not that I care in the least, but perhaps it could be solved by even MORE science, ie terraforming asteroids or Mars or something

― dave q, Thursday, 2 January 2003 17:28 (twenty-two years ago)

Nathalie and Toraneko: There's a very interesting article by E. H. Gombrich on the nutty and very un-Enlightenment symbology of reason and liberty during the French Revolution, in his book The Uses of Images.

How about a "French Revolution: C or D?" thread?

― Amateurist (amateurist), Thursday, 2 January 2003 18:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Classic.

Another recommended book on Enlightenment iconography: 1789: THe Emblems of Reason by Jean Starobinski.

― felicity (felicity), Thursday, 2 January 2003 18:35 (twenty-two years ago)

two years pass...

what about the dark side of the Enlightenment? all that Foucault-esque discipline-and-punish stuff, or the march of reason's leading to the Gulag, that's what I mean. Also, the Enlightenment Project does at times seem like a big excuse for Whitey to go on about how much better he is than other folks.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Thursday, 3 November 2005 23:16 (nineteen years ago)

Just the other day I had a sort of realization that "the market" is pretty awesome. I don't mean the idea of a totally unregulated free market where big corps rule all, but the general concept of free exchange of money for goods and for labor, enabling us to choose, at least to a much larger extent than we could in the pre-modern world, what to do with our lives, what to eat, wear, listen to, where to work, where to live, who to associate with, what to learn about, etc. I mean we really do take this for granted. I don't think I ever fully admitted this to myself before.

I do sometimes get on anti-Enlightenment kicks but then I'm usually snapped out of them when I remember what the other options are. I'll take science, and I'll even burn an offering before it if it means I don't have to live in the dark ages.

― Hurting (Hurting), Friday, 4 November 2005 04:12 (nineteen years ago)

Sapere aude! - Classic
hyper-individualist thinking as a result of Sapere aude! - dud

― Jack L., Friday, 4 November 2005 05:53 (nineteen years ago)

thirteen years pass...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D5pAPp5XsAA4TXs.jpg

― mark s, Friday, 3 May 2019 12:20 (six years ago)

Sounds like somebody has a case of the Mondays!

― Ce Ce Penistongs (Old Lunch), Friday, 3 May 2019 12:26 (six years ago)

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