Posted on 08/04/2010 8:55:56 PM PDT by Lorianne
We owe our modern prosperity to Enlightenment ideas. ___ Was the Enlightenment a Good Thing? At first blush, the question sounds almost sacrilegious. The eighteenth-century Enlightenment, after all, taught us to be democratic and to believe in human rights, tolerance, freedom of expression, and many other values that are still revered, if not always practiced, in modern societies. On the other hand, historians question whether the Enlightenment actually led to brotherhood and equality (it did not, of course), and even freedom, its third objective, was achieved only partially and late. Some have even suggested that its ideas of human improvement may have had unintended bad consequences such as twentieth-century totalitarianism, racism, and colonialism.
Yet the debate has obscured the most hardy and irreversible effect of the Enlightenment: it made us rich. It is by now a cliché to note how much better twenty-first-century people live than even the kings of three centuries back. In thousands of large and small things, material life today is immeasurably better than ever before. Are we happier? Who knows? Are we more enlightened? Possibly. But are we healthier and more comfortable? Of course we are. And without sounding too cocky about how progressive history is, or too triumphalist about Western culture as the crowning achievement of human development (a view that a majority of historians label whiggish), I would like to suggest that what generated all this prosperity was the growth of certain ideas in the century after the British Glorious Revolution of 1688.
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
The Enlightenment was run by the hypocrisy of the European politicians. They ran along with the claim that religion was the cause of intolerance, yet they still denied the colonial Mulattos the right to vote, setting off wars of Independence in the Caribbean and the Americas. France denied and belittled the Blacks and Mulattos after the revolution had set up an atheist government. Anyways, the real part about the Enlightenment that mattered was the fact that it inspired wars of Independence, including our own in the United States, and also inspired a great deal of the idea that one should hold politicians and policies accountable, as we do here on Freerepublic regularly.
The author has no idea what he is writing about. The so-called “Enlightenment” was as retrograde as the “Rennaisance”, which among other lovely things, reintroduced slavery into European culture. Why, just consider the wonderful things the Enlightenment did for France and the Continent: ideological murder on an industrial scale, larger scale war than had ever been known, the Red Terror, the complete destruction of the French economy and severe dmage to other Continental economies...ah, yes, the Enlightenment. It must have been a good thing because “intellectuals” in universities have been telling us that it was for a very long time.
The Reformation “made us rich”, if such a thing matters. Weber knew it, but who even knows his name today?
The Enlightenment was no more run by anyone than the tea party is. It was, as the article claims, a flowering of ideas that greatly improved the condition of those fortunate to have been exposed to them. That it didn't end war is no grounds to denigrate it. What an odd comment.
The Founding Fathers cited the literary ideas of natural rights, and inherent freedoms. Taking a look at figures such as Locke, you can see where the citations came from. The colonies of the European powers certainly had scholars who heard of and found ideas such as Lockean liberalism appealing to them. However, Europe’s refusal to grant their requests resulted in Revolutions.
The Enlightenment was good because the philosophers such as Locke and Voltaire were the source of inspiration for the writing of our own Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Which while flawed, is still a great”flawed” way to run a government.
The Enlightenment was problematic specifically because, as you said, it was also an age of warfare. Nationalism grew to fruition. Secularism and Enlightenment Philosophy did little or nothing to steady the tide of this warfare between powers, or colonial exploitation.
I would argue that throughout the Enlightenment, and at least Two World Wars Nationalism became a major world religion.
The Founding Fathers spoke effectively from the writings of John Locke, a British Enlightenment philosopher. They cited Philosophers of that time. Benjamin Franklin, a political philosopher was in his own bet against European challengers that there could be an effective Republic created in America.
In the various colonial wars of independence, Haitian, Dominican, and even South American revolutionaries cited the statements of Enlightenment Philosophers as justification for their revolutions against the European colonial powers.
This is not directed at you, but it is a distortion to claim Locke was an “Enlightment” thinker. He was a Christian of an arminian stripe who learned his political theory from his Puritan father and uncle, both of whom served in Cromwell’s New Model Army. All of the political theory that true Americans cherish was the work of the Reformation. The “Enlightenment” did enthrone Nationalism, but it also was infested with socialists and totalitarians of all stripes. Rousseau, not Locke, is the political voice of the Enlightenment, and Rousseau is pure evil.
Not all philosophers (persons making debate) during the Enlightenment were atheists or agnostics. Some were unitarian, some were Christian. I agree with you about how bad Rosseau was. I doubt anyone who actually bothers reading well into the details of the French Revolution can deny the genuine tyranny excercised by France, and the reason behind the term, “Reign of Terror” or the Vanadee massacre.
Either way, you make good company in discussing history, and I look forward to meeting you again.
I enjoy the echange, too. But one of the things that is utterly false in our historical “narrative” is the appropriation by “Enlightenment” historians of people who had nothing to do with the Enlightenment and who explicitly rejected its premises.
As a Christian, Locke would never have agreed to be part of a movement that posited the ultimacy of “Reason” and would have been appalled at being classed with such people. The only reason for “reaching back” for people like Locke to include in the Enlightenment’s “Pantheon” is to give that intellectually and morally bankrupt movement a respectable pedigree. This anachronistic approach to historiography is both deliberate and deceitful.
Consider another example of the same sort of deceitful historiograhy. With the exception of D’Alembert, the Philosophes were coffee house intellectuals; they were the kind of people who would write for a magazine like Harper’s today or write for Broadway. They were NOT apostles of “science”. In fact, they were suspicious of “natural philosophy”, as it was then called, because it had a “Puritan odor” about it.
Modern science truly began with the formation of the Royal Society in London in 1660, and the founders were overwhelmingly Puritan. It was only after “science” gained tremendous prestige in the 19th Century that the heirs of the “Enlightenment” decided to run to the front of the parade so that they could pretend to be leading it. The current false narrative about the alleged the conflict between science and religion was deliberately concocted by two 19th Century authors, John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White.
The cavalier attitude of the Enlightenment culture toward science can be seen concretely in the political murder of Lavoisier by the “Enlightened”. When a final appeal was made for Lavoisier on the ground that he was a great scientist, the “Enlightened” responded that the Revolution had no need of scientists. Lagrange later said that it took but a moment to cut off that head, but France may not produce another like it for 100 years.
Mokyr is writing about the British Enlightenment which was very different from the French. It was more involved with science and industry than with political or philosophical theories.
In the past I'd have agreed with you and identified the Enlightenment with the French Revolution and later totalitarian utopian projects. But the context has changed.
Years ago we thought in Cold War terms. Today the encounter between the West, which experienced the Enlightenment, and the Muslim World, which didn't, influences the way we think about the 18th century.
The point had to do with the dishonest historiography of the left’s “Enlightenment” historians who set about claiming that every positive development or every bit of progress was somehow part of the “Enlightenment”. What happened in England in political thought (the good parts) and in science, and especially Scotland, are a legacy of the Reformation.
Postmoderns are particularly adept at misappropriating things by simply saying that there were many “x’s” (e.g. “Enlightenments”) so that they can confuse peopole by grouping things that are dissimilar in principle under the same general term. The political uses of this sort of thing are legion.
Mokyr has no idea what he is saying.
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Well now there’s common ground. It’s disappointing to hear about how Lavoisier met his end after learning about his contributions to modern chemistry. I guess that’s the one part I did not hear about.
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