Illuminating discussion of “Enlightenment” philosophy and its relation to the French Revolution, Marx, and the rest of the usual suspects.
I would have loved to have understood this article when I faced the “Introduction to the Humanities” problem in my freshman year in engineering school. Apparently it is even more needed today by college freshmen generally.
It’s a long article to which a 300 word excerpt cannot do justice.
Don Rumsfeld famously spoke of “known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.” But I put it to you that there is another quadrant in that matrix, “unknown knowns.” On face value that seems absurd concept - if you know something, how can your knowledge of it be “unknown?” But, not so fast.
The reality is that we are not aware of everything we know - and we certainly cannot articulate it. A concrete example of an “unknown know” came to my attention when I was traveling what had been, a week before, an unfamiliar road. I found myself in what was logically the “wrong” lane, and moved over to the right lane. I was instantly rewarded with a drubbing to my undercarriage due to the rough pavement at that point. And I realized that rough patch was “known” to me before then but I had not consciously realized that I had known it.
Tradition and conservatism keep us in what may rationally seem to be the wrong lane because the knowledge which justifies sticking to that lane is not conscious and/or not readily articulated.
The Enlightenment’s strict emphasis on Reason as the only way to comprehend the universe led inexorably to the French Revolution, Marx, Darwin, and our modern world of Secular Materialism.
How ironic that the Progressives of today, who unquestionably came out of that heritage, now reject notions of Truth and Reality. They believe that there is no God, we can make our own Truth, and that if a Man wants to be a Woman, that choice is open and available.
It’s a shame our society has not put greater emphasis on Faith and Morality, which may not lend themselves so much to Reason, but which do help channel Human Nature is more responsible ways.
Ping to an article I really liked.
I read it, and also agree with him for the most part. My only disagreement with the author is whether David Hume was pro- or anti-Enlightenment. Personally, I’d argue he’s just as much for the Enlightenment as Kant. In fact, if anything, there’s evidence to suggest Kant’s on reason was meant to enhance Hume’s Empiricist argument rather than reject it. There’s at least one article exposing how Hume was ultimately as damaging to science as the Enlightenment was, and gave pretty good solid reasons for the case:
https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2012/05/16/david-hume-anti-christian/
Maybe (not really but pretending) Kant could deduce the best way to hit a baseball coming at him at a certain speed and trajectory. But could he hit it that way?
Reason is to the whole deal the way a plane/slice is to a 3 dimensional object. You can be totally accurate and internally rationally consistent within the realm of the slice with no height, and it's meaningless.
The house is not the hammer you built it with.
Here is the article, text only, without the paywall.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dark-side-of-the-enlightenment-1523050206
I found it very well done, and very well worth reading.
So it seems, to a few. It could asl be astonishing subterfuge: this is all about what you admit as evidence.
But yes, to say that the evidence one decides to admit is "universal" is a bit over the top. After all, reason can't produce a universe.
The French are derided for their “Cartesian” way of thinking and rightly so.
What you described is more like a forgotten known.
Subconsciously, we KNOW what is and what is not. At least I believe so. There is right and wrong, good and evil, black and white. It very well could be that which nature or nature’s God or God instilled within us so that we may function according to a rational or logical set of rules. I know what I know, even if it is unknown. If any of that makes any sense.
“Everything is everything.” Marvin Gaye
In the 18th Century, everyone thought that truth would be established as a certain fact and all that needed to be done would be to sum up the limits of expanding knowledge.
This is the idea behind the American and French Revolutions -freedom, equality and reason come to us through laws discovered by God and any human being can unlock them and make new discoveries.
Unfortunately, there are lots of unknowns that make doing that far from simple, because life doesn’t conform to human expectations of it. And conservatism arose in part because of the realization in reality we can never know everything with absolute confidence.
If we could know the outcome of knowledge, I don’t think any one would disagree with the assertion the human mind is enriched by new knowledge. That’s human nature - we are a curious species and have a need and a want to know more - the quality that sets us apart from every other animal on earth is our ability to ask questions about the world around us.
What troubles conservatives is not seeking knowledge for its own sake but rather the meaning of that knowledge and its practical and moral consequences for our well-being. Liberals tend to be completely blind to adverse consequences. And these happen quite often in life and we can’t assume knowledge will always benefit us.
Conservatives too are children of the Englightenment and on the whole its made our world a freer and better place than it was in the Middle Ages but it shouldn’t be taken on blind faith. The real world has taught us more often than not that more things are bound to go wrong than right and the pursuit of knowledge must be tempered with healthy skepticism.
Reminds of the philosopher Michael Polanyi and his theory of “tacit knowledge” which is summed up by his phrase “we know more than we can tell”. From this he deduces a conservative political philosophy.
This post reminds me of a song by Monty Python:
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable,
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table,
David Hume could out-consume Schopenhauer and Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ya ‘bout the turning of the wrist,
Socrates himself was permanently pissed...
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, with half a pint of shandy was particularly ill,
Plato, they say, could stick it away, half a crate of whiskey every day,
Aristotle, Aristotle was a beggar for the bottle,
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart, “I drink therefore I am.”
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he’s pissed.
This view of “reason”—and of its power, freed from the shackles of history, tradition and experience—is what Kant called “Enlightenment.” It is completely wrong. Human reason is incapable of reaching universally valid, unassailably correct answers to the problems of science, morality and politics by applying the methods of mathematics.
...
Wasn’t it Kurt Gödel, a theist, who established that?
Care Liberty Fairness Loyalty Authority Sanctity
vs.
harm oppression cheating betrayal subversion degradation. . . and notes that “liberals” focus first on “care vs. harm,” less on “liberty vs. oppression” and “fairness vs. cheating” - and not at all on "Loyalty vs. betrayal," “Authority vs. subversion," or “Sanctity vs degradation.” Conservatives can only view neglect of those latter three “pillars” as cynicism. People who neglect those pillars entirely cannot encompass the totality of human concerns with whatever mathematics they may employ.