What Was the Enlightenment?

Prager University ^ | 12/30/19 | Yoram Hazony

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Modern science, medicine, political freedom, the market economy—all of them, we’re told, are the result of a sort of miracle that took place 250 years ago. That miracle is called the Enlightenment, a moment in history when philosophers suddenly overthrew religious dogma and tradition and replaced it with human reason. Harvard professor Steven Pinker puts it this way: “Progress is a gift of the ideals of the Enlightenment.”

There’s just one problem with this claim. It isn’t really true.

Consider the U.S. Constitution, which is frequently said to be a product of Enlightenment thought. But you only need to read about English common law—which Alexander Hamilton and James Madison certainly did—to see that this isn’t so. Already in the 15th-century, the English jurist John Fortescue elaborated the theory of “checks and balances,” due process, and the role of private property in securing individual freedom and economic prosperity. Similarly, the U.S. Bill of Rights has its sources in English common law of the 1600s.

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The truth is that statesmen and philosophers, especially in England and the Netherlands, articulated the principles of free government centuries before America was founded.

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The greatest catastrophes of modernity were engineered by individuals who claimed to be exercising reason.

In contrast, most of the progress we’ve made comes from conservative traditions openly skeptical of human reason. The Enlightenment’s critics, including John Selden, David Hume, Adam Smith, and Edmund Burke, emphasized the unreliability of “abstract reasoning” and urged us to stick close to custom, history, and experience in all things.

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[KingLudd]

“ age of gullibility... no longer seeking the truth .... but seeking the celebrity, the popular, the puff piece.”

Exactly correct