Enlightenment cannot stop questioning the way things are, or it’s not Enlightenment any more — Jamal

Can this process eventually transcend Enlightenment? Is post-modern thinking an inevitable outcome of such an Enlightenment process? Isn't the eventual trajectory of questioning and more questioning anti-foundationalism? — Tom Storm

Philosophy, which once seemed obsolete, lives on because the moment to realize it was missed. The summary judgment that it had merely interpreted the world, that resignation in the face of reality had crippled it in itself, becomes a defeatism of reason after the attempt to change the world miscarried…philosophy is obliged ruthlessly to criticize itself…The introverted thought architect dwells behind the moon that is taken over by extroverted technicians. — Adorno, Negative Dialectics

Right now I can’t escape from this viewpoint, even though it has a lot of the Progress narrative about it that I’ve been criticizing. Adorno is saying that because the Enlightenment did not lead to humanity’s emancipation as Marx and the Marxists assumed it would—they really were surprised and stunned that instead of multiple social revolutions to put societies on the course to peace and freedom, we got world wars and unprecedented barbarism—philosophy has to struggle on somehow and face up to its failure. Adorno’s reference of course is to Marx’s famous eleventh thesis on Feuerbach:

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.

By which Marx meant that the point of philosophy is to change the world.

It didn’t happen and then we got postmodernism. To repurpose a Frank Zappa quote: Philosophy is not dead, it just smells funny.

Postmodernism wasn’t inevitable tout court, but in retrospect, given the actual historical circumstances, it doesn’t seem surprising that philosophy went that way: the failure of socialist movements and the horrors of war twisted things up, and they’re still twisted. Marxism was the last grand narrative/metanarrative (except for those that justified existing conditions), and it fell to pieces. Maybe it’s natural that thinkers began to question the very idea of grand narratives.

Now it feels like postmodernism, with its scepticism towards both Enlightenment universalism and the individual subject of experience, is precisely the kind of philosophy that suits modern society, with its fragmented public sphere and atomized populace. That is, it doesn’t seem like much of a challenge to the status quo, not significantly critical at all, despite sometimes seeming to be.

But I’m being too general and impressionistic, and I don’t know the answers to your questions. I haven’t read much of what is called postmodernism aside from Foucault (whose philosophy I like quite a lot), and I know I’m seeing things too much through a historical and political lens, rather than a strictly philosophical one, but that’s the way my mind goes.

It occurs to me to re-read Foucault’s What is Enlightenment? to see what he says about the whole thing, and maybe get a clearer picture.

EDIT: I just realized: in fact, self-critical Enlightenment has not only led to postmodernist anti-humanism and anti-universalism; it has also led to philosophers like Zizek, who (I think) has made it his mission to rehabilitate both universalism and the subject. So all is not lost!

You gotta roll with it, like I'm doing. :grin:

A Muslim has faith in their religious authorities — praxis

This is probably kind of close to blasphemy from a Muslim point of view. Which authorities? Some Muslims might follow religious leaders, but for the vast majority I think Islam is a way of life that doesn’t recognize hierarchy—famously, there is no institutional hierarchy in Islam. Respecting and listening to the Imam is not faith, but just an everyday deference to, ideally, expertise, knowledge, wisdom, etc.

But ND can take up the challenge from here.

moral improvement almost always coincides with increased mastery over the conditions of life — Judaka

I don’t want to argue now against increased mastery, but can you explain why you think it coincides with moral improvement?

Why does humanity need redemption? Humanity is just better at killing and dominating than other animals. Life is about killing and domination, competition and conflict, eating and being eaten, and suffering and causing suffering. Shouldn't humans be praised for trying to rise above that, and having any kind of success? — Judaka

Sure, I think of humans like that sometimes. I was really just referring to the suffering of human beings, usually caused by other human beings. War, oppression, and poverty, that kind of thing. That last paragraph in the OP was a rather grand and emotive way of making the point that we shouldn’t reduce those past evils (not that they are consigned to the past) to steps on a ladder to present or future happiness.

It seems OP is just a question about what measuring stick we should use... And you've decided it should be extraordinarily high. Isn't that the source of your relative pessimism? — Judaka

I don’t think that’s what I’m doing. It’s more an examination of ideology, of the myth of inevitable betterment, which I think is implied in the unthinking description of unhappy conditions as primitive.

I'll just add that I was motivated by the both of you to re-read the Yeats poem, and the hair stood up on my neck. Hasn't happened in awhile. — Noble Dust

Same here, even though I’d read it before.

But then, Pinker isn't really representing all the Enlightenment values he claims as his own - only the aspects of it that are adopted by MBA courses and hawkish economic rationalists — Wayfarer

Yes, that’s exactly the problem I have with him. His Enlightenment doesn’t have much of the spirit of the Enlightenment.

Edit: or maybe it’s better to say he’s missing some crucial aspects of it.

I enjoyed reading your overview of the status and history of progress, not least the way it ends triumphantly with some powerful poetry.

I disagree. I don't accept the binary of religious belief and secular belief; they're different flavors of the same thing, and again, what they do is give the lives of believers a sense of purpose, meaning and value. If this sounds corny, just reflect and examine your own life, beliefs, and what you value. Even a nihilist or rigorous individualist does not function outside of this reality. Religion is, in a sense, simply an organized narrative around which groups of people orient their lives, beliefs and values. You are no different than a muslim in this way. That's why I think the concept of "usefulness" in regards to "religion" (you're actually using it in regards to a set of beliefs) is misleading. Religion is not the opiate of the masses; rather, belief is what keeps people going, religious or secular — Noble Dust

Nicely put, and I agree.

I just want to add for anyone who doesn’t know that in the sentence before “opium of the people,” Marx says that religion is the “heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.”

"Scarcity" seems the fundamental driver of dominance hierarchies and imperialism that no amount of "progress" has put an end to or significantly diminished, so the title of Pinker's book doesn't recommend itself to me — 180 Proof

Absolutely.

That said, Jamal, why do you think I should read it? — 180 Proof

I don’t. This discussion is not about the book.

Can this process eventually transcend Enlightenment? Is post-modern thinking an inevitable outcome of such an Enlightenment process? Isn't the eventual trajectory of questioning and more questioning anti-foundationalism? — Tom Storm

Great questions that I hope to respond to tomorrow :smile:

I can't help but feel Pinker is an old fashioned figure, the kind of public educator with faith in progress I grew up with. My question for you is could his position be enhanced by more rigorous philosophical knowledge? Is he essentially just another nostalgic modernist liberal? — Tom Storm

When I was growing up I was a big fan of Jacob Bronowski, scientist, TV science communicator and documentary maker. He was very much on the side of Enlightenment, but I feel he was more sensitive and humane than people like Pinker. I still retain a belief in Enlightenment partly thanks to him.

Could Pinker’s position be enhanced philosophically? Maybe, although he’d probably end up with a rather different argument and thesis.

And yes, he probably is another nostalgic liberal modernist, but he’s not just that.

I was struck by this — Tom Storm

The passage is polemical, so it’s unfair to analyze it philosophically. But I’ll do it anyway.

Don't confuse pessimism with profundity: problems are inevitable, but problems are solvable, and diagnosing every setback as a symptom of a sick society is a cheap grab for gravitas — Tom Storm

Here, a problem is just a setback. This goes back to the OP, the claim that in this idea of progress, everything is a problem because it is at a primitive stage of development. Are there not problems that might make us pessimistic which are not setbacks on a road to happiness and prosperity for all, but are rather a result of how we are travelling down that road, and even where the road is leading? Isn’t that a legitimate question, and possibly a profound one? Can nobody point out that society is sick? Granted that diagnosing every problem as a symptom of a sick society is probably wrong, so what if we just diagnose some of them as such? At what point am I making a cheap grab for gravitas?

As it happens, that last paragraph of mine is a cheap jab, because as I say, the passage is polemic. As far as it can be taken seriously, it’s as an expression of the ideas that are at work in our culture.

Finally, drop the Nietzsche. His ideas may seem edgy, authentic, baad, while humanism seems sappy, unhip, uncool But what's so funny about peace, love, and understanding? — Tom Storm

Enlightenment must critique itself, and few did it better than Nietzsche. Enlightenment cannot stop questioning the way things are, or it’s not Enlightenment any more. Enlightenment is not just science, but reason too, and reason isn’t worthy of the name when it’s no longer critical but only instrumental (this is straight from Adorno & Horkheimer of course, and I’m trying on their critique for size).

Anyway, his targets in that passage are pessimists and anti-humanists. I think I’m neither, but I can still be critical. We can find Nietzsche exciting and incisive without embracing all of his thought. Dropping him is a bad idea.

To where and to what we are progressing is never mentioned. — NOS4A2

To the advanced conditions prevalent at Harvard?

Good point.

So isn’t that the past itself is bad, but that conditions were worse than now. If his conditions were to reverse he would have to say the past is worse according to his own measure. — NOS4A2

You've got to the heart of my post, which I appreciate. But I disagree. It isn't that conditions were worse, otherwise he wouldn’t have described present conditions as primitive. He would have described them as bad, unacceptable, or atrocious.

Now, of course I am not saying that he consciously believes that it's the past that's bad rather than the conditions themselves. I am saying that he, and we, slip into this way of thinking and reproduce it, imposing it on history as an abstraction and a myth, obscuring the fine details, dismissing the troublesome realities.

And of course I am not saying that he doesn't describe those conditions as bad elsewhere in the book. Focusing on one short passage, I'm examining how a mythic narrative seeps into our discourse, the result of which is to put the cart before the horse and explain away present evils as belonging essentially to the past.

I also realize that in the book he attempts to show that conditions were generally worse in the past, that general progress by means of Enlightenment is real. And if this is true, then you might say that he is justified in describing them as primitive even when we see them today, because, so the story goes, they characterize the past more than the present. But, even aside from how controversial his evidence is (which someone else might address), this is precisely the blindness of the narrative of Progress. Those conditions are not characteristic only of primitive or scientifically unenlightened societies.

But his use of “primitive” to describe those conditions is the clue to where he’s coming from. Of course he is acknowledging that those conditions exist in the present, but for him they are first and foremost relics, rather than the result of modern problems.

I very much agree. Maybe I’ll say something intelligent about it tomorrow.

That’s a fascinating angle. I can certainly see how the settler colonialism in Africa and India, with its “civilizing” mission, was part of the Progress narrative, but with the Middle East, I’m not so sure. I mean, you’re right, but there was a lot going on. For example, Ataturk, Saddam Hussein and other Ba'athists, the Shah of Iran, Nasser, and Gaddafi led modernization efforts, in many cases against the West. But I do agree that part of the original impetus for this was the encounter with the foreign imperial powers.

Yes, the “othering” that @unenlightened mentioned is directed towards whoever is not in the West and not in the present.

It can be seen as progressive in the sense that as civilization developed at some point (I think China was first) power was given based on merit rather than kinship, which may have resulted power exercised more competently. — praxis

Yes, I was saying pretty much the same thing last week:

Before capitalism, social relations were based on traditions and obligations that had nothing to do with money, and the people at the top had other things to think about, like winning wars, getting in to heaven, or producing an heir (and if they did make money, they didn't actually make it but just took it). A clan chief was obliged to protect his clan members and they owed him loyalty and service; a vassal was obliged to fight for his king to justify holding on to his fief, and also to protect his peasants, who in turn owed him part of their produce; and so on across many variations and times up to the modern period. Capitalism swept most of this away. The result in connection to merit was, ideally, that at last people could be rewarded for their effort and ability, not for their existing attachments of family, class, guild, religion, tradition, obligation, and so on. — Jamal

Otherwise, I do agree that the pervasive sense that everything is getting worse obscures some real progress.

But you’re still a moralist, not yet beyond good and evil — Joshs

And thus, in a sense, beyond Nietzsche.

But a nice point.

Me too. I was watching the Munk debates on both capitalism and populism and the same theme struck me, that the motivating ideology of any movement is not the same as the product. There's a disconnect created by the fact that ideologies gather popular support and as such become tools in themselves which can be wielded in the service of other, completely different ideologies.

I think enlightenment, progressiveness, whatever you call it, is like that. The notion of trusting in science, the rule of law, reason etc is one thing. The purposes that such a trust is put to is another. — Isaac

This fits with what I was saying recently about meritocracy. Whatever its… merits (and I question those), the idea functions as ideology to obscure existing inequality or even to justify it by implying you got to the top on merit, and I’m still poor because I’m lazy and talentless (though the latter is less often stated openly).

I think beyond Nietzsche by bypassing him.

That book looks interesting. Still haven’t got around to Graeber.

Some films I’ve enjoyed a lot in more recent years:

Under the Skin
The Green Knight
The Killing of a Sacred Deer
The Cabin in the Woods
Midsommar
Us, Get Out (haven’t seen Nope yet)
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
Triangle of Sadness
Nightcrawler
Birdman
Edge of Tomorrow

There are many I haven’t seen, especially foreign language films. I don’t watch a lot of anything these days.

Hey GMBA, good to see you ag—wait a minute, what’s this?

Isn't there a forum, on some other website, where the buzz of intellectual gnats do not drown out the thought of man? — god must be atheist

I’m offended!

Incidentally, I got the phrase "insufferable enthusiasm" from Nietzsche, writing about progress. Elsewhere he wrote this:

Progress. — Let us not be deceived! Time marches forward; we'd like to believe that everything that is in it also marches forward— that the development is one that moves forward. The most level-headed are led astray by this illusion. But the nineteenth century does not represent progress over the sixteenth; and the German spirit of 1888 represents a regress from the German spirit of 1788. "Mankind" does not advance, it does not even exist. The overall aspect is that of a tremendous experimental laboratory in which a few successes are scored, scattered throughout all ages, while there are untold failures, and all order, logic, union, and obligingness are lacking. How can we fail to recognize that the ascent of Christianity is a movement of decadence? -That the German Reformation is a recrudescence of Christian barbarism? -That the Revolution destroyed the instinct for a grand organization of society? Man represents no progress over the animal: the civilized tenderfoot is an abortion compared to the Arab and Corsican; the Chinese is a more successful type, namely more durable, than the European. — Nietzsche, Will to Power

I quite like the idea of humanity or history as a "tremendous experimental laboratory in which a few successes are scored, scattered throughout all ages, while there are untold failures."

My temptation is to think beyond Nietzsche and say: one day we'll get it right. This would not be to endorse Progress, only to admit that we can find better ways of living.

1. Nowhere is it established how we (enlightened countries) justify such a discreet separation from those benighted countries of war, famine and pestilence. It's as if Pinker treats borders as having some deep cultural/psychological fence around them such that cultures within can be judged in isolation. — Isaac

Wouldn't he just say that in actuality, the Enlightenment was only realized in nation-states, and especially in the US, where he and his friends stand at the pinnacle of history?

2. The assumption that recorded history is equal to 'the past' which, of course it isn't. What goes into the records is a selected subset of everything that actually happened. One of the main critiques I've read of Pinker here is that he takes a single, fairly famously biased, source for his data on Hunter-Gatherer tribes, for example. We shouldn't confuse the academic canon with the lived experiences of the people there. — Isaac

Yes, those are the critiques that I've seen too.

I like (though hadn't thought of it before) your noting that 'the past' is simply assumed to be source of these evils rather than actual material conditions (which, obviously could re-materialise). I agree it dangerously implies we need do nothing, that just passively 'allowing' progress will result in the benefits assigned to it. It has a disturbing paternalistic feel that I don't think is accidental. Pinker's target, after all, is not the forces which keep these benighted countries down. His audience is Western. His target is that particular branch of progressivism which sees technological and capitalist growth as a concern. His message is "stand aside". — Isaac

Exactly. At the same time, I share Pinker's animus towards some of that progressivism. It's complicated.

One gets off the hook by not trying to get off the hook. This is old-fashioned:-- "We are all sinners..." Progress therefore is not made, because progress in life science entails equal progress in death science, progress in healing entails progress in sickening and torture. Individual life-expectancy has increased, but species survival expectancy has radically reduced. — unenlightened

Nicely put. Seen in this light, the claim that the bad bits are just relics is especially preposterous.

I also feel that I cannot disagree with him about the progress since enlightenment, but at the same time I can't agree either. — javi2541997

I feel the same. I call it "dialectical". :grin:

But despite the melancholy behind the OP, I don't share your pessimism. I don't think war is eternal and that conflicts will repeat cyclically forever. I just don't think an overarching idea of progress is the right way to look at history.

By the way, I created this discussion after I saw you post something in another thread about the inevitability of war.

Yep.

I should point out that it's not just liberals who do this. It's obviously at work in Marx and in the revolutionaries who were inspired by him. Maybe this is the one issue where conservatives, of the more old-fashioned kind at least, get off the hook.

:up:

I think that it's because, for Aristotle, and the ancients generally, the cosmos itself was alive. I don't know if it's really pantheistic, although not far from it - more that there was the sense that man's relationship with the cosmos was 'I-Though' rather than our customary 'I-it' relationship (Martin Buber). But I think it's fair to say that for Aristotle, the Cosmos itself was ensouled, for, as a whole, it displays the attributes of all other living beings. The idea of the cosmos as inert matter governed by physical laws was yet to be arrived at. — Wayfarer

But I’ve been reading that IEP article and can’t see the justification for “To be is to be alive; all other being is borrowed being.” I’m not saying it’s untrue (or true), only that I’m trying to see the reasoning in the article and can’t. Your comment here sheds light on it, but it’s still obscure to me.

It’s on my list of things to look into now. :up:

That is interesting.

distinguishing 'beings' from 'things' is an eccentric and idiosyncratic attitude — Wayfarer

But note that distinguishing sentient, conscious, or rational beings from those which are not is certainly not considered eccentric by everyone at TPF.

That’s not so pitiful. I got excited by a small piece of pork on Saturday.

Enjoy.

:party:

Yeah I love those Google tricks. There are other ones here:

20 Google Search Tips to Use Google More Efficiently

In my lexicon, they don't exist, but they're real - real in the same way that, say, scientific principles and constraints and logical laws are real. — Wayfarer

Yes, this seems similar to existents vs beings.

Otherwise, I have to admit that I didn't enter this discussion in a spirit of metaphysical enquiry; I was just trying to sort out a terminological confusion that was disguising itself as a substantial philosophical difference (I think this is similar to the point that @Isaac made above).

Or is it the other way around: a substantial philosophical difference disguised as a terminological debate? Now I'm confused.

Anyway, my own properly philosophical interests right now are the non-metaphysical metaphysics of Theodor Adorno, which doesn't leave much mental room.

I did find it odd that you rejected precisely the usage that was common in the kind of Western philosophy you seem to have most affinity for: traditional metaphysics. I felt like I could show you this, so that's why I intervened.

Even if the debate has been skating over the real issues, it's still been good. :up:

there is no appreciable difference between the verbs 'to be' and 'to exist'. Everyone here generally accepts that, but I dissent — Wayfarer

I forgot to mention: I have not committed myself to that.

I wonder if Platonists would say that the Forms exist. Plato said they were beings, but maybe to say they exist would be to say something more, in a Platonic scheme.

So it all comes back to: there is no appreciable difference between the verbs 'to be' and 'to exist'. Everyone here generally accepts that, but I dissent. I'm quite happy to leave it at that. I will not push the point in future. — Wayfarer

But you can say there is a difference between being and existence and also say that anything that can be said to be is a being. Probably many of the philosophers mentioned in my citations would have upheld that difference. For example, I think some philosophers have said that possible beings might or might not exist, i.e., they are, but they don't always exist. Heidegger has a different distinction that I'm not clear about (in line with ontological vs ontic, I'm guessing). Others will have different distinctions again. All of them, however, go along with beings as anything that can be said to be.