I think that if we are honest we will acknowledge that we really do not know much. However, that is just my subjective opinion. No assertion there — WISDOMfromPO-MO
It's no so much about answering questions as it is about questioning the answers... — TheMadFool
Rationality doesn't guarantee answers... — TheMadFool
but it can assess the quality of the inquiry and the answers... — TheMadFool
Also, as Rich said, it's a work in progress. We're in the middle of a movie that hasn't finished telling its story. — TheMadFool
I feel Monty Python should re-form specifically to answer this question: What did the Enlightenment ever do for us?
- OK, apart from inaugurating mass literacy.
- Yeh, but as well as showing us how the cosmos works even if there aren't any gods.
- No, but, aside from liberating millions of poor schmucks to enjoy art and culture and everything.
I just don't know how that scene ends. Maybe : 'Yes, but they never resolved a single important question, did they?' — mcdoodle
The question is, basically, if anything has been resolved. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
tearing knowledge/truth/reality out of the jaws of any authority--culture, an institution, an individual who claims to have access to the divine that no other person has, etc.--and objectifying it. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Pre-modern individuals were blind and in the dark, if you like those kinds of metaphors.
Maybe a lot of us are no longer blind or in the dark. Maybe a lot of us are now empowered by reason. But we sure seem to be extremely confused. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Your selection of what you consider to be unresolved is interesting. I'm not certain those questions/issues will ever be resolved to the satisfaction of everyone, but I don't consider that to be particularly damning of the Enlightenment. — Ciceronianus the White
The impact of the Enlightenment can best be assessed by considering achievements in, e.g., medicine and science which have taken place since the year 1600, and comparing them with achievements before then. Wikipedia has its faults, but something like this is interesting and suggestive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_scientific_discoveries — Ciceronianus the White
In the 1600's there were about half a billion living humans. Today there are over seven billion living humans...
Life expectancy in 1600 was about 40 years of age. Today global life expectancy is over 70- years of age, and over 80 in first world countries.
The enlightenment lead to an understanding of how to live healthier and longer lives, in much greater numbers. That's an important advancement. But I would also say that the enlightenment is in and of itself a resolution to a particular problem: "how do we reliably gain useful knowledge and discard falsity?". If you weren't taught by someone to explicitly and inherently question things, and if you were never offered an understanding of the material world produced by science, would you have ascended to your current state of avant guarde critical prowess?
I reckon you would be stuck in a rural farm, worrying mainly about this year's crops and whether or not your wife will die as a result of her pregnancy (or you from yours), and any notions of objective truth and meaning would remain mostly out of sight and mind and culturally moored by the authority wielded over you by your lord, and his lord over him.
I believe I've offered this explanation to you before, but the since the enlightenment we've come to realize that just because it fell out of a king's ass doesn't make it sweet. We learned to question things and test them for their validity and utility, and also to innovate in spite of dogma and tradition. Everything that you wave off as unimportant is to someone else priceless. Curing even a single disease is important, and we have cured many. The double edge of modernity causes some suffering and poses continuing risks, but the payoffs have been worthwhile and we've done more good than harm according to the statistics. We could go back to merely scrounging in the dirt to sustain our existence; would you like that? If it's not a return to some kind of hunter-gatherer primitive lifestyle that you envision, what is it you believe is the way forward?
How do we become more knowledgeable by blindly and emotionally discarding anything that is not perfect in every way? — VagabondSpectre
On the other hand, again, those "means"--slavery, child labor, genocide, colonialism, cruelty to non-human animals, etc.--are almost never acknowledged, and on the rare occasion that they are acknowledged they are viewed as nothing more than hiccups on the march of "progress" and "liberty", not as necessary contributors to the outcomes that we congratulate ourselves for ad nauseam. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
it is a simple question — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Doesn't sound like anything close to a resolution to me. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Maybe it is just my own subjective experience, but this is predictable: spend a lot of time acquainting one's self with intellectual history and the latest ideas, think that you have found an answer, and somebody else who has acquainted him/herself with intellectual history and the latest ideas will tell you that that answer is false. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
...and as we all well know, the Roman Empire continues to thrive to this day. — Wayfarer
thought that it is not about subjective satisfaction. Most people are subjectively satisfied being dumb, ignorant, passive fools who never question anything.
I thought that it is about objectivity and intervention. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
I asked at the beginning of this thread for one--just one--definitive, conclusive question and answer that this whole Enlightenment/modernist epoch has produced. No response. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Gee thanks. I thought I provided one - but, no response. — Wayfarer
Maybe I overlooked it. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
The crucial issue is that secular humanism/scientific materialism has torn the Western intellectual tradition from its moorings in the Judeo-Christian tradition... — Wayfarer
But when you can incarcerate massive numbers of people who are not useful in the oppressors' system and subdue everybody else with an entertainment industrial complex (opening Saturday of college football tomorrow!) and anti-depressants, who needs heretics to burn at the stake? And you can congratulate yourself for how progressive and humane your methods are compared to the "barbarism" of those less civilized pre-Enlightenment people! — WISDOMfromPO-MO
I have had the subversive thought, that the whole aim of liberal democracy is to make the world a safe place for the ignorant. (I mean 'ignorant' in the spiritual sense.) It provides everyone with the freedom to do what they want, but at the same time has lost the philosophical or spiritual sense of what 'freedom' actually implies or requires. I mean, in classical cultures, it was understood that to be a 'slave to the passions' was philosophically and ethically harmful; say that to the proverbial man in the street nowadays, and they wouldn't have a clue what you're talking about. I think this is the meaning of that well-known 60's counter-cultural manifesto, Marcuse's One Dimensional Man, although at the time that was popular, I wasn't into leftist stuff, so had no idea what it was about.
But the 'forces of oppression' are not 'the system', and they're nowhere outside yourself. Sure, modern culture has no concept of spiritual liberation, but they don't have the means to deprive us of freedom; spiritual freedom is something we have to discover ourselves. — Wayfarer
I can't think of any work that has helped me grow spiritually and intellectually that owes its inspiration to the European Enlightenment. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Speaking of the Bible, it seems to be full of stories of personal spiritual encounters, not puppets being manipulated by authorities and needing liberation through becoming autonomous agents of reason. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! [Dare to know!] "Have courage to use your own reason!" – that is the motto of enlightenment. — Immanuel Kant
you might recognize that certain things have been resolved. For example, with regard to what have previously been fatal diseases, like malaria, polio, smallpox, typhoid fever, tetanus, diphtheria. Of course, the resolution of diseases merely saves and prolongs life, and you may consider that insignificant. — Ciceronianus the White
Well, one thing it provided me was the ability to explore the question on my own terms. That should never be taken lightly. However, it took me a lot of study and reading to understand the sense in which Biblical Christianity is concerned with 'spiritual freedom' at all, because that kind of terminology is foreign to their lexicon. I was more interested in the Eastern idea of liberation which I learned about through the 60's counter-culture - think Sgt Peppers - although in the end, I have come to understand that there is perhaps more in common between the two approaches than meets the eye... — Wayfarer
You're compressing an awful lot into a single paragraph. I will see if I can unpack it a bit. First - 'personal spiritual encounters' - I do believe that these are the basic substance of the Bible (not that I am well versed in the Bible.) But I think they have an existential depth and immediacy which most of the 'cultured despisers of religion' are blind to, as they reflexively reject the entire narrative as myth (and 'merely' myth)... — Wayfarer
But on the other hand, it has to be acknowledged that the Church exploited its position as the self-appointed sole custodian of the faith for immense political power. That was one of the major motivations behind Protestantism. And their aim was to restore the purported rightful relationship of man to God through faith rather than through priestly intermediaries and the vast machinery of the Church. But then, the Protestant God tended to vanish into the heaven of abstractions, leaving us in an 'all or nothing' position - either blind submission, 'salvation by faith alone', or wholesale rejection. I see a lot of what grew out of the Enlightenment, therefore, as an historical reaction against Christian dogma, conceived of as a regressive political apparatus, peddling superstition to maintain its power... — Wayfarer
I think that was what Kant had in mind when he wrote his famous essay which is one of the foundational documents of the enlightenment, aptly named 'What is Enlightenment'?
Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! [Dare to know!] "Have courage to use your own reason!" – that is the motto of enlightenment. — Immanuel Kant
I have to say, I can't see a lot wrong with that, except that when it became allied with positivism and the rejection of all religious metaphysics, it naturally tended towards scientific materialism. But it really didn't have to; Kant was an absolutely implacable foe of materialism, he never would have endorsed such an idea. It was he who said 'I had to declare a limit to knowledge to make room for faith' (although his faith would never be any kind of fideism, or clinging to dogma)... — Wayfarer
We seem to get a picture of Jesus constantly on the move ministering directly to whoever he encounters, crowds following him, etc. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Reason was simply elevated, brought to the forefront, for the first time. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
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