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Simulacra and Simulations. HUM 2052: Civilization II Spring 2009 Dr. Perdigao February 4, 2009. A New Tradition in Reason?.
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Simulacra and Simulations HUM 2052: Civilization II Spring 2009 Dr. Perdigao February 4, 2009
A New Tradition in Reason? • The Enlightenment: “a term used later in the eighteenth century to describe the loosely knit group of writers and scholars who believed that human beings could apply a critical, reasoning spirit to every problem they encountered in this world. The new secular, scientific, and critical attitude first emerged in the 1690s, scrutinizing everything from the absolutism of Louis XIV to the traditional role of women in society. After 1740, criticism took a more systematic turn as writers provided new theories for the organization of society and politics; but as early as the 1720s, established authorities realized they faced a new set of challenges. Even while slavery expanded in the Atlantic system, Enlightenment writers began to insist on the need for new freedoms in Europe.” (MW: 545-546) • Progress: Enlightenment writers “challenged the traditional Christian belief that the original sin of Adam and Eve condemned human beings to unhappiness in this world and offered instead an optimistic vision: human nature, they claimed, was inherently good, and progress would be continuous if education developed human capacities to the utmost. Science and reason could bring happiness in this world. The idea of novelty or newness itself now seemed positive rather than threatening. Europeans began to imagine that they could surpass all those who preceded them in history, and they began to think of themselves as more ‘advanced’ than the ‘backward’ cultures they encountered in other parts of the world.” (MW: 547) Applications to Voltaire’s Candide and Montaigne’s Essays?
What is (and isn’t) Enlightenment? • Philosophes: “Whereas philosophers concern themselves with abstract theories, the philosophes were public intellectuals dedicated to solving the real problems of the world. They wrote on subjects ranging from current affairs to art criticism, and they wrote in every conceivable format.” (MW: 556) • While the term “enlightened century” had been a term commonly used in the 1760s, Immanuel Kant’s “What is Enlightenment?” (1784) defines the term in the following terms: “The Enlightenment gave itself its own name . . . The philosophes associated Enlightenment with philosophy, reason, and humanity; religious tolerance; natural rights; and criticism of outmoded customs and prejudices. They tied Enlightenment to ‘progress’ and to the ‘modern,’ and it came into question, just as those other terms did, when events cast doubt on the benefits of progress and the virtues of modernity. Although some opposed the Enlightenment from the very beginning as antireligious, undermining of authority, and even atheistic and immoral, the French Revolution of 1789 galvanized the critics of Enlightenment who blamed every excess of revolution on Enlightenment principles.” (MW: 565) • After WWII, In Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947, 1993),Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno ask why “mankind was sinking into ‘a new kind of barbarism’” and answer that it is because “we have trusted too much in the Enlightenment and its belief in reason and science.” (MW: 565)
Eve’s Transgression: Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) • The promise: “I might perceive / Strange alteration in me, to degree / Of reason in my inward powers, and speech / wanted not long, though to this shape retained. / Thenceforth to speculations high or deep / I turned my thoughts, and with capacious mind/ Considered all things visible in Heaven, / Or Earth, or middle, all things fair and good” (2607, L598-605) • To “worship thee,” “Empress of this fair world,” “Sovereign of creatures” • But tree “Fruitless to me, though fruit be here to excess . . . Wondrous indeed, if cause of such effects” (2608, L648, 650) • “And render me more equal” (2612, L824)—question if she should share knowledge with Adam • “How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost, / Defaced, deflowered, and now to death devote?” (2614, L900-1)
