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Review: Main Premises of the Enlightenment

Chapter 7, first 4 pages only (pp. 199-202 in 9 th edition) Review of Enlightenment and the Roots of Counter-Enlightenment Ideologies. Review: Main Premises of the Enlightenment.

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Review: Main Premises of the Enlightenment

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  1. Chapter 7, first 4 pages only (pp. 199-202 in 9th edition)Review of Enlightenment and the Roots of Counter-Enlightenment Ideologies

  2. Review: Main Premises of the Enlightenment • Humanism – Belief in the emancipated individual as a meaningful end in and of him or her self and as chief agent of change. • Universalism – Belief in principles that act as a universal foundation for human identity. • At a minimum, a universal capacity for reason, empathy, self expression, basic human rights • Rationalism – Individuals are capable of reason. Epistemological observation and critical argument is the basis for knowledge and understanding. • Progress – Belief in progress and the ability of rational agents to improve the world. • Secularism – Separation between spheres (Degree varies from state to state) • Religious Belief & Practice • Constitutional Principles & Legal System

  3. Enlightenment Thought (con’t) • Includes: • Socialism & Communism • Marxism especially; recall Marx’s Theory of History and its emphasis on inevitable progress • Early Socialists reflect the Enlightenment Project even more strongly than the Classical Liberals who founded it • Liberalism • Classical Liberalism - Founders of the Enlightenment • Voltaire, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Adam Smith, Denis Diderot, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, etc. • Neo-Classical Liberalism & Welfare Liberalism endorse Enlightenment Thought • Traditional Conservatism • Edmund Burke & Michael Oakeshott • Although more skeptical on Progress and the power of Reason, they are Enlightenment thinkers

  4. Counter - Enlightenment Thought • Rejection of the 17th Century Age of Scientific Revolution (Bacon, DesCartes, Spinoza, Locke, etc.) • Rejection of the 18th Century Enlightenment • Rejection of Humanism, Rationalism, Progressivism, Universalism, & Secularism • Rejection of Modernity • Views the Power of Abstract Reason and Rationality as “Uprooting” & “Disorienting” • Manifests today as “Modern Reaction Against Modernity”

  5. The Counter-Enlightenment (con’t) • Emerged in the late 1700s • Joseph de Maistre’s Reactionary Conservatism (Our Reading was from 1797) • Gottfried von Herder (language, culture, nation) (late 1700s) • Arthur de Gobineau’s Racial Theories (mid 1800s) • Led to Fascism, Racism, Nazism, & eventually Neo-Fascism & Radical Religious Rejections of Modernity. 20th Century Examples: • 1920s-40s: Italian Fascism under Benito Mussolini • 1930s: Francisco Francos Spain, Nazism • Post World War II: • Neo-fascist movements, Racist, & anti-Semitic movements • Anti-immigrant & Skinhead movements • Radical Political Islam • Sayyid Qutb, founder of Muslim Brotherhood in 1950s • al-Qaeda in late 20th Century; Islamic State (Daesh) in 21st Century

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