May 22, 2015 03:45 PM
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/12183...ightenment
EXCERPT: Wherever we look today in academia, scholars are rushing to defend the Enlightenment ideas of political and individual liberty, human rights, faith in scientific reason, secularism, and the freedom of public debate. [...] And yet, to hear the defenders of the Enlightenment, they are under assault. There is no shortage of enemies—from mullahs and Christian conservatives to science deniers and left-wing post-modernists.
Defending the Enlightenment has become an academic cottage industry [...] But recently, a few leading scholars have decided that it was necessary to present their defenses to a wider audience. [...Making...] the case for Enlightenment values and the “soft power of humanity” in light of the use of torture by the U.S. government, but also, implicitly, because of the rise of new superpowers, like China, which openly reject human rights while embracing scientific progress. [...The....] defending [of] it from “theocracies” and the “fringe of the Christian right” that deny ideas of scientific progress, political liberty, and “global justice.”
[...] In spite of the fact that the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights were founded on Enlightenment ideas, it is not clear how many Americans understand the relationship of the Enlightenment to such documents. Many deists—believers in the Enlightenment idea of a post-Christian mechanistic nature god, such as Founding Fathers [...] would have a hard time getting elected in most parts of the United States today. The abolition of torture and capital punishment, seen by John Adams and Jefferson as central to Enlightened society, is now political anathema in most of the United States. Even the scientific explanation of natural phenomena is generally rejected or ignored, with only 40 percent of Americans standing by the scientific finding that global warming is man-made. When George W. Bush won the 2004 election, Gary Wills characterized the victory as “the day the Enlightenment went out.” The ideas of the Enlightenment are going through a crisis in the very country founded on them.
All this makes Vincenzo Ferrone’s newly translated book, The Enlightenment: History of an Idea, compelling: Ferrone claims that the importance of the Enlightenment has not been its triumph, but its centrality in public debate. [...] Ferrone believes the Enlightenment must be defended not simply as a secular, political idea, but, most importantly, as what Ferrone calls a tradition of “critical thought.” Immanuel Kant defined the Enlightenment as the “progress of mankind toward improvement” through the “freedom to make public use of one’s reason on every point,” and Ferrone claims it is this critical process that has driven public opinion and politics, giving us the language of human rights, tolerance, and individual liberty. [...] He allows that we can question the primacy of science and secularism, but not critical debate.
[...] We are thus faced with a stunning paradox in the history of Enlightenment debate. As the Enlightenment recedes from public consciousness, the original foe of Voltaire, the Catholic Church, engages with the idea of Enlightenment more prominently than many secular thinkers. Ferrone worries that this is a “muddying of the waters” of the Enlightenment debate. Yet Ferrone does not seem to recognize the challenges and paradoxes that face the idea of Enlightenment in a world disengaged from it.
If anything, Ferrone unintentionally shows that the old secular model of progress is failing, or has evolved in a world that embraces its products but not its central idea. If the Enlightenment is to survive, its proponents must fight apathy along with enemies. The public takes for granted complex debate and is often disconnected from the arguments of the informed press. This was not the case in the past, when the advocates of Enlightenment ideas and criticism were able to muster the passions of large populations. It is clear, though, that the Enlightenment will need great champions as well as critics to revive the debate that is its internal motor. For the moment, with critics of the Enlightenment the most engaged debaters, this looks unlikely.....
EXCERPT: Wherever we look today in academia, scholars are rushing to defend the Enlightenment ideas of political and individual liberty, human rights, faith in scientific reason, secularism, and the freedom of public debate. [...] And yet, to hear the defenders of the Enlightenment, they are under assault. There is no shortage of enemies—from mullahs and Christian conservatives to science deniers and left-wing post-modernists.
Defending the Enlightenment has become an academic cottage industry [...] But recently, a few leading scholars have decided that it was necessary to present their defenses to a wider audience. [...Making...] the case for Enlightenment values and the “soft power of humanity” in light of the use of torture by the U.S. government, but also, implicitly, because of the rise of new superpowers, like China, which openly reject human rights while embracing scientific progress. [...The....] defending [of] it from “theocracies” and the “fringe of the Christian right” that deny ideas of scientific progress, political liberty, and “global justice.”
[...] In spite of the fact that the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights were founded on Enlightenment ideas, it is not clear how many Americans understand the relationship of the Enlightenment to such documents. Many deists—believers in the Enlightenment idea of a post-Christian mechanistic nature god, such as Founding Fathers [...] would have a hard time getting elected in most parts of the United States today. The abolition of torture and capital punishment, seen by John Adams and Jefferson as central to Enlightened society, is now political anathema in most of the United States. Even the scientific explanation of natural phenomena is generally rejected or ignored, with only 40 percent of Americans standing by the scientific finding that global warming is man-made. When George W. Bush won the 2004 election, Gary Wills characterized the victory as “the day the Enlightenment went out.” The ideas of the Enlightenment are going through a crisis in the very country founded on them.
All this makes Vincenzo Ferrone’s newly translated book, The Enlightenment: History of an Idea, compelling: Ferrone claims that the importance of the Enlightenment has not been its triumph, but its centrality in public debate. [...] Ferrone believes the Enlightenment must be defended not simply as a secular, political idea, but, most importantly, as what Ferrone calls a tradition of “critical thought.” Immanuel Kant defined the Enlightenment as the “progress of mankind toward improvement” through the “freedom to make public use of one’s reason on every point,” and Ferrone claims it is this critical process that has driven public opinion and politics, giving us the language of human rights, tolerance, and individual liberty. [...] He allows that we can question the primacy of science and secularism, but not critical debate.
[...] We are thus faced with a stunning paradox in the history of Enlightenment debate. As the Enlightenment recedes from public consciousness, the original foe of Voltaire, the Catholic Church, engages with the idea of Enlightenment more prominently than many secular thinkers. Ferrone worries that this is a “muddying of the waters” of the Enlightenment debate. Yet Ferrone does not seem to recognize the challenges and paradoxes that face the idea of Enlightenment in a world disengaged from it.
If anything, Ferrone unintentionally shows that the old secular model of progress is failing, or has evolved in a world that embraces its products but not its central idea. If the Enlightenment is to survive, its proponents must fight apathy along with enemies. The public takes for granted complex debate and is often disconnected from the arguments of the informed press. This was not the case in the past, when the advocates of Enlightenment ideas and criticism were able to muster the passions of large populations. It is clear, though, that the Enlightenment will need great champions as well as critics to revive the debate that is its internal motor. For the moment, with critics of the Enlightenment the most engaged debaters, this looks unlikely.....