(Successor site to CoPhilosophy, 2011-2020)
A collaborative search for wisdom, at Middle Tennessee State University and beyond... "The pluralistic form takes for me a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of, being essentially a social philosophy, a philosophy of 'co'"-William James
Our reading this week notes the rise of the novel as a vehicle of enlightened reflection. Walker Percy and Shelby Foote were best friends and novelists, though Foote gained greater notoriety as a historian and Ken Burns star. I've admired them both. It's Percy's birthday...
Walker Percy is still my favorite southern Catholic Existentialist novelist...
It’s the birthday of novelist Walker Percy (books by this author), born in Birmingham, Alabama (1916). He was working as a psychiatrist when he caught tuberculosis and he spent two years recovering from the disease. In bed he started reading existentialist philosophers and decided to become a writer. He later said, “[Tuberculosis was] the best disease I ever had. If I hadn’t had it, I might be a second-rate shrink practicing in Birmingham, at best.” He’s best known for his first novel, The Moviegoer (1961), about a stockbroker who tries to get over a nervous breakdown by spending all his time at the movies. WA
And he's still my favorite Tea House co-constructionist. His pal Shelby Foote is still my favorite southern semi-reconstructed southern Proustian Civil War historian and Ken Burns talking head. (Mississippi, for such a benighted state, has produced more than its share of terrific writers. Richard Ford's another favorite on the trail.)
At the beginning of that CSPAN interview Foote told the humorless Brian Lamb that writers are unhappy people, but near the end of it he had a delightfully different message about the connection between meaningful work and happiness. It's also what he told the Paris Review in 1999:
“People say, My God, I can’t believe that you really worked that hard for twenty years. How in God’s name did you do it? Well, obviously I did it because I enjoyed it. I don’t deserve any credit for working hard. I was doing what I wanted to do. Shakespeare said it best: “The labor we delight in physics pain.” There’s no better feeling in the world than to lay your head on the pillow at night looking forward to getting up in the morning and returning to that desk. That’s real happiness.”
I cannot forgive Descartes; in all his philosophy he did his best to dispense with God. But he could not avoid making Him set the world in motion with a flip of His thumb; after that he had no more use for God.--Blaise Pascal (https://twitter.com/tpmquote/status/1397915502916214793?s=02)
But Pascal is wrong: Descartes's philosophy depends crucially on a non-deceiving god to guarantee the reliability of our "clear and distinct perceptions" and enable knowledge.
Agora is a space for academics to draw on their education and experience in order to address contemporary social, political and cultural issues from a philosophical point of view.
LISTEN. What a luxury it is, after last semester when I taught on Tuesdays from my lonely office all day long, to have time on Tuesdays before Enlightenment class begins at 6 pm to respond to all the late student posts. Funny how it makes for better classes, when we've actually thought about what we want to say.
I'm trying gently to encourage us all to post earlier in the week, so we'll have ample time and opportunity to reflect in advance on one another's questions and reflections... (continues)
Please add at least two questions for discussion prior to each week's class, pertaining to that week's assigned reading. (First read previously-posted questions, don't be redundant. Also post a brief essay responding to any question posed by yourself, a classmate, or me. Try to post before Tuesday, so we'll all have an opportunity to reflect on your questions prior to class.
I suggest we apportion the assignment into thirds: two or three of us can pose questions focused on the first 1/3 of the reading (this week the first 22 pages-Lucy and Kelly), two or three on the 2/3 (Gabriella and Nat), and Nathan and Jennifer the last).
Please review all the questions that have been posted before posting your own, to avoid redundancy.
Do you believe "radical improvement in the human condition" (1) is attainable? What might that look like?
Do you think Plato's cave analogy (2) is a useful depiction of the benighted pre-Enlightenment state of human understanding?
What do you think of Kant's definition of Enlightenment? 6-7
Nathan was wondering in class about the problem of accurate historiography, when interpreting the ideas and attitudes of another time and place and applying them to our own. Do you think this poses particular challenges to our attempt to learn enlightenment lessons from The Enlightenment?
If enlightenment is a "process," (8) how do you think it begins? What are its significant stages?
Do coffee houses and reading groups (12) continue to contribute to an expansion of enlightenment in our culture? What else does? What in our society detracts from it?
Have we yet attained in our culture a more enlightened view of women's roles and status?
Does Wittgenstein's "family resemblance" concept help in thinking about what enlightenment means?
Is it accurate to call Spinoza's metaphysics "atheist"? 15, 25
Are those who would "sacrifice the possibilities of life here on earth" (16) for an imagined afterlife inherently anti-enlightenment?
What do you think of the "Epicurean conviction"? 18
Does it matter if Christ was "divine"? 19
Is Christianity a "mystery"? 23
Is Deism a plausible view? 24
Can there really be a science of humanity "independent of nature"? 28 What's an enlightened way to think about the relation between nature, culture, and society?
The "Enlightenment Bible" may not have undermined revelation (30), but what about the Jefferson Bible?*
What do you think of David Hume's view that Christians "supported their elevation of the next world above the present with a morality of self-denial," and that this is antithetical to what is naturally "useful and agreeable"? 32 **
* Thomas Jefferson believed that the pure-principled teachings of Jesus should have been separated from the dogma and abuse of organized religion of the day. This led him to recast, by cutting and pasting from the gospels, a new narrative of the life and teachings of Jesus, where, according to Jefferson, ""there will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man... To the corruptions of christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence, and believing he never claimed any other.”"
** Today is publication day for Julian Baggini's book about Hume:
David Hume (1711-1776) is perhaps best known for his ideas about cause and effect and his criticisms of religion, but he is rarely thought of as a philosopher with practical wisdom to offer. Yet Hume's philosophy is grounded in an honest assessment of nature--human nature in particular... [The Great Guide] follows Hume on his life's journey, literally walking in the great philosopher's footsteps as Baggini takes readers to the places that inspired Hume the most, from his family estate near the Scottish border to Paris, where, as an older man, he was warmly embraced by French society. Baggini shows how Hume put his philosophy into practice in a life that blended reason and passion, study and leisure, and relaxation and enjoyment. The Great Guide includes 145 Humean maxims for living well, on topics ranging from the meaning of success and the value of travel to friendship, facing death, identity, and the importance of leisure. g'r... Baggini's site
Another cartoon treating "enlightenment" more as an eastern concept, but still an amusing critique of western pop cultural distraction--
What is silence? What is wisdom? How do you know you're here? Socratic dialogue—for kids? At least the answer to this last question is an easy, resounding Yes! The rest you'll have to think about and discuss with your friends, which is just what philosopher Christopher Phillips is hoping for. He has long been leading thinkers of all ages on a thoughtful and thought-filled quest for knowledge, and this picturebook models for young children that mulling over some of life's big questions can be done anytime, anywhere. g'r
Christopher Phillips also writes for, and converses with, adults.
Christopher Phillips is a man on a mission: to revive the love of questions that Socrates inspired long ago in ancient Athens. "Like a Johnny Appleseed with a master's degree, Phillips has gallivanted back and forth across America, to cafés and coffee shops, senior centers, assisted-living complexes, prisons, libraries, day-care centers, elementary and high schools, and churches, forming lasting communities of inquiry" (Utne Reader). Phillips not only presents the fundamentals of philosophical thought in this "charming, Philosophy for Dummies-type guide" (USA Today); he also recalls what led him to start his itinerant program and re-creates some of the most invigorating sessions, which come to reveal sometimes surprising, often profound reflections on the meaning of love, friendship, work, growing old, and others among Life's Big Questions. g'r
The "Enlightenment Bible" may not have undermined revelation (30), but what about the Jefferson Bible?
What do you think of David Hume's view that Christians "supported their elevation of the next world above the present with a morality of self-denial," and that this is antithetical to what is naturally "useful and agreeable"?
Jefferson thought Jesus naturalized was a "sublime" moral teacher... (continues)
The American Transcendentalists were, on my reading, in the "enlightened" wing of the romantic movement. The conclusion of Thoreau's Walden is a ringing declaration of enlightenment: "The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star."
But the historical slight of women intellectuals is anything but enlightened.
Being in Margaret Fuller’s company, Emerson once said, “is like being set in a large place. You stretch your limbs & dilate to your utmost size.”
So Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's tweet is a helpful corrective.
Goldstein, btw, is married to our author Steven Pinker.
==
Another enlightened woman, of the 20th century, was the late poet Jane Kenyon. Her great advice to writers:
“Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Take the phone off the hook. Work regular hours.”
She also said “a poet’s job is to find a name for everything: to be a fearless finder of the names of things.” In other words, find words for things most of us have a hard time expressing. This is a theme that challenges honest thinkers like William James, who said:
"What an awful trade that of professor is—paid to talk, talk, talk! . . . It would be an awful universe if everything could be converted into words, words, words." He also talked, ironically, about the "insufficiencies of talk," about how we must "fire our volleys of vocables from our conceptual shotguns but secretly know the irrelevancy" etc. So to me, truly enlightened thinking makes room for poetry.
And since Jane Kenyon advises walking, allow me to recommend Gymnasiums of the Mind, on peripatetic philosophy. (That phrase is Emerson's, it means walking.)
==
"In this refulgent summer, it has been a luxury to draw the breath of life. The grass grows, the buds burst, the meadow is spotted with fire and gold in the tint of flowers. The air is full of birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine..." --Divinity School Address https://t.co/WzZJIQGlNy
"Walk and think: Sometimes Hrach gives students a prompt and has them take a 20-minute walk to think it over before returning to her online class." Good, but it works so much better when they have an on-ground class to return to. Looking forward to doing it again in the Fall. https://t.co/oGYAsqzvdM
Animal medical care is as old as animal husbandry. A papyrus dated roughly 1900 B.C.E. has been found that lists a series of medical prescriptions for cattle and domestic dogs. But formal training in the Western world dates back only to 1762 when the first veterinary school was founded in Lyons, France. American veterinarians were either self-taught or served an apprenticeship with a more experienced practitioner. If they wanted a comprehensive education they had to go to Europe. In the mid-1800s professional schools began to emerge in the United States but most didn’t last long because their science was questionable. Some colleges and universities began offering courses in veterinary medicine in the 1860s, but there was no formal training program.
In 1858, Iowa Governor Ralph Lowe had signed a bill for the establishment of a “State Agricultural College.” Within that college, there would be a Veterinary Division, which would provide a truly scientific training program—something that was keenly needed, according to Dr. J. Arnold of the University Medical College in New York. He wrote:
“This desire for instantaneous practical results is the damnation of true science; the telegraph, the steam engine were not developed by men of commercial minds, but by those who, seeking diligently for knowledge, which is truth, found the precious treasure, and being pure of heart, gave to their fellow men the result of their labors.”
It does not bode well for us that so many of today's young "influencers" (as featured in this essay) seem to lack even the rudiments of a capacity for critical reflection or an appreciation of the value of education.
"..,these kids were very young when their parents gave them iPhones and tablets—they've never known a self that wasn't subject to anonymous virtual observation. And so it may well be that whatever we mean by "authentic" here isn't the standard definition that Rousseau and the Romantics first fathomed—a true effusion of your unvarnished personality—but is "authentic" in the sense that their identities have been made in perfect, unconscious sympathy with whatever their mob of online followers has deemed agreeable and inoffensive. Several times throughout my trip, I think I can see the toll this takes on them, a kind of pallid desperation that flickers across their faces. At one point, Brandon comes over and says, "The scary thing is you never know how long this is going to last, and I think that's what eats a lot of us at night. It's like, What's next? How long can we entertain everyone for? How long before no one cares, and what if your life was worth nothing?" Wasn't it precisely this kind of sadness that my lectures on Keats and Toni Morrison were trying so desperately to foreclose? —Continues, https://harpers.org/archive/2021/06/tiktok-house-collab-house-the-anxiety-of-influencers/
It was on this day in 1967 that a show featuring a kindly man in a cardigan and blue sneakers debuted on public television and introduced millions of schoolchildren to the concepts of peace, patience, and diversity. “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” would go on to become one of the longest-running children’s program on television.
The show was the brainchild of a Protestant minister and puppeteer named Fred Rogers (books by this author), who believed children needed a show that placed an emphasis on values, tolerance, self-control, and self-esteem. Rogers started as a puppeteer on a show called The Children’s Corner in Pittsburgh, then moved the show to Toronto for a few years, and then back again. Rogers created indelible characters like Henrietta Pussycat who lived in a small yellow and orange schoolhouse, and X the Owl who lived in an old oak tree in what became known to millions of children as “The Neighborhood.”
Rogers began each show by entering a door into his fictional home, hanging up his jacket, putting on one of his many cardigans, and trading his dress shoes for blue sneakers. He sang songs, led children on field trips to factories and restaurants, and even did crafts and played music. He spoke directly into the camera and often dealt with serious subjects like war, divorce, death, and competition. Rogers said, “The world is not always a kind place. That’s something all children learn for themselves, whether we want them to or not, but it’s something they really need our help to understand.”
Fred Rogers’s mother knitted all of the cardigans he wore on the show. One of them is hanging, right now, in the Smithsonian Museum. On his continued popularity with children Fred Rogers said, “One of the greatest gifts you can give anybody is the gift of your honest self. I also believe that kids can spot a phony a mile away.” WA
Review of the important book by Kahneman, Sibony, & Sunstein. Unaided human judgment is saturated with noise, resulting in massive inefficiency, suffering, & injustice. nytimes.com/2021/05/18/boo…
"...noise, which Kahneman, Sibony and Sunstein define as “unwanted variability in judgments.”
Sometimes we treasure variability — in artistic tastes, political views or picking friends. But in many situations, we seek consistency: medicine, criminal justice, child custody decisions, economic forecasts, hiring, college admissions, fingerprint analysis or business choices about whether to greenlight a movie or consummate a merger.
Consistency equals fairness. If bias can be eliminated and sensible processes put in place, we should be able to arrive at the “right” result. Lack of consistency too often produces the wrong results because it’s often no better, the authors write, than the random judgments of “a dart-throwing chimpanzee.” And, of course, unexplained inconsistency undermines credibility and the systems in which those judgements are made... LISTEN
1/7 Happy 215th birthday, John Stuart Mill! You may be needed more now than ever. Want some Mill content? Well you could of course read this, um, fine work... 🧵https://t.co/aG0zfEhHaLpic.twitter.com/gm6wxQkNXL
— Richard V. Reeves (@RichardvReeves) May 20, 2021
"Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing." - John Stuart Mill (born #onthisday) pic.twitter.com/DnrCR7Gra8
I had an interesting Twitter exchange with my Vandy colleague Talisse recently:
Talisse: Just purchased tickets to the huge Star Trek convention happening in Las Vegas in August. I’m not a fan of Star Trek, but I am a fan of Star Trek fans.
Me: Thanks!
--It’s my Millian nature....
--“The only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion"-not excluding Klingons and Romulans. Boldly go!
Can someone just "establish" such a thing? Many Enlightenment thinkers think not. (But what would Pascal say? See next post, below.)
The council [of Nicaea] established that Jesus was the son of God and that he was also of one being with God. Anyone who refused to accept the decision of the council about Jesus’ divinity was exiled, and it led to infighting and persecution among Christians. But within 50 years, about 34 million people had converted to Christianity. WA
Enjoyed our first Enlightenment class last night, we mostly just introduced ourselves and shared our respective notions of what "enlightenment" might mean. I wanted to emphasize the point that enlightenment in the western philosophical sense is decidedlynot about finding a singular sage or guru with privileged insight into reality, truth, and meaning. Itisabout the collaborative conversation that attempts to corral as many points of view and fields of experience as can be gathered, so to yield a wider comprehension of (in James's phrase) "our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means."
And, I wanted to highlight the distinction between The Enlightenment, as a particular historical era, and enlightenment per se as an attitude and approach to reason and feeling, head and heart, science and humanism and progress etc. that transcends any particular time and place... (continues)
Only other people can force us to doubt the beliefs we hold dear. Descartes's philosophical journey shows us why.
An enlightened look at one of Descartes' errors- "unlike you, other people are free and able to think you're wrong. Likewise, it's ultimately your responsibility to change other people's minds." Agnes Callard
LISTEN. The Master of Liberal Arts summer course inspired by Steve Pinker's book begins tonight. "Enlightenment Now" zooms Tuesdays at 6, all summer except for my date in mid-June with a couple of surgeons who offer a major improvement in my ambulation, and another a month later in Kansas for that conference I try never to miss (and missed last time only because COVID postponed it).
Opening Days (and Nights) are always about introductions, to one another and to our course, prompted by some basic questions. Who are you? and Why are you here? And, this time, What does enlightenment mean to you?
Who am I? A long-time student and teacher of philosophy... (continues)
==
For all us "lifelong learners," a little motivation...
==
LISTEN-Miscellaneous thoughts on our course, navigating this blogsite etc.
It is the birthday of Bertrand Russell, [who] said “Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric,” and “Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise” https://t.co/GNLVYmyVIR
LISTEN-Miscellaneous thoughts on our course, navigating this blogsite etc.; Enlightenment Now (my introduction)...
Zooming on Tuesdays at 6 (beginning May 18), flexibly. (We're officially listed for TTh 6-7:45, but we'll plan to zoom together once a week and reserve Thursdays for office hours and impromptu meetings at your request. Zoom & other contact info to be announced [via email].
Course requirements:
Post at least two questions for discussion (pertaining to the week's assigned texts) on this site each week prior to class, and join the discussion on zoom.
Respond with a short essay (at least a couple of paragraphs) to at least one discussion question (yours or mine or a classmate's) each week prior to class.
Present a report and final blog post on a relevant topic. (Details tba)
6 - EN, ch 8-11 (-p.166) - Inequality, Environment... Assign final report topics (you may select your own, related to anything discussed in our (req. or rec.) texts.
13 - EN, ch 12-17 (-p.261) - Terrorism, Democracy... UPDATE: Professor Daryl Hale will pinch-hit for me, while I'm at my conference in Kansas. Ask him any questions you have, he's an expert on Enlightenment (especially on Kant's philosophy). No zoom tonight, I'm traveling to a conference in Kansas.
27 - EN, Part III (ch 21-23) - Reason, Science, Humanism - Final report presentations begin.
August
3 - Final report presentations conclude. Final report blogposts due.
jpo
(Dr. Oliver)
Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu
I like the lighter side of thinking, I invite you all to share this sort of thing. Humor, said William James, is just common sense dancing. (I also invite you to share whatever else you think is pertinent, including quotes you like--see "Enlightened thoughts" in the right sidebar).
But seriously, "enlightenment" in the western philosophical sense is not about finding a know-it-all guru, nor is it about just sitting and meditating or ruminating in solitude and silence.
It's about conversation, dialogue, the exchange of views and perspectives, listening, thinking collaboratively... it's about co-philosophizing (see the masthead quote above).
From The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790 by Ritchie Robertson--
"Recently, the case for the Enlightenment has been put with particular eloquence by the psychologist Steven Pinker and the philosopher Susan Neiman..."
From The Secular Enlightenment by Margaret Jacob--
"[Hume] left religion largely out of the story of progress, but noted that superstition holds back all who seek to be 'in the pursuit of their interest and happiness'..."
From The Enlightenment and why it still matters by Anthony Pagden--
“'In a century as
enlightened as ours,' he declared emphatically, 'it has finally been demonstrated
...that there is ...only one life and only one happiness,' and that is here on Earth..."
Exploration, in all its forms, is an Enlightenment project.
Prompted by the recent passing of Apollo legend Michael Collins, I've just finished re-reading his Carrying the Fireand am reminded how exceptional an explorer he was... (continues)
Scottish philosopher David Hume was an amiable 18th century gentleman - cultured, generous, well liked by all who knew him. And yet he's become something of a "thinker's thinker", hugely admired by academic philosophers, but never quite managing to fire the public imagination or attain the mythic status of a Socrates or a Nietzsche. Our guest this week believes it's time to embrace Hume as a philosopher who can teach us how to live. Duration: 28min 26sec Broadcast: Sun 16 May 2021, 5:30pm
It was on this day in 1717 that the French playwright and poet Voltaire was imprisoned in the Bastille for insulting the government (books by this author). He was a young man at the time and a relatively unknown writer. His father had encouraged him to become a lawyer, but Voltaire hated practicing law, so he spent all his time writing satirical poetry instead, poking fun at his political enemies, including the Duke of Orleans. When the Duke read one of the privately circulated poems he had Voltaire thrown into prison for 11 months.
Voltaire used the opportunity to begin writing his first play, and when he got out of prison a year later he produced a series of successful plays that made him one of the most popular writers in Europe. He spent the rest of his life in and out of exile from France, speaking out against political and religious repression.
He said, “People who believe in absurdities will eventually commit atrocities.”
The American Romantic and Transcendental movements of the 19th century were a reaction against the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment’s emphasis on science and rationalism as ways of discovering truth.
The writers associated with these movements advocated the right of individuals to dissent and to engage in civil disobedience. They also believed that government may not interfere with freedom of expression.
Their writings influenced the civil rights, equal rights, and anti-war protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s. They also influenced the thinking of some Supreme Court justices and, indirectly, judicial interpretation of the First Amendment.
Among the Romantics were literary giants Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Transcendentalists valued individualism and self-reliance
Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller et al were all about nature and light. They were not anti-Enlightenment. Nor, in fact, would those 18th century figures who called themselves Enlightened have been anti-Transcendentalist. It's just a question of getting science and rationalism and nature in the right balance with our human natures. Sharp either/or dualisms, pitting (for instance) aThoreau against a Voltaire, are not helpful or constructive. We'll discuss...
Thinking some more, this morning, about creativity and its roots in custom and habit. Younger Daughter just texted me the image of some jewelry she's designed (and sold!), now that she's a college grad she's got time to be creative... (continues)
“Have the courage to use your own reason!”, (in Latin sapere aude!) is the battle cry of the Enlightenment. It was articulated by Immanuel Kant in his famous article ‘What is Enlightenment?’ (1784). Obstacles that can stand in our way in achieving ‘maturity’, i.e. thinking for ourselves, are manifold and have to do with: the self, politics and society, as well as culture. These are problems that concern academics as much as anyone else: In a letter to his sovereign Kant declared freely that he believed Rousseau to be correct in saying that rulers only tolerate those intellectuals who are happy to simply “adorn our chains with flowers” – as many do. The greatest difficulty lies in motivating people to shake off immaturity: “It is so easy not to be of age. If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth, I need not trouble myself. I need not think, if only I can pay – others will easily undertake the irksome work for me.” (continues)
...Mehr Licht! "More light!" would have been terrific haiku-poetic dying words for the great polymath Goethe, more stirring than what he actually said. "Do open the shutter of the bedroom so that more light may enter." (continues)
The heart of the eighteenth century Enlightenment is the loosely organized activity of prominent French thinkers of the mid-decades of the eighteenth century, the so-called “philosophes”(e.g., Voltaire, D’Alembert, Diderot, Montesquieu). The philosophes constituted an informal society of men of letters who collaborated on a loosely defined project of Enlightenment exemplified by the project of the Encyclopedia (see below 1.5). However, there are noteworthy centers of Enlightenment outside of France as well. There is a renowned Scottish Enlightenment (key figures are Frances Hutcheson, Adam Smith, David Hume, Thomas Reid), a German Enlightenment (die Aufklärung, key figures of which include Christian Wolff, Moses Mendelssohn, G.E. Lessing and Immanuel Kant), and there are also other hubs of Enlightenment and Enlightenment thinkers scattered throughout Europe and America in the eighteenth century.
What makes for the unity of such tremendously diverse thinkers under the label of “Enlightenment”? For the purposes of this entry, the Enlightenment is conceived broadly. D’Alembert, a leading figure of the French Enlightenment, characterizes his eighteenth century, in the midst of it, as “the century of philosophy par excellence”, because of the tremendous intellectual and scientific progress of the age, but also because of the expectation of the age that philosophy (in the broad sense of the time, which includes the natural and social sciences) would dramatically improve human life. Guided by D’Alembert’s characterization of his century, the Enlightenment is conceived here as having its primary origin in the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries. The rise of the new science progressively undermines not only the ancient geocentric conception of the cosmos, but also the set of presuppositions that had served to constrain and guide philosophical inquiry in the earlier times. The dramatic success of the new science in explaining the natural world promotes philosophy from a handmaiden of theology, constrained by its purposes and methods, to an independent force with the power and authority to challenge the old and construct the new, in the realms both of theory and practice, on the basis of its own principles. Taking as the core of the Enlightenment the aspiration for intellectual progress, and the belief in the power of such progress to improve human society and individual lives, this entry includes descriptions of relevant aspects of the thought of earlier thinkers, such as Hobbes, Locke, Descartes, Bayle, Leibniz, and Spinoza, thinkers whose contributions are indispensable to understanding the eighteenth century as “the century of philosophy par excellence”.
The Enlightenment is often associated with its political revolutions and ideals, especially the French Revolution of 1789. The energy created and expressed by the intellectual foment of Enlightenment thinkers contributes to the growing wave of social unrest in France in the eighteenth century. The social unrest comes to a head in the violent political upheaval which sweeps away the traditionally and hierarchically structured ancien régime (the monarchy, the privileges of the nobility, the political power of the Catholic Church). The French revolutionaries meant to establish in place of the ancien régime a new reason-based order instituting the Enlightenment ideals of liberty and equality. Though the Enlightenment, as a diverse intellectual and social movement, has no definite end, the devolution of the French Revolution into the Terror in the 1790s, corresponding, as it roughly does, with the end of the eighteenth century and the rise of opposed movements, such as Romanticism, can serve as a convenient marker of the end of the Enlightenment, conceived as an historical period.
For Enlightenment thinkers themselves, however, the Enlightenment is not an historical period, but a process of social, psychological or spiritual development, unbound to time or place. Immanuel Kant defines “enlightenment” in his famous contribution to debate on the question in an essay entitled “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” (1784), as humankind’s release from its self-incurred immaturity; “immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another.” Expressing convictions shared among Enlightenment thinkers of widely divergent doctrines, Kant identifies enlightenment with the process of undertaking to think for oneself, to employ and rely on one’s own intellectual capacities in determining what to believe and how to act. Enlightenment philosophers from across the geographical and temporal spectrum tend to have a great deal of confidence in humanity’s intellectual powers, both to achieve systematic knowledge of nature and to serve as an authoritative guide in practical life. This confidence is generally paired with suspicion or hostility toward other forms or carriers of authority (such as tradition, superstition, prejudice, myth and miracles), insofar as these are seen to compete with the authority of one’s own reason and experience. Enlightenment philosophy tends to stand in tension with established religion, insofar as the release from self-incurred immaturity in this age, daring to think for oneself, awakening one’s intellectual powers, generally requires opposing the role of established religion in directing thought and action. The faith of the Enlightenment – if one may call it that – is that the process of enlightenment, of becoming progressively self-directed in thought and action through the awakening of one’s intellectual powers, leads ultimately to a better, more fulfilled human existence... (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, continues)
Immanuel Kant is a philosopher who tried to work out how human beings could be good and kind – outside of the exhortations and blandishments of traditional religion...
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the son of Isaac Rousseau, an educated watchmaker, was born in Geneva in 1712...
The 18th-century writer David Hume is one of the world’s great philosophical voices because he hit upon a key fact about human nature: that we are more influenced by our feelings than by reason...
François-Marie Arouet was born in Paris in 1694. His father, a well-established lawyer, sent him to the best school in the capital, and by all accounts he was a brilliant student. The young Arouet decided at an early age to make his name as a writer – to remake his name, to be precise, as the first thing he did was to change his name to Voltaire. The eighteenth century is often referred to as the Age of Reason or the Age of Enlightenment, sometimes as the Age of Voltaire...
Thomas Jefferson believed science and reason were the surest paths to human progress. He urged a rethinking of government based on democracy, education, and free press — but his ideas were part of a larger, global intellectual shift known as "the Enlightenment"... (YouT)
Jefferson the Stoic-Epicurean "Before he attained domestic happiness he had probably worked out his enduring philosophy of life; it was marked by cheerfulness not gloom, and he afterwards described it as Epicurean, though he hastened to say that the term was much misunderstood. He came to believe that happiness was the end of life, but, as has been said, he was engaged by the "peculiar conjunction of duty with happiness"; and his working philosophy was a sort of blend of Epicureanism and Stoicism, in which the goal of happiness was attained by self-discipline." --Dumas Malone, Jefferson the Virginian
What university life is supposed to be about For Jefferson, William and Mary was largely about what university life is supposed to be about: reading books, enjoying the company of the like~minded. and savoring teachers who seem to be ambassadors from other, richer. brighter worlds. Jon Meacham
Jefferson and the Enlightenment Jefferson and other members of the founding generation were deeply influenced by the 18th-century European intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment. Enlightenment philosophy stressed that liberty and equality were natural human rights.
Colonial Americans argued that King George III and Parliament had denied them the basic rights of British citizens. Despite the pervasiveness of slavery in their society, the revolutionary generation envisioned a new American government that secured the rights and freedoms of its citizens. However, these rights and freedoms did not extend to slaves... Monticello.org
[See Jefferson quotes in the right sidebar--"Enlightened thoughts"...]
In the “Critique of Pure Reason,” Immanuel Kant writes that “all the interests of my reason,” theoretical as well as practical, boil down to just three questions: “What can I know?” “What ought I do?” and “What can I hope for?” In these three questions, Kant delineated the whole scope of philosophical thought...
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The nineteen-nineties were a dead zone for the U.S. distribution of international and independent films. While a handful of flashy breakout hits were being widely hailed (and over-hailed), many of the best movies of the decade were left unreleased and largely unseen. One of the most distinctive and original films of the time, Philippe Collin’s “The Last Days of Immanuel Kant,” from 1996 (which has turned up on YouTube), is a delicious cinematic paradox. It follows the famously abstemious and abstruse philosopher as he’s anticipating his death, yet it’s a physical comedy filled with neo-slapstick intimacy—one of the rare cinematic heirs to the works of Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton... (continues)
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My friend the Kant scholar didn't think this a flattering portrait, but I think it's charming.
I love the trailer for this book about Kant. What if everyone did that? https://t.co/cxGCuvbNAp
— Nigel Warburton #RejoinEU (@philosophybites) May 17, 2021
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