© Roger M Tagg 2009 revised 2010
Welcome to FROLIO – a new attempt to merge philosophy and the "semantic web" . This website is under continuing development.
Francis Wheen kicks off by quoting Immanuel Kant’s 1784 definition.
“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding, without direction from another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolve and courage to use it without another’s guidance. Sapere aude! (Dare to know!) – That is the motto of Enlightenment”.
Enlightenment means:
Enlightenment is like “taking the high road” (as opposed to the low road, in the sense of the song “Loch Lomond”). It means using your mind as fully as possible, and not giving way to lazy or sloppy thinking, or accepting whatever someone or some authority – or some media - tells you.
Wheen quotes Michel Foucault (not really an Enlightenment supporter) who says:
“it should be considered not, certainly, as a theory, a doctrine, nor even as a permanent body of knowledge that is accumulating; it has to be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical life …”
Chief critic according to Wheen is Alastair MacIntyre, who believes that the Enlightenment is a disaster, in the sense that it has eroded any chance of moral discussion, reducing everything to individual preference and “emotivism”. But MacIntyre’s argument seems dependent on accepting the concept of “teleology” (the idea that there is a set purpose in our being here), which not everybody would go along with.
John Gray has also come out against, but Wheen says that as he changes opinion frequently, it’s hard to know if he still believes his own arguments.
Other critics and opponents include post-modernists, relativists, New Agers, neo-liberals, authoritarians, dictators, self-perpetuating oligarchies and religious fundamentalists.
This is a most entertaining polemic against the utter rubbish that gripped the world between 1979 and 2005. It covers (among other things) the last years of 1970s Labour government in the UK, the Iranian revolution, Reagan and Thatcher, the 1987 stock market crash, Tony Blair and the Third Way, the Diana phenomenon, the dotcom bubble, George Dubya, 9/11 and Enron.
I have collected my favourite extracts into a set of spreadsheets with three sections: Villains, Heroes and Favourite Quotes. They sum up that era of anti-Enlightenment.
Index to more of these diatribes
Some of these links may be under construction – or re-construction.
This version updated on 30th January 2010
If you have constructive suggestions or comments, please contact the author rogertag@tpg.com.au .