February 28: Now, More than Ever: Let There Be Enlightenment!?!

We’ll start today with some words from ancient thinkers and then turn our attention to a more modern movement — the Enlightenment.

First, the ancients:

“This is the true athlete — the person in rigorous training against false impressions. Remain firm, you who suffer, don’t be kidnapped by your impressions! The struggle is great, the task divine — to gain mastery, freedom, happiness, and tranquility.” Epictetus, Discourses, 2.18.27–8

“For to be wise means only one thing — to fix our attention on our intelligence, which guides all things everywhere.” Heraclitus

Now we’ll have a couple of passages from the preface to a new book: The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680–1790 by Richie Robertson. Can you spot any similarities between what you read above and what’s below?

“Opponents of tyranny, injustice and superstition often appeal to the ‘values of the Enlightenment’… a historical period which runs from about 1680 to about 1790….The Enlightenment stands for the endeavors of thinkers, writers, and practical administrators in many countries to increase the well-being of humanity, and to do so by the process called…‘Enlightenment.’

“For them, to enlighten humanity is to clear away the false beliefs which have blinded people to their own interests; to oppose the power of institutions, especially the organized Churches, which have encouraged such blindness; to arrive at a true understanding of human nature, and of the political and economic societies in which people live; to increase people’s well-being and happiness; and to do so by close attention to empirical facts and the use of reason. The conviction animating these endeavors is that the world need not be a vale of tears; the earth is the destined home of humanity, and a place where happiness is attainable.

“Recently, the case for Enlightenment has been put with particular eloquence by the psychologist Steven Pinker and the philosopher Susan Neiman. ‘The era,’ according to Pinker, ‘was a cornucopia of ideas, some of them contradictory, but four themes tie them together: reason, science, humanism, and progress.’”

Robertson’s preface also quotes from one of the great historians of the 20th century, Eric Hobsbawm, who strikes a more apocalyptic tone regarding the acceptance or rejection of these values:

“‘I believe that one of the few things that stands between us and an accelerated descent into darkness is the set of values inherited from the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. This is not a fashionable view at the moment, when the Enlightenment can be dismissed as anything from superficial and intellectually naïve to a conspiracy of dead white men in periwigs to provide the intellectual foundation of Western imperialism. It may or may not be all that, but it is also the only foundation for all the aspirations to build societies fit for all human beings to live in anywhere on this Earth, and for the assertion and defense of their human rights as persons.’”

So, here are the questions for today:

1. What do you think of the “values of the Enlightenment” as discussed by Robertson, Pinker, and Hobsbawm? Are the bad, good, etc.?
2. Based on what we have read in the past couple of months on this discussion board, and in today’s quotes, what are the connections or similarities between the ideas of the Enlightenment and those of the ancient philosophers? Is one movement born from the other?
3. Is the Enlightenment a movement just for Westerners, or is it for everyone?
4. Are the ideas of the Enlightenment the “way forward” as Hobsbawm suggests? And how important is it to emphasize those ideas these days in the struggle against — in Richie’s words — “tyranny, injustice, and superstition”?

As we go into March, I’ll continue posting and reflecting on these ideas and their relationship to ancient ones. For the time being, I’ll leave the commentary on them in your capable hands.