Dear WISDOMfromPO-MO,



You emhasised that you would like a simple, straightforward answer to the question you posed at the start of this thread, namely, "Has the Enlightenment/Modernity resolved anything?" So here is my response...

Before I set it out, I must remind you that as a verb, the term "resolve" has a number of different connotations, so I am going to presume in my reply that you are using the word in the sense of its meaning: "to settle or find a solution to a problem or contentious matter."

To begin with - as Wayfarer reminds us- Kant, the last and indisputably the greatest of the Enlightenment era's philosophers, coined the dictum "Sapere aude !" (Dare to know !) in order to provide what he felt was a fitting motto for enlightenment. Kant's earnest plea - "Sapere aude !" - exhorts us to have the courage and firm resolution to use our own ( independent, "untutored") human reason in seeking (the) truth. In urging man to have the daring and bold tenacity to use his own reason to seek (absolute) truth, alone and unaided by any external mode of learning, Kant is effectively rejecting any role for supernatural faith ( i.e. the knowledge delivered by Christian revelation) in humanity's quest for (Absolute) truth.(And) over the past 500 years I believe his advice has been increasingly accepted by Western modernity, to the extent that it has, indeed, become its dominant intellectual principle. In short, what most distinguishes the era of Enlightenment/Modernity is the manner in which human reason (both the empirical reasoning associated with scientific theory and research, and, the speculative reasoning of philosophy ) was ever more radically sundered and isolated from faith in Christian revelation (theology).

Returning to the your OP, I would like to propose, therefore, that the fundamental and most important question that calls for resolution with respect to Enlightenment/Modernity is whether or not its strident exhortation and guiding principle - " Sapere aude !" - was, in retrospect, a triumph or a catastrophe for modern man ? That is, was the project of unaided, unguided, independent and unfettered human rationalism ultimately successful in helping to illuminate the path to ( absolute) truth and draw mankind closer toward to it? In my view, as I will try to briefly explain below , the answer is a resounding "No, it did not !" , and what Enlightenment/Modernity has served to "resolved" for human beings today is that when human reason is arrogantly and radically severed from its proper foundation in faith ( Christian revelation), man's search for the truth is not only destined to fail, but to fail indeed in the most disastrous and destructive manner.

The progressive sundering of reason from faith in modernity that began in the humanism of the Renaissance and its keen revival of philosophical interest in Aristotalian logic and reason, and then flourished in the atheism and deism of key Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire, Rousseau, Locke and Newton, reached its zenith in the 20th century with the ascention of various forms of atheistic humanism expressed in philosophical terms which viewed faith as alienating and damaging to the flourishing of full rationality. They did not hesitate to to present themselves as new religions serving as a foundation for projects on the social and political planes which soon gave rise to totalitarian ideological systems which proved catastrophic for humanity. Never before in the history of humanity had evil stalked the globe the way it did during the last century. Consider, for example, the rise of National Socialism in Germany under Hitler that ultimately resulted in the death of 50 million human beings in the Second World War including the systematic murder of 6 million Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, the indiscriminate nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the appalling brutality of Stalinism in Russia, the ten years of violence, terror and death by starvation brought to bear on the people of China during Mao Zedung's "Cultural Revolution", the sinister Pol Pot and his lethal brand of communist utopianism which saw 2 million men, women and children hacked to death with primitive axes and hoes in the "Killing Fields" of rural Cambodia between 1975 and 1977/8 , the insane brinkmanship of total nuclear annihilation that played out through September and October of 1962 in the terrifying "Cuban Missile Crisis" standoff between Nikita Kruschev and John F Kennedy, and the catalogue of murderous mayhem, rampant moral evil, human misery and suffering, devastation and destruction that marked the last century as the most benighted and God-forsaken 100 years in human history goes on and on.

Turning now to the role of science in the culture of Enlightenment/modernity...The scientific revolution triggered by thinkers like Isaac Newton and John Locke during the Enlightenment led to the great Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. William Blake famously lamented the destruction of nature and enslavement of millions in the dismal working conditions of its "dark satanic mills" as a manifestation of human evil , though in the time since then to date an increasingly unbridled and unfettered technology has, ironically, seen Enlightenment reason turn even more destructively on itself to become an instrument not of human liberation and political /intellectual freedom, but of profound human oppression and ruthless domination. In the modern era, the rise of scientism in the West ( in particular, over the past 60 years ) has seen a pervasive positivistic mentality take hold which has not only abandoned the Christian vision of the world but rejected every appeal to a moral or metaphysical vision. Lacking any ethical point of reference this scientism has, for instance, fuelled a market-based logic that has, in turn, created giant corporate, techno-capitalist cartels that continue to cast their shadow apace over increasing portions of the globe.Their rapacious exploitation of the natural world has, amongst other things, generated climate change through global warming, a phenomenon that now constitutes one of the gravest, most threatening and potentially apocalyptic moral issues humanity has ever faced. At the same time, in the sphere of human affairs, corporate techno-capitalism has become the late West's dominant politico-economic ideology, creating extreme plutocratic republics like the United States where the obscene greed of a super-rich ruling elite minority has fomented wide-spread ,bitter social division and, as recently witnessed dangerous levels of political instability.

Today, in the West, as a result of the crisis of Enlightenment/Modernity rationalism, what has finally appeared is nihilism. As a philosophy of nothingness, it seems to have a certain appeal for the people of our time. Its academic adherents (in such fields as postmodernist philosophy) claim that the search is an end in itself, without any hope or possibility of ever attaining the goal of (objective) truth. In the nihilist interpretation, life is no more than an occasion for sensations and experiences in which the ephemeral and evanescent have pride of place. Nihilism is at the root of the widespread mentality which advises us that a definitive commitment should no longer be made, because everything in human life and the world is fleeting and provisional. As we stand amidst the current crisis of rationalism in the West we see ,as well, that different forms of agnosticism and relativism ( moral, epistemological and metaphysical ) have led philosophical research to lose its way in the shifting ,sands of widespread skepticism. In recent times we have seen the rise to prominence of various doctrines which tend to devalue even the truths which had been judged certain. A legitimate plurality of of positions has now yielded to an undifferentiated pluralism, based on the assumption that all positions are equally valid, and this is one of today's most widespread symptoms of the lack of confidence in truth. Even certain conceptions coming from the East betray this lack of confidence, denying truth its exclusive character and assuming truth reveals itself equally in different doctrines, even if they contradict one another. On this understanding, everything is reduced to mere opinion; and there is a sense of being cast adrift., While, on the other hand, philosophical thinking has succeeded in coming closer to the reality of human life and its forms of expression, it has also tended to pursue issues - existential, hermaneutical or linguistic - which ignore the radical question of the truth about personal existence, about being and about God. Hence, we see among the men and women of our time, and not just in some philosophers, attitudes of widespread distrust of the human being's great capacity for knowledge. With a false modesty, man in the modern West now rests content with partial or provisional truths, no longer seeking to to ask radical questions about the meaning and and ultimate foundation of human, personal and social existence. In short, the hope that philosophy might be able to provide definitive answers to these questions has all but died.

I am beginning to ramble and rant I fear, so let me now quickly "cut to the chase" of this post.That is, in answer to your initial question, I would argue that what Enlightenment/ Modernity has very clearly resolved is the fact that human reason - however daring and courageous it may be, cannot by itself - alone and unaided - succeed in guiding humanity closer toward (the) truth. Rather, it would seem, as the great "Angelic Doctor", St Thomas Aquinas, taught us so long ago, that the boldness of human reason must always be matched and complemented by a firm foundation in the parhesia of supernatural faith (in the divine knowledge Christian revelation). But this, of course, is a topic for a separate post.


Regards


John

For one thing, a case could be made that modern science and technology have only corrected problems that they created. And that while some people have lived longer and healthier lives other people have been made worse off.

And it could ultimately be a losing battle. All of the antibiotic use, vaccinations, etc. could result in a superbug that costs more than the sum of the benefits we have accumulated to date. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Well, not a very good case, I think. We're the cause of the problems which afflict us, not science or technology. The Enlightenment can't be blamed for the fact that we're corrupt, stupid, greedy, selfish, cruel, ruthless, ignorant, immoral etc. We always have been, and were so long before the Enlightenment, in defiance of and in blithe if not eager disregard of what's being referred to in this thread as the "Judeo-Christian tradition" or Christianity itself, and for that matter were before the moral insights and wisdom of the pagan philosophers which Christianity relied on so entirely in its theology, though combining them with the mythology which grew around the figure of Jesus through the efforts of Paul and others has never been an easy thing.

Is it really thought we were "better" people in pre-Enlightenment times?

.That is, in answer to your initial question, I would argue that what Enlightenment/ Modernity has very clearly resolved is the fact that human reason - however daring and courageous it may be, cannot by itself - alone and unaided - succeed in guiding humanity closer toward (the) truth. Rather, it would seem, as the great "Angelic Doctor", St Thomas Aquinas, taught us so long ago, that the boldness of human reason must always be matched and complemented by a firm foundation in the parhesia of supernatural faith (in the divine knowledge Christian revelation). — John Gould

Ha. The radical arm of the Enlightenment (i.e. Spinzoa, Diderot, Bayle, d'Holbach, et al.) decisively showed the inconsistency and intellectual poverty of the 'Moderate Enlightenment' (i.e. Kant, Voltaire, Newton, Leibniz) the latter of which aimed and failed to marry faith to reason.

Nihilism is at the root of the widespread mentality which advises us that a definitive commitment should no longer be made, because everything in human life and the world is fleeting and provisional. — John Gould

Everything in life is fleeting and provisional (empty), and for Buddhists and people like myself, it is this belief that advises a definitive commitment should be made, because doing otherwise will result in more suffering.

If there's a lack of definitive commitment in the world today the loss appears to be shared rather equally between theist and atheist. To me, that doesn't suggest a loss of values but rather a shifting of values, a shift towards materialistic values.

I don't care what the source is--a prophet, a coin toss, dumb luck, an accident, carefully designed rigorous empirical science--I want the truth. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I believe the Buddhist concept of emptiness is true, but I'm not a Buddhist. There are many aspects of Buddhism that I think are not true and are therefore meaningless to me. I have no use for religion in general because I believe it's essentially just a neatly packaged system of meaning, and nothing more. Though I think it's in our nature to desire meaning in our lives I think we can find it for ourselves. That's one of the gifts of the enlightenment, as I see it.

I feel Monty Python should re-form specifically to answer this question: What did the Enlightenment ever do for us?

- OK, apart from inaugurating mass literacy.
- Yeh, but as well as showing us how the cosmos works even if there aren't any gods.
- No, but, aside from liberating millions of poor schmucks to enjoy art and culture and everything.

I just don't know how that scene ends. Maybe : 'Yes, but they never resolved a single important question, did they?' — mcdoodle

This is a brilliant answer. I know you are not supposed to make entries with simply agreeing with someone else, but this is not simply an agreement; it is an expression of admiration for a genius mind.

Well, not a very good case, I think. We're the cause of the problems which afflict us, not science or technology. The Enlightenment can't be blamed for the fact that we're corrupt, stupid, greedy, selfish, cruel, ruthless, ignorant, immoral etc. — Ciceronianus the White

Therefore, science, technology and the Enlightenment are the creations of corrupt, stupid​, greedy, selfish, cruel, ruthless, ignorant, immoral people.

Yet, apparently we are supposed to believe that science, technology and the European Enlightenment are somehow exceptions to or somehow transcend humanity.

Heck, it wouldn't surprise me to find that "humanity" is itself a creation of the European Enlightenment and that no such concept existed before it.

If we really believe​ that science and technology somehow transcend humanity then I guess it is no surprise that we now have transhumanism and people calling for decision making by humans to be replaced by AI.

I would say that anybody who thinks a human creation like science is some innocent being that has done nothing but good in spite of its creators is really desperate to deny reality and find something to cling to.

Is it really thought we were "better" people in pre-Enlightenment times? — Ciceronianus the White

No.

But any honest, objective evaluation of the epoch of the last several centuries in the West must consider everything in that epoch, not cherry-picked anecdotes about science eradicating certain infectious diseases.

I don't think that we have the tools to undertake such an honest, objective, thorough evaluation. We'd have to account for all suffering, such as all of the suffering of animals on factory farms that made it possible for only a small percentage of the population to be employed in agriculture and freed other people to do things like develop vaccines. And so many other things, like the nearly complete destruction of the indigenous people of the land that is now the United States of America.

Not only is it not acknowledged that a thorough accounting is not possible, most accounting that can be done, such as the treatment of Native Americans by Europeans and the United States of America, is almost never brought into the conversation and is something that 99.9% of people are oblivious to.

But nobody is oblivious to science, technology, modern medicine, etc. We are socialized from the moment of birth with constant messages in education and the mass media about how great science, technology, etc. are.

The more that I write about it the more that this whole epoch in the West from the Renaissance through the Enlightenment to present looks like a very long, drawn-out episode of extreme narcissism.

For several years now I have wondered if the ethnographic record shows any people more self-congratulatory than the people of the modern West. That question now seems especially appropriate.

And, almost predictably, discussions of the legacy of the European Enlightenment always seem to include at least one reference to how pre-Enlightenment people were worse or no better. My guess is that they did not see life, society, the world, etc. in terms of moral superiority and inferiority. I don't know if moral superiority was an Enlightenment goal or is just a byproduct of other Enlightenment developments, but it seems to be an irrational obsession among the disciples and heirs of a movement that supposedly epitomizes the appreciation of rationality.

Any honest, objective evaluation of the epoch of the last several centuries in the West must consider everything in that epoch, not cherry-picked anecdotes — WISDOMfromPO-MO

That would be a good idea. Would take a lot of work, though.

Praxis,

You claim that...

"Everything in life is fleeting and provisional ( empty), and for Buddhists and people like myself it is THIS belief that advises a definitive commitment should be made..."

I am sorry to have to tell you, my dear fellow, that this statement expresses a logical contradiction.

The belief that everything in life is transient, fleeting, provision ( empty) IS nihilism. Nihilism is a philosophy of nothingness, and one cannot make a "definitive commitment" to anything in world wherein one believes that no-thing has any absolute, objective, enduring meaning, value or purpose. In other words, please explain for me to what PRECISELY it is that you ( a nihilist) claim to make your "definitive commitment" (?)

The Buddhist doctrine of "voidism", by the way, is nothing more than a morbid form of passive nihilism; indeed, insofar as Buddhism can be defined as a group of philosophical/religious traditions grounded in the "Four Noble Truths" of the Buddha, I am more than happy to quickly demonstrate for you that Buddhism is based on a set of logical contradictions.

Regards

John

I would say that anybody who thinks a human creation like science is some innocent being that has done nothing but good in spite of its creators is really desperate to deny reality and find something to cling to. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

But science, of course, isn't a being at all, you see, So it makes no sense to think of it as innocent, or for that matter guilty. It's something we do, or some of us do in any case, like painting. Painting isn't innocent either. But when someone spray paints a swastika on a synagogue, we don't blame the paint, or painting, or even the technology by which the spray paint can was invented.

Science, or the scientific or experimental method, has allowed us to understand the way many things work, make predictions, do things with things, as it were, much more successfully than we have in the past by recourse to such things as prayer, deductive thinking, trial and error. There are no absolutes and so it's unreasonable to condemn a method because it doesn't establish matters to an absolute certainty. It's also unreasonable to condemn a method because its results are misused.

Maw,

Newton was a deist and Kant an agnostic. To "cut to the chase", both Kant and Newton denied the notion of the revelation of ( divine) supernatural knowledge from the Biblical God and therefore the Christian conception of faith.

Thanks

John

And, almost predictably, discussions of the legacy of the European Enlightenment always seem to include at least one reference to how pre-Enlightenment people were worse or no better. My guess is that they did not see life, society, the world, etc. in terms of moral superiority and inferiority. I don't know if moral superiority was an Enlightenment goal or is just a byproduct of other Enlightenment developments, but it seems to be an irrational obsession among the disciples and heirs of a movement that supposedly epitomizes the appreciation of rationality. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

If it's maintained that the Enlightenment is especially "bad" it's entirely appropriate to respond that there's nothing especially bad about it.

I doubt if moral superiority or anything in particular was an Enlightenment goal, although it's clear certain Enlightenment figures had agendas. Certain Enlightenment thinkers, like Voltaire and the Frenchphilosophes, thought it appropriate to "enlighten" people and society by exposing the flaws of institutional religion and noting the manner in which it restricted thought. I'm one who would say it was appropriate for them to do so, as it was appropriate for certain Renaissance thinkers to rediscover those pagan philosophies and art which had been ignored or condemned by the Church (yes, I know Aquinas and others were aware of Aristotle, for example, but Aquinas's time was the beginning of the Renaissance, I think).

I think the enlightenment raised more issues than had been before, instead of resolving the existing ones.

I won't know why we need to blame the enlightenment for not resolving issues. Nothing else ever has. If they had been resolved by the Church, by Christianity, by Aristotle or Socrates or Plato, then there would be nothing for the Enlightenment to resolve.

No. The achievement of the enlightenment is not resolving things, but proudly presenting new things to resolve:
- what is the self
- is there a god
- does morality exist outside of religion
- biblical self-contradicions
- self-contradictions in the Christain fatih, and how to resolve them
- solving world hunger (at least we are now thinking about it)
- preserving the environment (ibid)
- preserving species (ibid)
- is abortion wrong
- why we ought not to smoke cigarettes -- resolved, they cause disease and kill people, one resolution for sure
- allotting the possibility that animals have souls, they are sentient (some of them)
- why giraffes have long necks -- yeah, this one has been resolved, too, btw, the fact that evoution is a much more viable explanation for biodiversity than creation or the biblical explanation. The only people who deny that are religious, and they have a vested interest in denying it. The vested interest is not reason, btw.

You claim "there are no absolutes". I take that you therefore deny the notion of absolute truth ? Is that correct?

John

In other words, please explain for me to what PRECISELY it is that you ( a nihilist) claim to make your "definitive commitment" (?) — John Gould

I'm not a nihilist and I didn't claim to make a definitive commitment. I said that my belief advises a definitive commitment should be made. That doesn't mean that I've made a definitive commitment. To answer your question as to what, in Buddhism it's the cessation of suffering. My personal goals are not so lofty.

I am more than happy to quickly demonstrate for you that Buddhism is based on a set of logical contradictions. — John Gould

Please do. I think we might be able to stay relatively on topic.

" I am not a nihilist and I didn't claim to make a definitive commitment. I said that MY BELIEF advises a definitive commitment SHOULD be made."

Your belief in WHAT ?

Regards

John

PS: I am being called right now to high tea, so I shall have to ask you to wait until tomorrow morning for the critique of Buddism you have requested, I provide ( as it may take me some time to type out for you).

Emptiness.

Emptiness = nothingness. Nihilism is, by definition, a philosophy of nothingness ( Latin: "nihil" = nothing) therefore , you are, logically, and for all reasonable intents and purposes, a nihilist.

John

Emptiness doesn't mean nothingness. If it interests you I suggest that you study the concept to better understand it. If you'd like to discuss it further I suggest starting a new topic on the subject.

If you are referring to that labyrinthine corpus of semantic waffle promulgated by certain Western intellectuals who endeavour to differentiate the Buddist conception of "emptiness"( as it appears in doctrines like the Mahayana "voidism" of the current Dalai Lama) , from what is "nothingness" ( in the sense of what the "nothingness" that defines Western nihilism connote) ) let me tell you straight up that none of it cuts any ice at all with me. I have already read enough of this fringe, quasi-intellectual pulp to see it for what it actually is, that is, nothing more than an elaborate exercise in obscurantist sophistry. It seeks , in short, to inject higher meaning into what is clearly meaningless and in doing so fails dismally.

So , with respect, I do not believe I need to study the "concept ( of Buddhist "emptiness") to better understand it" because I believe that I understand it very clearly already. I understand it as clearly representing a core foundational construct in what is essentially a morbid philosophical system of passive nihilism. (And) any claims to the contrary are ( pardon the vernacular) in my opinion pure 100% bullshit and I will demonstrate this for you tomorrow as promised.

Regards

John

PS: I am being called right now to high tea, so I shall have to ask you to wait — John Gould

I believe this is the first incidence of the term "high tea" on this forum.

enough of this fringe, quasi-intellectual pulp to see it for what it actually is, that is, nothing more than an elaborate exercise in obscurantist sophistry. It seeks , in short, to inject higher meaning into what is clearly meaningless and in doing so fails dismally. — John Gould

You must adore Depak Chopra then. He is not getting laid for nothing by slender blonde beauties of the upper echelons of society in the prime of their reproductive years ten times more than you and I combined. Erm... how many times must you multiply zero to get fifty thousand? Not ten. So then I underestimated him.

Looking forward to it. And do enjoy your evening.

I believe this is the first incidence of the term "high tea" on this forum. — Bitter Crank

I am envisioning a quaint British castle overlooking pristine shire-land below, dotted with fields, cottages, and cattle. In a cobble room adorned with banners and sigils John's man sits in dictation as our humble castellan paces the room in meditation, pausing occasionally to glance at a very old and jeweled great-sword mounted on the wall...

You claim "there are no absolutes". I take that you therefore deny the notion of absolute truth ? Is that correct? — John Gould

Quid est veritas? Pontius Pilatus had a point, though it's not one he intended to make, I think. To answer your question or any such questions I'd have to know what you mean by "absolute truth." Are tautologies "absolutely true"? [If so, who cares?]

What I was referring to was more in the way of absolute certainty of judgments made in science or in life.

I tend to think that the most correct judgments we can make are those made based on the intelligent assessment of the best available evidence, but there's always the possibility that other evidence may become available which will require a reassessment. That may be extremely unlikely in some cases; not so unlikely in others. But we live in a world of probabilities. This made people like Kant nervous, or perhaps it's more appropriate to say that Hume made him/them nervous. I don't think it a problem. We successfully make decisions/predictions/judgments all the time and are warranted in doing so.

In answer to your question, what I mean by "absolute truth" is THE truth. The ONE, unchanging, eternal , absolute truth of God the Father Almighty.

Don't be like Pilate. Don't make the same mistake. I exhort you to realise how much is at stake in Jesus' claim to have brought THE truth to this world; to realise that It is literally a matter of eternal life and death; to realise that YOUR own life is on the line right now as we speak. You are an intelligent man. Pick up the Gospel and read. Do this and THE truth will set you free.

Regards

John

John, you are preaching. You did two things in your previous one post people are not allowed to do on this site.

Whether your post gets flagged or not, is up to how vigilant the monitoring of this site is. I am new here, so I don't know if it will happen.

The Buddhist Śūnyatā is not nihilism, although often misunderstood as such. From a Christian perspective, I think the most appropriate Biblical analogy is Ecclesiastes 1, 'All is vanity'. It refers to the emptiness of worldliness or 'the things of this world' in Biblical parlance. Here is an introductory essay on the subject.

Newton was absolutely not a deist, and while Kant did not believe that there were sound arguments that evidenced or proved God, he was a Christian on pure faith. I recommend actually reading Kant and Newton, and additionally Jonathon Israeli's magisterial trilogy on the Enlightenment to cure yourself of your ignorance on the subject.

I recommend actually reading Kant and Newton, and additionally Jonathon Israeli's magisterial trilogy on the Enlightenment to cure yourself of your ignorance on the subject. — Maw

Now, that would be a shame. "Ignorance is power." As long as you don't know your subject material, you can assert and claim anything.

Then again, that works better for an audience of dilettantes than for an audience of experts.

That's actually the trick and salvation and damnation of Donald Trump's political success: he bedazzled those who don't have a clue about anything, and they are the majority of the voters. And now Trump faces all these Yale and MIT and whatever-graduated eggheads who are looking at him with stern expectations written on their countenance and body languagem, and god have mercy on Trump should he try the same tactics on them.