From: jimruttshow8596
The Enlightenment
The Enlightenment is considered a “second founding” of the United States, marked by figures deeply enamored with its ideals [1:29:56]. It posited that reason, understood as the logical and mathematical manipulation of propositions, combined with evidence, provides all the necessary tools to alleviate human suffering [1:31:57]. This era saw the rise of science and democracy as interconnected forces [1:32:25]. A key tenet of the Enlightenment was secularism, which asserts that the natural world operates independently from the supernatural [1:32:32]. This meant that religious and political spheres should be run separately, as the supernatural world was deemed irrelevant to the functioning of the natural world [1:32:46].
For the Enlightenment, reason, evidenced science (a self-correcting process), and a market (also a self-correcting process run by reason and evidence) were all that was needed to manage the world and end human suffering [1:33:34].
Precursors to the Enlightenment
Key figures are identified as precursors to the Enlightenment:
- Martin Luther Luther’s philosophy, particularly his extreme version of Augustinian thought, suggests that personal transformation is completely driven by God and not by human participation [1:24:40]. This introduces a paradox where individuals are powerless but fully responsible for their salvation, leading to an unmediated, individual relationship with God [1:25:32]. His metaphysics, where God acts arbitrarily, is seen as leading to God becoming “completely absurd and irrelevant” [1:26:09]. The fragmentation of the Protestant church is attributed to its lack of a unifying ultimate vision [1:27:46].
- René Descartes Descartes, like Luther, did not see a need for personal transformation in his philosophy [1:25:19]. He believed that a mathematical method of certainty, influenced by Galileo, could properly connect him to the world and alleviate the meaning crisis brought on by the scientific revolution [1:26:56]. In Descartes’ view, God primarily serves to guarantee the scientific method’s efficacy, thus becoming largely irrelevant otherwise [1:27:15]. Descartes’ separation of mind and body is seen as a continuation of Aquinas’s division of natural and supernatural worlds [1:12:17].
- Galileo Galilei Galileo is seen as having “killed the universe” [1:14:49]. He challenged the Aristotelian view that things happen on purpose and have an inner life, by demonstrating inertial motion [1:17:50]. This implied that there is no grand purpose or narrative to the universe, reducing it to “just a bunch of stuff slamming into each other” [1:18:31]. Galileo, as a part of the revival of Platonism, asserted that mathematics is the language of the universe, suggesting that mathematical reality is more real than sensory experience or language [1:15:21]. This shift led to a reduction of “knowing” to propositional knowledge, where reality is judged solely by conviction, at the expense of other normative ways of understanding reality such as power, presence, and belonging [1:21:50].
- Thomas Aquinas Aquinas’s work is presented as a temporary patch on the challenge to the Christian worldview posed by the rediscovery of Aristotle’s emphasis on the natural world [1:07:34]. Aquinas solidified the “two worlds mythology” by dividing reality into a natural world (accessible by science, reason, and observation) and a supernatural world (accessible only by faith, seen as a special gift or grace from God) [1:09:50]. This division, while preserving both science and theology, ultimately made the supernatural world seem less plausible and eventually absurd, paving the way for the self-sufficiency of the natural world [1:12:44]. The separation of the natural and supernatural is seen as destroying the Platonic concept of
anagoge(ascent) and wisdom as a connection between the two worlds [1:12:30]. This philosophical move is considered a significant crack in the meaning framework that had been fundamental to the West [1:13:10].
Critiques of the Enlightenment
The Enlightenment, despite its strengths, is critiqued for several flaws:
- Truncated Reason and Propositional Tyranny The Enlightenment’s view of reason is seen as “very truncated,” leading to a “propositional tyranny” where all knowledge is reduced to justified true beliefs in propositions [1:34:01]. This overlooks other forms of knowing, such as skills (powerful/weak), perspectives (presence/connectedness), and identities (affordances/belonging) [1:22:44].
- Naive Newtonianism The Enlightenment is seen as reeking of “naive Newtonianism” [1:35:51]. It lacks concepts of complexity, relativity, and systems thinking, treating the world as complicated rather than complex [1:35:56]. This “clockwork universe” view, while relying on self-organizing processes like markets and democracies, failed to incorporate the dynamic nature of such systems, thus hindering the development of wisdom-cultivating practices [1:37:38].
- Assumed Adult Competence The Enlightenment, particularly exemplified by figures like Benjamin Franklin, assumed that a “standard smart adult person has all the tools they need to navigate the world” [1:35:10]. This overlooks the fact that adult human thinking is often full of distortions and may not have an optimal grip on reality, suggesting a need to go beyond the standard adult understanding of rationality to cultivate wisdom [1:35:19].
Romanticism
Romanticism emerged as a reaction to the Enlightenment’s “austere” view of the world [1:39:06]. It arose particularly from the implications of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy, where Kant argued that the mind shapes experience, and that mathematics describes how our mind organizes reality, not the universe itself [1:39:42]. This led to the conclusion that humans are “locked inside of our heads,” creating a worldview that “robs you of all of those senses of connection that are central for meaning” [1:40:06].
Core Tenets of Romanticism
- Reconnection through Irrationality Romantics sought to reconnect to the world by exploring the “irrational aspects of the mind,” moving backwards through layers of processing to discover a “true self” [1:41:50]. This concept was notably influenced by Rousseau, who posited a true self existing before the filtering of civilization [1:42:06].
- World as Empty Canvas Romanticism reversed Locke’s idea of the mind as a blank slate, instead viewing the “world as a blank slate” [1:44:40]. On this “empty canvas,” individuals “press myself out,” expressing their authenticity through acts of will and imposition [1:44:45]. This act of self-expression, rather than development, was seen as the path to wisdom and meaning [1:42:26].
Critiques and Implications of Romanticism
- Flawed Concept of the “True Self” The idea of an “inborn true self” that is merely expressed onto the world is seen as “very very questionable” and rejected [1:43:13]. The self is instead described as a “complex recursive dynamical system” that is “inherently developmental” and “aspirational,” aligning with a Socratic model of the self [1:43:49].
- “Stupid Idea” of the World as an Empty Canvas The notion of the world as an “empty canvas” upon which we can project ourselves, seen as the “ultimate culmination of nominalism,” is deemed a “genuinely stupid idea” [1:45:10]. It denies that the world is inherently structured with properties, patterns, and principles [1:45:27].
- Rejection of Virtue Ethics Romantics are criticized for rejecting virtue ethics and the cultivation of character [1:46:16]. They often unfairly viewed individuals committed to virtue as “stultified, rigid, ossified,” lacking the freedom and
joie de vivreof letting the true self out [1:46:41]. - Roots of Totalitarian Ideologies Decadent romanticism is argued to be the “grandfather of all the pseudo-religious ideologies” of the 20th century, including fascism and Marxism [1:48:08]. The idea of the world as a blank canvas, combined with the willful expression of a “true self,” provides the philosophical basis for ideologies that seek to shape the world according to their will, leading to genocidal levels of political working out of these implications [1:48:15]. The glorification of the “inborn true self” is dangerously close to notions of racism [1:49:16].