I am prejudice, I can agree with that. The European Enlightenment at large bothers me. Rousseau, perhaps one of the strongest minds of the enlightenment was the midwife to the semi morbid yet existential thought nonetheless, "l'homme est ne libre, et partout il est dans les fers." (Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains." I cannot more so thoroughly agree with any enlightened concept, however it was the trajectory that the enlightened ones chose to take which is what bothers me the most.
Throughout our time in German 401, we have watched the Germans move from small spaced out clans into functioning cities and states at large. Through literary pages we have watched the Romans and the Franks bolster and build the German society-- a cornucopia of influences. Within the sojourn we watched those allegedly born with divine right ruthlessly and mercilessly belittle and bastardize the minds of the average man only in their selfish pursuit for power, riches, and infamy. Thus, we reach the age of the reformation and as though it were a domino effect we watched the "whole world" wake up and be fruitful. Medicines, Language, Math, Textiles, and knowledge as a whole flourished. (we are humans, hear us roar!)
However, I am not convinced that this was for all people. Knowledge became a capitalistic enterprise. It is true that information was introduced to the masses, but for the daily life of a peasant who never has been anything, never was going to be anything, the introduction of information was about as useful as fire in hell. In class, we spoke of the hierarchy where the educated were ontop and the undereducated were on the bottom. The enlightement did a damn good job of protecting that hierarchy even up into today's society. We cannot turn on the news without seeing the undereducated losing their homes in natural disasters, or watching the undereducated lose their lives to plaguelike diseases (aids, cancer, etc.). Many of us cannot walk down highstreet without being haggled for change by the undereducated, and we most certainly cannot thumb the pages of the newspaper without seeing the undereducated being convicted of life in prison because they weren't smart enough to make good decisions. The underedcuated send their children to underfurnished schools where their highschool education, if attained, means nothing to the educated society. The unedereducated are poor, and tired, and in desperate need of help. We live in a cut-throat society ladies and gentleman. Half of us are asleep in this fake empire and the other half of us just don't even care. To me, the enlightement was apathetic, because while it flourished with thought and optimisim it failed to protect and advance the institution of the all minds .
Had the enlightenment actually wanted to share its finding with everyone rather than just those who could afford it and those who were luckily in the right place at the right time, we would be one step closer to a better world. However, because the bourgeois replaced the nobles, gained their fortunes and said screw the rest of you-- we now live in this bougie-bougie society where enlightement is still purchased and rarely deserved and all the undereducated, like dark forests, eat themselves and somehow live forever.
So, because the enlightment failed to expand itself and truly enlighten all.. I cannot help but to be morally opposed to it as a whole.
Good-Day.
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6 comments:
Bien dicho Eric. Estoy de acuerdo contigo en cuanto a la educacion y demas. No creo que la gente pobre alla tenido las mismas oportunidades que los otros ni que todos hubieran estado al mismo nivel en cuanto a possibilidades de aprendisaje y de mejoramiento personal. Y creo que estamos en la misma situacion hoy en dia. Es obvio que una persona de bajos recursos no va a tener la misma possibilidad de mejorarse en la vida. Digo, si es possible mejorarse pero tomaria mucho mas de una persona de bajos recursos mejorarse que de una persona con mas recursos.
I applaud your courage in taking this tack, not many would commit the intellectual sin of criticizing the Enlightenment. However, academic blasphemy or not, these arguments were flawed, illogical, and utterly devoid of merit. These insipid contentions aim to throw the Enlightenment baby out with the bath water that is the flawed society in which we live. In the words of one of those apathetic philosophers: "I do not agree with a word you say, but I will fight to the death to hear you say it."(Montesquieu)
It is absolutely true that we have watched as those with alleged "divine right" run roughshod over the average man. Why is this? Because the average man has only recently become empowered; only with enlightenment and education has the average man realized that everything can be questioned, that rulers are flawed that not even the gospels are gospel and that everyone has the right to expect, demand and at times to forcefully claim his personal dignity. Without the Enlightenment this would never have been possible, if not for the efforts of those apathetic scholars and the bourgeoisie-cum-nobility the average man would still be but the toy of fortune and the nobility and life itself would at best be "nasty, brutish and short" (Hobbes) and at worst an exercise in futility.
If information is only as useful as fire in hell if one doesn't come from means, how could it possibly create a hierarchy? If being a person of means is a prerequisite to: 1. obtain an education and therefore to 2. use it to acquire more means thereby becoming a person of means, if follows that steps 1 and 2 are meaningless and one might as well skip them and rejoice in being a person of means. The entire argument that the Enlightenment failed because it did not do away with the concept of hierarchy is predicated on the notion that this is a noble goal which it unequivocally is not-look at the consistent failure of communism. In a nonhierarchical society, one devoid of a system of rewards, stagnation occurs, industry stalls and the nation-assuming its ability to plunder the riches of the earth eventually ends- eventually collapses. What the Enlightenment did was put forth the notion that everyone could better his social standing by becoming enlightened-educated, informed and industrious. And education IS available to all who seek it, let's call a spade a spade, we've all spent tens of thousands on and education "we coulda' got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library" (Good Will Hunting).
Certainly we turn on the news and see the cause of disaster, calamity and brutality, because this is the only news worth reporting. Nobody wants to tune in to see Dan Rather reporting: "This just in uh, we've cured the plague, smallpox, and sanitation problems through industrious, post-enlightenment, ideals. Also, we're stamping out illiteracy, cancer, hunger and poverty. Great job, species!" No, we tune in to see "who did what to whom and in what disgusting manner." (Frasier) Of course there is great ugliness in the world, this is because: 1. mother nature is a bitch, and 2. there is still great ignorance in the world. But we've done much to combat the first (Why do you think there are now 6 billion people in the world?) by combating the second, which we would not have done were it not for the Enlightenment.
Destruction of the hierarchy is not the answer. This is not the "Harrison Bergeron" society Vonnegut wrote about. Our-western- society is one in which hard work and education are rewarded and there is a hierarchy because not everyone wants to work, in fact, most do not, it's not in our nature. Doing away with the hierarchy would do away with the American dream, the line to get into this country doesn't look like that of the "Producers" on opening night because we all are people of means, but rather because we all have the ability to become so. We weren't all born with the same opportunities but such is life, that's why I gave up basketball in favor of books, because 5' 10" and can't jump, you rarely get drafted, this just means I'll have to work a bit harder to get on the cover of a magazine.
Like it or not, while the bourgeoisie may have "gained their fortunes and said screw the rest of you" the rest of us made them give us rail roads, antiseptics and greater food production potential in return for those fortunes. In addition, a lot of those bourgeois bastards gave us universities, libraries, and museums just for the hell of it. As you said: "we now live in this bougie-bougie society" and thank god and Rousseau that we do because the Dark Ages were very dark indeed.
Admittedly the Enlightenment failed to be a panacea for the world's woes but it-unlike your wallowing in anhedonia- has done and is doing much. "Long is the way, and hard, that out of [squalor] leads up to light." (Milton) But thanks to the fathers of the Enlightenment, we in our American society can all tread this path if we will but summon the strength and for this we all owe them our thanks.
Matt
You're right, I looked it up and it was Voltaire (if either of the two). I was definitely told Montesquieu in High School, damn you Mr. Gibson 1st period History.
Matt
Hi all,
Don't forget to sign our posts and comments so that you get authorial credit.
Prof. Ribaj
yes. The post in spanish was written by Anais
i'm a little confused as to who wrote what since both entries read "professor ribaj said...", but mostly i'm wondering if montesquieu ever said anything like "I do not agree with a word you say, but I will fight to the death to hear you say it." as you ended your first paragraph with, because i've always heard that statement attributed to voltaire. in fact, i used to carry that quote around in my wallet when i was in high school, but i have since read that he probably never said this at all. here's what wiki has to say about it:
>>The most oft-cited Voltaire quotation is apocryphal. He is incorrectly credited with the quote "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." These were not his words but instead were written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall (under the pseudonym S. G. Tallentyre), in her 1906 biographical book The Friends of Voltaire. Hall intended to summarize in her own words Voltaire's attitude towards Claude Adrien Helvétius and his controversial book De l'esprit, but her first-person expression was mistaken for an actual quotation from Voltaire. Her interpretation does capture the spirit of Voltaire' attitude towards Helvetius ; it had been said that this was inspired by a quote found in a 1770 letter to M. le Roche, in which he says "I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.", nevertheless, French scholars feel there must have been some misinterpretation, as the letter doesn't seem to contain any such quote.<<
just a thought...
liam.
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