Sunday 23 January 2011

The nonsense of 'enlightenment values'

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How sick I am of hearing people say that they adhere to 'Enlightenment values'!

What nonsense!

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What was the Enlightenment but a bunch of intellectuals (albeit, some being creative geniuses - for what that is worth) abstractly theorizing along the lines of: wouldn't it be pleasant and useful if...?

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What was the Enlightenment but an extremely brief and unsustainable cultural transition between much more lasting cultural types?

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2 comments:

Dirichlet said...

This is an interesting term, because most "Enlightenment" values have nothing to do with the Enlightenment, nor did have acceptance during that period.

But what are those so-called Enlightenment values? It seems to me that's just a synonymous for secular humanism.

Reminds me of "Judeo-Christian."

Brett Stevens said...

@Dirichlet:

The values of the Enlightenment were (a) make polite and (b) deconstruction, specifically the idea that each human is a god in his or her own sphere.

Rationalism is a very fancy term for materialism and individualism glommed together into one potent virus.