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As in our previous discussions, the antipode is missing. You condemn the enlightenment, but you ignore and refuse to defend the actual enemies it was up against : the ancien regime and its privileges, the absolutism of Louis XIV and Nicholas II. Let us grant that the french revolution was more ‘enlightened’ than the american revolution. Does that make the american revolution anti-enlightenment?
You adopt the perspective of a liberal english or american visitor in paris, initially supportive, then disgusted by the blood and radicalism. That’s understandable, but it’s not anti-enlightenment. It’s the noncommittal, comfortable position of a tourist. I too prefer my revolutions with as little blood and terror as possible. The only interesting dilemma here is, revolution with blood, or ancien regime.
In 1789, the french system of government was less enlightened than the anglos, but the intellectuals were up to date. So when the center broke, the pendulum swung considerably. What compromise could there be with those who did not recognize the people’s authority, and claimed divine right to rule over them? Only way to dispell the magic “We will cut off his head with the crown upon it.” The King’s trial by ordeal. That lesson, and others, centuries of progress, france had to speedrun, while at war .
Those rascals, one crazy idea after another. The sheer hubris to think they could solve this problem, a venerable institution vetted by our ancestors and the bible.
Not defending it, but he was executed for being a top tax farmer, viewed as a Crassus , not a Galileo.
Why do the features of the people the revolutions defeated matter? The revolutionaries won. They took absolute power. They built the societies they wanted, unconstrained by what came before. If they built abattoirs packed with human misery, how is that the fault of the people they overthrew?
No, it makes it a less central example of the Enlightenment, and it weakens claims that Enlightenment values are responsible for American outcomes. This is important to do, because there is a very clear ideological core of the Enlightenment from its inception to the current day, that core is what America largely passed on, and that core has an abysmal track-record elsewhere.
Ancien regime. How is this even a question? The Revolution killed a shitload of people, failed to solve the problems that propelled it to power, and collapsed into a military dictatorship that plunged Europe into a generation of brutal warfare before plopping the Bourbons briefly back on the throne, before continuing to modernize more or less alongside the rest of Europe. Why should we consider any of that remotely necessary? What possible silver lining are you seeing here?
They failed, though. The whole thing failed. They accomplished nothing but mutual fratricide and mass murder, and then were swept aside by a tyrant who got a considerable portion of their population killed attempting and failing to conquer the world. They didn't dispel any magic. they didn't build a legacy. They didn't speedrun shit, other than than the pointless atrocity counter.
It's another example of how the French Revolution was more Enlightened than the American. I wish the American revolution had abolished slavery as well, but the fact is they didn't, and had to solve the problem the hard way a century later. I think the French abolishing slavery was a great idea! ...But they also collapsed their whole society and got many millions of people killed through the secondary effects, and that happened precisely because of their hubris. So the hubris seems like kind of a problem!
Maybe if their ideology had been a little less bloodthirsty, it might have been a little better at actual science?
I’d think americans would have a problem being ruled by someone who does not require their consent. Where’s that alamo spirit? Do you tolerate insults to your will? I think it is the right, the duty and the pleasure of every man to cut down such rulers. Of course the king had to go, first. It’s not a silver lining, it’s the entire point.
You’re introducing a lot of confusion with your definitions because the anti-enlightenment position you’re trying to occupy already exists as a distinct set of ideas (then as absolutism, nowadays as neoreactionary). And they do not recognize this artificial split between good(american) and bad(fr**ch) enlightenment. So me and my enemies, we all agree, we reject your innovative definitions as unhelpful.
Seems like you’re trawling through a giant enlightenment box, arbitrarily picking stuff you dislike and putting that in your new smaller enlightenment box, while the rest is just relabeled as good common american god-fearing sense. In reality, what made it the enlightenment box is the giant anti-enlightenment box next to it, which you ignore.
They did not solve the problem of rule without consent, they just changed a relatively benign despot for an insanely paranoid and delusional pack of murderers, and then a competent but bloodthirsty tyrant that plunged the whole continent into war. They made everything worse, and got millions of people killed for zero benefit.
In any case, the idea that you make things better by killing the bad people is exactly the problem I'm pointing out here. Killing people should never be a terminal goal, which is yet another of the mistakes an entire branch of Enlightenment ideology repeatedly makes.
The confusion already exists. People claim that the Enlightenment is defined by a commitment to individual liberties, and then claim that the French Revolution was a central example of an Enlightenment project. These two claims are contradictory. My position is that you cannot claim A = !A. I feel like that's a pretty solid position.
Then you and your enemies are ignoring the evidence in front of you, because those two revolutions were very, very different in character from each other. You are being sloppy in your definitions, and I object to that. If we are going to claim that a category is important, that category should be rigorously defined. If that category is an ideological movement, we should be able to define what features determine whether an item is included or excluded from the set, and we should be weighing the historical results of that ideology more heavily than theorizing or public statements of intent. I am willing to accept whatever definition you prefer, provided that definition is then scrutinized properly and rigorously applied. If you want to define the Enlightenment as "only good things and never bad things", I'm fine with that, as long as you do so explicitly, so I can point out that such a definition is useless for analysis of the real world.
No. I'm asking you and everyone else to give your definition of what we all agree was a pivotal ideology, and then sort two very distinct historical examples according to that definition. This should not be hard to, and it is not unreasonable to insist that it should be done. This is what definitions are for.
Then make that your definition, and let's see where the evidence goes. If you want to claim that the Enlightenment is defined by opposition to traditional forms of religion, government and social structure, I'm fine with that. It still leaves America and Britain as distant outliers given that they kept their traditional religion and social structures and even much of their government, and it still leaves the basic problem that the more Enlightened a revolution was, the worse the results it delivered.
Or perhaps I'm not getting the definition right. Feel free to correct me in detail. Make your case!
Me and others have quoted the dictionary at you already. That definition is perfectly serviceable. But you try to create meaning for its own sake, untethered to the minds of other men. Your definition of the enlightenment clashes with
the dictionary
present supporters of the enlightenment
present opponents of the enlightenment
historical supporters and opponents of the enlightenment
american revolutionaries , and their opponents
everyone
I think you’re stretching the limits of acceptable word games, dude. If you want to keep arguing against this ‘bad enlightenment’ , you should call it something else, like ‘rousseauianism ‘, or ‘Cult of Reason’ , some less well-known expression that is not already imbued with a different meaning to the one you want to assign to it.
Plus you’re trying to define a mammal by comparing a cat to a dog, saying this one’s paws are more mammal-like than the other’s and so on. Futile exercise, you need a mollusk or a reptile.
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