The Enlightenment under attack
Submitted by Robert Daeley on Fri, 2006-07-21 07:07.
On the subject of postcolonialism and the appropriation of “Western” modernist thought by various anti-modernist romanticist groups (Young Earthers, Intelligent Design propagandists, Vedic Physicists, etc.)…
In David Brin’s addendum to a guest post (by Blake Stacey) on his blog:
Human nature would destroy the Enlightenment, if it ever gets a chance, and snuff it out far LONGER than those same forces kept Pericleanism quashed, the first time. 2500 years of darkness. It happens so easily! The French wing of the Enlightenment got lured back into Platonism - believing you can attain truth through incantation.
Even American modernist ikons like Frank Lloyd Wright and Robert Moses gave into the temptation to become tyrannical gurus, in the wizardric tradition, rather than collaborative modernist pragmatists. Modernism barely survived their antics and the NAME was driven into the wilderness.
What a slender thread is the trail that leads from Pericles, through scattered candles of light, to John Locke and Adam Smith and Ben Franklin, who pointed us down a new path.
One that is under attack even as we speak.