I, like most people, tend to paint with a broad-brushstroke, and in this blog I have several times referenced "the Englihtenment" as a broad historical change that Christians should challenge. We should keep in mind, however, that the Enlightenment was not a monolithic conspiracy. It was and is a multifaceted movement, existing in tandem with its Christian and non-Christian predecessors. Historian Henry May has suggested that there were four Enlightenments:
- The Moderate Enlightenment (Locke, Newton): mechanistic and mathematical models of nature and humanity are empirical and no threat to religion or traditional morals.
- The Skeptical Enlightenment (Voltaire, Hume, Rousseau): mechanistic and naturalistic models do call into question traditional religion, morals, and claims for human knowledge.
- The Revolutionary Enlightenment (Paine, Godwin): direct attacks on traditional religious, familial, economic, and political structures.
- The Didactic Enlightenment (Reid, Stewart): softens radical implications of Enlightenment thought, a preference for natural and inductive explanations over supernatural and deductive ones.
The Enlightenment in its moderate form, and to some extent in its didactic form, I have far less trouble with than the more skeptical and revoluntionary strains. Likewise, it is important to remember that no form of the movement was (or is) so airtight and doctrinaire that it contains no truths to learn from, and that the various strains of the movement were often for a time bedfellows, strange or otherwise, with movements in the 18th to 20th centuries that as a Christian I could at least be a co-belligerent with. (For example, abolitionism, women's suffrage, or the protection of human rights.)
Do you think 2 and 3 are as 'objective' as 1 and 4? Have 2 and 3 had as much impact on the society as 1 (and maybe 4)?
ReplyDeleteNot sure what you mean by objective here.
ReplyDeleteTo a novice like myself it seems that empirical evidence and replicable experiments give some weight to issues more so than the opposite (nonempirical, nonreplicable) approach, making the first more objective. When my child is sick I will go with a medicine that has been tested and proven to work in many cases, and I will not rely on an idea that has not been tested and verified. That I call objective. That seems to be consistent with Moderate Enlightenment the way you have described it above. So I guess I am using the word objective with a meaning that comes out of Modern Enlightenment to then go back and describe Modern Enlightenment, that's certainly faulty logic and circular thinking, but to me the concept of objectivity is still useful.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that 1 is a necessary condition for 2 and 3, but it is not a sufficient condition. My reading of Voltaire, Godwin and Rousseau is extremely limited, though, so I am basing my logic on your descriptions instead of their actual texts.
That helps. Thank you. I would argue that historically you are right here, #3 does depend on #2 which at least uses the rhetoric of #1 to buttress its claims, so in that sense they are less objective than #1, though each claims to be based on observable "laws of nature" based in "objective" reality. (I've had to read Voltaire, Rousseau, and a bit of Godwin over the years, but my own description is based on May's above.)
ReplyDeleteIn general I am functionally a person who treats modern medicine as something objectively trustworthy, though I have friends who study it much closer who would call it somewhat into question. At the same time, I do agree with Thomas Kuhn and his followers that the history of science at the very least problematizes the claims of objectivity in science--maybe I'll post something on this soon.
That would be an interesting post. The issue of 'objectivity' is interesting, since - as this discussion has helped me see - at least in my use the very idea of objectivity comes out of the enlightenment understanding of the scientific method, and thus circular reasoning is used to declare science objective. This may not be a problem if this is the best we have for defining objectivity, but at least it's worth pondering.
ReplyDelete