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Starts good. The idea that enlightenment is constructed later doesn't even surprise me too much. Cohesive political movements usually have some sort of geopolit

• lsy 11y ago
  > This is weird. It might help to understand academic concepts of whiteness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiteness_studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiteness_studies As the author makes clear in the very next sentence, the concept is more about ideology and less about skin color or particular groups of people.
• mjewkes 11y ago
  >Socrates, Buddha and Confucius we're alive at the same time, yet we don't call that "age of philosophy". Actually we do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_Age >During this time, according to Jaspers' concept, new ways of thinking appeared in Persia, India, China and the Greco-Roman world in religion and philosophy, in a striking parallel development without any obvious direct cultural contact between all of the participating cultures of the Old World.
• pjc50 11y ago
  Colonialism and enlightenment happened at the same time. Was that really news to anybody? Only if you stop and think about it for a second: the use of "enlightenment" to refer to a set of ideas about freedom and liberty which were in practice only extended to white men. The only way to reconcile the "we the people" of the US constitution with the actual historical facts is to assume that the drafters meant that people == white men. Because the rights weren't extended equally to women, slaves, or Indians. You've substituted "accomplishment" for "enlightenment", which isn't the same thing. The article refers to the Enlightenment in the context of its modern marketing campaign: why are people talking about the Enlightenment so much now? He postulates that this is in contrast to Islam, as part of current habit of painting the West as morally and racially superior to the people of the near East. > "The apotheosis of this turn came in the early Twenty-First Century, when Christopher Hitchens and Martin Amis identified “Enlightenment values” with the prosecution of the “Global War on Terror”. And so, it appeared, we came to bomb and torture in defence of the Enlightenment." There's also an assault on the "Whig view of history", an old academic hobby horse; a reminder of the importance of the Haitian revolution; and a general call to seek out and include in the Enlightenment canon those who were an important influence on it but not white or European.
  • JanezStupar 11y ago
    Yet you and the others presenting this argument conveniently forget that not all white men were free and privileged - and that these progressive thinkers of the day, naturally strived to free and uplift those that were closest to them and mostly visible to them. Also you forget that not all people of colour were slaves and that not all slaves were of colour. You also ignore the fact that most slaves were bought and purchased by non whites. Applying modern zeitgeist and morals to different historic periods is wrong at best.
    • nemo 11y ago
      Enlightenment ideals of liberty were not universally applied, but only to a limited in-group deemed worthy. That in-group was primarily wealthy white men and not all (hence the American States originally granting the vote to male property owners as well as adding race requirements), but that doesn't really change anything about the point of the article or the point of the person you're replying to, but rather illustrates it.
• AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  > Somebody thinks pride is a sin... OK. > ... and the master race should purify itself from sin. To show the barbarians how much better the master race is. (Unconsciously of course but anyhow.) That sounds a lot like pride in action...
  • vlehto 11y ago
    Unconscious thought is not very good at being logical.