Triumph of the Counter-Enlightenment - FDL

[WillyT]

Triumph of the Counter-Enlightenment
By: Glenn W. Smith - FDL
Sunday August 7, 2011 9:30 am


Joseph-Marie, Comte de Maistre,
Counter-Enlightenment Champion

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The liberating principles of the Enlightenment, however, are obvious. The profoundly humanistic understanding of equality and freedom, the questioning of Tradition and Authority (especially religious authority), the more modest or humble hopes for reason – these are among its gifts. From its very beginning the Enlightenment faced vicious opposition, opposition that became known as the Right (the terms “Right” and “Left” owe their origins to the seating arrangements of France’s 1789 National Constituent Assembly). The Counter-Enlightenment was a powerful force in its own day.

Today we see its power everywhere: the rejection of compromise in politics; the trashing of public education and the assault on independent universities; the teaching of Creationism in the schools that remain; the dismantling of the social safety net; the rejection of climate science; authoritarian control of private life, from bans on gay marriage to attacks on women’s health. These are all symptoms of an ascendant Counter-Enlightenment. Texas Governor Rick Perry’s Saturday prayer meeting was called “The Response.” It may has well have been called National Counter-Enlightenment Day.

Here’s how Darrin McMahon describes 18th-Century Counter-Enlightenment voices in his terrific book, Enemies of Enlightenment:

The fundamental importance of religion in maintaining political order, a preoccupation with the perils of intellectual and social license, the valorization of the family and history, the critique of abstract rights, the dangers of dividing sovereignty, and the need for a strategic alliance between throne and altar – these all featured centrally in this new ideology. Even more fundamental was a Manichean readiness to divide the world in two between good and evil, right and wrong, Right and Left. Marked by an unwillingness to compromise and the belief that to do so would imperil the social order in its entirety, this vision was a direct outgrowth of the apocalyptic rhetoric aimed at the philosophes during the final years of the ancien regime.

McMahon writes that the Right believed the free exchange of ideas in an open public sphere would undermine all authority and send the world into chaos.

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More: http://firedoglake.com/2011/08/07/triumph-of-the-counter-enlightenment/

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