Comments on: Wicked Company

By: Sorpozhi

Sorpozhi — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 04:11:55 +0000

I am surprised that some are shocked that the Enlightenment did not run its supposed course. But why? The reformation that came earlier was simply the abandonment of the Catholic hierarchy for a man made hierarchy guided by man’s own conscience in search of – you guessed it right – god! So we are still reaching for that explanatorily intelligible account of the cosmos. No one has in the last 30 years brought this to our notice than S. N. Balagangadhara and his collaborators at Univ of Ghent.

By: David Hume on British character « 2ndlook – View From A Square Prism

David Hume on British character « 2ndlook – View From A Square Prism — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 17:20:33 +0000

[...] Wicked Company (blogs.discovermagazine.com) [...]

By: bittergradstudent

bittergradstudent — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 18:26:40 +0000

@spyder:

Considering that we’re living in a world mostly free of a landed aristocarcy, serfdom and slavery, and in which colonial empires are becoming more of a thing of the past (though not wholly excised), can you really say that? I have mixed feelings about these guys, sitting in opulence and engaging in their personal vendettas (Rousseau was driven from the salons due to being a commoner, for example), and claiming to be the vanguard of justice, while life for 99% of people of the time was a life of nonstop toil and disease.

Its a condition that still persists today, but lets not kid ourselves about 18th century Britain and France.

By: Origami

Origami — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 16:04:59 +0000

Thanks for the recommendation! This seems to be a very interesting book indeed (after reading 20% of Kindle edition).

By: Jim Harrison

Jim Harrison — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 17:40:34 +0000

Blom’s work is part of a larger reappraisal of the Enlightenment that’s been going on for some years now. The Princeton historian Jonathan Israel, in particular, has put out a series of impressive books that make the case for the significance of what he calls the radical Enlightenment, the atheistic and democratic Enlightenment whose great initiator was Spinoza. Israel shows in great detail how this movement, despised and persecuted, was really more significant in the long run than the more familiar moderate Enlightenment of Voltaire and others who made their peace with religion and the authoritarian state. What might be called the commonsense of educated people in the 21st Century was first enunciated in Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Israel defines the radical enlightenment “as a package of basic concepts and values [that] may be summarized in eight cardinal points: (1) adoption of philosophical (mathematical-historical) reason as the only and exclusive criterion of what is true; (2) rejection of all supernatural agency, magic, disembodied spirits, and divine providence; (3) equality of all mankind (racial and sexual); (4) secular ‘universalism’ in ethics anchored in equality and chiefly stressing equity, justice, and charity; (5) comprehensive toleration and freedom of thought based on independent critical thinking; (6) personal liberty of lifestyle and sexual conduct between consenting adults, safeguarding the dignity and freedom of the unmarried and homosexuals; (7) freedom of expression, political criticism, and the press, in the public sphere; (8) democratic republicanism as the most legitimate form of politics.”

By: spyder

spyder — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 01:31:31 +0000

With so much information available at our fingertips, one would think we would have an enlightened and rational way to govern ourselves, or at least be able to reduce the sheer volume of irrational and senseless babble that pretends to be appeals for voting. Three hundred+ years later, i think we have actually devolved.

By: Grad Student

Grad Student — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 17:47:04 +0000

From the title, I thought this might be about spending the weekend in Montreal with the philosophers

By: Tweets that mention Wicked Company | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine -- Topsy.com

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 16:40:14 +0000

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Cosmic Variance, kosmofilo. kosmofilo said: #CosmicVariance Wicked Company: Via 3 Quarks Daily, an Economist review of what looks like a fun book: Philipp… http://bit.ly/aAXXSX [...]