Darkened Enlightenment

The Deterioration of Democracy, Human Rights, and Rational Thought in the Twenty-First Century

Tim Delaney

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000071603
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 21st Century History
• Index: History

The premise of Darkened Enlightenment is to highlight the fact that there currently exist a number of socio-political forces that have the design, or ultimate consequence, of trying to extinguish the light of reason and rationality.

The book presents a critique of modernity and provides a socio-political and cultural analysis of world society in the early twenty-first century. Specifically, this analysis examines the deterioration of democracy, human rights, and rational thought. Key features include a combination of academic analysis that draws on numerous and specific examples of the growing darkness that surrounds us along with a balanced practical, everyday-life approach to the study of the socio-political world we live in through the use of popular culture references and featured boxes.

The general audience will also be intrigued by these same topics that concern academics including: a discussion on the meaning of "fake news"; attacks on the media and a declaration of the news media as the "enemy of the people"; the rise of populism and nationalism around the world; the deterioration of freedom and human rights globally; the growing economic disparity between the rich and the poor; attempts to devalue education; a growing disbelief in science; attacks on the environment; pseudoscience as a by-product of unreasoned and irrational thinking; the political swamp; the power elites and the deep state; and the variations of Big Business that impact our daily lives. This book will make a great contribution to such fields as sociology, philosophy, political science, environmental science, public administration, economics, psychology, and cultural studies.

1

ENLIGHTENED RATIONAL THOUGHT

Introduction

Enlightened rational thinking evolved into a paradigm of thought following the emergence of the Enlightenment era. “The Enlightenment,” also known as the “Age of Reason,” is a collective term used to describe the politics, philosophy, and growth in science, social trends, and writings in Europe and the American colonies during the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Spearheaded by the liberal sentiments of liberty, equality, and brotherhood, and the thoughts of many enlightened European and American social thinkers (i.e., Charles de Montesquieu, Francois-Marie Arouet (Voltaire), Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson), the Enlightenment spirited a movement of social reasoning. The “enlightenment” metaphor was frequently employed by writers of this period as they were convinced that they were emerging from centuries of darkness and ignorance (as a result of the paradigms of thought of tradition and faith) into a new age of enlightenment by means of reason, science, and respect for humanity (Delaney 2019). The Enlightenment was a period of dramatic intellectual development and change in philosophical thought as a number of long-standing ideas and beliefs were being abandoned and replaced by new ideas that were influenced by science, reason, and the utilization of empirical research.

Enlightened thinkers argued that since the natural world could now be explained by science and reason, so too should the principles of rationality and reason be applied to the social world (Ritzer and Stepnisky 2018). Geoffrey Clive (1973) argued that the “Enlightenment consolidated the scientific breakthroughs of the great seventeenth-century thinkers by applying their method to the problems of society” (p. 23). He further presented the idea that the application of science and reason paved the way for the French Revolution of 1789. Indeed, the traditional system of feudalism had been metaphorically dismantled piece by piece during the rise of enlightened rational thought.

Antecedents to the Enlightenment

Most of human history played witness to the dominance of the paradigms of thought of tradition and faith. These forces shaped how social order should be structured. In a number of instances, these two forces worked symbiotically via such a doctrine as the “divine rights of kings.” Elements of enlightened rational thought (e.g., discovery and explanation, innovation and invention, and theoretical speculation) had emerged from time to time over millennia and in a variety of geographic locations but in many cases, such discoveries represented practical improvements in technique and were less often a result of intellectual curiosity. Among the key antecedents of the Enlightenment are the Renaissance (c.1300–1600) and the Scientific Revolution (c.1600–1700).

The Renaissance (c.1300–1600)

The Renaissance is a period of time in European history that falls in between the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment. There is debate among scholars who have studied the Renaissance as to its exact time frame. As explained by Ernst Cassirer (1951), Jean le Rond d’Alembert’s essay on the Elements of Philosophy describes the beginning of the Renaissance as the middle of the fifteenth century, with the Reformation reaching its climax in the middle of the sixteenth century. William Caferro (2011) describes how J.R. Hale wrote in Renaissance Europe (1971) that the Renaissance took place during the limited period of 1480–1520 but, at the end of his career (in The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance), argued that the Renaissance actually spanned from 1450 to 1620—in essence, the “long” sixteenth century. As another example, Caferro (2011) explains that Wallace Ferguson first advocated that the Renaissance took place from 1300 to 1600 but later changed his mind to state that it took place from 1300 to 1520—with the terminal date corresponding to the deaths of Leonardo da Vinci (1519) and Raphael (1520) and the condemnation of Martin Luther (1521). Caferro further explains that

Some scholars divide the Renaissance into stages or generations. They use rubrics “early, high, and late,” the same employed by medievalists for their period. The stages represent degrees of penetration and diffusion of the movement. Petrarch, an early figure, is emblematic of a “limited,” early Renaissance that involved few participants. Leonardo da Vinci (d. 1520) is representative of the “high” Renaissance, now a pervasive phenomenon most evident in terms of artistic developments.

(p. 24)

Paul Oskar Kristeller (1951) puts forth the notion that the Renaissance was a period of Western European history that extends approximately from 1300 to 1600, although also makes the point that it was not the case that there was a specific event in 1300 or 1600 that represents a clear beginning and ending point, respectively. Kristeller offers a good explanation as to why there is such debate among scholars as to the exact time frame of the Renaissance—it was because of regional and social differences in the various European locales. For example, Kristeller states that there were cultural differences between Italy and Northern Europe that led to Italy’s Renaissance being earlier than that of France. Adding to this explanation offered by Kristeller, Caferro (2011) states that a number of variables go into determining the labeling of Renaissance periods. For example, “The early Renaissance represented a period of ‘hope’: the late Renaissance an era of ‘anxiety’ ” (p. 24). Peter Burke (1964) adds, “In the sixteenth century, the idea of the Renaissance was developed in several ways. It was divided into periods by Vasari; applied to music by Galilei, and to medicine by Vesalius; and extended to include printing, gunpowder, and voyages of discovery by Rabelais and Fernel” (p. 4).

One thing scholars seem to agree on is the fact that the Renaissance followed the Middle Ages (the period in European history from the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century ce to the time of the Renaissance). Burke (1964) proclaims that the people living in the Middle Ages never knew they were the Middle Ages, but that the people in the Renaissance era did in fact know they were experiencing the Renaissance. As with Caferro, Burke describes Francis (Francesco) Petrarch (1304–1374) as a (the) early beginning point of describing the Renaissance.

Christian writers had often divided history into two periods; an age of darkness and paganism, followed by an age of light and Christianity. Petrarch took over these terms but applied them differently; for him, it was the period before conversion of Constantine, the aetas antiqua, which was the age of light; and the aetas nova, the modern age which succeeded it, which was the age of darkness.

(Burke 1964:2)

Johnson (2000) disagrees with Burke that those in the Renaissance were aware of this term.

Needless to say, it is not those who actually live through the period who coin the term, but later, often much later, writers.… The term “Renaissance” was first prominently used by the French historian Jules Michelet in 1858.… The usage stuck because it turned out to be a convenient way of describing the period of transition between the medieval epoch, when Europe was “Christendom,” and the beginning of the modern age.

(p. 3)

Johnson also chronicles the beginning of Renaissance sculpture to the Italian Nicola Pisano, who lived approximately between 1220 and 1284 ce.

As Petrarch’s name has been referenced twice already, it should be pointed out that Francis Petrarch is actually the Anglicized version of Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374). Petrarch was a Latin and Greek scholar and Italian poet whose poems influenced “much of Elizabethan lyric poetry, and Shakespeare’s sonnets could not exist without Petrarch’s previous sonnets and canzone” (Harvard University 2019). Petrarch’s sonnets were admired throughout Europe during the Renaissance era. He was also among the earliest proponents of Renaissance humanism (to be discussed later in this chapter). Petrarch’s interest in recovering and studying Latin writings and historical accounts helped to spark the Renaissance in Italy.

At the height of the Italian Renaissance, Florence-born Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527), a political philosopher, statesman, and secretary of the Florentine Republic, published his most famous works, The Prince and the Discourse on Livy, in which he laid out his political ideas. There was much turmoil in Italy during Machiavelli’s lifetime. He was born in Florence during the Medici regime but this government was defeated during France and Spain’s 1494 invasion of Italy. It was at this time that Machiavelli became a member of the Florentine government. His role with the government placed him in charge of the Republic’s foreign affairs in subject territories. Machiavelli attempted to create the perfect system of government in Florence and restore the city to the position it had held in Tuscany prior to the French invasion (Schwoebel 1971). In 1512 the Florentine Republic was overthrown and the gonfalonier deposed by a Spanish army that Julius II had enlisted into his Holy League. (In the medieval Italian city-states, gonfalonier— “standard bearer”—was the title given to high civic magistrates, who generally were the commanders of the people’s militia.) The Medici family returned to rule Florence, and Machiavelli, suspected of conspiracy, was imprisoned, tortured, and sent into exile in 1513 to his father’s small property south of Florence. There, he wrote his two major works, both of which were published after his death (Mansfield 2019).

In The Prince (1513), Machiavelli

believed that he was providing a scientific analysis of the practice of government based on experience and on the study of the past. He went beyond events and analyzed the characteristic behavior of men and institutions. His conclusions were stark and shocking. He said in effect that the way things had gone in Italy constitute political reality. And he went on to prescribe what the rulers of Florence must do in order to survive and prosper within that reality.

(Schwoebel 1971:xvii)

To truly understand the nature of politics, Machiavelli believed, it would be necessary to examine and grasp the underlying motives of behavior. He concluded that men and states were equally aggressive, ambitious, and grasping. Change, disorder, and struggle were facts of life. The ruler of a republic would have to be able to control such social forces that directly affected the success of his plans. Until the Renaissance, most books upheld general notions of normative behavior, were non-empirical, and did not observe, describe, or analyze actual human behavior. The Prince shocked its readers and was widely censored and banned.

At nearly the same time as Machiavelli was shocking the establishment with his political discourse in The Prince, Martin Luther (1497–1546) was challenging the Catholic Church and its assertion that the only true interpretation of the Bible should come from the religious leaders. As a proponent of mass education, Luther believed that it was the right, even duty, of all Christians to interpret the Bible for themselves. In 1517, Luther publicly challenged the Catholic Church by nailing his 95 Theses to the door of the cathedral in Wittenberg, Germany, lighting the fires of the Reformation and Protestantism.

In addition to the open proclamation and challenge of the existing social order among a select number of Renaissance thinkers, there were also a few significant contributors to the scientific community during the Renaissance era, including Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543). Copernicus proposed that the planets, including the Earth, revolved around the Sun, instead of the universally held belief that the Earth was the center of the universe (Redd 2018). It would take other astronomers to build upon Copernicus’ work and prove that our planet was indeed just one of many planets to orbit the Sun and just one star in a vast cosmos of infinite others. However, as Edward Rosen (1971) explains,

Before Copernicus, it [the Earth] was almost universally considered not to be a heavenly body. The earth was placed in a category apart from the heavenly bodies. This disjunction divided the universe into two separate layers. The planets and countless stars dotted the heavenly region. Far below it lay the subcelestial zone of the earth, on which we spend our lives, miserable or happy.

(pp. 96–97)

Copernicus would suffer the same fate as most other brilliant thinkers in the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the Modern eras who dared to speak the truth against long-held ignorant beliefs—being mocked and questioned and having to find others smart enough to verify his factual knowledge.

Scientific discovery would not be the central achievement of the Renaissance era. Instead, the key intellectual aspect of the Renaissance is humanism. Once again, however, scholars and historians seem to disagree as to its true meaning. (Still today there is much debate as to the actual meaning of the term “humanism” as almost any kind of discourse regarding human values is called “humanistic.”)

Humanism has long stood at the core of the Renaissance debate. Scholars have viewed it not only as an individual prime mover, but as a unifying feature by which the Renaissance was transmitted, received and transformed into a pan-European phenomenon.… But if humanism was a critical component of the Renaissance, its precise nature has been the source of much disagreement.

(Caferro 2011:98)

Schwoebel (1971), for example, describes the importance of humanism during the English Renaissance period and credits the “spread of the new culture” of humanism to Thomas More (1478–1535), describing him as “one of its leading lights” (p. xv). Saint Thomas More’s most famous publication, Utopia (1516), was a work of fiction primarily depicting an island on which social and political customs were entirely governed by reason. More used Utopia to point out that European society of his era was driven by self-interest and greed, and not reason (Delaney 2016).

As Kristeller explains, to understand the role of classical studies in the Renaissance, we must acknowledge the character of humanism.

The most characteristic and most pervasive aspect of the Italian Renaissance in the field of learning is the humanistic movement. I need hardly to say that the term “humanism,” when applied to the Italian Renaissance, does not imply all the vague and confused notions that are now commonly associated with it. Only a few traces of these may be found in the Renaissance. By humanism we mean merely the general tendency of the age to attach the greatest importance to classical studies, and to consider classical antiquity as the common standard and model by which to guide all cultural activities.

(Kristeller 1951:95)

The true meaning of humanism during the Renaissance period is directly connected to Petrarch, who is generally considered the founder of humanism. The humanistic movement of early Italian humanism is centered on intellectual, philosophical, and cultural aspects of study designed to restore classical intellectual values (known today as the “humanities”). Renaissance humanism did not abandon religious thought but, rather, attempted to find a balance between religious and secular thought. As the “Father of Humanism,” Petrarch’s writings include well-known odes to Laura, his idealized love. His writings were also used to shape the modern Italian language (Biography.com 2019a).

Beginning with Petrarch and other early Renaissance social thinkers, the concept of “humanism” was really articulated by the term humanista.

The term humanista, coined at the height of the Renaissance period, was in turn derived from an older term, that is, from the “humanities” or studia humanitatis. This term was apparently used in the general sense of liberal or literary education by such ancient Roman authors as Cicero and Gellius, and this was resumed by the Italian scholars of the late fourteenth century.

(Kristeller 1951:9)

Humanism in this context, then, refers to the study of classical literature (i.e., Latin and Greek) and values liberal education; it emphasizes the importance and central role of the classics in the curriculum. “Thus, Renaissance humanism was … a cultural and educational program which emphasized and developed an important but limited area of studies” (Kristeller 1951:10).

Charles G. Nauert (1995) describes studia humanitatis as an implied broad general education, but one with a strong emphasis on the oratorical skills and the social attitudes most needed by a ruling elite: grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history (largely dealing with politics), and moral philosophy (which included the issue of political obligation). Nauert credits Petrarch for making humanistic education a popular ideal. However, Nauert also points out that the humanistic program of education proposed by Petrarch wo...