Thomas de Zengotita, Common Ground : Finding our way back to the enlightenment
Nice piece, Win. Next time I'm at Barnes & Nobles I'll pick the issue off the magazine rack and read it carefully. I skimmed it now.
My reaction is that it's more than a little windy, while very well written. I gather the central argument is that post-modernist thought rejects the enlightenment and thus rejects our common humanity. But this author wishes to make a plea to respect both--identity politics (now equated with post-modernist thought)--and enlightenment thought.
I've read a lot of stuff that suggests that post modernism essentially amounts to a rejection of the enlightenment. I don't share that view. But then my post modernist roots are in Rorty, not in Foucault. I've never seen Rorty write directly to this point, but my guess is he would argue something like the following. Yes, I reject the Enlightenment in so far as it insists on a timeless, transcultural set of ideals as first principles. But no I don't reject the Englightenment in the sense that the term is often a handy package for a set of values that I value, that seem to me to be better than a lot of other values that are thrown around. And, if one would like to argue the question, I would love to have a discussion. But I can't assert that mine are, in principle, better because, like you, I don't have a pipeline to the truth.
That's just repeating the rendition of Rorty I typed to Bill and Nadine. But it's the very core of his thought, at least so far as I'm concerned. Up with the Enlightenment; down with moral absolutists. Or some such. |
