06.30.06
Reinventing the Enlightenment?
As readers of World History and The Eonic Effect will realize, reinventing the Enlightenment is easier said than done (See the section, Towards a New Enlightenment, in Chapter Four).
I think the Enlightenment wasn’t an invention, nor a consistent philosophical position. It represents a major turning point in history, and the possibility of a postmodern retrograde movement is certainly there.
What is it that one is trying to reinvent? Those who claim the Enlightenment understand it poorly.
We might be better off finding out what the original really was.
The challenge, then, is to create a new Enlightenment, not one that reflects only a single culture or tradition, but one that embraces multicultural patterns and mutually exclusive but valid ontologies; not one that assumes an increasingly unrealistic static stability, but one that internalizes constant dialog, change, and unpredictable evolution; not one that encourages reactionary fundamentalisms of any stripe, but one that demands authentic individuals and institutions. Such an Enlightenment arises from, but cannot be sought, in the past; it reflects, but must move beyond, obsolete and increasingly dysfunctional ideologies and wistful utopian fantasies. The choice is not, as some would have it, to deny the anthropogenic world that is already here, for that is simply moral cowardice in the face of challenge and complexity. Rather, it is to grow into our responsibilities, and to learn to be rational, ethical and authentic within a contingent and constantly evolving framework. In doing so, we reinvent yet again the vision of the human in a context undreamt of only a few hundred years ago by those who faced their own unknown, and at that time unprecedented, complexity. Perhaps, like them, we can grow ourselves to create a truly authentic world, and in our turn validate our promise as sentient beings.