4. And Jonah Goldberg is heir to National Review conservatism, a tradition whose leading intellectual lights (Burnham, Chambers, various Straussians) were decidedly outside the Enlightenment.
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5. Whittaker Chambers (a huge figure in National Review's history) once suggested Enlightenment was like the apple that Satan got Adam & Eve to eat.
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6. Pinker has more right to claim an Enlightenment linage but his critique of Blank Slate-ism sits uneasily with his echoes of Enlightenment ideas of perfectibility.pic.twitter.com/UwaaQKyYC8
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7. Which is all to say that the current enthusiasts of the Enlightenment are (like the rest of us!) not really 18th century thinkers but engaged in a complex with past. The problem is they want to claim full ownership of a what is in fact public domain thought.
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7. Which is all to say that the current enthusiasts of the Enlightenment are (like the rest of us!) not really 18th century thinkers but engaged in a complex dialogue with past. The problem is they want to claim full ownership of a what is in fact public domain thought
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8. Why claim the Enlightenment when you are really in complex argument with it? Because you see the Enlightenment not as a complex historical phenomenon but rather as a brand. "We're Team Enlightenment," the argument goes. "You are Team Tribalist."
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9. Team Enlightenment is interesting as a branding exercise. But let's not confuse it with intellectual history.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
Is anyone doing so? Or is need to pretend u don't know what people who say today they support enlightenment values mean equivalent to insisting "Wait you support the Democrat Party&yr not a racist? Didn't you KNOW the Dem Party supported slavery and was against civil rights?"
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Replying to @brianmdoherty
These people aren't just saying they support Enlightenment values but also that those values are purely good (i.e. David Brooks crediting Locke as father of "human equality, pluralism, democracy"
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Replying to @HeerJeet
Conversations like this breed bad faith and make us treat each other like fools. I should not need to point out to you the MANY statements in Locke that support such a notion, and it is THAT that modern pro-enlightenment people stand up for. This is all bad faith pedantry.
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I just don't think it's good history to speak of Locke as father of "human equality" without acknowledging the many contractions. Nor would I speak of, say, Democratic Party of Woodrow Wilson without acknowledging racism, authoritarianism, etc.
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