Me (dumb guy): There are thousands of books using Enlightenment to mean a period in time & thoughts of Kant, Hume, etc. You (smart guy): Let's ignore them and define Enlightenment to mean whatever arbitrary ideas Steven Pinker welds togetherhttps://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1004426458368897024 …
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Replying to @HeerJeet
Not a very fair dunk there, Jeet, because I don't say "let's ignore them", and I don't think Pinker is selecting his ideas arbitrarily. I don't think that's a fair characterization of what I wrote.
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Replying to @Noahpinion @HeerJeet
I think Pinker selects his ideas systematically rather than arbitrarily, and I also think that the Enlightenment as historical period is incredibly interesting and deserves the huge volume of scholarship it has received. So, no.
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Replying to @Noahpinion @HeerJeet
(((R 🎃r 👻n_St ☠️hl)))¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Retweeted (((R 🎃r 👻n_St ☠️hl)))¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This. People lived and should be judged in their era. Ideas by what they became.https://twitter.com/roran_stehl/status/1004368288082784256?s=21 …
(((R 🎃r 👻n_St ☠️hl)))¯\_(ツ)_/¯ added,
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Replying to @Roran_Stehl @Noahpinion
Ideas became many things including (as countless historians have shown & Jamelle fairly summurized) the ideology basis for ethnic cleansing, imperialism, slavery, & genocide. Why should we pretend that history didn't happen.
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Replying to @HeerJeet @Noahpinion
But these would have happened anyway. History was like this (racism, death and despair) before these ideas. They were just the tools at the time, as religions before. But they got us to free our minds from their context.
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Replying to @Roran_Stehl @Noahpinion
No dude, they didn't just inherit bad ideas from past. They invented new bad ideas which linger to this day. Did you actually read Jamelle's article?
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Replying to @HeerJeet @Noahpinion
I did. But as I explained they used their new way of thinking to justify their biases, just as scientists did with the scientific methods. If you read what I said I point that the limits of the Enlightenment were the people, not the ideas.
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No, it wasn't just a matter of justifying previous bias but making them much more systematic & oppressive than before, creating something that didn't previously exist.
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The enlightenment is the link between racial animus and institutionalized anti-blackness. Totally bizarre and ahistorical to say that the latter was inevitable because the former existed.
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