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.
5 replies 0 retweets 12 likes -
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.
2 replies 0 retweets 1 like
The idea that racism (as opposed to, say, xenophobia) is as natural as death & despair is deeply ahistorical & not justified by scholarship. Nor is it good to think systematization & institutionalization of racism "would have happened anyway."
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