1. David Brooks: "That belief, championed by John Locke, or a story we tell about Locke, paved the way for human equality, pluralism, democracy, capitalism...." I like that "a story we tell about Locke."https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/opinion/renaissance-right-gop.html …
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2. Brooks is not a stupid man. So he knows that the actual historical Locke believed in hedged rights for Catholics & atheists, denying land rights to Natives & slavery. So why uphold Locke as hero of universalism, etc. It's "a story we tell about Locke"
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3. People get strangely testy when I point out that "the Enlightenment" as celebrated by Brooks (and Pinker, Harris and, Jung help us all, Peterson) has nothing to do with the actual historical Enlightenment.
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4. But to critique popular myth making about "the Enlightenment" isn't to say Locke, Newton, Voltaire, Diderot & co. have no value. Rather, it's that deserve to be understand in full complexity & not as smooth pavement on the road to glorious us.
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5. As used by people like Brooks & Pinker "the Enlightenment" is a myth: a tribalist myth in fact since it involves covering up the history of those killed & dispossessed in the name of Enlightenment values. It's identity politics for elite centrists.
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6. What's also interesting about neo-Whig celebrations of Enlightenment is not just negative stuff that gets left out but also things like the anti-militarism of Adam Smith or the broader republican critique of luxury
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Replying to @HeerJeet
Also the belief in the perfectibility of man, which Pinker defines himself against in The Blank Slate.
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yeah, that somehow gets lost.
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