Chapter 7, first 4 pages only (pp. 199-202
in 9th edition)
Review of Enlightenment and
the Roots of Counter-Enlightenment
Ideologies
Review: Main Premises of the Enlightenment
• Humanism – Belief in the emancipated individual as a
meaningful end in and of him or her self and as chief
agent of change.
• Universalism – Belief in principles that act as a universal
foundation for human identity.
• At a minimum, a universal capacity for reason,
empathy, self expression, basic human rights
• Rationalism – Individuals are capable of reason.
Epistemological observation and critical argument is the
basis for knowledge and understanding.
• Progress – Belief in progress and the ability of rational
agents to improve the world.
• Secularism – Separation between spheres (Degree varies from state to state)
– Religious Belief & Practice
– Constitutional Principles & Legal System
Enlightenment Thought (con’t)
– Includes:
• Socialism & Communism
– Marxism especially; recall Marx’s Theory of History and its emphasis on
inevitable progress
– Early Socialists reflect the Enlightenment Project even more strongly than
the Classical Liberals who founded it
• Liberalism
– Classical Liberalism - Founders of the Enlightenment
• Voltaire, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Ben
Franklin, Adam Smith, Denis Diderot, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, etc.
– Neo-Classical Liberalism & Welfare Liberalism also endorse Enlightenment
Project
• Traditional Conservatism
– Edmund Burke & Michael Oakeshott
– Although more skeptical on Progress and the power of Reason, they are
Enlightenment thinkers to be sure
Counter - Enlightenment Thought
– Rejection of the 17th Century Age of Scientific
Revolution (Bacon, DesCartes, Spinoza, Locke, etc.)
– Rejection of the 18th Century Enlightenment
• Rejection of Humanism, Rationalism, Progressivism,
Universalism, & Secularism
• Rejection of Modernity
– Views the Power of Abstract Reason and Rationality as “Uprooting” &
“Disorienting”
• Manifests today as “Modern Reaction Against Modernity”
The Counter-Enlightenment (con’t)
• Emerged in the late 1700s
– Joseph de Maistre’s Reactionary Conservatism (Our Reading
was from 1797)
– Gottfried von Herder (language, culture, nation) (late 1700s)
– Arthur de Gobineau’s Racial Theories (mid 1800s)
• Led to Fascism, Racism, Nazism, & eventually Neo-Fascism &
Radical Religious Rejections of Modernity. 20th Century Examples:
• 1920s-40s: Italian Fascism under Benito Mussolini
• 1930s: Francisco Francos Spain, Nazism
• Post World War II:
– Neo-fascist movements, Racist, & anti-Semitic movements
– Anti-immigrant & Skinhead movements
• Radical Political Islam
– Sayyid Qutb, founder of Muslim Brotherhood in 1950s
– al-Qaeda in late 20th Century; Islamic State (Daesh) in 21st Century