Re: Enlightenment

Any definition of the enlightenment, left or not, has got to put rationality 
at the center.  The enlightenment involves the belief that rationality 
applied systematically will bring progress.  'Left' and 'right' (actually 
left and  liberal--the right, until Hayek-Thatcher-Pinochet-Reagan pretty 
much let the center and the left have the idea of enlightenment for 
themselves) may disagree about how much equality is entailed in progress, or 
whether the market is rational or not, but if they believe in the 
enlightenment, they believe in rationality (and they all believed science was 
the only true form of rationality).  That's why the enlightenment socialists 
claimed to be 'scientific'--they had little use for any cultural tradition 
that didn't celebrate rationality, and often weren't particularly nice to 
those they ran into. I'm pretty tempted to say that all enlightenment 
thinkers also put the state at the center of rationality, although perhaps 
this is slightly more ambiguous. Minus rationality, one can find dozens of 
religions, radical uprisings, etc that had nice ethical beliefs worth 
repeating. So the central question is, is replacing God with rationality, as 
happened in the last two to three hundred years a good thing or not (if you 
believe it was not, by the way, that doesn't necessarilly mean one wishes to 
restore God--perhaps one wants nothing at the center, asserting a royal claim 
to 'the way')?  Warren wants to avoid evaluating things by claiming his 'left 
enlightenment' isn't responsible for anything.  By the same token, since 
Fransicans had better ideas than most Christians, we cannot say much of 
anything about the impact of Christianity, since the Fransicans were always 
pretty marginal.  Or he suggests that Russia was really a medieval country 
(so much for world systems analysis!).  'Scientifically', I think its also 
worth noting that states ain't what they used to be, and this is going to 
raise problems for left enlightenment types whether they like it or not.  
Minus the state, how does one attain the 'god's-eye view' necessary to 
rationally reorganize culture, society, economics, politics?  I believe 
Warren usually proposes a world state, but, without a thorough rethinking of 
the bases of action, this would undoubtedly result in cultural, human and 
environmental devastation that would dwarf the first wave of the 
enlightenment project.  

Steven Sherman