Postmodernism and Enlightenment, or, Why Not a Fascist Aesthetics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4386962 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Larry L Langford (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1992 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 24 |
| Publication date | 1992-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | SubStance (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0049-2426 • E-ISSN: 1527-2095 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.2307/3685345 |
| OpenAlex | W2323196593 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 6 |
utopianism that makes it easier to understand the enduring strength of the Enlightenment and the status of empirical science as one of its dominant paradigms. Kant's judgment that the Enlightenment marked humanity's release from a state of immaturity illustrates a pervasive attitude within it that Peter Gay calls the recovery of nerve (II, 5), by which he means the attempt to regain control over both fate and the environment by making reason the ruler in human affairs. Though the Enlightenment's obvious technological efficiency largely accounts for its triumph, we must remember that this triumph is also due to the innocence of empiricism, which offers authoritative explanations of cause and effect without ever raising the issue of moral responsibility, and unabashedly identifies the process of categorization with the understanding of first principles. Empiricism enables us to discover, explain, and describe the world in which we live; but because it does not equate the act of perception with the act of creation, it also enables us to remain largely unaccountable for the configuration of truth and reality. In empiricism, that which is true and real has a materiality which cannot reasonably be denied. Also responsible for this triumph, however, are the political and philosophical implications of empiricism. In adopting reason and empirical science as its principal weapons in the struggle against political and intellectual authority, the Enlightenment found it necessary to adopt such concomitant values as freedom, toleration, and unfettered critical inquiry in order to further not only the expansion of knowledge, but to guarantee its democratic ideals. To question the innocence of empirical science, therefore, is to question the Enlightenment's commitment to these values and thus to threaten its utopian potential. In fact, the Enlightenment's commit
Aesthetics · Empiricism · Enlightenment · Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Postmodernism · Sociology · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy, Science, and History
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |