The Enlightenment period really had quite an effect on the world that is still felt today. Some may think it’s good and others may think it’s bad. I would say that it’s been good, on the whole. I think that it has affected people through both politics and scientific fields, to be sure.
Not that I think that it was all so good, there were some flaws. Perhaps setting up Reason as a sort of idol, though this certainly was not the intention, may have altered the notion that Reason is a tool more than a source of goodness (or of badness, for that matter).
We may be the heirs—and bankrupt heirs—of the Enlightenment. Looking at the current climate today with so much pseudo-science and proto-logical thinking being used by people to manipulate others, I wonder if the Enlightenment was just a blip on the screen of human history?
Sapere
aude! (“Dare to reason!”)
One good
thing of the Enlightenment was the evening out of the playing field of human
beings. That is, those in the movement
really believed that all human beings at any time were capable of using reason
to lift themselves out of their predicament.
This may have been too naive simply because human beings are as much
emotional as rational. In my view, it
can be faulted more for its optimism than for its failure.
To state that variant ideas and cultural customs are more idiosyncratic than inherent is quite a radical approach to anthropology. If true, this would mean that people can cooperate and do things without much conflict.
Today, I think that we have to be careful about imposing our world-view on others (and, ironically, this means an Enlightenment attitude to the world), but seeing people as rational individuals capable of doing things together—I would think this is a positive feature of Enlightenment thinking.
