more on enlightenment, a response to joe
I very much want to get back to the discussion on the Enlightenment and ideology taking place between Thomas and Joe.
Quite awhile back, Joe asked me the following questions: "isn't the anguish that accompanies not knowing, and the associated awareness of one's ignorance, a drive to knowledge? [ . . .] Aren't religious fabrications - with their illegitimate status of truth - a hindrance to knowledge? Will they not lead people to avoid questions and anticipate unfounded answers?"
In a comment prior to this, Joe described religion as "a factor of irrationality which tends to shun rational objections" and I asked whether the source of this dynamic is "really religious belief per se [or rather] a kind of primordial coercion".
First, I do agree that the anguish that accompanies not knowing can be a drive to knowledge. But I can also imagine religious forms of not knowing that drive a spiritual quest. The quest that I'm picturing, however, doesn't concern immediately empirical knowledge but rather questions about, say, the "meaning of being". (E.g., my anguish of not knowing what it means to "love my neighbor" drives me to devote my life or a part of my life to helping the poor).
Second, part of what I meant by a more primordial subjugation underlying religious subjugation is that "a factor of irrationality which tends to shun rational objections" doesn't operate solely within religious contexts. It seems to me every ideology, religious or not, forces discourse to adhere certain irrational and allegedly unobjectionable assertion (i.e., "we're right, even if the facts say otherwise"), and that the Enlightenment is about more than freeing our thought from superstition -- it's about freeing our thought from any kind of ideological subjugation whatsoever.
3 Comments:
This is a good way of refocusing the discussion, Jay. Thanks. My questions are: Do you think there is a difference between having prejudices and being subject to ideology? Is is possible to make a judgment without having prejudices? Do you think the very having of prejudices is what "freeing thought" is supposed to free us from? Or do you think, as I do, that the free thought is simply one that takes into consideration the unthought one is bound to take into all of one's thinking? As always, all ears.
Great questions, Thomas. Thanks very much. I'm working on a response but have been a bit distracted over the past few days. Will try to post something in the next day or so . . .
I certainly agree on the fact that any idea of orthodoxy in general (not just the religious one) may vitiate proper reasoning, form resistance to change or create blurring screens when analysing facts. Just like I agree on the fact that Enlightenment should be "about freeing our thought from any kind of ideological subjugation". This is actually what I was trying to say all along.
But one of the differences in views emerged so far appeared to regarded the fact of considering Enlightenment an ideology. One could concede that the best investigating intentions could incur in some fallacies, but this does not entail that the very simple necessity of relying on verifiable statements is per se an ideology.
Thomas asks a question: "Do you think there is a difference between having prejudices and being subject to ideology?". I think if one considers himself subject to an orthodoxy there is indeed a risk of prejudice. If the relationship with a set of values becomes similar to, say, that of the devout to his church. But the fact of requiring proper reasoning and verifiable statements, the openness and non-dogmatic nature of the scientific method (open to challenge) is in itself a remedy against such a risk.
At the antipodes, religions propose views that claim to draw their founding principles on a set of unverified facts. The acceptance of this type of 'mindset' is surely a factor of irrationality, it reinforces and encourages 'magical thinking', superstition, prejudice, arbitrariness, to an extent that is not remotely comparable to Enlightenment, if even it hypothetically incurred in the risk of dull ideology.
I think this distinction should be made very clearly, especially when we see signs of behaviours in which people claim to draw 'authority' from religious arguments, even in the plane of social policies or international affairs.
P.S.: just a quick reply on the last post of Thomas in the other thread. I am not sure why he asked those questions regarding fashion etc. However they are interesting in that if analysed with a 'secular' view, they simply reveal a cultural origin, with the relevant amounts of arbitrariness and contingency. If analysed with the 'religious lens' they suddenly appear overcharged with claims of 'divine designs or God's will' or the like. Which is a way to subjugate people and reinforce power and traditions through fear. In other words, religion camouflages the contingency of mere cultural, and relative, habits and customs with a cloth of alleged divine will.
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