Final Notes on Enlightenment vs. Romantic

Early on in this series I made some note about the epistemological state of our present culture, comparing it to the epistemological state of the early Enlightenment - the optimistic phase, when light and reason and science were about to triumph over all the ills of man. The new tools in the toolbox - scientific reasoning and logical problem solving - were extraordinarily useful and obviously successful. One need only look at the scientific record to see this. And political reform, especially outside of France, was equally exciting.

What I would try to expose is the overreaching and the arrogance that infected the early French Enlightenment - perhaps the inevitable consequence of frail men handling such powerful tools. I am making these notes because I think we are in a similar situation.

Comparisons

For the Enlightenment thinker, Truth was, and could only be, a product of the rational process. For the computer savvy twentysomething today, Truth is what the computers tell us.

For the Enlightenment philosopher the rituals of precision occurred when he measured the natural universe. Careful observation and improving instruments of measurement were how his understanding would advance. For the computer dependent today, the ritual of precision occurs when interconnecting with the existing computer universe.

For Enlightenment man the prerequisite for a reliable rational process was
a candid state. For our computer dependent it is, whether he realizes it or not, purified silicon oxide, from which constant semiconductor platforms are built. This requirement may express itself commonly as the consumer impulse for fast, reliable hardware - but the instinct for unimpaired processing is the same.

First principles for the Enlightenment philosopher were instinctively absolute - the legacy of judeo-christian and classical thought. But a significant shift was occurring: the primacy of revelation was ending, and in its place men laid a foundation of natural law. The modern mind admits no absolutes, but cannot create a stable society from random values. The momentary concensus of influential players becomes a sort of utilitarian law, and provides the instinctive starting point for the practical modern philosopher.

Data, for the Enlightenment idealist, were defined points of the material universe - carefully measured and confirmed by his most sensitive means. Now data are whatever is on the web. If it is not represented in binary code it doesn't exist - and if it is represented electronically, that caricature becomes the reality rather than the representation.

For the Enlightenment thinker data was analyzed in a specific process: deductive reasoning. The analyst today uses whatever software is popular and affordable, or resorts to cloud processing. In either case the logic of the program determines the result.

For the Enlightenment philosopher the epistemological product of all his careful work was self evident truth. Modern man hits ENTER and gets something which is popular truth - immediate, modestly authoritarian, and incontestable - isolated from historically valid methods and sources of critique.

Conlusion

As in eighteenth century France, the individual today is losing his place. An informative and analytical process - undeniably useful and unprecedented in power - now looms over the individual with massive and irresistible presence. Here is Voltaire's 'bloodless thinker' grossly enlarged; omnipresent, authoritative and ruthlessly efficient. The individual feels his soul displaced and his life divested of the very things that gave meaning to virtue, honor, and happiness. And to the extent that popular truth takes authoritative form, he knows the loss of his liberty.

How does the individual push back?

We will take our lessons from those who pushed back before. Those who became the 'measured, well-crafted No' that I wrote of earlier. The Romantics. We behave courteously. We respect societal conventions as much as we may. We invite the muses to inhabit our dissent. We live, and grow, in the Light, and we stay in the Light. And thus informed, clothed in this tattered human form, we protest.

We are the Neo-romantic.