Counter-Enlightenment
03 Oct 2004 12:17
See also: Artistic Modernism; Decadence; the Enlightenment; Modernity; Postmodernism; the Right; Romanticism; Totalitarianism
- Recommended:
- Isaiah Berlin, "The Counter-Enlightenment" [An essay reprinted in several of his collections; one version is online as part of the Dictionary of the History of Ideas]
- Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies [A good essay, and nice at showing how common counter-Enlightenment themes are and have been. They suggest that it's a kind of response to the process of modernization, which is very plausible, and reminiscent of Gellner's remark that the French philosophes were, themselves, the first modernizing intellectuals, concerned about the comparative under-development of their society. However, this book is quite weak on actual analysis, and it's often not clear if they're implying, e.g., causal, historical connections between the different movements they discuss, or merely parallel adaptations to similar environments, or what. For that matter, it's not at all clear how one would even establish, in a reliable way, an association between this kind of thinking and modernization, both terms being more than a little vague.]
- Don Herzog, Poisoning the Minds of the Lower Orders [This might be summarized as "The birth of conservatism out of the spirit of contempt."]
- Stephen Holmes, The Anatomy of Anti-Liberalism [Intellectual history and critique; excellent.]
- Stephen Wolin, The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism [See especially the introduction, "Answer to the Question: What Is Counter-Enlightenment?"]
- To read:
- Isaiah Berlin [Important, on this subject, but I find his style
incredibly off-putting, for reasons I have never been able to put my finger on]
- The Crooked Timber of Humanity
- Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamannm, Herder
- Owen Bradley, A Modern Maistre: The Social and Political Thought of Joseph de Maistre
- Darrin McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity
- Jan-Werner Mueller, A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought
- Zeev Sternehll, The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition
