Critique of the Enlightenment

Modernity and technology are closely related to each other. When modernization began in the middle of the 18th century it was followed almost immediately and in the closest way by the rapid development of technical development. The movement of modernity profoundly transformed all segments of experiential reality. It transformed politics, religion, and philosophy, among other things. It also changed many
of the basic conditions of society. However, nowhere, in any field of human activities, did it result in such profound changes as in the general way of life of man, which previously existed in man;s specific and close dependence on nature, regardless of worldview, religion or ideology. The drive for self-mastery has had immense and often unintended consequences. In this paper I intend to show some of the ;inevitable consequences of modernity's technical hubris and the shortcomings of techno-utopianist’s „pervasive technology” from a
decidedly conservative point of view. I would also like to argue that the luddite; or machine-destroying attitude towardstechnology is not the primary objective of the conservative, That is, maintenance of a purely instrumental relationship with technology, reducing it back to technique, while preserving one’s inner spiritual and mental integrity.

This paper explores subjective processes of "Agents of Law" - individuals who the state grants the authority to use violence - and the dissonance stemming from the contradictory demands posed on them as legitimate users of violence despite the societal taboo against violence. A conceptual model will be offered based on two theoretical legs, Lacanian psychoanalysis and political theories of legitimacy. Specifically, psychoanalytic ideas would serve to examine unconscious processes, subject position and various identifications related to the question of "self-legitimacy" of Agents of Law. A central link between psychoanalysis and political thought is found in the image of the father and in the triad ruler-God-Father, which calls for an oedipal analysis. A psychoanalytic reading of two philosophical schools that elaborated on the question of legitimacy will be presented, and yield two analytic poles of a model for the understanding of possible subject positions of a...

Die Schrift Adornos 1 und Horkheimers über die sogenannte Dialektik der Aufklärung ist ein etwas seltsamer Klassiker, 2 denn für eine philosophische Schrift fehlt es ihr an Systematik. Doch hat der essayistische Text eine er-staunliche, bis heute weiter fortdauernde Wirkung, auch wenn sich diese manchmal vielleicht nur an bekannten Schlagworten und Grundbegriffen orientiert (Kulturindustrie, Aufklärung als Massenbetrug, Aufklärung ist totali-tär, wahr ist nur die Übertreibung etc.). So oder so erscheint es sinnvoll, den Text wie im vorliegenden Band 3 einmal aus philosophiehistorischer Sicht abzuklopfen. Das geht nicht immer gut aus für die Dialektik der Aufklä-rung. Denn dadurch, daß Adorno und Horkheimer Begriffe wie Aufklärung, Mythos, Positivismus etc. in einer spezifischen, teils polemischen Färbung benutzen, werden bestimmte Zusammenhänge suggeriert, die sich an den Quellen oder auch an bestimmten philosophischen Strömungen wie dem logischen Positivismus so nicht hinreichend zeigen lassen. Es kann konstatiert werden, daß der vorliegende Band von Sonja Lavaert und Winfried Schröder, der auf eine Marburger Tagung von 2016 zurück-geht, einen sehr nützlichen und anregenden Beitrag zur kritischen Diskussi-on des Textes von Adorno und Horkheimer bietet. Denn er beleuchtet sy

Is it possible to be ‘irrational’ without being ‘uneconomic’? What is the link between ‘Value’ and ‘values’? What do economists do when they ‘explain’? We live in times when the economic logic has become unquestionable and all-powerful so that our quotidian economic experiences are defined by their scientific construal. This book is the result of a multifaceted investigation into the nature of knowledge produced by economics, and the construction of the category that is termed ‘economic’ with its implied exclusions. It is an attempt to think economics Otherwise, that is, a questioning of economics as if difference mattered.
Nitasha Kaul re-examines certain understood ways of thinking about economics as a discipline, especially in relation to questions of identity and difference. This book explores the notion that economics is not a timeless, universal, objective science but a changing response to the problems of knowledge and administration. The epistemological inheritance of economics is ‘rooted’ in the enlightenment, and it also inherits the liberal paradoxes of that age. Kaul argues that the juxtaposition of identity with economic (culture/economy) is essential, and can only be achieved by critiquing establishment economists’ discourse on identity, and taking feminist poststructural and postcolonial work seriously. The author challenges the assumption that there is a simple linkage between the category economic, the entity economy and the study of economics. She envisions an economics in the plural: contextual, social, political – econo-mixes.
This book brings together some of the most urgent topics of the day – the power of economics as a discipline, the questions of difference and the politics of identity, and feminist perspectives on this. It will be particularly relevant to heterodox economists, feminist theorists, postcolonial studies scholars, social and cultural theorists, philosophers and history of ideas or intellectual history of thought scholars.

This paper explores subjective processes of "Agents of Law" – individuals who the state grants the authority to use violence – and the dissonance stemming from the contradictory demands posed on them as legitimate users of violence despite the societal taboo against violence. A conceptual model will be offered based on two theoretical legs, Lacanian psychoanalysis and political theories of legitimacy. Specifically, psychoanalytic ideas would serve to examine unconscious processes, subject position and various identifications related to the question of “self-legitimacy” of Agents of Law. A central link between psychoanalysis and political thought is found in the image of the father and in the triad ruler-God-Father, which calls for an oedipal analysis. A psychoanalytic reading of two philosophical schools that elaborated on the question of legitimacy will be presented, and yield two analytic poles of a model for the understanding of possible subject positions of agents of Law: identification with a "Living Father" vs. identification with a "Dead Father".  The psychoanalytic reading will shed light on the limitations of the philosophical perspectives in reflecting on the various (im)possible psychological positions of agents of Law. Finally, then, it will be shown how psychoanalysis helps finding words to characterize different nuances in the coping of agents of Law with the contradictory demands posed on them in an age in which God is dead, the father was murdered and the king was beheaded.

In Another Philosophy of History, J.G. Herder claims that his aim is not to compare and judge different cultures, but merely to describe and explain how each came into being and thus to adopt the standpoint of an impartial observer. I argue, however, that there is a tension between Herder's understanding of his own project—his stated doctrine of historicism and cultural relativism—and the way in which it is actually put into practice. That is, despite Herder's stated aims, he is nevertheless unable to avoid justifying premodern forms of life and making context-transcending evaluative judgments in the process of trying to understand cultures on their own terms and holding them up as exemplars vis à vis the Enlightenment. This tension presents the challenge of accounting for it in the most charitable and illuminating way. I argue that this goal can be achieved by appealing to the resources of the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, which enables us to disclose two enabling conditions for Herder's project of which he was not explicitly aware, viz., the internal connection between understanding and justification and the enabling character of prejudice as the condition for the possibility of understanding as such. In Another Philosophy of History, J.G. Herder develops a distinctive methodology for historical inquiry that poses a challenge to his Enlightenment contemporaries on the grounds that their methods radically distort and, as a result, fail to genuinely understand and learn from premodern cultures and civilizations. Against the assumptions of cultural superiority of Enlightenment historians, based on a historical narrative of linear progress which posits the Enlightenment as history's terminal point, Herder argues that no such comparative, context-transcending evaluative judgments can be made since every culture has to be understood on its own terms and evaluated on the basis of the criteria internal to each. By situating cultures within their own historical context, therefore, we can come to understand and appreciate the particular virtues distinctive of each. As such, according to Herder's historicism, the aim is not to compare and judge different cultures, but rather to describe and explain how each came into being; that is, to adopt the standpoint of an impartial observer in order to avoid the hubris of Enlightenment historians on the one hand, and the tendency to overly romanticize and 'pick favorites' among premodern cultures, on the other.

Er det sandt, at oplysning fører lige fra den franske revolution til nutidens demokrati? Ikke, hvis man spørger modoplysningen, som denne bog beskriver: Oplysningsfilosofien perverterer det, der gør livet stabilt og sandt, den forvandler mennesket til noget monstrøst, friheden til trældom og terror - og fornuften til ufornuft.

Modoplysningen er både en radikal form for oplysningskritik og navnet på en historisk periode, der strækker sig over årtierne før, under og efter den franske revolution. Denne bog giver for første gang på dansk et præcist billede af modoplysningen - og rummer nyoversatte primærtekster af de tre centrale modoplysningstænkere Edmund Burke, Joseph de Maistre og Juan Donoso Cortés.

Oplysningsprojektet er i dag er under angreb fra mange sider - lige fra radikal islamisme, konservativ nationalisme og new age-bevægelser til filosofiske modestrømninger. Men oplysningen er altid blevet sagt imod, og skal vi forstå modoplysningen også i dens nutidige former, må vi kende dens idéhistorie. Det er den, der fortælles i Fornuftens perversion.

History is here presented as a living past, that
is, one which can be useful at present by setting
aside unwanted negative prejudices and
maximizing the productive worth of positive
prejudices. It argues for the legitimacy of
tradition in historical interpretation through the
mediation of the understanding. In understanding
the whole text of the other through its details and
the details through the whole, we eventually come
to a fusion of horizons.

Reflections” as a classic text cannot be understood without analysing the interaction between the text and its historical-philosophical context. On its historical side, “Reflections” was written in order to defend the 18th century British political system against the omnipresent air of change in Europe as being prudently progressive, aristocratic, and post feudal. On its philosophical side, “Reflections” is an inside critique of the Enlightenment thought. Although Burke was by no means an anti – Enlightenment hero, he developed a theoretical criticism of the exaggerated role that the Enlightenment put on the concepts of reason, progress, and rights of man by replacing the “abstract reason” with his “practical reason”, contextualizing the discourse of the “rights of men” with his discourse of the “rights of Englishmen”, and integrating the concept of progress into, and excluding the concept of perfection from, his theory of prudent reform. Whilst Burke was attacking to the Revolutionary men of letters as metaphysicians, to the paper money and unimpeded monied interest as the tyranny of economists and calculators, to the sacred and infallible reason as the secular superstition, and to the extremely self-assured will to defame everything associated with the past and to recreate a new world from scratch in an abrupt process, he was directly launching a crusade to the very heart of the Enlightenment thought itself.