Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 13:44:50 -0500
From: Richard Moodey <moodey001-AT-mail1.gannon.edu>
Subject: Re: BHA: on Hegel, Bhaskar, Descartes


At 05:21 PM 01/13/2002 -0600, Viren wrote:

>   I wonder whether talking about a pre-bourgeois enlightenment doesn't 
> risk making
>the term "Enlightenment" meaningless, precisely because such an
>application of the term does not historically analyze its emergence. I
>wonder what is gained  by lumping Aristotle, Aquinas, Plato and Plotinus
>with Descartes, Kant, Mill and Voltaire and calling them all Enlightenment
>thinkers.  In your review, you mention that elements of pre-bourgeois
>thinking continue to exist in Enlightenment thinkers, such as Kant.  I
>agree and would add that such elements exist in Mill and Montesquieu as
>well.  If this is the case, then there is no need to prefer the
>"pre-bourgeois enlightenment" to the bourgeois Enlightenment.

Doesn't the meaning of "Enlightenment" depend upon the tacit judgment that 
Aquinas and his ilk were part of the "Dark Ages?"  To the extent that we 
find enlightened thinkers in the Dark Ages, the usefulness of 
"Enlightenment" as a term to be used without scare quotes declines.  It 
becomes a word subject to critical analysis, rather than a term we use 
confidently as a tool of critical analysis.

Regards,

Dick Moodey



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