What Is Enlightenment? (1784) | Hacker News Reader

What Is Enlightenment? (1784)

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And Jung refined it, 150 years later: “our age has a blindness without parallel. We think we have only to declare an acknowledged form of faith to be incorrect or invalid, to become psychologically free of all the traditional effects of the Christian or Judaic religion. We believe in enlightenment, as if an intellectual change of opinion had somehow a deeper influence on our emotional processes, or indeed upon the unconscious! We entirely forget that the religion of the last two thousand years is a psychological attitude, a definite form of adaptation to inner and outer experience, which moulds a definite form of civilization; it has thereby created an atmosphere which remains wholly uninfluenced by any intellectual disavowal. The intellectual change is, of course, symptomatically important as a hint of coming possibilities, but the deeper levels of the psyche continue for a long time to operate in the former attitude, in according with psychic inertia. In this way the unconscious has preserved paganism alive. The ease with which the classic spirit springs again into life can be observed in the Renaissance. The readiness with which the older primitive spirit reappears can be seen in our own time, even better perhaps than in any other historically known epoch.”

Jung's fault is well betrayed by his use of '«we»': well, get out of the pond and climb.

His idea ignores that clean eyes affect both the «intellectual» side and the «unconscious» one.

Fascinating quote. Definitely need to read more Jung! And so, instead of asking here for the source I pinged the esteemed GPT: “The passage you provided is indeed from Carl Jung. It is from his work "Psychological Aspects of the Modern Archetype" which is found in Volume 10 of his collected works, titled "Civilization in Transition." This work was published in 1964, after his death, and is a compilation of various essays and lectures by Jung.”

> instead of asking here for the source I pinged the esteemed GPT

Which gave you a wrong answer, as it is found in Volume 6, Psychological Types (pp. 268-267) published in 1971 (not sure about that date, maybe it's just the edition I found - looks like it might be 1921 which adds another layer of wrong to ChatGPT's answer).

I really don't understand why people would ask ChatGPT for this kind of thing.

It’s Faster than searching + thinking (especially now with all the spam) and gives you a single answer that people don’t feel the need to verify

Proven, IMHO, by the ease with which many atheists have fallen into alternative faith-based belief systems. 21st century America is increasingly atheist, but no less religious.

That happened in Europe from the 60's. A lot of people replaced Christianism with Horoscopes, which is a similar irrational bullshit to feel yourself better. Or buying lottery tickets depending on where they bought it, as if the place were magical or so.

Magical Thinking is way older than that and may well be the source for many religions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_thinking

It's deeper than that: the vast majority of people believe in science in the exact same way as the used to believe in Christianism. Try asking around for bulletproof proofs of the Earth's roundness. Or communicating the idea that time and space aren't really distinct entities.

Side note, but horoscopes aren't fully to be thrown away[0]. IIRC the main idea was that the month of birth is/was related to seasonal human activities, or illnesses seasonality, which would have a tendency to affect newborns/newborns-to-be strongly.

[0]: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.041431898

> It's deeper than that: the vast majority of people believe in science in the exact same way as the used to believe in Christianism. Try asking around for bulletproof proofs of the Earth's roundness. Or communicating the idea that time and space aren't really distinct entities.

I'm not so sure. The common person definitely cannot give scientific explanations for most things, but between modern medicine, computers and all else, society is drowning in very hard proof that science is an effective and worthwhile endeavour, in a way that i don't think most religion is. Though admittedly that does not seem to completely stop people form breaking away from science the same way as they break away from religion (see flat earthers).

I think religions played a too often underestimated positive role in past societies, and I say that I someone who isn't particularly fond of what I would call the "religious mentality".

For example in Buddhism there's the notion of karma: if you do something bad/good, you'll meet bad/good things in return. Now, there's the "fantasist" interpretation, with reincarnation & cie, but there's also a pragmatic approach: if you keep doing bad things, people will want to get back at you, you'll get a bad reputation, and others won't want to deal with you anymore.

Or, frowning upon sodomy, considering that feces are a transmission route[0] for many common infections. Same thing with advanced promiscuity and STDs. Or the importance of sturdy couples (marriages, Confucianism) for kids's well-being (see e.g.[1]).

What I mean to say is that, we may have a very hard proof that religions were effective to help societies, at least to persist.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecal%E2%80%93oral_route

[1]: https://ifstudies.org/blog/children-first-why-family-structu...

> Or, frowning upon sodomy, considering that feces are a transmission route[0] for many common infections. Same thing with advanced promiscuity and STDs. Or the importance of sturdy couples (marriages, Confucianism) for kids's well-being (see e.g.[1]).

But all these things can be explained and understood rationally without the need for a divine book forbidding things for frivolous reasons (or at best, without any stated reason).

Basically, people don't really need a bible to know that poop is dirty (a parent or a doctor can explain it just fine) but when the bible explains that one shouldn't put one's penis in another's anus (does it actually say it, or does it just vaguely talk about an ill-defined action called "sodomy"?) it doesn't give valid reasons.

So in the end, while religions do have a positive role on some aspects, they also encourage thoughtless actions or even actively discourage rational thought because of gaps that shouldn't be questioned, or outright inconsistencies.

Perhaps the problem religion solves is that half of all people are dumber than the average person.

Perhaps for a lot of those people "if you do bad thing big man in sky punish you" is the most convincing argument.

I'm confident people understood the causality relations early on. But as time passes, the knowledge was progressively lost, and people were stuck with mis-understood habits: it's the "5 monkeys experiment"[0].

A Chinese friend once told me about the evolution of Confucius's interpretations: in the early days, a woman married to a poor excuse for a husband could be expected to leave him, for example so as to avoid her kids to imitate their father. Centuries later, breakups were strictly "haram".

The Muslims aversion for pork is another example.

The precise knowledge we have about poop's dirtiness is recent (e.g. first bacteria observed in 1676[1]; first virus in 1892[2]). Strictly speaking, we don't need divine books, but at some point, it probably was the only widespread, battle-tested option. Remember also that it was at a time with no Internet, and low literacy levels; people were different.

(I'm not intimate with the Bible's relationship with sodomy).

There's also the fact that the vast majority of people aren't receptive to rational arguments. Well-known, ubiquitous example: advertisement.

The fact that the Bible and others don't (always) give a why, do you think it's really a bad thing? There are valuable side-effects (let me leave this as an exercice).

[0]: https://intersol.ca/news/organizational-culture-and-the-5-mo...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteria#History_of_bacteriolo...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_virology

> modern medicine, computers and all else, society is drowning in very hard proof that science is an effective and worthwhile endeavour, in a way that i don't think most religion is

I'm not sure this is a good argument. Science "works" in the same way religion "works" for many people.

I dont think people into astrology would call themselves atheists. They would probabably identify as “spiritual”.

“Atheist religion” is more like NPL, scientology, UFO cults, The Singularity, simulation universe etc.

Indeed, I was never aware of it, until Covid... millions of people believing in nano-bots raining from the clouds programmed by Bill Gates and many other unbelievable far fetched idea's, people just believed it like it was common knowledge.

And the false believes have far reaching impact, like polarization in society and deaths. Just today I read that Dutch vaccination rates are lower than ever [1]. Diseases like polio are no longer a 3rd world problem, but could revive in Europe as well.

[1] https://nos-nl.translate.goog/artikel/2512681-vaccinatiegraa...

I experienced and saw it with the crypto bubble too. It was near guru level of mania and belief. Very telling.

Not proven, but illustrated, in number of cases.

>150

Nietzche said that before.

A problem with that is that it can be easy to make claims about unconscious, as you can be loose with how and if it can be observable. The main core of "our" (Western) philosophical, ethical, legal, artistic etc. concepts predates closer intercourse with Judaism and derived religions, whose ideas were later patched onto that system. (Modulo long term cultural diffusion in Mediterranean which was long somewhat undervalued in historiography.)

Of course seeing Enlightenment as anti-Judeochristian in principle is a misunderstanding: Kant was one of the last great philosophers to sort-of rescue monotheism in his system. Most of 'philosophes' were Deists, Rousseau trolled them by being a Calvinist. What counts for Enlightenment is justification, not genealogical provenance of the idea. Later German post-Enlightenment philosophers were much happier to be godless.

I think the main problem with Enlightenment is how it has been abandoned, and the main reason is that it is easier to organize and dominate people with a faith-based doctrine (be it a traditional religion, or mass ideology).[1] The main thing that Enlightenment has going for it is that eases the access to material truth and fruits of free inquiry and inventiveness.

Can't say what will win, in the long term. It's an interesting question about human society folding into itself vis-a-vis physical world. I think you can be forgiven for thinking that Enlightenment is now in a path to being extinguished, but on the other hand, people are still aware of it. Seeing abuses of fundamentalists in power, they have where to turn to. I myself went through that transformation from oh-so clever "seeing the limits of reason wow" youth in the neoliberal era.

[1] Auguste Comte's positivism was an... amusing? attempt at creating an rational-scientific religion. There were of course others.

Then popper came along and dealt the final blow, proving that you can’t prove any “truth“ and there’s no such thing as certainty - simply levels of ignorance about claims

"Criticism is no longer going to be practiced in the search for formal structures with universal value, but rather as a historical investigation into the events that have led us to constitute ourselves and to recognize ourselves as subjects of what we are doing, thinking, saying. In that sense, this criticism is not transcendental, and its goal is not that of making a metaphysics possible: it is genealogical in its design and archaeological in its method. Archaeological -- and not transcendental -- in the sense that it will not seek to identify the universal structures of all knowledge or of all possible moral action, but will seek to treat the instances of discourse that articulate what we think, say, and do as so many historical events. And this critique will be genealogical in the sense that it will not deduce from the form of what we are what it is impossible for us to do and to know; but it will separate out, from the contingency that has made us what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing, or thinking what we are, do, or think. It is not seeking to make possible a metaphysics that has finally become a science; it is seeking to give new impetus, as far and wide as possible, to the undefined work of freedom."

It's worth reading Foucault's entire discussion of Kant's essay, published on the second centenary of the original:

http://individual.utoronto.ca/bmclean/hermeneutics/foucault_...

I don't know why I thought this was going to be about the Window Manager.

All my life I've been told to stop trying to think for myself and just believe what experts say, and now this so-called expert in thought is telling me to think for myself? I'm confused.

This cannot be repeated often enough.

Here is also the original text: https://bdfwia.github.io/bdfwia.html

For a long time I've seen Kant as someone who deeply misunderstood the Enlightenment. It was specifically meant to free people of this endless bickering over some scripture or other abstract issue, and told them see for themselves. But science has long descended back into "rationalism" (what an unfortunate term), and is no better than what the enlightenment fought against.

How so? What is "rationalism" and how do you apply it to scientists, as opposed to, say, Jesuits?

Rationalism is the rejection of the idea that knowledge needs to be gathered, rather than intuited. A rationalist, in practice, necessarily derives his worldview either starting from some gut instict (that something just has to be a certain way, because it feels that way), or from preexisting texts, be it a religious scripture, or a scientific theory that is treated as inviolable.

Which scientific theory or theories do you perceive being treated as inviolable?

It depends more on the person who does it, rather than a specific theory, but I will pick obesity in particular - there has hardly been any idea so widely contradicted by practical experience, yet it is still treated as an indisputable fact, to the extent that all the further work aims at resolving why people "lie" and how to make them eat less, rather than coming up with something else.

I don't understand... "obesity" has been "contradicted by practical experience"? Or do you mean the idea that following a calorie-restricted diet leads to weight loss?

Yes. That it's caused by eating too much.

For the vast majority of obese people the cause lies in overeating - especially where it concerns high-fat and -sugar foods - and the cure in eating less and to a certain (but lesser) extent getting more physical exercise. There are people for whom this does not hold as they gain weight due to other reasons - thyroid problems, Prader-Willi syndrome, Cushings syndrome, 'side effects' of medication they take for other conditions and more - but these are the exceptions to the rule.

What do you think is the main cause for obesity?

Famine doesn't mean the absence of food. There is often plenty, but the food is inadequate. The skeletal children are often basically propaganda, they refuse to show the real ones. They look fat, and they fear they wouldn't get anything. I believe it is the same thing. The signs are the same.

Didn't that professor lose 27 pounds on a diet of twinkies just to show it's all about calories? Marc Haub, after googling it

so do you meanwhile recognize him as one of the guys who started the age of enlightenment and defined what it is? with, for example this very essay that is referenced here? which is one of the groundbreaking philosophical works of that epoch?

I believe that might not be historically accurate, he is only convenient for those who want to undo the changes.

Surprisingly pertinent given all the news about AI and cognitive automation.

(1784)

Which could be telling also since Kant was born in 1724: he wrote the piece about Enlightenment at 60 - as a mature man.

If Kant wrote his philosophy in this friendly prose he'd be an even greater philosopher now, most importantly he would be actually read by philosophers and students.

"Nature, then, has carefully cultivated the seed within the hard core--namely the urge for and the vocation of free thought."

Kant may be referring to the liberation of political nonage. The illusion of open discourse with the necessity to obey is the mark of a slighted man in the sovereign. So he urges us: "Caesar has no power over grammarians."

That might be the content of what Kant is speaking about, but I think the method/process of what he is speaking about is interesting and deserving of attention too.

"Thanks be to Nature, then, for the incompatibility, for heartless competitive vanity, for the insatiable desire to possess and to rule! Without them, all the excellent natural capacities of humanity would forever sleep, undeveloped. Man wishes concord; but Nature knows better what is good for the race; she wills discord. He wishes to live comfortably and pleasantly; Nature wills that he should be plunged from sloth and passive contentment into labor and trouble, in order that he may find means of extricating himself from them. The natural urges to this, the sources of unsociableness and mutual opposition from which so many evils arise, drive men to new exertions of their forces and thus to the manifold development of their capacities. They thereby perhaps show the ordering of a wise Creator and not the hand of an evil spirit, who bungled in his great work or spoiled it out of envy."

From https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Idea_for_a_Universal_History_... (under the heading "FOURTH THESIS").

I can certainly relate to his statement that labour and trouble have enhanced my capabilities and others here likely can as well.

Sapere aude, motherfuckers!

You are all wrong.

This is a GFX toolkit!

Humorous content denial on HN...

https://library.tsu.ge/data/file_db/anthim/10_80354.pdf

404. The irony isn't lost on me.

Same. Though I’m lost knowing if this is an issue with the link/site, or if that’s the joke.

The submitted link works for me, but maybe it’s a regional issue. Here’s an archive.org link:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230329042339/https://www.colum...

Alternative link https://courseworks2.columbia.edu/files/587042/download?down...

Quote from link:

This enlightenment requires nothing but freedom--and the most innocent of all that may be called "freedom": freedom to make public use of one's reason in all matters. Now I hear the cry from all sides: "Do not argue!" The officer says: "Do not argue--drill!" The tax collector: "Do not argue--pay!" The pastor: "Do not argue--believe!"

For developers:

Agile coach: "Do not argue--believe!"

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