Enlightenment, Reason, Religion, and Knowledge Sociology 250 - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Enlightenment, Reason, Religion, and Knowledge

Sociology 250 January 15, 2013

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What Does Theory Do?

Theory frames empirical work Theory structures empirical methods Theory offers rules and ideas for generating and interpreting empirical

• bservations

Theory synthesizes scattered realities into coherent ideas

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Enlightenment: Prisoners of Illusion

Plato, “Allegory of the Cave,” Republic VII (ca. 360 BCE)

Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?

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The Cave and the Enlightenment

Plato, “Allegory of the Cave,” Republic VII (ca. 360 BCE)

1 Deception is systematic and constraining 2 Understanding is at once difficult or painful and liberating 3 Truth itself is a social thing, pieced together by common perceptions () Enlightenment, Reason, Religion, and Knowledge Sociology 250January 15, 2013 5 / 21

Spoof on social science

Plato, “Allegory of the Cave,” Republic VII (ca. 360 BCE)

. . . they were in the habit of conferring honours among themselves on those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark which of them went before, and which followed after, and which were together; and who were therefore best able to draw conclusions as to the future. . .

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The Enlightenment

Roughly 1650–1750

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The Enlightenment

Faith ⇒ Science Authority ⇒ Reason

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The Enlightenment

Monarchy ⇒ Democracy

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Immanuel Kant Was ist Aufkl¨ arung? (What is Enlightenment?) (1784)

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Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.

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• G. F. Hegel, “Enlightenment”

From The Phenomenology of Mind (1807)

Pure insight. . . can have no activity and content of its own and thus can

• nly take up the attitude of formally and truly apprehending this witty

insight peculiar to the world and the language it adopts. Since this language is a scattered and broken utterance and the pronouncement a fickle mood of the moment, which is again quickly forgotten,. . . this latter can be distinguished as pure insight only if it gathers those several scattered traces into a universal picture, and then makes them the insight

• f all.

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Enlightenment and Belief

• G. F. Hegel, “Enlightenment, ” from The Phenomenology of Mind (1807)

Enlightenment does not operate against the believing mind with special principles of its own, but with those which belief itself implies and

• contains. Enlightenment merely brings together and presents to belief its
• wn thoughts, the thoughts that lie scattered and apart within belief, all

unknown to it.

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Modern Cynicism

• Enlightenment. . . wanted to dispel myths, to overthrow fantasy with
• knowledge. . . . Knowledge obtained through [scientific] enquiry would not
• nly be exempt from the influence of wealth and power but would

establish man as the master of nature. Horkheimer and Adorno “The Concept of Enlightenment” Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947)

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A Slogan for Modernity?

All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind. Marx & Engels The Communist Manifesto

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The Experience of Modernity

. . . agitation and turbulence, psychic dizziness and drunkenness, expansion

• f experiential possibilities and destruction of moral boundaries and

personal bonds, self-enlargement and self-derangement, phantoms in the street and the soul—is the atmosphere in which modern sensibility is born. —Marshall Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air

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From Modernity to Postmodernity

Mythology itself set in motion the endless process of enlightenment by

• which. . . every definite theoretical view is subjected to the annihilating

criticism that it is only a belief, until even the concepts of mind, truth, and, indeed, enlightenment itself have been reduced to animistic magic. Horkheimer & Adorno

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Modernity and Postmodernity

Modernity Postmodernity We can know the Truth Truth is partial and contextual Big systems work well Small, local, interconnected systems Information generates power Power generates information

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Reading Theory

1 Who are we? 2 What can we know? 3 What can we do? 4 Who’s in control? 5 Why do things happen? 6 (Why) do we care? () Enlightenment, Reason, Religion, and Knowledge Sociology 250January 15, 2013 20 / 21

Reading Theory II

Theory has a history Theory happens in a social context Be prepared to turn from the cave Nothing is:

Natural Self-evident Obvious “Just human nature”

What would it mean if the theory were true? Is the theory true? Was the theory true when it was written?

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