I was going to create a separate thread for this next topic but
decided to keep it here for reasons that will become apparent…
I am going to do something that the opponents of liberalism won’t/can’t do…
which is argue for my position of being illiberal… I will argue against
liberalism and for some position…
to argue against liberalism is to argue for intolerance and for
superstition and for bowing down to authority…
for these were the main features of the time period before the
enlightenment…and the enlightenment argued against intolerance and superstition
and the enlightenment created the modern framework of liberalism…
now the enlightenment as with other time periods, was a response
to something…each time period responds to the time period before
it…so who or what was the enlightenment responding to?
so let us, to correctly understand our concept a bit better,
let us take a look at history as we understand it…
you have the Greco-Roman time period… which ended roughly around 500 AD,
then you have the medieval period which lasted from, again roughly, from
500 AD to about 1500 AD…then historically you have the Renaissance,
the Reformation, the counter-reformation, side by side with the scientific/
philosophic revolution… then comes the enlightenment…
again, this gives us a ball park understanding of history…
so was the enlightenment a response to the Renaissance or the Reformation?
not really…it was a response to the middle ages, the medieval period…
the important fact to understand is how well read the enlightenment thinkers
really were…and their main reading was the Greco-Roman writers…
this is truly important…they of course knew the writers before them,
like Descartes and Spinoza but they really read the Greco-Roman writers
and in the original Greek or Latin, mostly Latin but many enlightenment
thinkers knew Greek and read the Greek writers in Greek…
this is monumentally important… and you cannot understand our
own age until you understand this basic fact…
so you have the Greco-Roman writers, then comes the Middle ages…
so, the medieval period is a reaction to the time before it…
so what was the Greco-Roman period? it was very religiously
tolerant… the Romans for example, gave religious freedom to its
citizens… the Jews for example, were allowed to freely pray to its god…
without restrictions… as long as they paid taxes to Rome… Rome didn’t care…
this Greco-Roman religious tolerance is the basis of the enlightenment call for religious
tolerance…why? because the middle ages was a time for intolerance and superstition
and bowing to authority like the church or Aristotle…this is the war that the
enlightenment period was fighting… the middle ages…and it was in their
reading of the Greco-Roman writers that lead them to the enlightenment ideals of
religious tolerance and freedom and not bowing down to authority…
so we have the Greco-Roman time period of religious and personal freedom
giving way to the Medieval period of intolerance and superstition…
and the Renaissance was not a period of religious or personal freedom…
it was the period where people started to relearn the old Greco-Roman
writers… the mania in the Renaissance was to find and translate the
Greco-Roman writers like Cicero… the idea was not to create ideals from them
but to relearn them… remember the idea behind the Renaissance was rebirth…
to recall the old masters and bring them into the world anew…
the Renaissance brought new translations of the important writers
of the Greco-Roman world and that was the importance of the
Renaissance…but the Renaissance didn’t bring about new ideas
like the next period of the scientific/philosophic age or the enlightenment
period did…the template of the enlightenment was the Greco-Roman writers
and not the Renaissance…and in opposition to the middle ages ideals of
intolerance and superstition and bowing down to authority…
so we have the Greco-Roman world of religious toleration and personal
freedom… the medieval world reacted to this by thinking that the
Greco-Roman world was too liberal and too free thinking and really corrupt…
in both thinking and in actions…the morals of the Greco-Roman world was
far too liberal for the medieval period…and the medieval period was
modest and closed off and fearful and far removed from the concerns
of the Greco-Roman world…
then we have a return of ideas of the Greco-Roman world of liberal thoughts
of religious toleration and personal freedom in the enlightenment…
so we have a liberal time period, the Greco-Roman world,
we have a conservative time period, the medieval time period,
then we have a return of the liberal time period, the enlightenment…
the question becomes, what is next? do you want a restoration of
the medieval ideals of modesty and religious intolerance and bowing
down to authority? that is what conservatives are saying when they
are arguing against liberalism… we want a return of medieval values,
of medieval ideals… is this what you want?
this is the big question of our time… which values, which ideals are
we going to follow… the Greco-Roman/enlightenment ideals of
religious tolerance and not bowing down to authority or, or
a return to the medieval values, ideals of religious intolerance
and ignorance and superstition and against personal freedom…
that is the question… which values are you going to follow?
Kropotkin