\n<\/p>\n
It has been almost a decade since Steven Pinker called for\u00a0<\/span>Enlightenment Now.<\/i>\u00a0Although many readers lauded his clarion call to return to logical empiricism, most of academia, including universities and research publishers, doubled down on postmodernism or its ugly spawn, meta-modernism and post-postmodernism. As a result, the quality of U.S. higher education, scientific research, and public discourse continued to spiral downward, pushed along by the Covid lockdowns, which were firmly rooted in postmodern worldviews that stress authority over scientific method. Only Re-Enlightenment can save higher education and with it Pinker\u2019s optimistic view of human progress.<\/span><\/p>\n By Re-Enlightenment, I mean the Will progress continue, though? In the latter half of the twentieth The irony is that authoritarian Where the postmodernists won early Reality, though, again reared its The same day that I began teaching The parallel institutions of higher The Re-enlightenment can improve Beauty is in the eye of the Anyone may claim whatever he or she Normative claims can be ignored on The listener can also independently The veracity of the most important Higher education and freedom To re-establish the intellectual Consider, for example, classroom Many universities today would laud The proposition could be better Note that if they do not insist A Re-enlightened University, by Re-enlightenment is not inherently A Re-enlightened It has been almost a decade since Steven Pinker called for\u00a0Enlightenment Now.\u00a0Although many readers lauded his clarion call to return to logical empiricism, most of academia, including universities and research publishers, doubled down on postmodernism or its ugly spawn, meta-modernism and post-postmodernism. As a result, the quality of U.S. higher education, scientific research, and public […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[2708,174234,20725],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-353227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-history","tag-america","tag-reenlightenment","tag-universities"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nrevivification of the intellectual goals of the eighteenth-century
\nEnlightenment that privileged empirical observation, logic, and reason above
\nbase authority,\u00a0ancient custom, and rank superstition. That intellectual movement
\nmodernized the world, leading to the American Revolution and the sundry
\neconomic revolutions that released humanity from the population trap identified
\nby Thomas Malthus and that helped billions of people to become better off
\nmaterially than the wealthiest pre-Enlightenment monarchs just three centuries
\nago.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nWill the gains already made persist? History is literally littered with
\nsocieties that experienced so-called Golden Ages only to devolve back towards
\nwhat Adam Smith termed \u201cbarbarism.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
\ncentury, many Western intellectual elites jettisoned the Enlightenment in the
\nmistaken belief that its ideals had caused the horrors of the
\ntwentieth-century: the two world wars, the Great Depression, numerous genocides,
\nand the ever present threat of nuclear holocaust, not to mention racism,
\nsexism, and xenophobia. In the place of Enlightened ideals, those elites
\nembraced postmodernism, a creed that denies the quest for objective truth and
\nreplaces it with nihilism, subjectivism, and a quest for governments powerful
\nenough to dictate \u201ctruth\u201d by fiat.<\/span><\/p>\n
\ngovernment, or in other words a dearth of Enlightenment in politics, diverted
\nthe productive forces unleashed by the Enlightenment in economics to violent,
\ntribal ends. But instead of trying to tame the destructive forces of
\nauthoritarian government, the postmodernists blamed humanity\u2019s woes on
\n\u201ccapitalism\u201d and Enlightenment, and undercut them at every turn in classrooms
\nand legislatures while bestowing them with heinous sobriquets.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nascendancy, under labels like communism and national socialism, they ran
\nheadlong into the objective realities that they denied. Within a few years or
\ndecades they faltered and failed, often reappearing in the more gradualist
\nvarieties that gained a foothold in the \u201cfree\u201d countries of the West, including
\nthe United States. There, they spread throughout government and academia
\nsupported by the largesse of rationally ignorant taxpayers and wealthy alumni
\nwith eyes swaddled by thick layers of nostalgia.<\/span><\/p>\n
\noft ugly head, revealing in 2020 Western institutions that the intellectual
\nleaders of the Enlightenment would recognize as new forms of authority, custom,
\nand superstition. The conflation of science and authority, the repression of
\nlegitimate business, and widespread censorship during the pandemic constituted
\nthe Enlightenment\u2019s nadir, but also a springboard from which Re-enlightenment
\nmay gain ascendance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nU.S. History at the new University of Austin I began regularly to work out at
\nthe gym again, after having given up my lifelong routine during the pandemic. I
\ndid so because for the first time since March 2020, I again want to live long.
\nThe conversation that day in early January, which began before<\/i> the
\nappointed start time of 8:30 am, was deep, frank, and precisely the reason that
\nI decided to join the academy 35 years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n
\neducation that have been springing up \u2013 some de novo<\/i> like the University
\nof Austin and Reliance College, others like mushrooms from the rotting corpses
\nof dying incumbents \u2013 provide hope that America and the rest of the West will
\nnot further devolve into idiocracy, kakistocracy, or tribalism. I still fret,
\nthough, that their efforts will prove too little, too late unless they are
\naccompanied by more widespread Re-Enlightenment across America\u2019s intellectual
\nlandscape.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nupon its predecessor by incorporating the best that its postmodern critics
\noffered. The following sentiments encapsulate it:<\/span><\/p>\n
\nbeholder, but Truth is not. Beauty therefore can be achieved for some, but
\nhumans can only strive towards Truth without ever fully attaining it.
\nIntellectual humility therefore behooves everyone. No single mind, even that of
\nthe great leader or the mighty AI, can understand all. Collectively, however,
\nthrough the free trade in ideas, human understanding can advance closer to
\nTruth.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nlikes, but no one else is bound to listen to, let alone heed, the message. Just
\nbecause someone offers a good for trade does not mean anyone must take it up.
\nThe same holds for the trade in ideas.<\/span><\/p>\n
\ntheir normative basis alone. Positive claims can be ignored too, but at the
\nlistener\u2019s peril. If a person shouts \u201cfire!\u201d in a crowded theater, for example,
\nthe listener can call the Thought Police but will be better off by critically
\nassessing the veracity of the claim. Who is the speaker? Does the speaker have
\nmore information or better insight into the state of the theater than the
\nlistener does? If so, the listener should seek more information.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nassess the speaker\u2019s credibility. If the speaker is carrying a large water hose
\nand wearing a fire-retardant uniform, following directions will likely extend
\nthe listener\u2019s existence. If the speaker is another theatergoer giving
\ndirections to a character to shoot his gun, ignoring \u201cfire!\u201d likely will extend
\nthe listener\u2019s enjoyment of the film, play, musical, or other theatrical
\nentertainment.<\/span><\/p>\n
\npositive claims, however, is not so easily ascertained.\u00a0Some Enlightenment
\nthinkers erred by being too optimistic about the ease of establishing Truth
\nclaims. Moreover, some policymakers incorrectly invoked the Enlightenment to
\nsupport normative claims that bolstered their power, a propensity that
\nconstitutions based on Enlightenment thought did not sufficiently check. In
\nreaction to the Enlightenment\u2019s intellectual overreach and its usurpation by
\npower seekers, the intellectual pendulum swung too far in the other direction,
\ntoward nihilism and Continental philosophies like postmodernism.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nsuffered as a consequence. Free speech devolves into vacuous concepts like
\n\u201cvoice\u201d when all claims carry equal weight, or solely the weight of the
\nspeaker\u2019s perceived authority. Free enterprise likewise suffers when its defenders\u2019
\nviews can be outright censored, distorted through linguistic twists that
\nconflate authority and liberty, or denigrated as \u201cbiased\u201d even if based on
\nempirical evidence and logic.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nmilieu in which free speech and free enterprise can thrive, universities can
\nagain ground students in Analytic philosophy, reason, and logic, alloyed with
\napplied history and tempered by post-modernist concerns over power
\nrelationships, particularly those of the state over individuals.<\/span><\/p>\n
\ntreatment of the following proposition: \u201cThe U.S. federal government should ban
\nall firearms.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
\nstudents for making or virtue signaling support for such a claim. A few would
\nchastise students for supporting it and might even try to ban such speech. A
\nRe-enlightened University, by contrast, induces intellectual investigation by
\nfirst asking what type of claim it is. It is normative, so listeners need not
\nheed it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nunderstood, however, if reframed as a positive claim, like \u201cIf the U.S. federal
\ngovernment bans all firearms, the homicide rate will \u2026\u201d If the speaker ends the
\nclaim with \u201cdecline,\u201d a certain set of universities will reinforce and another
\npunish the speaker. If the speaker ends the claim with \u201cincrease,\u201d the set of
\nuniversities will reverse.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nupon restatement of the original normative claim in positive terms, some
\nuniversities will laud students who believe that the U.S. government should ban
\nfirearms because the students believe doing so will increase<\/i> the
\nhomicide rate.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\ncontrast, asks the speaker to state the empirical grounds for his or her
\npositive claim. That is where simplistic views of the world can be questioned
\n(can\u2019t people kill each other with weapons, like bombs and vehicles, other than
\nfirearms?) and rational tools like comparative analysis, logic, and statistical
\ninference can be used to move toward a better understanding of the issue and
\nperhaps even closer approximations of Truth.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nimperialist, racist, sexist, or anything else anyone might think untoward
\nbecause it is more intellectually humble than its predecessor. Contrast the
\nviews of, say, Friedrich Hayek with the Marquis de Condorcet. Re-enlightenment
\nwill also be even more skeptical of intrusive government policies than its
\npredecessor. Contrast the skepticism of James C. Scott with, say, the optimism
\nof Jean-Jacques Rousseau.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nUniversity does not exclude topics of discussion but simply accords postmodern
\napproaches to policy questions their due weight. Not everything is knowable, or
\neffable, but for those things that are, the methodologies of the Enlightenment,
\nlike randomized control trials and natural experiments, remain far superior to
\nthose of postmodernism. Re-enlightened universities allow postmodernists to
\nspeak, of course, but attend to them only insofar as they help students to
\nprogress toward greater understanding of the real world.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"