Was the Age of Enlightenment-- with it's triumph of reason, emphasis on Republic and Liberty, and love of beauty in the arts-- the height of Western values and culture?
>>388676
Of course. Almost every scientific field (as well as the social sciences - including economics) was either created or vastly expanded between the mid-1700 and early-1800s. Also most of our political concepts rely on distinctions made in that period.
>>388676
Yes. All the choices of religion and government unique to western civilization culminated in it. Too bad after the height only the decline comes.
it was basically when the west became the west instead of Greek, Roman, or Germanic Barbarian
How do we restore it bros
>>388676
"the height?" The Enlightenment was the *beginning* of 'Western values and culture"
>>388676
Yeah, we definitely peaked between 1700-1900. It's maddening to wonder where we could be now if we had found a way to avoid the world wars. Or perhaps we should go back further and avoid the French Revolution altogether?
>>388676
no, it is the beginning of the downfall from the degeneracy of the rationalist having faith in structures to regulate people. it is pathetic and a few centuries later, the liberal doctrine that they wanted which was bound to fail, just turned into pure hedonism with its entry price always lowered in order to provide the populace with an activity once they leave work.
plus the total failures of the politicians to consider the babyboomers and their weight on the youth.
most people are born hedonist, and the liberal doctrines do not set any doctrine as a goal. the few people being stoic or epicurist or even adhering to other moral principles than the one in hedonism are made powerless to change people.
By the way, even the rationalists of today are reluctant to claim that there is a progress in science.
>>393964
>>393970
>>393964
The Enlightenment was the flowering of individual philosophical and political thought in Europe, buoyed up by a rapid increase in scientific advances and discoveries.
It was the age of: Voltaire and Paine, the voyages of Captain Cook, the American Revolution and the discovery of oxygen and steel-making.
It made chemistry not alchemy, invented vaccinations and developed the idea of Man as a rational being.
and it put the church in its place-irrelevance
>>388676
No, it was a decadent form departing from the great noon that was the 17th century; the arts, losing their capacity to fill form with meaningful content, turned into the sole expression of the artist's capacity at producing refined and complex forms, becoming more and more vain as time went on; the previous thought of the 17th century which remained Classical and lively, degenerated into reason reasoning about Reason, whilst most of the intellectual elites were indulging in a vapid salon-culture, which, having started as a form of unofficial censorship for the preservation of higher forms of art, slowly turned into an organ of representation of political and cultural power, quickly taken over by the Bourgeoisie, which used this power to spread the rousseauist and voltarian ideas previously only held by the aristocracy to the lower strata of the population, eventually resulting in the Rise of the Rabble, namely, the French Revolution. Basically, the 18th century was an era of artistic, architectural and philosophical decay, where the elites, too too aware of their decline, tended to refine everything surrounding them, thus sacrificing their taste; their decay was a decay in their capacity to represent themselves as meaningfully superior, and as soon as the lower classes realized the elites no longer could sustain their position as elites, heads rolled.
It was certainly the height of swag
>>388676
>emphasis on Republic and Liberty
lol, where? Maybe only in far away America and Revolutionary France, but thats all.
>>394108
Interesting perspective, thanks for sharing. No sarcasm.
