I think you have just captured the essence of what makes the Enlightenment culture different from all the others. It’s also why people who aren’t yet quite sold on the Enlightenment project have so much trouble understanding us; they are used to harkening back to the “good old days”, and when we tell them, “No, the past was terrible; you’d die of malaria or get burned at the stake” they don’t understand. They think we have no values, because we have no authorities on value. They think we don’t believe in truth because we locate the truth in the future instead of the past.
(It doesn’t help that there are moral relativists who actually say things like “There is no such thing as truth” and “anyone’s values are as good as anyone else’s”. Maybe we should be spending more time refuting and repudiating such people.)
I even see this among people who mostly accept the basic ideals of rationality and science; they do things like quote Thomas Jefferson as if Jefferson were one of the ancient prophets who knew all the deep truths we have since forgotten. The man owned slaves! He was right about a lot of things, but also wrong about a lot of other things; you should be quoting him only to talk about his ideas, not yours. Similar things happen when people harken back to the US Constitution, or the writings of Ayn Rand. It’s not even that wrong—it’s surely better than the Bible or the Qur’an—but you’re missing the whole point if you hold up a chunk of cellulose and say it’s the truth. You should be pointing outside, at the world.
I think you have just captured the essence of what makes the Enlightenment culture different from all the others. It’s also why people who aren’t yet quite sold on the Enlightenment project have so much trouble understanding us; they are used to harkening back to the “good old days”, and when we tell them, “No, the past was terrible; you’d die of malaria or get burned at the stake” they don’t understand. They think we have no values, because we have no authorities on value. They think we don’t believe in truth because we locate the truth in the future instead of the past.
(It doesn’t help that there are moral relativists who actually say things like “There is no such thing as truth” and “anyone’s values are as good as anyone else’s”. Maybe we should be spending more time refuting and repudiating such people.)
I even see this among people who mostly accept the basic ideals of rationality and science; they do things like quote Thomas Jefferson as if Jefferson were one of the ancient prophets who knew all the deep truths we have since forgotten. The man owned slaves! He was right about a lot of things, but also wrong about a lot of other things; you should be quoting him only to talk about his ideas, not yours. Similar things happen when people harken back to the US Constitution, or the writings of Ayn Rand. It’s not even that wrong—it’s surely better than the Bible or the Qur’an—but you’re missing the whole point if you hold up a chunk of cellulose and say it’s the truth. You should be pointing outside, at the world.