What is Enlightenment?

[Art321]

Hello everyone.

I hope this is the right thread. Anyway I am hoping to start a honest and clear discussion on the enlightenment. I would love to hear more on the Catholic perspective on this.
Unfortunately I am covering this in one of classes and it would seem that they are going to bash the Church later on as we continue to cover this topic.

Here are a few quotes from a paper the teacher give me. Refering to the what is enlightenment, it says…

Enlightenment is the human being’s emergence from his self-incurred minority. Minority is inability to make use of one’s own understanding without direction from another. This minority is self-incurred when its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another.

It is because of laziness and cowardice that so great a part of humankind, after nature has long since emancipated them from other people’s direction nevertheless gladly remains minors for life, and that it becomes so easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians.

For this enlightenment, however, nothing is required but freedom, and indeed the least harmful of anything that could even be called freedom: namely, freedom to make public use of one’s reason in all matters. But I hear from all sides the cry: Do not argue! The officer says: Do not argue but drill! The tax official: Do not argue but pay! The clergyman: Do not argue but believe! (Only one ruler in the world says: Argue as much as you will and about whatever you will, but obey!)

It goes on and I find this disturbing…

a clergyman is bound to deliver his discourse to the pupils in his catechism class and to his congregation in accordance with the creed of the church he serves, for he was employed by it on that condition. But as a scholar he has complete freedom and is even called upon to communicate to the public all his carefully examined and well-intentioned thoughts about what is erroneous in that creed and his suggestions for a better arrangement of the religious and ecclesiastical body. And there is nothing in this that could be laid as a burden on his conscience. For what he teaches in consequence of his office as carrying out the business of the church, he represents as something with respect to which he does not have free power to teach as he thinks best, but which he is appointed to deliver as prescribed and in the name of another. He will say: Our church teaches this or that; here are the arguments it uses. He then extracts all practical uses for his congregation from precepts to which he would not himself subscribe with full conviction but which he can nevertheless undertake to deliver because it is still not altogether impossible that truth may lie concealed in them, and in any case there is at least nothing contradictory to inner religion present in them. For if he believed he had found the latter in them, he could not in conscience hold his office; he would have to resign from it. Thus the use that an appointed teacher makes of his reason before his congregation is merely a private use; for a congregation, however large a gathering it may be, is still only a domestic gathering; and with respect to it he, as a priest, is not and cannot be free, since he is carrying out another’s commission. On the other hand as a scholar, who by his writings speaks to the public in the strict sense, that is, the world – hence a clergyman in the public use of his reason – he enjoys an unrestricted freedom to make use of his own reason and to speak in his own person.

So what do you all say about this? What does the Church say about the enlightenment?

 

[JDaniel]

Hello everyone.

I hope this is the right thread. Anyway I am hoping to start a honest and clear discussion on the enlightenment. I would love to hear more on the Catholic perspective on this.
Unfortunately I am covering this in one of classes and it would seem that they are going to bash the Church later on as we continue to cover this topic.

Here are a few quotes from a paper the teacher give me. Refering to the what is enlightenment, it says…

It goes on and I find this disturbing…

So what do you all say about this? What does the Church say about the enlightenment?

Hello, Art:

Your quotes are quite interesting. They seem to imply that one, especially a priest, is enjoined from being free to say anything he wants. My first thought is that the Catholic Church did not stop Aquinas, or Augustine, or Fr. Lemaître, or many others from saying out loud what they believed to be true. I think the gist of the two articles, or article pieces, is that what is being encouraged is some sort of helter-skelter, pedal to the metal public utterances, by anybody, with or without any credentials, or specific knowledge. This would be utter chaos. The results would be that nothing makes sense. Our very own experiences tell us that there exists, in fact, more knowledgeable people than us, that there are, for example, scientists that have actually done the work, that there are attorneys that have actually researched the matters, and that, in general, we should trust them - at least to some extent. That doesn’t mean that from time to time breakthrough ideas should not be raised. I mean, as an analogy, you would not want anyone but a trained brain surgeon working inside your head, would you? Anyway, that’s what I thought I was reading.

We have a great Buddhist participant herein, that goes by the handle, “rossum.” You know, of course, that enlightenment is big for Buddhism. He can explain it better than I, but, I’ll bet that their’s is a disciplined, studied growth to a State of enlightenment. Not the seeming big bang of freedom the writer(s) of your articles are encouraging.

God bless,
jd

 

[Brendan_McCabe]

The philosophies of the enlightenment are what gave us the wonders of Nazism and Communism, they freed us from the shackles of religion so that we could go about exterminating each other with a clear conscience.

 

[JDaniel]

The philosophies of the enlightenment are what gave us the wonders of Nazism and Communism, they freed us from the shackles of religion so that we could go about exterminating each other with a clear conscience.

Yes! (Welcome, Brendan.) An excellent observation.

God bless,
jd

 

[Art321]

Thank you JDaniel for your post. Still I have questions on this! During the Age of the Enlightenment, what exactly did the Church do about this?

I’m also sure that some if not all of the beliefs of the Enlightenment go against Church teaching, no? I only consider this because the motto of the Enlightenment was to base one own’s understanding on his point of view, while I have read a some Church document, I believe that it said one should base his or her understanding on the Laws of God.

Also with the Enlightenment, came a mentlity that seems to brainwashed many. And that being that the Church is afraid of science and reason, although I have heard the opposite. At one point, I believe Pope Benedict said that one must have reason to have faith!!!

Your thoughts?

Hello, Art:

Your quotes are quite interesting. They seem to imply that one, especially a priest, is enjoined from being free to say anything he wants. My first thought is that the Catholic Church did not stop Aquinas, or Augustine, or Fr. Lemaître, or many others from saying out loud what they believed to be true. I think the gist of the two articles, or article pieces, is that what is being encouraged is some sort of helter-skelter, pedal to the metal public utterances, by anybody, with or without any credentials, or specific knowledge. This would be utter chaos. The results would be that nothing makes sense. Our very own experiences tell us that there exists, in fact, more knowledgeable people than us, that there are, for example, scientists that have actually done the work, that there are attorneys that have actually researched the matters, and that, in general, we should trust them - at least to some extent. That doesn’t mean that from time to time breakthrough ideas should not be raised. I mean, as an analogy, you would not want anyone but a trained brain surgeon working inside your head, would you? Anyway, that’s what I thought I was reading.

We have a great Buddhist participant herein, that goes by the handle, “rossum.” You know, of course, that enlightenment is big for Buddhism. He can explain it better than I, but, I’ll bet that their’s is a disciplined, studied growth to a State of enlightenment. Not the seeming big bang of freedom the writer(s) of your articles are encouraging.

God bless,
jd

 

[Art321]

The philosophies of the enlightenment are what gave us the wonders of Nazism and Communism, they freed us from the shackles of religion so that we could go about exterminating each other with a clear conscience.

Really? I have never heard about this! Could you care to explain a bit more on this?

Thank you.

 

[Art321]

Anyone?

 

[Brendan_McCabe]

Racial hierarchies were intrinsic in Enlightenment thinking at the time and not unique to the Nazis:

“Moreover, by overthrowing The Book of Genesis, the doctrine of the unity of mankind was rejected in the century of the Enlightenment. A developmental hierarchy of races, nations and classes was thus established, culminating in some kind of higher type, of which Marx’s proletarian, Jahn’s German, Michelet’s Frenchman, the Slovophiles’ peasant and Wagner’s Aryan were mere variations.” Hitler as Philosophe: Remnants of the Enlightenment in National Socialism, 1995, by Lawrence Birken.

In this way, the Nazis were like all the other dividers of people into races and classes. As a revolutionary secularism, like Marxism, it believed in “the perfect Man.” For Marxism it was based on class, for Hitler it was based on the race.

 

[Art321]

Racial hierarchies were intrinsic in Enlightenment thinking at the time and not unique to the Nazis:

“Moreover, by overthrowing The Book of Genesis, the doctrine of the unity of mankind was rejected in the century of the Enlightenment. A developmental hierarchy of races, nations and classes was thus established, culminating in some kind of higher type, of which Marx’s proletarian, Jahn’s German, Michelet’s Frenchman, the Slovophiles’ peasant and Wagner’s Aryan were mere variations.” Hitler as Philosophe: Remnants of the Enlightenment in National Socialism, 1995, by Lawrence Birken.

In this way, the Nazis were like all the other dividers of people into races and classes. As a revolutionary secularism, like Marxism, it believed in “the perfect Man.” For Marxism it was based on class, for Hitler it was based on the race.

Every interesting. Thank you for the post.

God bless.