>>10743407

>John Gray
Oh, it's that "Deny free will exists while totally relying on its existence for my arguments" cuck.

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> Instead of acknowledging that the Enlightenment itself has often been illiberal, Pinker presents a Manichean vision in which “Enlightenment liberal values” are besieged on every side by dark forces. Amusingly, he is in no doubt as to the identity of the intellectual master-criminal behind this assault. The Professor Moriarty of modern irrationalism, the “enemy of humanism, the ideology behind resurgent authoritarianism, nationalism, populism, reactionary thinking, even fascism” can at last be revealed

> He recognised no principle of human equality. But where does concern with equality come from? Not from science, which can be used to promote many values. As Nietzsche never tired of pointing out, the ideal of equality is an inheritance from Judaism and Christianity. His hatred of equality is one reason he was such a vehement atheist.

> Instead, there has been a shift in the mood of liberals. Less than a decade ago, they were confident that progress was ongoing. No doubt there would be periods of regression; we might be in one of those periods at the present time. Yet over the long haul of history, there could be no doubt that the forces of reason would continue to advance. Today, liberals have lost that always rather incredible faith. Faced with the political reversals of the past few years and the onward march of authoritarianism, they find their view of the world crumbling away. What they need at the present time, more than anything else, is some kind of intellectual anodyne that can soothe their nerves, still their doubts and stave off panic.
jfc
Pinker's going to be pissy at this.

The "revealed" enemy of humanism in question is Nietzsche obviously.

that Pinker book unironically sounds like the most reddit and brainlet book ever written

Enlightenment 2.0 by Joseph Heath is a better book in every way and was written way earlier. The main issue with Pinker and Heath is that they have no idea (or would rather not think about) what would take to evaluate and restore the values they so cherish to the public sphere.

I'm really intrigued by one of Deneen's central conceits in "Why Liberalism Failed": the idea that liberalism is a tradition-destroyer and a values-shredder, its all-consuming focus on individual self-expression causing it to destroy anything that inhibits the free action of atomized individuals.

It sounds an awful lot like Nick Land's idea of Capital as a self-perpetuating entity that uses individual participants in the market as agents. However, there's a crucial difference: Land sees capital as something that grows and strengthens as it's perpetuated, while Deneen seems to think that liberalism's self-perpetuation inevitably leads to its self-destruction, as the conditions which allowed it to exist and be strong are gradually stripped away by its own growth.

Their work becomes even more worthless when you realize that technological advances may destroy the final propositions underlying enlightenment morality.

Yes, it basically eats away at autonomous social institutions and any kind of standard in the name of a misbeggoten egalitarianism. Strangely enough this didn't really seem to be an issue until the rise of the New Left.

>enlightenment morality
There's not really any such thing as a single "enlightenment moraltiy". The ideal that every man should be the guardian of his own soul doesn't seem to be going away any time after the colossal failure of the totalitarian projects of the 20th century, but it's already apparent that something like human equality or dignity is a relic of Christianity and not something that can be found in nature. Not that it's bad or anything, but still.

>Strangely enough this didn't really seem to be an issue until the rise of the New Left.

Well, that puts me in mind of Land, again. He's all about the acceleration of Capital's development, right? What if liberalism, being closely related to and intertwined with capitalism, has hit an acceleration point, too? Maybe it was always destined, after a certain point, to speed up.

I really hate continental philosophers. Is this guy one of them? In my mind I associate stupid thoughts and continental philosophy as one.

is mr.straw dogs still fighting straw men?

This all sounds weirdly inspired from Marx's own thoughts on the acceleration of capital's excesses. Am I wrong?

Yeah, Land directly draws from it, but instead of fighting back he says we all ought to worship Capital.

Sounds interesting, if nothing else. Where can I start with Land?

Veeky Forums made a nick land reader ages ago, see if you can find it on the archive.

So his criticism is what? Pinker needs a history lesson? That's it?

First you must fry your brain by constantly overdosing on psychedelics.

they seem equally brainletty

How can human beings be confined to their natures but also deluded by Christianity?

I've barely read it but I think he's claiming that Pinker picks good stuff as examples of enlightenment thinking (and practice) while ignoring the bad stuff.

I'm sure Pinker would disagree and maybe say something like "the bad stuff isn't classed as enlightenment practice. Don't class Stalin and his gulags with me because he tried to scientifically design the economy."

But ultimately I agree with this guy. I am heavily biased in favour Pinker and his rejection of continental pseuds. And I don't give a fuck about religious posturing. All these pseuds who go on about the rationality of religion barely practice what they praise. But ultimately it's one guys broad brush bullshit against another guy's

Veeky Forums has a Nick Land reader but it contains less mainstream stuff that I don't think you should start with; you can go for his actual essays, namely 'Thirst for Annihilation' and the ones contained in 'Fanged Noumena'. Whatever he wrote inbetween 1999 and the early 2010's, as well as CCRU stuff, is very skippable due to being more drug experimentation than actual philosophy. His more recent stuff, not only is much more political, also diverts itself somewhat from his early work and can be found online such as in his blog (xenosystems.net/) or Jacobite.

You can also get yourself started with the general feeling for this acceleration concept with his Dark Enlightenment essay and the one about space exploration:

themigrationperiod.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/nicklandlureofvoid.pdf

thedarkenlightenment.com/the-dark-enlightenment-by-nick-land/

Probably because christianity is in tune with some characteristic or other of human desire or nature.

Gray's an atheist, though.

>Searching for some intellectual authority for this wild diatribe, Pinker cites Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, where Russell denounced Nietzsche as a Romantic enemy of reason who preached a life of instinct and emotion. Published immediately after the end of the Second World War, Russell’s assessment of Nietzsche was understandably crude. Today it would not pass muster in a first-year undergraduate’s essay.

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>Probably because christianity is in tune with some characteristic or other of human desire or nature.
But this faggot's argument near as I can see is that human nature is contrary to Christian principle, or morality.

wtf progress actually exists

Well, I think it isn't. At least some of it, enough to perpetuate itself.

Good point.

>Don't class Stalin and his gulags
would Pinker even be wrong? It is pretty clear that Pinkers enlightenment is primarily the anglo-scottish one, so this Gray's attempt to make Pinker answer for Marx, Lenin, and Stalin comes across as disingenuous. Communism is a product of German idealism, not empiricism.

More from the review:
>Exponents of scientism in the past have used it to promote Fabian socialism, Marxism-Leninism, Nazism and more interventionist varieties of liberalism
Seems like a stretch, roots of Nazism again have roots in German Romanticism not some enlightenment based world view. He could of made a counter point by bring up Mill and India or eugenics from 1900-1920

>Communism is a product of German idealism, not empiricism.
Have you ever actually read Marxism's theoretical underpinnings, like the LTV and declining rates of profit? It hardly seems to be anti-empirical to me.

There is a direct doxological line from David Ricardo, Adam Smith, David Hume, and Marx.
And even of we bracket Marx off as somehow not an extension of the Enlightenment 'project' (even though he absolutely is, and understood himself to be), and aside Pinker is aligning himself with the 'anglo-scottish tradition', Gray still had him dead to rights for refusing to engage or fully consider the implications of David Humes thinking, which is 1) radically subjectivist 2) denies in toto the possibility of objective moral principals and 3) seriously undermines the ontological and epistemological framework of the natural sciences

Yes.