Uses of the past: The Age of Enlightenment in 20th and 21th Historiography and Public Debate
CSN Roundtable with Juliane Engelbrecht.
Discussant: Associate professor Marie Riegels Melchior, University of Copenhagen.
In recent years much research has been devoted to encountering postmodern criticism of the Enlightenment. It is argued that we need to recognize the ideals of the Enlightenment such as human rights, rationalism, secularism, humanism and democracy as fundamental western values. An example of this is Harvard professor Steven Pinker, who has achieved great influence with his monograph Enlightenment Now. The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (2018). In his book, Pinker argues that the Enlightenment was the first step in a long process which led to the free and rational societies characteristic of the West today. Pinker also warns against contemporary intellectuals, who shy people of pride of our historical heritage. The restate of the ideals of the Enlightenment is also reflected in contemporary public discussions on national identity in Denmark and other European countries.
The sanctification of the Enlightenment as a new golden age has not passed unnoticed among German researchers, the homeland of historicism, who have a long tradition of analyzing how ideas and concepts were explained and understood in a historical context. Among the contributions to what is understood as anachronistic use of Enlightenment values are Andreas Pe(c)ar og Damien Tricoire monograph, Falsche Freunde. War die Aufklärung wirklich die Geburtsstunde der Moderne? (2015). Here the two authors argue that the cornerstones of historical research, historicization and contextualization are neglected when researchers put themselves in the service of identity politics. They demonstrate that ideals of tolerance, gender equality and abolitionism asserted by highly recognized philosophers of the Enlightenment do not resemble modern understandings of these.
The purpose of this lecture is to discuss the uses of the Enlightenment in the 20th and 21th historiography and in public debate today. On the one hand it can be argued that historical research inevitable is, and has always been, pursued from the perspective of contemporary interests of knowledge. In fact we don’t need to go that far back in history to see the opposite interpretation of the Enlightenment than today; throughout the 20th century researchers diagnosed everything that went wrong in modern western societies – from Weber’s iron cage of rationality to Horkheimer and Adorno’s examination of the totalitarian discourse – as emanating from structures forged in the 17th and 18th centuries. On the other hand the smooth and to some extend idealized interpretation of the Enlightenment calls for critical discussion.
Format
Talk: max 40 minutes
Discussant: 10-15 minutes
5-minute break
Debate app. 30 minutes
