This Western devotion to the liberal arts and liberal educa-tion must have been largely responsible for the emergence ofdemocracy as an ideal.

contemporary radical thinkersare more likely to see Enlightenment thought as the ultimate inreceived authority, as an intellectual movement whose mainachievement was to lay the foundations of a peculiarly modern formof rational individualism that became the basis of “scientific” racism,modern imperialism, exploitation, and genocide

This anyway would explain the apparent paradox of theBetsimisaraka: supposedly created by a failed philosopher king but,in fact, remaining as a stubbornly egalitarian people to this day,notorious, in fact, for their refusal to accept the authority of overlordsof any sort.

first stirrings of Enlightenment political thought

But the blanketcondemnation of Enlightenment thought is in its own way rather odd,when one considers that this was perhaps the first historically knownintellectual movement organized largely by women, outside of officialinstitutions like universities, with the express aim of undermining allexisting structures of authority.

Enlightenment thinkers were often quiteexplicit that the sources of their ideas lay outside what we now call“the Western tradition” entirely

the Enlightenment project, one now seen inrevolutionary quarters as a false dream of liberation that has insteadunleashed unspeakable cruelty upon the world

is one of the solid East's who's you know all the Enlightenment salons have had sort of women facilitators who of course it's been forgotten and and marginalized in the history but she was one of those and she wrote a book which

pretty much all the arguments that we would be making too if we've met a bunch of Jesuits fear right of kings and reveal the faith and it's actually it's 00:41:37 the indigenous sort of looking rationally

Whig history (or Whig historiography), often appearing as whig history, is an approach to historiography that presents history as a journey from an oppressive and benighted past to a "glorious present".[1] The present described is generally one with modern forms of liberal democracy and constitutional monarchy: it was originally a satirical term for the patriotic grand narratives praising Britain's adoption of constitutional monarchy and the historical development of the Westminster system.[2] The term has also been applied widely in historical disciplines outside of British history (e.g. in the history of science) to describe "any subjection of history to what is essentially a teleological view of the historical process".[3] When the term is used in contexts other than British history, "whig history" (lowercase) is preferred.[3]

The Renaissance ob-session for order

It was largely the speakers of Iroquoian languages such as theWendat, or the five Haudenosaunee nations to their south, whoappear to have placed such weight on reasoned debate – evenfinding it a form of pleasurable entertainment in own right. This factalone had major historical repercussions. Because it appears tohave been exactly this form of debate – rational, sceptical, empirical,conversational in tone – which before long came to be identified withthe European Enlightenment as well. And, just like the Jesuits,Enlightenment thinkers and democratic revolutionaries saw it asintrinsically connected with the rejection of arbitrary authority,particularly that which had long been assumed by the clergy.

Enlightenment texts took the form of dialogues; mostcultivated an easy, transparent, conversational style clearly inspiredby the salon. (It was the Germans, back then, who tended to write inthe obscure style for which French intellectuals have since becomefamous.)

in Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” which has a chapter called “How the Americans Combat Individualism by the Principle of Interest Rightly Understood.” Despite our ambient certainty that it is natural, Tocqueville describes individualism as a newfangled phenomenon. The word “individualism” itself entered the English language largely through translations of his work. Somehow, our leaders are educated into the error of dangerously discounting this “enlightened self-interest” (also a term Tocqueville invented). 

We will suggest that there isa reason why so many key Enlightenment thinkers insisted that theirideals of individual liberty and political equality were inspired byNative American sources and examples. Because it was true.

For Europeanaudiences, the indigenous critique would come as a shock to thesystem, revealing possibilities for human emancipation that, oncedisclosed, could hardly be ignored.

The unwritten rule of Cybernetics seems to be - Maintain the homeostasis until you break it for the better. #Cybernetics #Ashby

Critical theory upends the universal values of the Enlightenment: objectivity, rationality, science, equality, freedom of the individual. These liberal values are an ideology by which one dominant group subjugates another. All relations are power relations, everything is political, and claims of reason and truth are social constructs that maintain those in power.