Well I doubt that Norman Geras or Hitchens would want to defend nationalism of this sort last time I checked , so Chris B must be talking about HP posters and commenters. But here I have a problem : when David T who is the most outspoken commenter at HP on the subject of national identity queried Chris’s claim @# 27 above , Chris B would not respond.
Its seems that he needs to say something especially since he offered no backing up in his main post but I will not hold my breath.

I think you’re alluding to Hegel’s “terror of virtue” (“Terror der Tugend”) here, but nobody of importance posited that virtue or morality was grounded solely in reason (certainly not Kant), so I don’t see your point there and Hegel clearly champions a form of reason, albeit not a simple one (“der zu sich selbst gekommene Geist”), as the highest form of human development

Similarly, there is no meaningful religious Christian right in the UK, and anyone who claims otherwise is probably a paranoid loon. But it would be a big mistake to apply that rule of thumb to the US, where they are obviously a significant electoral force. Different countries, different cultures, different politics.

If you don’t like HP, another blog that covers much of the same ground (but without the Iraq war support) is http://www.pickledpolitics.com/.

Thanks.

The moral rightness of imposing “Enlightenment” values on this or that part of the world is a very popular theme of the “decent” left in the blogosphere—a sort modern-day adaptation of “white man’s burden” thinking that’s hit on the innovation of claiming that the real racists are liberals and leftists who don’t see such a project as viable. Via the Harry’s Place blog which is part of the subject of this thread, for instance, we have David Thompson, who rather dances around the question of Iraq (though it seems fair to suppose it’s on his mind more than a little) but otherwise strikes all the usual (dis)chords. This sort of commentary tends to be part of a broader enthusiasm for “Clash of Civilizations”-style polemic (if you’re really interested in finding more of it, a quick search for articles related to the so-called “Cartoon Intifida” should turn up plenty more).

More directly, we actually had a case of someone directly invoking an Enlightenment philosopher on behalf of the Iraq War on a recent CT thread. See posts 147 and 168 here. Zdenek isn’t atypical.

I have been meaning to ask this for a while, being largely ignorant of the rhetorical flourishes of four flushers, decently left, right, or center, but who was it that claimed the Enlightenment, or if you prefer the “Enlightenemtn,” authorized bombing anyone?

All I am saying is that the Enlightenment didn’t happen because Volaire with Kant had a project, industrial revolution didn’t happen because Henry Ford got an idea and the informational revolution didn’t happen because Al Gore took the initiative.

The Wittgensteinian position does not preclude relationships, in fact it asserts a whole series of them, which, as I said earlier, translated from words and meaning to people, ideas and projects does nothing to preclude, exclude or denude the Enlightenment of project or projects.

“On the other hand if you really want to include ALL ‘enlightenment’ thinkers, then you end up with a definition that is so broad as to be meaningless.”

Granted this does not explicitly say that you reject the notion of the Enlightenment, but it certainly implies that as used it is, as you wrote, meaningless.

‘It is not true to say that nature hasn’t invented the wheel: bacteria have been using it to get around for millions of years. It is the basis of the bacterial flagellum, which looks a bit like a corkscrew and which rotates continuously to drive the organism along. About half of all known bacteria have at least one flagellum.

Each is attached to a “wheel” embedded in the cell membrane that rotates hundreds of times per second, driven by a tiny electric motor. Electricity is generated by rapidly changing charges in a ring of proteins that is attached to the surrounding membrane. Positively charged hydrogen ions are pumped out from the cell surface using chemical energy. These then flow back in, completing the circuit and providing the power for the wheel to rotate.

The only nutrients that the flagellum needs are protein building blocks to allow it to grow longer. These are forced up through the hollow centre of the flagellum and are assembled into new flagellar material when they reach the end.

It is a very sophisticated piece of nanotechnology and even has a reverse gear that helps the organism find food. So, far from nature not having invented the wheel, given the very large number of bacteria in existence, there are probably more wheels in the world than any other form of locomotion.’

http://www.newscientist.com/backpage.ns?id=mg18524852.700

Yes, but the post on “On Beauty” was largely content-free except to express your astonishment at people who disliked it. And predictably, people piled on to make fun of people who were put off by the book.

Not that I have a long, sophisticated response or anything, except to say: WTF? I never saw anything like this in that thread.

Whereas I think that not everything that is possible is inevitable. In particular, I am pretty sure there are things right now that are economically feasible, but don’t yet exist.

Of course, it is hard to point to an example of something that doesn’t exist yet. Ask again in 5 years.

As I said before, the relationship is that of chemistry and biology – no chemically impossible creature exists, but not every chemically possible one does. In particular, there are no wheeled animals.

It’s not as if Tim Berners-Lee died young it wouldn’t have happened. It would’ve happend pretty much the same way and pretty much around the same time.

“Finally: please for God’s sake: if you want to bomb Iraq (or Iran) hey, be my guest. But don’t pretend that it’s what Voltaire would have wanted.”

It is fully possible to believe that the Arab world would benefit from the ideals of the Enlightenment. And one may also believe that those ideals are not best propagated through bombing. Indeed, it seems to me the only sensible position around (and it is, of course, my own).