Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Thank you for joining us. I'm Scott Schiff with Atlas society's senior fellow Rob zysk. Um, I'd ask everyone to share the room and to please raise your hand. If you want to join the conversation. Our, uh, CEO, Jennifer Grossman is here as well. Um, I also wanna note that Rob and our other scholars will be speaking during the day at our gala in Malibu, October 6th. Then I'll put up a link for tickets. Uh, Rob, thanks so much for doing this topic. What do we need for a new enlightenment?
Speaker 1 00:00:32 Well, yeah, let's talk about, um, first of all, why would we want a new enlightenment? Why are we talking about the idea of a new enlightenment? Well, this was this, uh, topic today's topic was inspired by the fact that there are, and, and for the last five years or so there have been a number of different, uh, people out there talking about the legacy, the enlightenment, and defending the legacy of the enlightenment and, and proposing it as a solution or an answer to today's problem. So this, you know, this sort of kicked off, I think it was about five years ago you had, um, no, I think it was four years ago, 2018, that there were several different books, prominent books that came out, uh, talking about the enlightenment. There was Stephen Pinker did enlightenment now, um, Jonah Goldberg that said, you know, on the center on the center left, Stephen Pinker did enlightenment now on the center, right? Jonah Goberg did, uh, uh, I can't remember what the think liberal
Speaker 0 00:01:27 Fascism.
Speaker 1 00:01:28 No, no, no. This was a much more recent one. Uh, uh, something like the, that it was, had this weird title, like the death of the west suicide of the west. That was the name of it, the suicide of the west, which is over the dramatic title, probably cuz his publishers thought that would sell better, but it's really about the enlightenment and its impact and why, and, and try to reclaim the legacy of the enlightenment and, and there. And so, and I, I think that, uh, I also have heard somebody kicking around the phrase enlightenment 2.0, which sort of implies that we should have a reboot of the enlightenment or a, a new and improved, uh, version of the enlightenment. And I think this is a great idea. I think this is a terrific idea because it is absolutely true that we live in a world shaped by the enlightenment.
Speaker 1 00:02:16 Now what did we mean by the en the enlightenment? It's a name used mostly after the fact to refer to the, roughly to the intellectual movement of the 18th century. Uh, now the enlightenment is usually regarded as beginning with, uh, Locke and Newton in the late 1600. So very late 17th century, uh, you know, 16 89, 16 87, 16 89, uh, 1680 gets, uh, that, uh, Newton publishes the B, which is this great work on physics 1689 Locke publishes, uh, the two treatises on government there's. Uh, and this is sort of kicking off the movement intellectual movement of the enlightenment to which lasts through the 18th century, but it is, you know, it is the intellectual movement that sort of created the modern world. And it includes things like, uh, a belief, a, a regard for science and reason as offering, you know, uh, basic answers to, uh, you know, the big, the, the big questions of human life as offering guidance for action and for our worldview.
Speaker 1 00:03:31 So a scientific worldview and also a, uh, a more, an individualist worldview, an idea that that individuals should be allowed to pursue their own interests and make their own decisions, uh, and, uh, leading to the development of the concept of, of natural rights or individual rights. That was lock's big contribution at the end of the 17th century, which took off and became implemented in many different ways in the 18th century, especially in the American revolution, the declar declaration of independence, the bill of rights, all of that stuff is, you know, an, uh, an implementation of this enlightenment idea of, uh, uh, the individual and the, the rights of the individual and the, the autonomy of the individual being at the center of, uh, uh, of politics and of morality. And then, uh, you know, as well as the fact that the same time at which free market economics, uh, is basically invented and begins to be used to explain the world.
Speaker 1 00:04:35 And so the idea of a, of a free society, a society with representative government and also society with relative freedom, economic freedom, uh, is really born out of the enlightenment. And so you can see how this totally shapes the modern world, the world of capitalism, the world of individualism, uh, the world of individual autonomy, uh, that ideal of an individual autonomy and, um, and of a scientific and technological society that is, you know, human life has been totally transformed by all of the science and technology, uh, the implementation of that to industry that happened, uh, subsequent to, and as a consequence of this inte shore movement, the enlightenment. So obviously this is, you know, this is something that made the modern world that has made a dramatic improvement in human life. So the idea is there's been a, a number of people sort of hearkening back to that in the current context and saying, we need to return to the ideals of the enlightenment.
Speaker 1 00:05:38 Now, the topic I wanna take on today is, is based on the agreeing with that part of it. I absolutely agree with every part of that, except for the one implication that you often get in these things is the idea that we need to return to the ideas of the enlightenment, that the ideas of the enlightenment, the existing intellectual phrase, perfectly adequate. We don't really need to change it, and we just need to sort of rediscover it and return back and study. We need to study the enlightenment to turn. Enlightenment are basically here. And, uh, so we know we don't need anything new, and I think we absolutely do need some things that are new. So I think, you know, one of the things I wanna talk when I talk about it, you know, I like this phrase enlightenment 2.0, emphasize the idea that this is 2.0, it is going, if we, we want to reclaim the legacy of the enlightenment, we're also going to have to be open to the idea that there are things that need to be fixed in the enlightenment and that we need to, uh, have some new ideas and some, some, some changes and modifications required to put the enlightenment in on a firmer footing.
Speaker 1 00:06:55 I wanna talk a little bit about what those things are, and I think there's, uh, there's like three big things I'm gonna throw out here. Uh, but then I wanna end by talking the fact about the mindset that is required to go back to cutting
Speaker 2 00:07:12 Out just a little bit.
Speaker 1 00:07:14 I gotta move it's it's a little sensitive to your exact, let me stand over here. Is this better?
Speaker 2 00:07:23 Yes.
Speaker 1 00:07:25 Okay.
Speaker 2 00:07:30 Wait, now it's not
Speaker 1 00:07:32 What's that
Speaker 2 00:07:33 You cut it out for another second again, right after
Speaker 1 00:07:35 You said, okay. Oh yeah, right after I said, that's better. Right. Makes sense. All right. So, well, let's go over the, the, the things that I think need to be fixed about the enlightenment. So one of the places I'm talking about is, you know, like, um, Stephen pink is a good example. You know, the funny thing I, I did at the time these books came out, I did reviews them. And I found it very interesting that, you know, Stephen Pinker and Jonah Goldberg, both wrote books about the legacy of the enlightenment of all the progress we've made since the enlightenment and how, what we can learn from the enlightenment. And the funny thing is, Stephen Pinker basically says, comes up to the conclusion that the enlightenment coheres completely with a standard, you know, down the line sensor, left viewpoint, cont contemporary sensor left viewpoint, and Gerberg looks at the enlightenment and basically derives from it standard issue 20 late 20th century conservatism. Right? So it's very interesting that, you know, the enlightenment was a big and varied intellectual movement. It had elements of, of both of those things in it. So it's very easy for some, you know, somebody to look at that and say, yes, the enlightment was great. Let me pick the elements from the enlightenment that cohere directly to my, you know, to my standard issue right. Of center or left of center worldview.
Speaker 1 00:09:00 Uh, but painter is a great example of someone who I think has this sort of attitude that, well, all the ideas are there and we, you know, we all the existing, anything new or anything to be changed. Uh, we'll just go with what, you know, let's conventional, it's underestimating the fact that, you know, there's a reason why the enlightenment didn't last, there was a backlash against the enlightenment, and there were certain key intellectual weaknesses that, uh, need to be addressed if we're going to have an enlightenment 2.0, so it's, there's, there's two big things I wanna talk about then a third one, that's a little more, perhaps a little more subtle. Um, the first one is one of the reasons the enlightenment didn't last people who are the big enlightenment philosophers, one of the big answers to your answers answers you will get is Emanuel.
Speaker 1 00:09:57 K cuz these the late 18th century philosopher, he talked a lot about reason and he actually wrote an essay called what is enlightenment in which he, uh, uh, sort of positioned himself as one of the supporters of the enlightenment. You know, this is late in the process where they actually start to use that term and gained this sort of self-awareness of this movement. And he positioned himself as an advocate of enlightenment philosophy and his, uh, um, from his essay, what is enlightenment is he says dare to no. So that's a great enlightenment pH enlight. Uh, it seems like this great statement to the enlightenment dare to no. And yet con turns around and in his, uh, uh, big abstract works on epistemology. He ends up saying, and this is another quote from him. He ends up saying that he found it necessary to deny reason or in order to make room for faith and how he ended up denying reason.
Speaker 1 00:10:58 Now, if people will say, oh, that's a mistranslation. It he's either denying reason or limiting reason. There are different translations you could do from the German. But the basic idea is he wanted to wall off reason into its own little domain is domain. But I imagine from you by putting in a domain that is outside of the reach of reason, and can't be challenged by reason. Now, the idea that that, that religion is within the realm of reason. And he has to be, uh, um, examined by the use of reason was a central tenant of the enlightenment. And that's exactly the rug he was trying to, you know, he was trying to pull the rug out from under the enlightenment in that central way, by saying that you had to limit reason in order to make room for faith and creating this separation between faith and reason.
Speaker 1 00:11:46 Now he didn't actually succeed in preserving religious faith because, you know, religious faith actually fades, continues to fade after his time. He didn't actually preserve Christianity as he was attempting to do, but he created a trying to limit reason he did succeed in and convincing limited in it. It, you can't really end up, you know, getting the worst of, of both world Christianity, but, but he did undermine reason. And that's an argument that persists to today. And so something I've noticed that if you go to, you know, people who are sincerely attempting to defend reasons. So I just do decently did a review of <inaudible>, which is called rationality. And it's about, it's supposed to be about going over all the different canoe reason and a defense in favor of the idea that we should be using reason marketing. What was that? You just kinda you're back.
Speaker 1 00:12:59 Okay. So, and I noticed in, in there, and in some, all these other people, there's a reluctance, it's very typical reluctance to come out and simply say, you know, reason is valid because that's the way the world is because metaly, we can look out, we can see it's itself evident. Um, you know, there's a reluctance to, to, to do what iron Rand did and say, reason is valid because AA because things are what they are, that's just the way the world is. Right? So, uh, in another example for this that I came across is Jonathan Roche, uh, wrote a, a, a very good book called the constitution of knowledge, uh, lots of valid and interesting and legitimate things in it. But when it comes to saying, why is reason valid, he accepts this idea as he put it, that, that, um, that, that we, we can't really know the real world out there.
Speaker 1 00:13:52 All we know is the world, as it appears from within our own, you know, from, from within our own perspective, as distorted by our different biases and opinions, and this creates a problem. And so we have to come up with a way sort of come up with a ham. He had that in defen indirect defensive reason say, it's just, you know, this is reason is valid because this is just the way the world is because ASA, he has to say, well, we all, all of our view, all of our views are just our, our consciousness is distorted. All of our views are distorted. We could be completely wrong, but maybe if we work together collectively as a group will correct each other's errors, errors enough that we can come to reality. Now, why does he have to go through all this sort of hemming and make all these concessions about how we can't really know?
Speaker 1 00:14:38 And I love this phrase, the real world out there. Well it's because that argument that he's using is, is directly from Kat. He probably doesn't realize it, but it comes directly from cut the idea that, and, and that the phrase there is the real world out there. So it's this idea that we're all trapped into our brain in our brains, in our own little world of illusions. There's a real world out there somewhere, you know, separate from us. But all we can see is the world, as it is appears to us, that is the, and the content argument is that the world, as it appears to us is, uh, because it's just the world, as it appears to us, it has necessarily distorted and filtered by our consciousness. Now, before this, you know, conflict, the first woke philosopher, because this is the basic premise that you need to get to what you call political correctness or wokeness today, which is this idea that, you know, because you are, if you, because I'm a, a, a white, a straight CIS hetero, a straight CIS white male, therefore I perceive the world only in way.
Speaker 1 00:15:55 Your personal identity is so way that someone from a different background is a different identity. Entity would understand it. That's the essence of wokeness. And that all goes back to this content idea that, you know, there's the real world out there, but we're all stuck in our little distorted bubble created by our own identities. Um, and so the first thing I think we need to do to fix the enlightenment is we need to totally challenge at the, that idea. I think that's one of the key, uh, contributions that iron Rand has made, uh, in terms of sort of reclaiming or, or providing a better foundation for enlightenment ideas, uh, is that she came up with a sort of definitive rejoinder to, to that argument and her rejoin, her, her famous, her, her best, most succinct phrase of it. She, she says constant theory is the idea that we are blind because we have eyes death, because we have ears of a mind.
Speaker 1 00:16:58 So you see how it's, you know, it's there ridiculous assumption that our means are perceiving the world, uh, that a means perceiving the world are with the world, not what separates trust from be on being able to understand the world. And specifically, she went behind that and challenge this idea. And she says that the, the assumption behind this constant idea, that the means by which we perceive the world must distort it is the idea that the perfect means of the perfect perception, a perfectly accurate consciousness of the world would have to have no means by which it occurs. It would have to happen by no intermediary factors. There have to be no, uh, means by which we understand the world, no mechanisms, it would just have to happen through some sort of mystical, as she pointed out that, you know, uh, uh, the other great formulation she gave is she said, nobody would say that, uh, because we have to digest food.
Speaker 1 00:18:01 Uh, we, we, that true eating and true nutrition is impossible. And she says, similarly, the mind has anti entity. It has a process that has a method, which by which BLE, by which, by with it op by which it operates, excuse me. And that just, as we have to go through a process to digest our food, we have to go through a process to digest knowledge and that's normal, and that's natural, and that's not an argument against knowledge. It's exactly how we should expect the beginning of knowledge to work. So we need to sort of get past that content argument and go back to the point where we can act, we can quote iron Rand or, or quote iron Rand, quoting Aristotle, and say, reason is valid because a is a things are what they are. That's just nature of the world. And we are capable of perceiving that directly.
Speaker 1 00:18:48 Uh, so that's the first thing I think we need to fix about the enlightenment is to challenge that sort of radical, that implicit radical subjectivism of the content viewpoint and get to the point where we can actually just go out and affirm that we are capable of perceiving the world. Uh, and, and, uh, and you know, that things are with there, that we are able to gain knowledge of that. All right. So the second, and, and that would sweep away, you know, part and that, that, well now cons worst fears would be realized, which is that if we don't deny knowledge, then we won't be making room for faith. So that would be bad for the anti enlightenment forces, the religious obscurantist, the people on the religious, right, who are anti enlightenment, but it would also sweep away the, uh, the woke anti enlightenment viewpoint, which is, you know, that no, we can't really know, know anything about the world.
Speaker 1 00:19:36 Our knowledge is distorted by, um, by our personal identity and by race class and gender, et cetera. All right. So the second big thing that we need to fix about the enlightenment is we need to reclaim the idea of rational. Self-interest now rational. Self-interest actually was a widely accepted, moral philosophy in the enlightenment. Uh, and you know, one of the claims I've hear often made, especially by a conservatives about the enlightenment is they say, well, the enlightenment, they set out to try to find a secular morality and they never succeeded. And it's sort of like, ha see, that just shows that you need religion to have morality. This is the religious conservative argument. Well, yeah, I, I, my research and, and in the last five to 10 years, I've really come to appreciate, this has led me to, to the conclusion that actually the enlightenment did develop a secular what is essentially a secular morality.
Speaker 1 00:20:29 And it was a morality of rational self-interest and this, but the problem is that this was done under the cover of religion or under the, uh, rubric under the ages of religion. There was actually a, a widespread, uh, viewpoint known as, um, natural religion. And so I mentioned before that, uh, uh, the idea that religion should be sub that, that religious questions and questions of God and, and, and faith should be subjected to rational inquiry was a central idea of the enlightenment. Well, natural religion was the way by which they did that. So natural religion to explain the term as opposed to revealed religion. So revealed religion was the idea that having mythical visions and then relating them to you, that's revelation, that's revealed religion. Natural religion by contrast is when you try to curve God and what God wants for us by observing nature, you know, by observing human nature, by observing the world and trying to infer from, well, if it says, God created the world and God created, man, we can infer from the nature of the world and from human nature, what kind of creep, you know, what God must be and what he must want for legitimately conclusion, but what that did that idea of natural religion, what it did, that enlightenment version of religion, what it did is it allowed people to actually come up with what was essentially a secular, and it was a morality of self-interest.
Speaker 1 00:22:12 It was the idea that certain things will tend to, uh, make us happy and lead to, you know, flourishing and success in, in our lives. And certain things will tend to make us miserable and cause us pain. And therefore that's the that's that's that's. And we could use reason to figure out which things will make us happy and which things will make us miserable. And then do the things that will make us happy, come up with the rules for living it's how, how we can live in a way that will make us happy and allow us to live in, in peace and prosperity with our fellow man, a and then also come up with rules that will keep us from making errors that will, that will lead to pain and suffering. So this is essentially a secular morality. The idea that that happiness and misery is are, are the, are the, are the main goals, you know, the thing you want to achieve, the thing you want to avoid, and that you're using reason to understand what rules you should follow, what, what guidance you should have in order to achieve happiness.
Speaker 1 00:23:10 That is essentially a secular this worldly morality, but it was developed under the heading of natural religion. And so what happened is that as you know, I, my, my theory in this, I'm totally research on this as you get in the 19th century. What I think happens is that the people who want to stay, keep want to stay religious, you know, if you're really dedicated to religion, you don't like this halfway, you know, it's just natural. Religion was this halfway, um, uh, position between a religious outlook and a secular outlook. And so what happened is it was reelect by the people who wanted to really rejected by them in FA and now what the secular people did then in the 19th century is a whole bunch of them substituted society or the state for God, and had a basically as August comp to put it, and I'm rejected the philosophy of self-interest.
Speaker 1 00:24:08 And then the people who were really committed to keeping religion didn't want to go halfway to a secular viewpoint. They reclaimed, you know, the, they, they, they, they reclaimed that old time religion. And they said, no, no, no, we should do this all on faith and on faith and scripture alone. And, and we should, you know, reject this, the God of the philosophers is just gumming things up, right? So this is the idea that, you know, the philosopher is using philosophy and reason to talk about God, that's getting in the way of the real faith, which comes from, uh, from revelation and from the Bible. All right. So that faded away and people sort of, you know, so you hear now people saying, well, that then in the enlightenment, they have secular morality and that's because they, they developed one that wasn't recognized as such and was promptly sort of abandoned and forgotten.
Speaker 1 00:24:55 So we need to reclaim of a morality of self-interest and specifically, you know, they use terms for like self-interest properly understood or enlighten self-interest, but I think rational self-interest is the best term, cuz it implies, you know, by what means is, is self-interest properly understood by what means is it enlightened? Well, it's enlightened by the use of reason. And it emphasizes the idea that, you know, a rational self-interest is not just doing whatever you feel like it is observing the world and coming up with rules and, and principles of morality. Uh, so reclaiming the idea of a, of, of a RA, a morality of rational self-interest I think is a crucial idea to, to, um, if we're gonna have an enlightenment 2.0, those are the two big things, defending a better defense, a better firmer foundation for reason. And reclaiming the idea of, of a morality of self interest are the two big things.
Speaker 1 00:25:50 I think we need for a second enlightenment and, you know, a better foundation for self rational, self interest, one that gets rid of the sort of religious dressing that was put on it in, in the enlightenment. But the last thing I wanna mention and one that I think is really the, to the absolute unique contribution of iron Rand to the enlightenment. And that is that, uh, you know, I came across, came across this perspective, partly by trying to understand why is it everybody thinks iron Rand is in each hand, right? Because you can see some superficial similarities, but there's so many differences between her Anitha in their philosophy that even people who are not completely superficial thinkers still trip up over this. And I think the reason is because they see the, um, similarity in a similarity in style, a similarity in the poetry and, and the sense of life, uh, iron Rand, and NHA and this, you know, and that was so she herself saw, she said, you know, NHA had this tremendous sort of as a poet, this tremendous ability to project, uh, a view of human self-esteem.
Speaker 1 00:26:56 I think she meant self-esteem not just individual self-esteem, but self-esteem for, you know, the, the greatness of human potential and more widely what she saw in the romantic, you know, the romantic movements, the 19th century was both a literary movement and also a philosophical movement. And in its essence, it was anti enlightenment. The romantics were, were, uh, what made them romantics the romantic part, the wild and, and, and an emotion over reason that you're, you're your wild, uncontrolled emotions put you in touch with a deeper reality than the cold logic of reason. But by doing that, by embracing that emotional aspect of life, they also sort of cornered the market on the idea of, um, well, first of all, on that sort of this idea of having a rich, inter internal spiritual life of having a sense of personal greatness and, and, and the, the, uh, the sort of the grandeur of your own internal thoughts and internal personal density and this sense of adventure and excitement in life, right?
Speaker 1 00:28:05 So, you know, the, the, and the romantic literature that came from that, I'll emphasize all those characteristics. So, you know, you had Byron and, and these, uh, uh, um, uh, and, and all these things, you know, all these people creating this great, exciting literature with this very sort of grand sense of life, of the excitement and adventure of life that was produced as part of this movement, that was anti enlightenment. So what I think is most interesting about iron Rand that she contributed entirely in its content is entirely in the tradition of the enlightenment. It is entirely pro enlightenment, it's pro reason pro individual rights it's individualist. It is, um, uh, and, and, and it's, it's, it's a, uh, uh, it emphasizes things like, you know, production and trade as, as the, uh, most important activities in life, as opposed to warfare or art, or, or, you know, the crazy artist kind of, uh, viewpoint that was typical of, of the, of the enlightenment.
Speaker 1 00:29:13 But at the same time, it has all the excitement and adventure and the liveliness of romanticism. So it has the sense of life of romanticism, the actual philosophical content of the enlightenment. And I think that's the last ingredient the enlightenment needs to sort of take off and to revive itself is this, um, sort of reclaiming the excitements that comes from the Roman from this, the, the art and the sense of life of the enlightenment, reclaiming that for a pro reason, individualist, uh, uh, pro-technology pro progress, uh, outlook overview there. And, uh, I think you open up for questions and comments.
Speaker 0 00:30:00 Great. Uh, lots of rich material. I tried to take notes as we were going. Um, but for now I'll defer to JP. Thanks for joining us. I know you've been waiting.
Speaker 3 00:30:12 Hi, Scott, thank you for, uh, inviting me to the room. Um, Robert, you gave today a couple of angles to my, my, um, my previous understanding on how the United States, at some point during the early years of its founding, her finding, I think you say, sorry, English is not my first language, but that's
Speaker 1 00:30:40 Fine.
Speaker 3 00:30:41 Um, of her founding, uh, this, this ethic of, of rational self interest was prevalent. And, um, I've studied under a, um, a, uh, UA professor that holds a theory of, uh, fusion, uh, that speaks of the, uh, many, well, they turn more to the, the, the, the Bible as being the original liberal text, which is very far out for me, which is something that I never accept accepted, but, um, that, um, uh, this ethic that was, uh, embedded in the American culture in their very early years, came from Calvinism. Can you confirm that that's the case and the other is the last one is, is an observation. Um, uh, you're very much talking about a, uh, an objective future. Are you being modest?
Speaker 1 00:31:49 Well, I mean, the ideas that I'm saying the are needed to fix the enlightenment are basic objective ideas.
Speaker 3 00:31:57 Yeah. Let's call it that then.
Speaker 1 00:32:00 Okay. So you want me to take on Calvinism, right? Have to hear the argument for a while it's based on Calvinism. I really strongly doubt it. That Calvinism was a very Calvinism was part of this sort of let's return to the old time. It was not a natural religion outlook. It was very much a, uh, a, a, an appeal to faith. And, um, you know, I think where people get this, cuz you know, this was planted deeply by, uh, a guy named max F who is a German philosophy and a social scientist who came with this, this idea of the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, this famous title of it famous work, somehow it was Calvinism that promoted the work ethic and that somehow was at the basis of capitalism. And I just, I've never really seen that. I mean, I don't it's, I doesn't bear out in, um, in, in American history because, you know, um, uh, it was not primarily Calvinists who, uh, were at the, at the basis of forming this sort of American outlook.
Speaker 1 00:33:09 Uh, and in fact, uh, so one of the things I would, I recommend a friend, I, I find this a very interesting thing is, and a friend of mine was the one who turned me onto this. Uh, he's done some good work to writing about, uh, Jonathan Mahu, who was a, uh, a new England preacher in the 1750s and sixties, uh, who was a, a really important figure leading up to the American revolution. He, he died before it happened. So he's not considered a founding father because he didn't make it that far, but he was very influe founding fathers, uh, uh, John Adams, for example.
Speaker 1 00:33:45 And the interesting thing is he came around along in Boston, among the sort of Calvinist Puritan, uh, hi, uh, uh, the existing Calvinist Puritan, uh, establishment there. And he became extremely influential. But at first he was shunned because he had these enlightenment influenced, um, uh, uh, uh, natural religion views that he basically the Lockean, the, the, the views he had gotten from John Locke and from the enlightenment philosophers. Uh, and, uh, uh, so the thing is he had in order to promote those ideas, though, he had to first overcome the opposition of the Calvinist establishment among the, the new England, uh, the leftover from the Puritans who settled new England. Uh, so it was very much not a Calvinist viewpoint. It was a, you know, for, so for example, I think, I think Jonathan Mahu was actually, um, like slightly related, like a great nephew or something like that of Jonathan Edwards.
Speaker 1 00:34:47 Jonathan Edwards was one of these Calvinist, uh, in the early days in new England. And he, his famous speeches that, uh, we are all sinners in the hands of angry God, you know, and we should all view ourselves as inherently depraved and leading to seek, uh, uh, forgiveness for our sins. And it was this very puritanical, very Calvinist outlook and, uh, you know, opposite kind of theology to him. Uh, and it was very no, you know, God gave us reason and he gave us the ability to, to, to enjoy life and to feel pleasure. And therefore we should use that our faculty of reason use it to examine even all the questions of religion. And we should, uh, use that to, in order to be happy here in our lives in this earth. And it's a very different from the puritanical Calvinism. But I think, I think that sort of max VA thing of, oh, well, Calvinism, the purism of Calvinism created this sense of a work ethic and the work ethic is important to capitalism.
Speaker 1 00:35:52 And it's just, I, I find that to be a very super many years ago, probably 23 years ago, I'm thinking, uh, John, uh, John rid path that objective was he's passed away since then, but, uh, an objective historian did I thought a very good lecture on this idea of max favor and the, uh, uh, the Protestant theory of capitalism and sort of found that his conclusion, what there was that there's no, there, there, um, but that, that might be available somewhere. You should look and see if that's available somewhere online. I'm not sure if it is or not. Okay, good. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah. Great. Thank you. Uh, Lawrence.
Speaker 4 00:36:34 Hi, Rob. Uh, my question is, I guess one thing that I see sort of happen today is especially among the, uh, nontheistic or these people who, uh, they say they're rationalists they're, they're, they believe in the data. And I think, I don't really know how to classify these people, but they're sort of like the same group that belief in sort of the evolutionary biology or evolutionary anthropology where they're stating, oh, well, the reason we do X thing is because our evolution is dictated such where they're more just focusing on just observation and sort of stating causality, but they don't really go much deeper with the practice of reason. So like, they would just say the brain is just chemicals firing, but that's discounting, you know, the brain is so much more, so much more powerful and everything, you know? Yeah. So they seem to ignore romanticism and the sort, the higher levels of thought yeah. That we would talk about. I don't really know how we would classify them, but they say we're part of the new rational group. That's gonna be sort of pushing forward. We're all about data science and rationality, but that's different from what you've talked about, how would you approach those types of,
Speaker 1 00:37:52 Yeah, that's interesting. And, and that's a good reminder to me that I gotta do an up clubbing upcoming clubhouse on evolutionary psychology, cuz this is just everywhere. I mean, Stephen pink is into it. And a lot of you probably have noticed it. There's a bit of a, sort of a tech bro angle to this, right. Because I think it, it come this idea that, oh, well everything's because we can explain everything by how we're programmed by our evolutionary. And we do game theory to show how we're programmed by our evolutionary, uh, pressures to do this or that other thing. It it's very, I don't wanna be too glib about it, but I found this very pop kind of guy. Who's like a Silicon valley programmer type comfortable with anything that's that can be reduced to a program, right? <laugh> anything can be reduced to code, like put the right input, you get the right output, the dealing with life that he's comfortable with.
Speaker 1 00:38:52 And so I think Silicon valley types, there's this appeal of, okay, we cracked the code is software. Everything is code, including human behavior. It's all just code. And if we understand the, how we were programmed by our evolutionary background, then we'll understand everything. Including also was like behi the idea, including how do you get women to sleep with you? Well, there's a code and if you just follow the, the right inputs, you know, the women will follow at your feet. It, it generally doesn't work out terribly well for them, but there was this fad there for a while, but you see that sort of outlook. And what they're doing is this is part of, I think this is a, now this is very indirectly, but it's part of the contention legacy that when concept, I mean the limit reason in order to, in order to make room room for faith, what he did is he basically said, well, reason is good.
Speaker 1 00:39:49 The way this came down into the is reason is good for dealing with scientific and technical, okay. The big questions of life, what you should do, feelings and love, all that sort of stuff. That's not the realm of reason. That's the realm make room for faith come to in terms of the public understanding. And I think the, the right types that you're talking about and I've encountered many of them too. I it's like they, they accepted that. Yes contant is right. This content outlook is right. Reason is good for understanding scientific and technical stuff. And therefore that must be all. And since we're in favor of reason, that must be all there is to life. And we're just going to dismiss everything out instead of using reason to apply it. Instead of saying, reason also applies to issues of love and, and to the big philosophical questions and to the meaning of life.
Speaker 1 00:40:56 And all, instead of saying, we should apply reason to that. We're gonna dismiss all of that as irrelevant and as meaningless and, uh, as sort of an epiphenomenon. And we're just going to this stuff that con said it was okay to apply reason to, we're going to assume that's all of life and we're going to, we're gonna reduce everything in life to that. So it's all, you know, well, since reason can be used to understand the technical scientific issues of, of evolution, therefore all of life can be explained by evolutionary sake. Now, like I said, I gotta, I've got to set aside another clubhouse to sort of present my full case against evolutionary psychology. I think the biggest, the essence of in a sentence or so is that they wanna basically reduce everything to how we were programmed by evolution. Our brains were programmed and hard wired in certain ways while ignoring the fact that the whole evolutionary Val brain, the whole programmed, because it is self programming. Uh, they, you know, they wanna act as if we are programmed and exactly we are evolutionary program Mo is evolutionary programmed. So it's like they have this, what seems superficially to be an evolution, a point based evolution, but ignoring the one like evolutionary superpower that humans have, you know, the one thing that, that gave us evolutionary advantage of self programming and they wanna sort of throw that out. So that's my, my like very briefcase, I guess, evolutionary psychology.
Speaker 0 00:42:43 Well, I'll look forward to that episode. Um, you know, I, when you brought up con I'm curious, I mean, you know, when people like Pinker or others are fighting for a new enlightenment, I mean, do they mean partially the version in which con has a part in it?
Speaker 1 00:43:00 <laugh> well, one of these guys who's sort of the devil thing about cant is because he wraps up a lot of his philosophy in being part of the enlightenment, right. And invented himself that way. And when he said, you know, I design knowledge in order to make room for faith. He also sort of repackaged that as well. Then I'll put on a firmer foundation by showing exactly where it's appropriately applied right now. He's undermining reason the whole time. And he's pretty clear that he's actually wants to undermine reason. It's not just our imagination, but he manages to sort of spin that in a way. Well, basically, basically he was, he's destroying the village in order to save it right. I'm, I'm limiting reason in order to save it. But really what he sees doing is he's completely undermining reason, uh, uh, and not really being about that.
Speaker 1 00:43:52 So he managed to, um, and that's actually one thing I was gonna end with, I forgot to do is the one thing that's good about cotton is when he says dare to know, and that spirit that he captured in that of saying, we should want to be using our minds to understand the world we should want to dare to know. And so if you know, obstacles to our, to, to the, to, uh, our UN to our ability of our minds to understand, to deal with the world, that is the basic spiriting enlightenment we should be trying to reclaim. But the problem is con sort of present presenting himself as one of the advocates of that, while on the fundamental, he was totally undermining it. And, you know, that's across all. I'm gonna have to also do another clubhouse one of these days, uh, there was another philosopher who referred to con as the old destroyer and I <laugh>, so I have to do one on how conch was the old destroyer. He mean everything from, uh, uh, morality to art. He ruined it. Uh <laugh> so, you know, he's sort of the last he sort of viewed as the last enlightenment. And my view is he's the last one because he killed it. <laugh>,
Speaker 0 00:45:06 That's funny.
Speaker 1 00:45:09 Um,
Speaker 0 00:45:10 Well, uh, I'm glad we're starting to get these scheduled. Um, I, I have to admit, I, I cheated a little bit and I went to your subs stack. There's a lot of good information on there, but you wrote a little bit about this, uh, a couple of weeks ago. And one of the things, uh, you quote, you say their crucial spots where Pinker's defense of the validity of reason is undercut by a type of metaphysical shyness. And that it's common. And I just, you know, I wonder if some people just they're, they're trying to make a distinction between that kind of spot, like, you know, no emotion and the other side of the dichotomy, or they don't wanna miss out on the, you know, creativity of, of intuition or, you know, what, what you might see in artists.
Speaker 1 00:46:02 Yeah. I, I, I see that. Yeah. I mean, that was one of the impetus behind the flash against the enlightment was, oh, this is a narrow view. And, you know, if we do everything by reason now, I'm glad you mentioned Spock, cuz he's the guy who capsulates. So when I talked about this idea of trying to unify Roman, what's good about romanticism take all the exciting and interesting parts about romanticism and combine them with a pro reason philosophy and integrate them within a, a pro reason enlightenment, essentially enlightenment content of the philosophy. Well, first of all, no, you know, I've gone to many clubhouse without talking about, had you brought this up, you have to keep have to keep it Spock as a great example of how deeply internalized that false alternative has become. Uh, so you know that when people came to the idea of what, who would, what would be at the ultimate example of a, of, of reason and logic applied to human life?
Speaker 1 00:47:03 Gene rod says, oh, wow. Let's, you know, let's create the S let's create Spock, a guy who has gone through this, you this, this, um, spiritual discipline of totally purging himself of all emotions. And I think maybe this also speaks to what I'm get was getting at when talking to Lawrence about this, this, this, the people who think of themselves as rationalists and who want to explain everything away as evolutionary psychology, it's the same sort of thing that they have this spot like caricature of what reason is that, you know, if reason is to purge yourself of emotions or to detach yourself from emotions or to explain, explain emotions away as a reflection of some underlying evolutionary, uh, uh, programming that, you know, that, that explain them away in terms of something that's non-emotional right. Uh, and that comes from this, this, uh, uh, sort of left over idea of a separation between the emotional aspect of life and the rational aspect of life that I think is one of the uncorrected problems that sort of change from, from the misunderstanding of reason that we need to change from the enlightenment.
Speaker 1 00:48:20 And rather what we think we need to have is, is the idea that you could integrate reason and emotion and that's, you know, the other big thing that iron Rand did is her view of the emotions is that your emotions are a sort of automatized version of your prayer, of your prior thinking, your prior assumptions about life, your prior evaluations of the world and all the things in it and your place in the world, all that stored away in your subconscious and produces automatized results. And that, you know, not only that, that this is actually a good thing that's worthwhile, it's valuable, but at the same time, it can reduce inappropriate reactions and inappropriate responses that you need needs to be able to analyze by reason. And one of the things I think is actually very hopeful today and would be a crucial part of a enlightenment 2.0 is this viewpoint has actually become a very common and widely accepted one under the name of cognitive behavioral therapy.
Speaker 1 00:49:20 It's actually becoming the dominant theory in psychology is the <inaudible> to change your emotional reactions in your psychological reactions. You need to understand the thinking that that created that, and then change your thinking patterns and thinking methods in order to counteract that, and it's been tremendously successful. And I think that's why it's becoming, uh, more dominant. So I think that needs to be integrated and, and more broadly the idea that the emotional that art and literature and creativity also needs to be brought sort of within the, um, uh, needs to be integrated with reason. Now that wouldn't leave room. It wouldn't mean there's no room for, you know, it's, it's the spot like view that says, oh, that would leave no room for creativity or spontaneity or for, you know, for, um, for, for, uh, going on your gut feeling or anything like that. When Ashley, I think a non spot approach, one that tries to integrate reason and emotion would understand that, you know, creativity and spontaneity as your quote unquote gut feeling is you properly using and, and, and taking advantage of the, the automatic operations of your subconscious, that that's the, the, your subconscious is not a force opposed to reason, but that it's complimentary with reason, but that that's a whole other topic for another day, probably too.
Speaker 1 00:50:43 There's the third show topic. Um, thank you for joining us. The thing about these big issues though, just make one sentence. Uh, the thing about these big issues is, uh, every time you touch one, it's connected to a whole bunch of other ones. And so every time we start everything, one of these discussions, I come up with four more topics we can spend than hour talking about. Go ahead, Keith, but go ahead,
Speaker 5 00:51:08 Keith. Thank you guys. Uh, Rob, you know, I, Rand talked a lot about having the need for a second Renaissance and I was wondering, is there something useful in thinking of thinking in terms of a second Renaissance in order to get to an enlightenment 2.0, or is there really no distinction there?
Speaker 1 00:51:24 Yeah, well actually the original way she talked about a second Renaissance, I think I'm not sure she talked so much about a second Renaissance, but it came to be sort of adopted as a bit of a slogan and, you know, the objective, you know, pre-Amazon, uh, you know, back, back in the days, pre-Amazon, if you want a specialty subject, you got official catalog, you know, it delivered to your, uh, you know, you got catalog delivered to your mailbox where somebody would gather together a bunch of books on that. So was called second Renaissance books. And so the idea of a second Renaissance became sort of a slogan. Now, the funny thing is when I ran actually used that phrase, it was, I think Ellis Wyatt has it in the, in the, in Atlas sh strike. He says, we're gonna have a second, uh, a second Renaissance.
Speaker 1 00:52:15 He's talking about an industrial Renaissance paintings. This gonna be oil derricks is his, his way of putting it. So she meant a little something different by it when she first used the phrase, but it came to sort of stand for the idea of a revival of ProRes ideas. Uh, and the interesting thing I found out about, I found about this when iron Rand wrote, she never talked about the enlightenment one way or the other, she didn't say bad things say good things about it. She actually says some things about the post Renaissance era that, that the enlightenment era, but she never uses the phrase. And I I'm curious, I don't really fully myself know why I'd like to track that down. See if anybody has any definitive answer to that. It could simply be intellectual fashions. Uh, the idea of referring to the 18th century as the enlightenment was something that was not really common until fairly late in the 19th century.
Speaker 1 00:53:11 It could be that, you know, in her education of philosophy in Russia, in the, you know, 1910s and twenties, this was not a phrase. This was not a way of looking at things that, that she encountered. So she thought of the Renaissance and then there's the post Renaissance era, but the idea of the enlightenment as being a separate era and having it, it, it, I think it didn't, it certainly didn't have the profile in her mind that it, it has especially now. Um, so I, as to the value of, of, of which term to use or second Renaissance or second enlightenment, I love the idea of a Renaissance of a rebirth. And, but I, I also, I, I I'm going with enlightenment partly because first of all, I think the ideal thing enlightenment than the Renaissance, and I'm looking at this time in this, but the Renaissance was sort of are rebirth of all classical knowledge, but it was everything from the classical world, right?
Speaker 1 00:54:12 It was you, it was Aristotle. I mean, Aristotle was the driving force. It was the thing that made the Renaissance special. But if you look at the Renaissance thinkers, they were reviving Aristotle, they were reviving Plato. They were reviving everything from the classical world and it didn't have as much of a direction, right. It was just the excitement of rediscovering all these ideas that had been buried for a thousand years, uh, uh, uh, under this sort of obscure of, of Western Christianity, uh, specifically, you know, and, and the dark ages, uh, uh, specifically in Western Europe. And, uh, so the enlightenment has, I think, more specificity to it that there was more of a sense of, okay, specifically the idea of science. And it was the point at which we were just trying to revive, but we had gone beyond Aristotle and we had discovered all these amazing new things.
Speaker 1 00:55:05 And we had, you know, the whole lock, uh, the whole, uh, Newtonian physics. And we were able to understand the movement of the planets of the solar system and all of that. It, it was this, you know, science had developed to this tremendous new advances and tremendous new ability to explain the world. So it was, it had gone beyond just a revival of the classical world to become something, something new and opening these new vistas of like, we can go beyond that and do even more than the ancients ever did. Uh, but it also had a greater specificity and, you know, the idea specifically of, uh, immorality of, of rational self-interest right. That's something that went beyond what had been done before and was more specific than just a revival of classical learning. So that's why I lean towards the enlightenment. Um, and then there's the simple, practical thing that the enlightenment is kind of looming large in the imagination, you know, among the sort of inte intellectual classes among people who read books by Stephen Pinker and, and that kind of thing among this sort of middle to high brow, um, range of America political discussion, the enlightenment is looming very large.
Speaker 1 00:56:14 It also loom I found it also loos very large in the minds of the opponents of our ideal. So I I've had a lot of run-ins well, among the, on the woke set, they'll say, oh, the enlightenment was all racist. And it was really all about finding scientific ex scientific, um, theories of racism. And that's what the enlightenment was about. Or, uh, if you go to the religious right types, they, they hate the enlightenment. And the enlightenment was the era of full terror. It was the era of atheism. It was the era that deed religion from a central role in life, and they hate the enlightenment too. So I think for a whole bunch of reasons, I think it's the right label for the kind of outlook that we're looking for.
Speaker 0 00:56:57 Great, Tom, quick question.
Speaker 6 00:57:01 Yes. I, I just wanna make a comment to what Rob just said about, uh, what, why Rand may not have used the term, the, uh, age of enlightenment, uh, because I think that, uh, another term maybe a different, uh, time range, uh, was used more by her, at least according to my objectiveist, uh, CD Ram, uh, search. Uh, and, and that term is the age of reason. And so in a way she uses that a little more maybe than, than all the other terms, because it, it addresses the essence of, of this, uh, Renaissance, right. Rebirth of reason. So the age of reason comes after that. Uh, and so that's, uh, I think is, is probably the reason.
Speaker 1 00:57:49 Yeah, I think the age of reason was also, uh, in the mid, early to mid 20th century was a more common way of referring to the, the era that we call the enlightenment now.
Speaker 0 00:58:04 Great. Uh, yeah. Um, some sort of
Speaker 1 00:58:08 Tremendously influential series of books on the history on, on its social history by getting will Durant the story of civilization by will Durant. And he, I, the age of reason.
Speaker 0 00:58:20 Right. Great. Well, uh, this has been a great conversation and, uh, it probably sparked, uh, three or four new, uh, clubhouse sessions in the future. Um, tomorrow to special time, 1:00 PM the Atlas society asks we'll have JAG interviewing well known rapper fitness expert, and the Liberty movement phenom Zubi, um, on clubhouse back here tomorrow at 7:00 PM. Eastern professor, Jason Hill will discuss the case for colonialism and objectiveist inquiry. And also tomorrow professor Steven Hicks is continuing his series on education's heroes and villains. This one on content, absolute duty, uh, Friday on clubhouse at 4:00 PM. Eastern Richard Salzman will be here on the topic of recession, essence cause and cure. And, uh, we do have our gala coming up October 6th and Malibu honoring Michael sailor. We're going to have panels with the scholars during the day. It should be a lot of fun. Um, thank you, Rob, for doing this topic. Thanks to everyone who participated and we'll see you all next time.
Speaker 1 00:59:26 Thanks everyone.
Speaker 0 00:59:27 Take care.
