Reiterate Enlightenment: On an Actively Engaged Politics: On an Actively Engaged Politics

Author: Stephen Eric Bronner
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-11-01
Features: This book aims to revisit the topic of the theoretical and practical traditions of the Enlightenment. Of course, the 21st century and the 18th are worlds apart: the past and the present are incomparable. To address new circumstances, the Enlightenment's advocacy for intellectuals' involvement in public affairs and the ethical model it proposed to resist oppressive power structures urgently require reinterpretation. Today, the strict concept of progress has been forgotten; no organization or political party can claim to represent humanity's ideals, and intellectuals often equate the university with the world. Images in television and film have replaced the words in books in shaping public opinion. Liberal regimes are often tainted by imperialistic ambitions and parasitic elites. Both the left and the right support authoritarianism. The global new expansion of capitalism, the rise of bureaucratic states, the consolidation of media, blind consumerism, neglect of the environment, and cultural relativism all undermine many of the ideas the Enlightenment proposed: cosmopolitan tolerance, economic justice, democratic accountability, and the concept of a "good society."