Enlightenment, Contested

[turoldus]

As someone living in a country proclaiming itself to be the birthplace of human rights and the Enlightenment (erroneously in my view) I read Humphrey's latest post with much interest. As I see it, Dr. Israel is advocating the brand of Enlightenment that blossomed into French Republicanism, and I suspect most French philosophers, ideologues and politicians would agree with him. The authors he champions occupy a privileged place in history and philosophy courses as well as in the roman national. Voltaire in particular is virtually untouchable. Now whether Israel's right depends on whether you think French Republicanism to be more "enlightened" than British or German liberalism.

[humphreyclarke]

The idea of natural rights goes all the way back to the recovery of Roman law in 1140, the publication of Gratian’s Decretum and the 'glosses' which were written on the subject. They took the Roman concept of 'ius naturale' and developed a language of rights derived from natural law. This is critical because for rights to have any hold at all there needs to be a legal concept to justify it. I wrote on this:

bedejournal.blogspot.com/2008/11/brith-of-human-rights-part-one.html
bedejournal.blogspot.com/2008/12/birth-of-human-rights-part-two.html

In revolutionary France the Convention held to the enlightenment conception of natural law and natural rights but developed the concept of a 'hostis humani generis' an enemy of the people who violated nature' laws and has to be destroyed. They used this to do away with Louis XVI and then expanded the term to legally and morally justify the mass executions of the terror. So we start with Robespierre and the Montagnards decrying the death penalty and wanting to abolish it and we end up with large numbers of people being put to death.

[humphreyclarke]

Looks like Israel replied to Moyn's review

hnn.us/articles/128361.html

...and Moyn responded

www.hnn.us/articles/128433.html

[turoldus]

Jan 21, 2011 17:53:57 GMT humphreyclarke said:

Looks like Israel replied to Moyn's review

hnn.us/articles/128361.html

...and Moyn responded

www.hnn.us/articles/128433.html

One Steven Johnson attacks Moyn in the comments section to his response:

"What is the best way to square religion and secularity?"

This is not a reasonable goal for an historian, but a pressing need for a theologian. It is like asking how to square evolution and the truth of the Bible. Moyn's insistence that such is the purpose of history is itself a falsification of history that wants to be more than apologetics.

I am reminded that in Moyn's original review there was a cryptic denigration of Spinoza's Bible criticism as "sly." Before he straightens out Professor Israel, he should straighten out what that means.

Looks like evangelical secularists always resort to the same tricks - attacks on the contradictor's actual expertise or hidden motives - whatever the subject. What they never do is actually, er, replying.