Wally defends Reason

[James Farmelant]

It should not at all be surprising that "Strauss-influenced
conservatives"
should be found in alliance with pomos in attacking the Enlightenment,
since Leo Strauss had after all been a student (and teaching assistant)
of Heidegger, who is a patron saint of pomo.  Also, it is of interest to
note that Lou Proyect's friend, Meera Nanda, has written on how in
India, some right-wing Hindu nationalists have been taking up pomo
in order to bash the Enlightenment ideals of the secular left. 

		Jim Farmelant

On Fri, 29 Jan 1999 12:25:23 -0500 Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
writes:
>[From today's Chronicle of Higher Education daily email. Olson, a 
>corporate
>libertarian, is an old comrade of mine from my freshman-year 
>indiscretion,
>the Party of the Right. He went on to advise Dan Quayle on tort 
>reform.]
>
>MAGAZINES & JOURNALS
>
>A glance at the January issue of "Reason": The end of the
>Enlightenment
>
>Postmodernism has long attacked the Enlightenment's emphasis on
>reason to examine accepted doctrines and traditions, but now the
>movement has found an unlikely new ally in its attacks on
>reason: traditionalists. In "Dark Bedfellows," Walter Olson, a
>senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research,
>writes that just about everyone -- from "center-left
>communitarians" to "Strauss-influenced conservatives" -- is
>lambasting Enlightenment ideas as a racist, classist "cover for
>power." Mr. Olson, however, defends the ideals of the
>Enlightenment, crediting the philosophical movement's
>inventiveness, intellect, and enterprise with forging modern
>scientific methods, as well as modernist thinking about
>individual rights and self-cultivation. While Mr. Olson concedes
>that the Enlightenment had its share of "blind spots and
>excesses," he writes that today's attacks on science, evolution,
>and the self-made man are unwarranted. Benjamin Franklin, Mr.
>Olson notes, once said he was sorry that he was born too soon
>because he would not be alive to see what would happen in 100
>years. "Two centuries later, amid undreamt-of levels of health
>and comfort that science has brought the West, a generation of
>intellectuals amuses itself in efforts to gnaw away at the
>Enlightenment foundations of the enterprise," Mr. Olson writes.
>"Were he hooked to an underground turbine, Ben Franklin might be
>discovering a new way to generate electricity: spinning in his
>grave." The article may be found on line at
>http://www.reasonmag.com/9901/co.wo.darkbedfellows.html
>

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