This week, we read part of David Hume’s Origin of Ideas.  Whilst Descartes’s philosophy hinged on finding undoubtable fact from doubting everything, the main idea in Hume’s writing is our experiences and observations allow people to make cause-and-effect relationships, and those observations are the basis of human knowledge.  According to Hume, “our reason, unassisted by experience, [can never] draw any inference concerning real existence and matter of fact.”  So then, all original thoughts are merely inferences and sort-of blended ideas of things we have already experienced ourselves or observed in some way.  Upon first reading through, it was easy for me to agree with Hume.  Not everyone has the same experiences, so not everyone has the same reality.  Objectivity is hard to find, and subjectivity is where creativity thrives.  However, the philosophy of whatever-you-feel-is-fine is extremely dangerous.

Immanuel Kant takes this idea a step further in his essay titled “What is Enlightenment?”  To Kant, people should let themselves be governed neither by government nor the church, and everyone should be free to think for themselves.  Now that is where things get very rocky.  Of course, people really liked Kant’s ideals.  The thought of being freed from the authority of a higher power was highly attractive then, and today, we are reaping both positive and negative repercussions of the Enlightenment.  New ideas are more easily accepted, and creativity and experimentation is encouraged; it’s cool to be unique, to go against the grain (even that saying means something different from person to person).  However, everyone is so very highly individualized to the point of arguing objective fact.  Objectivity is scarcer than ever because everyone would like to be right and would like to be noticed for their individuality.

American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson stated some questionable things in his essay titled “Self-Reliance”, and what is interesting and kind of scary is that Emerson’s way of thinking in 1841 when the essay was written is not an uncommon mindset today.

“if you would be a man, speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon balls, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said to-day.”  –R.W. Emerson

Is it really acceptable to continuously change your mind and move from viewpoint to viewpoint just to find something that “fits”?  I’m definitely guilty of that.  It’s comfortable to stick to other people/viewpoints/speakers/churches that don’t challenge me, that cater to me and tell me that my opinion is definitely right.  However, Descartes is right when he declares that some things are simply non-negotiable, objective fact.  And sometimes facts and truths are uncomfortable.

So then, was the Enlightenment the worst thing to happen to humankind?  No, it wasn’t as awful as some would make it out to be, regardless of all the negative things I’ve just said about it.  There are always pros and cons, but without the Enlightenment, science would not be so advanced, the Church would not have their authority so challenged, constitutional government would not have been developed, and while on that note, Hamilton: An American Musical would never have come along.  Society will never be perfect, but at the end of the day, I do appreciate Descartes, Hume, and Kant for the progress they issued in.