The Enlightenment dream is a good one. The idea that people should rationally appreciate their place in nature, assess threats and possibilities, and regulate their behavior in response is inspiring.
The problem is that the Enlightenment dream may make too many demands on poor African apes like us. We may just not be up to it.
The Enlightenment is not a nightmare, nor is it something that comes easily to us. It is an aspiration - and a good one!
The most fundamental challenge of the anthropocene concerns agency. For those who lived the Enlightenment dream (always a minority but an influential one), agency was taken for granted. There were existential threats to agency (e.g., determinism) but philosophy mobilized to refute these threats (e.g., by defending libertarianism) or to defuse them (e.g., by showing that they were compatible with agency).
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Holmes Rolston III Philosopher
Ernest Sosa Philosopher
