Original scientific paper

Dialectics of Radical Enlightenment. Its Shifts and Shadows in the Interpretation of Human Being and Reality

Stjepan Radić ; Catholic Faculty of Theology in Dakovo, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Đakovo, Croatia

Abstract

The article discusses the problem of Enlightenment radical approach to being. This approach is manifested in the »expansion« of mind and »shrinking« of reality. It constitutes the Enlightenment’s limitless trust in the mind, whereby the latter is given free reign in modelling, i.e., conditioning reality according to its own principles. This problem is discussed in the first section of the article, which points out that the cause of this shrinking is to be found in the Enlightenment (radical) formalisation of the mind. Such an approach conditions the mind to lose its fundamental trait of meaningfulness and integrity and to turn into a purely discursive ability of analysis and, consequently, to pure technical performance, which actually happened in the (radical) Enlightenment. The author has detected this problem, i.e., approach, especially in the Enlightenment approach to human person, that is reduced to a highly functional material givenness, discussed in the second section of this article. An approach that is devoid of any sensibility and modelled according to the Enlightenment reconstruction of human being will result in an equally stripped, technical approach to »squeezed out« reality, devoid of its original meaning, as discussed in the third section. For this reason, the radical Enlightenment will be accused, not without any cause, of a certain responsibility for a totalitarian approach – which was what it, as a philosophical‑social movement, opposed in the beginning. Its approach is totalitarian insofar as the other has to be enlightened and this reduces the other to a mere object, i.e., a material, receiving givenness. This made dialectics of the Enlightenment more than evident. The reflection concludes by pointing out that questions and answers on the meaning and purpose of human life, although outside of the purview of science and knowledge, are meaningful and purposeful as such and, thus, they cannot be simply pushed into the domain of subjective and, for the Enlightenment, variable sphere. Precisely because of that the author points out to Christianity, considered to be finished by the Enlightenment, but nevertheless tolerated for its utility of society, as an answer to the Enlightenment demand for total technicization of human being’s fundamental questions.

Keywords

Enlightenment; mind; reason; reality; human being; Hume; La Mettrie; Helvetius.

Hrčak ID:

250185

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/250185

Publication date:

29.11.2020.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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