by Bill Joslin I’m reminded of something Stephen Davies said in a lecture. The e

by Bill Joslin

I’m reminded of something Stephen Davies said in a lecture.

The enlightenment thinkers (Anglo) had a focus on “improvement”. Look at what worked and didn’t in the past and incrementally improve the product. Its focus was on the past as a resource.

The counter-enlightenment (continental) had a focus on “progress”, that being an ideal state in which their efforts “progressed toward”. And this delineates the two. The later accompanies some vision of eutopia or equivalent. It rejects the past as something to run forward away from.

To.me this shift to “progress” in the later parts of the 18th century through the 19th century was when the best social innovations (crystallization of a long organic development in England) where twisted in one themselves.with idealized arguments which we are now seeing the consequence.