My judgment is based on the direction of criticizing new ideas. Generally speaking, the Enlightenment has gone through two stages, namely, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment Philosophy. In fact, it can also be seen as a period of breaking the hegemony of belief language and establishing a new era language. In fact, they are two periods: the disintegration of the old lifestyle and the establishment of a new lifestyle. In these two periods, the criticism of enlightenment thought is aimed at belief, that is, at an ideology or social consciousness that has become or is becoming the past.
The Renaissance movement is the most typical manifestation of the resistance to the hegemonic language of Christian belief. However, with a little analysis, we can find that they actually contain the spirit of resistance to universal language hegemony, that is, personality liberation.
The Renaissance left us a splendid cultural heritage, which is not limited to saying that it left us a lot of priceless literary and artistic works. More importantly, it actually opened a new way of thinking for mankind. A large number of artistic creations in the Renaissance itself are the embodiment of people's freedom of introspection. It is said that it is enlightenment because it expresses a new value, a new idea and its new idea in the form of literature and art. In the most intensive way, it is the publicity of human nature, or rather the liberation of human desire-this is the initial form of human personality liberation or the pursuit of freedom. The main feature of the Renaissance is not that their theme has changed, but that the way of expression or speaking (that is, the artistic language itself) has changed. We can see that although the themes of most literary and artistic works in the Renaissance are still religious and mythical, the way they express their sacred life makes this life show a strong secular color.
Renaissance works are such a feature created from old ideas. At first glance, it is only a natural phenomenon, and there is nothing worth paying attention to. In fact, it shows that enlightenment is essentially a reflection on tradition. Introspection, in a fundamental sense, refers to self-awareness; The ego looks at itself from an external perspective. Introspection of culture itself, in its original meaning, refers to making different understandings and interpretations of its own cultural materials. Here, historical or traditional materials are the tested self. The material is inevitably old, but the appearance of this old thing has nothing to do with the so-called "conservatism", which is exactly what constitutes the basis of reflection. The new thing is a reinterpretation of the old material, and it is a new expression that gives the old material a new "meaning".
Western enlightenment thought draws nutrition from Christian culture. Using all kinds of fairy tales as themes is not only because depicting such themes will be less taboo and easy to be accepted by the church that masters language hegemony, so it is easier to exist, but also because it really constitutes a kind of cultural self-reflection. Of course, as a reflection on the old civilization and culture, enlightenment is more important than its absorption of nutrients from the old culture, but its negation of the old culture. But this kind of negation is an "internal" negation, and it must be an internal negation, because only the internal negation is the real negation. As a basic condition of internal negation, it is a certain consistency of the starting point of this thinking. As Hegel said, the logic of affirmation-negation-negation of negation, the real negation is the negation of negation, and without the initial affirmation, the negation of negation cannot be established. Therefore, when we look at this problem more deeply, we find that the change of the method or observation angle of looking at the same theme is actually a deeper change than the change of the theme, which is of greater revolutionary significance to the ideological progress of mankind. Specifically, the revolutionary significance of the great works of the Renaissance lies in that they began to observe life and treat the world from the standpoint of human beings, instead of starting from God as in the belief era. This is a new kind of introspection.
Reflective thinking mode can be said to be the traditional western thinking mode, including Christian belief itself, and it is still thinking like this. The question is in what position and in what way. In the belief system, this introspection is based on the transcendental existence of God. However, Renaissance works show the inversion of values. People no longer judge people's value from God's eyes, but from people's own eyes. Praise for people's secular life, nostalgia for life, is to regard people as the basis of value, as the starting point of judging value. During the Renaissance, the appearance of early science showed the characteristics of taking people as the starting point.
We all know the revolutionary role of Copernicus's book "On the Operation of Celestial Bodies" in the history of modern science. The achievement of the book "Celestial Motion" lies not in its discovery of new celestial phenomena that the ancients did not find, but in its unique angle in explaining the laws of celestial motion. It is the establishment of this angle that shows the birth of modern science and even modern rationalism.
The basis of the geocentric theory advocated by Christian teachings is precisely the celestial phenomenon "observed" from the viewpoint of "people" on earth. On the contrary, the phenomenon that the celestial bodies in the solar system are located in the center of the sun described by Copernicus has not been actually observed ("seen"). That is a phenomenon that can only be observed on the spot outside the solar system, and humans have not been able to leave the solar system so far. Then we can actually say that the solar system described by Copernicus is a scene that only "God" can observe-a scene observed from a transcendental observation point. From this point of view, in fact, Copernicus' theory seems not only not to pose a threat to God's belief, but even to consolidate God's belief if used properly. However, this does not mean that the church opposed Copernicus' theory simply because it was stupid. Geocentric theory involves not only the operation of natural celestial bodies, but also the way of thinking and world outlook.
Gravity says it serves the myth that God created the world. Therefore, the core of his way of thinking is to directly attribute all things and phenomena in the world to the will of God with the concept of teleology. Copernicus' theory broke through this primitive way of thinking in at least three aspects, laid the basic principles of rationalism, and made the emergence of modern science possible.
Firstly, the phenomena are classified according to the motion of celestial bodies. He regards the movement of celestial bodies as a natural phenomenon with its own laws, instead of mixing this natural imagination with other kinds of ideas such as human creation and the greatness of God, as geocentric theory does. This primitive Christian way of thinking existed in almost all ethnic groups before modern times. For example, in China, people often directly associate astronomical phenomena with the good and bad of human life.
Secondly, the theory of "natural luck" takes causality as the principle concept, not the principle concept of teleology. After classifying the natural imagination according to different ways of experience, the explanation or understanding of them will not be directly based on God's will or creation, and everything in the world will no longer show specific sacred light such as will and soul under the cover of purpose. The motion of an object is not the "transcendence" of will, but the action of force or energy-this is the concept of cause and effect in science. This not only makes it possible for people to understand or explain the world with their own rationality, but also makes it possible for people's spirit or consciousness, people's subjectivity or subject to exist independently.
Thirdly, the "celestial movement" establishes the principle of explaining the world and phenomena with human "rationality". The rationality of Copernicus theory lies in its simplicity in explaining the motion of celestial bodies. We should pay attention to the fact that geocentric theory is not unable to explain the astronomical phenomena we observed. If the ship's position is determined only in practical sense, such as by the position of celestial bodies when sailing, then the observation on which geocentric theory is based is actually more practical. But in explaining the "principle" of phenomena, Copernicus's way is much simpler than geocentric theory. The principle of rationality is to explain all similar phenomena with the least basic principles, that is to say, to summarize and unify many perceptual experience phenomena with the least rational logic. This is the famous "thinking economy principle" of rationalism.
It is not difficult to see why Christianity opposes this theory so fiercely. This theory not only replaces the will of God with reason, but also aims at humanitarianism. Christianity opposes this theory, which can be called "science" later, not because it is stupid or ignorant, on the contrary, it is very sensitive and "smart" to discover the fatal threat of this theory to the foundation of deism system. The church executed Bruno, who publicly declared his support for this scientific theory. This darkness is not so much out of ignorance as out of the need of language hegemony.
Compared with the spirit embodied in the slogan "I am a man, I have everything that human beings have", which is very representative in the Renaissance and embodies the requirements of human liberation, Copernicus's theory is more positive and constructive. We can also say that the traditional enlightenment philosophy, which inherited this way of thinking, has been vividly portrayed at this time. The slogan of emancipating people's desires in the period of rationalism Renaissance is actually based on the belief myth that God created man. According to the enlightenment version of this myth, since man is created by God, the desire of man who is attributed to evil by creed is actually created by God. Therefore, if people try to satisfy their own desires, it should be said that it does not violate God's teaching, and even conforms to God's purpose when he created man.
This explanation, in the view of orthodox creed, is of course heresy. According to Christian teachings, human desire itself is original sin. Christianity advocates curbing human desires, but this containment has become a containment of human freedom itself. The Millennium darkness caused by the linguistic hegemony of faith not only caused great pain to people at that time, but also curbed the possibility of human progress. So the enlightenment thought rose up against it. From the Renaissance to scientific discovery, we can say that it is the "evil" of human desire that provides a rare impetus for human development and progress. But this statement is actually too simple. Christianity says that human desire is an "evil". In a sense, it can't be wrong. If there were no norms and restrictions on human desires, would this world still be the world? Saying that "evil" is the motive force of historical development does not mean that people advocate evil, but that people can do evil. However, starting from the premise that human desire is also created by God, it is difficult to produce a positive and constructive value system, and its direct conclusion is only infinite indulgence.
Man's desire is evil, but it's not just evil. Man's desire also embodies man's freedom or free will.
Although the linguistic hegemony of belief imprisons human freedom, it has at least a positive effect, that is, it embodies the basic moral requirements of human beings and maintains the essential basic order of human social life. When the Enlightenment of the Renaissance destroyed the foundation of faith, how to rebuild the basic order and basic moral values of human life became an urgent task before the Enlightenment. The emergence of Descartes' philosophy is a remarkable sign that the modern Western Enlightenment entered the stage of value reconstruction. Descartes' principle of "I think, therefore I am" is often called "I think" principle, which I think is both concise and accurate. "I think" contains two basic principles of enlightenment thought and expounds the comprehensive relationship between these two principles.
First of all, I think I affirmed the principle of humanism by affirming that the existence of "I"-as a person-is the basis of all truth, and I also affirmed that humanism is fundamentally individualism-I think I'd better remind you that it is not solipsism or egoism, although this reminder is unnecessary for people who understand Spanish.
Secondly, I want to establish the principle of rationalism by affirming that thought is human nature. Under the induction of my thoughts, when we understand humanism and rationalism, we can clearly see that what humanism says is a rational person, while what rationalism says is human rationality. Or more specifically, when we determine that man is the basis of value, rationality is the essence of man, and when we determine that rationalism is the supreme law of value, this rationality is actually man himself. Reason and people are actually the same thing. According to this understanding, it can be said that the core of enlightenment thought is rationalism or humanism, but we should not regard them as two independent principles, they are just two aspects of the same principle.