Faith and/or Reason

WITH THE collective yawn that greeted the two-hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution, and the simultaneous repudiation of Communism around the world, what is left, practically speaking, of the progeny of the modern movement, the eighteenthcentury Enlightenment?

Although academics may be excused for padding around the musty halls of history, the 18 conservative intellectuals gathered together by William Rusher and the Claremont Institute to discuss “The Ambiguous Legacy of the Enlightenment” treated the topic as anything but arcane. One point on which there was agreement was that how the questions raised by the Enlightenment are answered today is vital to the future of American society. The link involves the American Founding. Does the Founding’s partial reliance on Enlightenment ideas doom the project, by its own logic, to the nihilism of the French Enlightenment?

JR

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James R. Rogers

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WITH THE collective yawn that greeted the two-hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution, and the simultaneous repudiation of Communism around the world, what is left, practically speaking, of the progeny of the modern movement, the eighteenthcentury Enlightenment?

Although academics may be excused for padding around the musty halls of history, the 18 conservative intellectuals gathered together by William Rusher and the Claremont Institute to discuss “The Ambiguous Legacy of the Enlightenment” treated the topic as anything but arcane. One point on which there was agreement was that how the questions raised by the Enlightenment are answered today is vital to the future of American society. The link involves the American Founding. Does the Founding’s partial reliance on Enlightenment ideas doom the project, by its own logic, to the nihilism of the French Enlightenment?