Ep 131 - Revolution, France burning, Ukraine, and Biden's library

If you look at the Enlightenment itself, the Enlightenment had a profound impact on social framework like of world society.

And if you look at the Enlightenment, the concepts that sprang out of it really gave you America.

The foundation of America was laid by Enlightenment principles.

Well, if you look at that historical timeline, the Enlightenment came out of the scientific revolution.

And how did that happen, right? What it did, what the Enlightenment did is it took the concepts that the examination used in the scientific revolution, it took empirical inquiry of science, but what it did is it applied that thought process, that examination, that clinical examination, and it applied it to mankind, to social structures, to political structures, right? I guess a better way to say that would be is that the Enlightenment used process-laid inquiry to examine logic, reason, the rights of man.

It's a scientific examination of the social structures of mankind.

Well, based on that analysis and thought process, the Enlightenment gave mankind new principles, new concepts for politics and government.

We started moving away from a monarchical system.

Concepts like individual liberty and natural rights, constitutional government, religious tolerance, those were all logical, rational principles that the Enlightenment thinkers advanced.

You have people like Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, all those guys were from the Enlightenment.

And if you look at John Locke, John Locke is so interesting.

John Locke is actually considered the father of liberalism.

So if you back away from it, though, the Enlightenment itself was this fertile ground where the founding fathers took ideas and they used those ideas to craft a new country with a new system of government that had never been tried in human history before.

But if you look at the Enlightenment, it's like anything in life, right? If you take the scientific revolution, you have people that are on the pro side of it and people that are on the negative side.

The Enlightenment was no different.

The Enlightenment had detractors.

And I should say this more succinctly because the Enlightenment didn't really have detractors.

You really had people that were providing a counterweight to the skepticism that was given to you by the Enlightenment.

So it's the other side of the ledger to the rapid skepticism of the Enlightenment.

So there's this kind of odd, obscure part of the Enlightenment that people don't talk about.

It's really an alternative vein to the Enlightenment.

It's an obscure school of thought.

And that obscure school of thought that hung as a counterweight to the Enlightenment would be the Scottish common sense realism precept.

So what is that? So what is Scottish common sense realism? It's the Scottish school of common sense.

So the genesis of the Scottish school of common sense was a clinical response, again, to the skepticism that the Enlightenment provided.