Belief that events result from hidden intentions made conspiracy explanations normal in Enlightenment thought.

Evidence

The revolutionaries’ conspiracy theory was “hard-wired” in a broader sense. Historian Gordon Wood attributes the ready resort to conspiratorial explanations to a set of propositions about social reality shared by Enlightenment thinkers generally. These assumptions sited moral responsibility squarely in freely acting individuals and lent themselves to explanations in which intentions were the cause of events. If something important happened, it was because someone intended it to happen, though these intentions may have been concealed. American thought “was structured in such a way that conspiratorial explanations of complex events became normal, necessary, and rational.” — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 55

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Conspiracy functions as an alternative epistemology when interpretation has no ground truth — , The Braided Reading EPUB: 5-Year…, 105; Conspiracy belief offers psychological reassurance by making the world meaningful and purposive — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 78

Broader Connections

• Conspiracy functions as an alternative epistemology when interpretation has no ground truth #expands (0.75) — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 105
• Conspiracy belief offers psychological reassurance by making the world meaningful and purposive #expands (0.72) — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 78