Enlightenment philosophy took Western civilizational superiority as its founding question.
Evidence
The questions which concerned the social philosophers were: What had led the West to its high point of refinement and civilization? Did the West evolve from the same simple beginnings as “savage society,” or were there different paths to “civilization”? — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 659
Categorization
- DEFINE: Frames the core Enlightenment problematic that the West-and-Rest discourse answers.
- XREF: connects to: The Dialectic of Enlightenment targeted the whole Western rationalist tradition, not just Marxism — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 781; Western civilization discourse was built on a constructed binary of superiority and inferiority; Enlightenment thinkers idealized China rather than viewing it as a savage Other (+8 more)
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: The Dialectic of Enlightenment targeted the whole Western rationalist tradition, not just Marxism — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 781; Western civilization discourse was built on a constructed binary of superiority and inferiority; Enlightenment thinkers idealized China rather than viewing it as a savage Other (+8 more)
Broader Connections
- Enlightenment thinkers idealized China rather than viewing it as a savage Other
#complicates(0.82) - Orientalism once fueled Enlightenment critiques of dogmatic Christianity.
#complicates(0.75) - Nature-domination’s roots precede the Enlightenment in earlier rationalism and Christianity.
#complicates(0.74) — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 287 - Orientalism functioned as a Western self-projection requiring an invented East as its antithesis
#complicates(0.74) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 542 - Enlightenment reason replicated the tyranny it rebelled against, now over nature
#complicates(0.72) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 182