John Locke and The Enlightenment Metanarrative: A Biblical Corrective to a Reasoned World
According to recent literature, the crisis of modernity owes much to an uncritical acceptance of the ‘Enlightenment metanarrative’. The Enlightenment, with its sanctification of reason, privileged technological progress and personal advancement and created the illusion that human potential and happi...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1996
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| In: |
Scottish journal of theology
Year: 1996, Volume: 49, Issue: 1, Pages: 57-73 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | According to recent literature, the crisis of modernity owes much to an uncritical acceptance of the ‘Enlightenment metanarrative’. The Enlightenment, with its sanctification of reason, privileged technological progress and personal advancement and created the illusion that human potential and happiness was unlimited. All one had to do was to free oneself from superstition (for example, religion) and the world would be a better place. Modernity has, correspondingly, emphasized individual rights, personal power, and wealth. In spite of the promise of modernity, however, the wars, famines, poverty, and inequality of the modern world have made it all too obvious that the end result of the Enlightenment's goal to alleviate the miseries of the human condition applies only to a small portion of the population. In this respect, the contradiction between the universality of the Enlightenment project and its application to a minority of the population lies at the heart of many of the critiques of modernity. |
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| ISSN: | 1475-3065 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Scottish journal of theology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0036930600036607 |