During a fun (and long) question-and-answer session after a lecture at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania — some of us were still going strong after three hours — I was asked my view on the origins of the Enlightenment. The first questioner noted that Jordan Peterson had spoken at Lafayette the year before and had argued that Christianity played a major positive role. I wasn’t present for Professor Peterson’s account, but below or at YouTube is my contrasting analysis.
Subtopics: The two arguments about who gets the credit for the Enlightenment * the rediscovery of Greek and Roman texts * Thomas Aquinas’s synthesis of Aristotle and Christianity * Renaissance humanism * unintended consequences of the Reformation * Catholic accommodations * Judeo-Christianity’s view of the sanctity of the individual, its soul-body dichotomy, and the doctrine of benevolent torture * Greek art and the Renaissance’s reclaiming of the beauty of the human body * whether the visual arts are blasphemous.
Thanks again to the Mill Series and Professor Brandon Van Dyck for the invitation and an enjoyable evening.