Enlightenment in an Age of Destruction by Christopher Britt

Bush’s “Crusader Nation,” and then comparing these reversals to the downright failures of enlightenment in Spain and Latin America-this chapter calls into question the triumphalist vision according to which the United States is the epitome of enlightenment. By focusing on the historical and political reversals of enlightenment in the United States-from the Founding Fathers to the champions of Manifest Destiny and from Theodore Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders” to George W. This chapter postulates a historical critique of the unenlightened marriage between Christian providentialist thought and modern scientific and technological progress in the enlightenment. The book thus ties American, British, French and German theoretical traditions into a reflexive challenge to the notion of intellectual as critic, and argues instead for a trespassive tradition of cultural leadership. During a time in which national democracies seem an imperial farce, it is not enough for intellectuals faced with all this destruction to blithely recommend resistance. Positive dialectics signal a new era of intellectual engagement in the construction of our historical future. Providential enlightenment is not only a critique of the failure of enlightenment, but of the mutilation of historical enlightenments. The spectacle, in this case, is the apotheosis of the culture industries, a total inversion of reality and of our existences. The main intellectual aims of this title are the following: the analysis of spectacle, the criticism of providential enlightenment, and the examination of positive dialectics. This book is about the ways in which modern enlightenment, rather than liberating humanity from tyranny, has subjected us to new servitude imposed by systems of mass manipulation, electronic vigilance, compulsive consumerism, and the horrors of a seemingly unending global war on terror.

Enlightenment in an Age of Destruction by Christopher Britt