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Ro's avatar

I am dying to know two things. 1) which Frankfurt School theorist claims fascism is the product of the enlightenment and 2) do the theorists who attack universalism throw out every notion underwritten by universalism?

I am not doubting these claims exist. I am simply curious about the details--since these views seem important and I am not aware of them.

The argument seems convincing overall, especially the doubts about whether this word means anything in the critics' mouths.

It is odd that a word describing a disposition or state without any description of beliefs required or arrived at as a result of the state--pretty similar to 'alert' is supposed to mean a vast and sweeping pile of substantive content, a whole world view.

Maybe it's because the people who are enjoined to be alert to danger/hazards, etc. are the real objects of the term so anything 'they' say is 'woke.' The idea seems to be if 'they' say anything that is not amenable to our outlook but requires taking up 'their' outlook to comprehend then it's illegitimate.

This simply seems like an us v. them idea in disguise. I don't understand why the right wing use of the term woke isn't the real

attack on universalism. 'They are talking again, so there's no need to take up the claims they make and consider whether they're true.' If there are universal values, including enlightenment values, the claims people make about oppression and so on are defensible via those values. Maybe everything people mean isn't perfectly understood in enlightenment terms because of the idea of a universal subject and a blindness to subjectivity of certain kinds if people but the moral arguments do make sense on standard universalist grounds unless you assume some people aren't really people. 'Woke' is to negate ideas as coming from certain kinds of people, to shut down the whole discussion because the perspective of certain people is automatically illegitimate. But when people invoke 'woke' from the right, when is it not against a standard moral claim that's at issue? When are the evidence and arguments not standard evidence and arguments?

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patricia trentacoste's avatar

Well, from my journal of 40+ years to your pen. All the investigations, the jettisoning of credos, the new (age) catechisms, then some relief from pristine atheism, on to Crosby, Still, Nash & Young's, "We are stardust," to reemergent Sagan-ism and the promise of cosmic consciousness. At moments like this, when another's reflections match my own, the cosmos speaks! Thank you, friend. Patricia Trentacoste

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