# Comments on NT Wright’s Loving to Know

- **Wright critiques a picture of the Enlightenment. Is his picture of the Enlightenment accurate?**
- **claim:** The Enlightenment is a reaction to the church, designed to overthrow its claims, and substitute new claims, based on a revival of pagan Epicureanism
- **The Enlightenment is revived Epicureanism?**
- Have we revived Epicureanism? Which aspects of Epicurean thought do we accept? Which aspects of Epicurean thought do we reject?
- What are the features of Epicurean thought?
- [ChatGPT](https://chat.openai.com/share/3d35be72-3763-48b1-b155-3486551e049f)
- Claude.ai
- Here is a bullet list of the major factors and features of ancient Epicurean philosophy:
- Epicureanism was founded by Epicurus in the 4th century BCE.
- The main goal of Epicureanism is to attain a state of ataraxia (tranquility and freedom from fear) and aponia (absence of pain).
- Epicureans believe that pleasure is the greatest good, but this refers to the absence of pain and fear rather than the pursuit of sensual pleasures.
- Epicureans advocate for a simple life, living modestly and avoiding unnecessary desires and fears.
- They emphasize the importance of friendship and living in a community of like-minded individuals.
- Epicureans believe in the atomic theory of matter, which states that the universe is composed of indivisible atoms moving through empty space.
- They reject the idea of divine intervention and the fear of death, as they believe that the soul is mortal and disperses upon death.
- Epicureans encourage the study of natural phenomena to dispel fears and anxieties caused by superstitions and ignorance.
- They advocate for the pursuit of knowledge, as it helps one understand the world and achieve peace of mind.
- Epicureans believe in free will and that humans have the ability to make choices that affect their lives.
- They emphasize the importance of living in the present moment and not worrying about the future or dwelling on the past.
- Epicureans believe in the ethical principle of "hedonic calculus," which involves weighing the potential pleasures and pains of a decision to determine the most beneficial course of action.
- Are these aspects unique to Epicureanism?
- How do we account for the fact that we have reclaimed some features of Epicurean thought, and rejected others?
- How does Wright account for the fact that many of the "Epicurean" ideas were argued for on biblical and theological grounds, as a reform pointing us back to the creator God?
- "laws of nature" as commonly understood, were a theological development to replace Aristotle
- "mechanical philosophy" from God as creator
- **What other interpretations of the Enlightenment are there?**
- Stephen Pinker: Enlightenment Now
- > The Enlightenment is conventionally placed in the last two-thirds of the 18th century, though it flowed out of the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Reason in the 17th century and spilled into the heyday of classical liberalism of the first half of the 19th. [][]
- **The Enlightenment is the Protestant Reformation**
- The Enlightenment is Protestantism, worked out in politics and epistemology
- I understand the successful form of the Enlightenment as born of the Anglican and Scottish Reformations, specifically
- Martin Luther saw the Protestant Reformation as a reform in science as well as ecclesiology
- The Protestant Reformation unleashed vast political and epistemological changes
- As they grappled with those, the Christians of the time saw their work as completing the Reformation, by finishing the political and epistemological work needed to truly ground Protestant society
- Alexander Campbell sees ongoing reform in epistemology, science, and religion as the gradual throwing off of Catholicism. In other words, for Campbell, the Enlightenment is the Protestant Reformation
- The Enlightenment didn't begin with the overthrow of Christian suppositions, but with the overthrow of the pagan assumptions of Aristotle (associated with Catholicism)
- see Galileo or Bacon
- [Pope Benedict claims the Enlightenment for Christianity](https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2015/05/13/to-be-perfectly-clear/)
- essentially identifying it with Reformation
- My take:
- I might agree that Wright's Enlightenment is the late stages of the Enlightenment, retroactively secularized and claimed for an atheistic intellectual class
- I might agree that this is a version of the Enlightenment that people have heard about.
- But is it the Enlightenment, in its true essence, original intention, or effective form?
- **How do we account for the good things and the incredible success that the Enlightenment has brought us?**
- Epicurean revival?
- If so, why didn't that work the first time?
- The dawn of secularism?
- How do we account for the profound religiosity we see during this era?
- Protestant Reformation?
- (That's how they explained it)
- **Wright proposes an "epistemology of love" as an antidote to the Enlightenment.**
- What he offers is just what Francis Bacon offered in 1620, as the foundation of modern empirical science.
- I will agree with Wright that the modern world has not at all lived up to the epistemology of love.
- But this is not because the foundations of the Enlightenment were wrong, but because we have not been up to their high calling

- **Where does Wright get his claim that the Enlightenment saw itself as a secular "climax of history" as an alternative to Jesus as the climax of history?**
- The Enlightenment saw itself as the Protestant Reformation
- Galileo was a martyr for science—to other Christians, who saw this as a problem with the papacy
- Only later is this narrative rewritten to have a secular aim
- **Wright critiques "transhumanism" as based in approaching the world from fear, rooted in a fear of death.**
- Yet the scientific pursuit of longevity was proposed and pursued by evangelical Christians in the 1600s. And they believed this was good and possible because they were deeply rooted in the story of scripture. Specifically Genesis 1-2.
- **(Maybe the reason people confuse Enlightenment triumphalism with Christian triumphalism is because they are the same thing?)**
- **Freedom was not historically understood simply as “freedom from” in an Epicurean sense.** It was understood as the very preconditions of spiritual development. See Teilhard de Chardin, Reinhold Niebuhr.