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Good essay, and not just because the Scottish Enlightenment is in fact the best Enlightenment.

I am curious to hear about your sense of the transition between classical liberalism and modern liberalism. Particularly because all of the people I first heard refer to themselves as "classical liberals" were followers of the Scottish Enlightenment, and did so to differentiate themselves from the modern (1870-present) American liberals, while trying to retain the word. Reading this it seems like you are making perhaps a third distinction in the groups? No classical liberals I know would put "progressivism" as you describe it here in their list of principle beliefs, for example.

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Sep 20, 2022Liked by The Evolved Psyche

At the risk of using it too much, I'm inclined to apply the McGilchrist hemisphere dominance paradigm to this issue. It would appear that these Scottish folks had an appropriately "right hemisphere brain" dominant conception of the individual, being able to appreciate the bidirectional relationship between individual and community. Using this same paradigm, the type of thinking that would necessarily lead to a deracinated individualism would be a "left hemisphere brain" dominant perspective that fails to appreciate how, even as individuals, human beings are intensely social animals and cannot be understood outside the context of community.

Thank you for this article, I don't know that I would have ever appreciated the sinister conflation of liberalism and the enlightenment that has apparently resulted in so much confusion. I also appreciate the recognition that a religious revival may have merits, but with unequivocal rejection of the idea than an abandonment of science is acceptable. I've been thinking of how populism can build the widest tent possible, but see in, say, flat earthers an aggressive rejection of science that implies that they may very well stone the like of you and me to death for questioning the firmament if they had the political power to do so. I could support that kind of thing in a particularized community you are allowed to leave, but those sets of norms applied broadly would bring civilization to its knees every bit as much as managerial liberalism.

You get the feeling Ferguson had a significant impact on the thinking of Mises? Maybe I'm honing in on his use of the term "human action" too much, but it seems like his methodological dualism was a recognition that science hadn't reached the point where it could fully explain what people like Ferguson were able to recognize, so side stepped the issue in an effort to better understand economics while science worked out the answers to these other questions.

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All you wise men don't know what it fee e e e e e ells to be- thick as a brick.

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Sep 15, 2022·edited Sep 15, 2022Liked by The Evolved Psyche

No wonder Hume hated Rousseau's guts...

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None among the rejecting the Enlightenment people I read also rejects science. This might be a selection bias, though - I'd never take anybody who rejects science wholesale seriously.

I find your elucidation cogent and compelling. "What they did dispute was the idea that human society was, or could be, constructed out of rational will and planning". Or that the rational mind is the only source of truth and knowledge.

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