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The dream of enlightenment : an essay on the promise of reason and freedom in modernity

University of British Columbia

This thesis utilizes a methodological reading strategy of intertextual comparison in an attempt to explicate certain conceptual covergences within modern thought. Basically I attempt to defend the values of reason and freedom while trying to avoid the authoritarian discourses that these concepts have been historically implicated within. Throughout, I follow three themes centred around what I have called "the dream of enlightenment." The first theme examines the optimism within enlightenment thought examined through the texts of Rousseau, Kant, and Marx. The second theme explores certain pessimistic critiques of enlightenment thought through the texts of Freud, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche. The final theme views the dream of enlightenment as an ongoing critical process perhaps requiring an awakening of consciousness. In order to explicate this theme I draw upon certain textual convergences between the optimistic dream and the pessimistic dream especially through the work of Marx and Nietzsche. In the end, against Kant's motto "dare to know," I propose an alternative motto for the postmodern age. This motto is "dare to dream."

Thesis/Dissertation

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2009-06-15

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/9168

Anthropology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

DSpace