Anglo-American cultural Studies

Résumé du document

The notion has been widely called into questions by authors. Some have denounced a failure of the Enlightenment process, through historic changes and social evolutions. And yet, I am personally convinced that Enlightenment remains as an ideal for current societies, with the purpose of making men really free. The real problem, as we are going to show it, comes therefore from the application of the Enlightenment process within the society. That's why we have to study the interconnections existing between culture, power and freedom. Will the concept of Enlightenment always remain as an ideal? How culture and the control of the culture's production are determinant factors to Enlightenment's failure or success?

Extraits

[...] All things considered, the complexity of the culture's production and of the connections between culture and freedom don't have to lead to the reject of the Kant's concept of Enlightenment. On the contrary, this complexity must force men to maintain Enlightenment at the level of the ideal, without being convinced it can be directly achieved in the real society. Bibliography - Mannheim, K. Ideology and Utopia - Kant, E. What is Enlightenment? - Gauchet, M. De la critique à l'autocritique, le combat des Lumières aujourd'hui in Le Débat 150, 2008) - Weber, M. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism - C. [...]

[...] What is the mean of this process? For the author, it is only the access to the public sphere, the cultural sphere, where controversies appear and ideas fight which leads to a personal, responsible and completely free approach of life. Enlightenment is a universal approach of mankind. Indeed, thanks to the public sphere, men become equally free, equally cultured. The fight of ideas and opinions in the public sphere produces what the author calls the one truth, what is of course the link between men that produces universalism. [...]

[...] That's why I am going to focus on two cases in which the process of Enlightenment has failed or turned to failure: fascism and “mass culture”. For historical reason, I will start with fascism. Fascism is a very interesting ideology to study because it was born of the failure of democracy. What is the link with our current study? To my mind, democracy represents in theory one of the most efficient mean of Enlightenment. It appears obvious considering that democracy permits the access of the public sphere to every citizen. [...]

[...] It needed protection, management, comprehension. For instance, in what concerns the democratic field, we know that democracy cannot succeed without strong institutions and guaranteed laws, guaranteed principles. Here I would like to enounce a quote from Marcel Gauchet: We are children, but children who know they are children and predestinated to remain it. Children who consequently know that they must rise upon their childhood state, without any hope of being cured. This is the secret of human creation. We have made a huge progress to that extent, by getting rid of childish presumptuousness that was misting the Lumières' ideal in its first enunciations. [...]

[...] We will see later that one of the central questions is to know who is able to produce the truth. Enlightenment gathers hopes for a future “golden in which mankind would have acquired freedom thanks to the access of culture and the integration of the genuine truth. it is now asked, "Do we presently live in an enlightened age?" the answer is, but we do live in an age of enlightenment."”. Nevertheless, this notion has been widely called into questions by later authors. [...]