Were the 1990's the peak of Western Civilization?

[Peeperkorn]

Enlightenment was the peak of Western Civilization.

[Peeperkorn]

Enlightenment was the peak of Western Civilization.

Except of course for the fact that it was an error.

Leo Naphta, I presume?

How could be an error the beginning of the death of superstition and the triumph of man, art and science?

[Peeperkorn]

Enlightenment was the peak of Western Civilization.

Yes, I also love slavery, kids working in mills, women being used as beasts of burden in mines and farm workers starving to death in muddy hovels. Huzzah!

The ideas of the Enlightenment created the notion of human rights.

[Peeperkorn]

This is absolutely hilarious.

Why?

[Peeperkorn]

This is absolutely hilarious.

Why?

First of all, what are these "rights?"  The right to not be a slave?  But Voltaire agreed with slavery, as did Rousseau (though he opposed slavery as a hereditary status), as did any number of other philisophes not named Adam Smith.  How about gender equality?  Take a look at how poor Mary Wollstonecraft was treated, or how Olympe de Gouges was executed by the Jacobins, the most radical segment of society, for claiming that women deserved an equal say in government.  Look how the people most obsessed with Enlightenment ideas, the French Revolutionaries, started a grand campaign to resubjugate and rechain the people of Haiti.  If you think the Enlightenment was a good era for human rights, you've been taken in by the Enlightenment's 200+ year old propaganda campaign, where a couple of decent people (Brissot, Mary Wollstonecraft, etc.) have been taken and used as a figleaf to conceal the actual depravity of the activities of the time.

1 - I'm not saying that 1700' society or politics or whatever were better. I was just talking about when the ideas and ideals that forged what know as Western Civilization, liberal democracy and human rights and political rights became important.

2 - If you read Voltaire you wil find that he was quite a very ambiguous thinker, and in many places of his bibliography he openly condemns slavery.

3 - What do jacobines have to do with Enlightenment?  French revolution was about politics, and when you reach the power you only care about realpolitik and  fuçk the ideals.

Human rights as understood right now are by far more extensive than then, but Enlightenment (or even Humanism) was when the main concept became an issue.  

[Peeperkorn]

You may add the southern cone of South America (Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile and Southern Brazil to a lesser extent), where European immigration from 1870 to 1950 turned to be the majority of the population.

And I would 't consider orthodox Europe as part of Western Culture.

[Peeperkorn]

And because not everybody might have reached the end of the preceding posts, maybe a bonus relevant question:

What's Western Culture?

Europe+USA+Canada+Austrailia+New Zealand. I don't know if countries south of USA count. Mabye.

Yeah, I know the countries that would be part of 'West', I was rather asking about an eventual definition of the 'Western culture', not the geographical area.

And, in that list, you would still have to geographically define 'Europe'.

It depends on the author.

Better question: What is culture?