BRITISH ENLIGHTENMENT

Roy Porter, The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment (New York & London: W. W. Norton, 2000) ("Enlightenment histories claimed to be replacing error with truth, but they were in reality trading new myths for old--their own mentalities were mythopoeic too. Yet, however, blind to their own myth-making the enlightened were energetic anatomists of myth, going beyond accounts of individual fables to shape grand anthropologies--or pathologies--of the myth-making imagination self." Id, at 233. "The eighteenth century bought conflicts of allegiances for intellectuals, torn between cosmopolitan leanings and local loyalties. Being a 'citizen of the world' was attractive for those steeped in Graeco-Roman values and disgusted by sectarian and chauvinistic bigotry. Yet there a growing clamor, too, for national identity: enlightenment libertarianism, after all, demanded independence from oppressors, while a new fascination with roots and race, with vernacular, customs and history was fostering feeling of nationhood which transcend dynastic fealties." Id. at 239. "Postmodernism has one virtue at least--it has reopened inquiries into modernity and its origins. When, why, how did the 'modern' self and 'modern' society come into being? Should we root back as far as the 'self-fashioning' men of the Renaissance, or pitch out inquiries further forward?" Id. at 476.).