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The Role of Memory

Contributor: banquosghost

Date: 2003-02-25 20:46:22

I wasn't challenging your use of the notion of enlightenment as much as I was exploring one of the themes that seems to emerge every so often...that of an "enlightened foreign policy" or an "enlightened social policy".

Classical Buddhist notions of enlightenment would mitigate against what proponents of enlightened government policies of this or that would seem to desire. Acceptance of suffering is a hallmark of this version of enlightenment, probably not an indication of what it's supposed to infer in regards to policy. I rather think the word enlightened in the context of government policy is more likely intended to refer to The Enlightenment, the period of western history which saw the emergence of rationalism and empiricism. http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/enlightenment.html

Maybe that's just me. :-)

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The Role of Memory

Contributor: Vox

Date: 2003-02-26 22:42:09

Thank you for your explanation. I actually did not view it as a challenge but more as a thoughtful and reasonable question. I also wanted to see if people were interested in the idea. So the questions that ensued were not surprising to me.

I had purposely only alluded to the word because the word itself was not a key concept to discuss (although its meaning in the context of memory was). The word "enlightenment" has much broader meanings to me while the application of the word in the topic's context would be seen initially to be more limited. My meaning of enlightenment is not of the empirical sense Western thinking often associates with the works of Locke, Rousseau, Voltaire,...etc. It includes those ideas while also going beyond them. It must because many foreign policy issues also involve people either not of or not convinced of Western thought.

I agree that wording poses a very real challenge whenever people from different backgrounds or experiences try to discuss complex issues. A key word can have significantly different meaning for each party. I fondly recall an experience I had in grad school where I literally spent 6 months working with 7 other people to simply agree on the meaning of the words "strategy" and "strategic". LOL!

Vox Canadiana

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