THE PROBLEM OF METHOD AND ENLIGHTENMENT

 

Is divided into two parts which are:

• Method and reason.

• Criticism and enlightened reason.

1. Method and reason 

For historians and philosophers of science such as Mardones (1991), it is in the 17th century that the question of method in the construction of knowledge becomes central, hence the relevance of Descartes' work and his text On Method (1637) (1983).

The question of method synthesizes the debates in the West on the production of episteme or the creation of reflective knowledge in the Greek sense and of science in the Galilean sense as the production of knowledge from experimentation. In the first sense, method is assumed as a method of demonstration based on the argumentation of ideas. Here, to think about method is to approach questions of reasoning and theorization. With this academic pretension, the method entails the search for coherentist truths, that is, coherently argued truths. Therefore, the method implies non-contradiction in the arguments, in the correct support of ideas or theses. It could be said that rhetoric and dialectics can well exemplify this idea of method.

Example: of the problem of method as demonstration is the well-known logical syllogism according to which truth is found in the logical relation derived from two initial axioms, for example: axiom one: every living being will die; axiom two: John is a living being. Derived truth: John will die.

 

• Demonstration method:

The method of demonstration involves the coherent argumentation of ideas.

The problem of method from the new Galilean science implies discovery, that is, the production of new knowledge based on empirical investigation. With this method, the truth pursued is a truth of correspondence. Everything said must have an empirical-concrete expression. Every statement must have a correspondence with a state of the method as a question about the path to follow in the.

The method as a question about the path to follow in the production of new knowledge, has assumed in western history two expressions: the method of demonstration or argumentation and the method of discovery or empirical research. These methods currently allow us to relate to coherentist or theoretical truths proper to demonstration and correspondentist or empirical truths proper to discovery.

2. Criticism and enlightened reason

The Enlightenment implies an epoch where thinking for its own sake becomes radical.

• Illustrations of enlightenment

Enlightenment would be, in the Kantian sense, the responsibility of assuming an autonomous life, which has political, pedagogical and scientific implications. In the first case, it makes human beings political beings who must watch over the common (public), without letting their particular interests take precedence and put at risk the dignity of others. In the second, human beings must form themselves by making of themselves, on the basis of education, something more than what is biologically given to them. Finally, the human being must seek the truth by his own action, the light of reason must be brought to all spheres of human life.

Scientific Enlightenment involves bringing the light of reason to all spheres of human life.      

Important idea:

 In the 19th century these enlightened theses will see their germination in the historical configuration of modern Western society, being the relation enlightenment-modernity the main key to understand the hegemony of Western civilization. After Hegel, modernity implies an epoch in which thinking about it becomes fundamental. Modernity would be an epoch woven on the basis of its constant self-reflection. It is here where the idea of science and philosophy as a more elaborate study of the epoch makes sense (Hollis, 1998). 

The Enlightenment-modernity relationship is the key to understanding the hegemony of Western civilization.

Important idea:

Criticism is the clearest expression of the Enlightenment; it is assumed as a way of life in which everything must pass through the tribunal of reason. Everything that exists is criticized in the interest of overcoming any limit to the human condition. Hence, criticism is consolidated as the basis of all knowledge production (Adorno, 2001).

In conclusion, the question of method has marked the modern history of science and philosophy, radicalizing its political, pedagogical and scientific implications in the Enlightenment. With the clarity of the Enlightenment as a way of life governed by the conquest of autonomy, the problem of method derives in the sciences in the responsibility of an elaborated, rigorous thought capable of giving an account of itself. Its influences on modernity are objectified in the development of science and a clear critical thinking of the time.