The Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment

by Christian Thorne

In this wide-ranging, ambitious, and engaging study, Christian Thorne confronts the history and enduring legacy of anti-foundationalist thought.

Anti-foundationalism―the skeptical line of thought that contends our beliefs cannot be authoritatively grounded and that most of what passes for knowledge is a sham―has become one of the dominant positions in contemporary criticism. Thorne argues that despite its ascendance, anti-foundationalism is wrong. In The Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment , he uses deft readings of a range of texts to offer new perspectives on the ongoing clash between philosophy and comprehensive doubt.

The problem with anti-foundationalism is not, as is often thought, that it radiates uncertainty or will unglue the university, but instead that it is a system of thought―with set habits that generate unearned certainties. The shelves are full of histories of modern philosophy, but the history of the resistance to philosophical thought remains to be told. At its heart, The Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment is a plea not to take doubt at its word―a plea for the return of a vanished philosophical intelligence and for the retirement of an anti-Enlightenment thinking that commits, over and over again, the very crimes that it lays at Enlightenment’s door.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

390 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Lee]

Thorne writes a lively and stylish account of early modern/Enlightenment skepticism, with the aim of complicating all-too-typical academic claims about the politically subversive power of anti-foundationalist thought. His basic point, smartly argued, is that anti-foundationalism doesn't have a necessary politics, or that its politics are not exactly obvious. His conclusion is too polite to anti-foundationalist theory, in my view.

[Garth · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment is Christian Thorne's examination of anti-foundationalism or skepticism from the time of the ancient Greeks to the modern day. Starting with an examination of one of the most famous Greek skeptics, Sextus Empiricus, Thorne takes the reader on a journey through the origins of the modern novel, the fourth estate, and even contemporary science-fiction.

What is anti-foundationalism or skepticism? How I like to explain the concept is this: take the comedy TV show South Park, in that show the line commonly taken is that: "everything and everyone is equally bad", this is the skeptical line of reasoning taken to the extreme, where everything is lampooned. What is wrong with this line of reasoning or outlook? Well for one, if you don't take a position and stand for a path forward, you don't actually stand for anything. In the context of skeptical media including other shows, movies, books, or commentary similar to South Park, this actually upholds the current status quo and stands against progressive political change and can even support reactionary politics.

Christian Thorne's writing is jazzy, smooth, and makes a difficult topic to approach an enjoyable read. This is the type of book that I would recommend to readers who are somewhat familiar with philosophy in general and want to take a deeper plunge. My main criticism is that while Thorne offers an excellent analysis, he doesn't make a hard enough attack on anti-foundationalism. This book was published in 2010, during and in the aftermath of 2008's 'Great Recession', the political and historical context then was different that what it is in now 2025. Perhaps if Thorne's book was published now, with all the crises and change that have occurred since 2008, he would've taken a harder line.