Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Category:The Enlightenment

The following discussion comes from Wikipedia:Categories for deletion, where it is currently listed as unresolved. It may be reviewed again in the future in the light of evolving standards and guidelines for categorization. 22:03, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Category:The Enlightenment

There is already a heavily populated (if poorly capitalized) Category:Enlightenment Philosophers. If we did need a parent category to contain all Enlightenment-related topics, it should at least follow the title of the article—The Age of Enlightenment, to which "The Enlightenment" is a redirect. Postdlf 21:24, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Possibly agree on renaming. But it might be too early to tell on the usefulness of the category - it was only created this morning. -- Solipsist 23:03, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There are other philosophical traditions;Enlightenment Philosophers are western. Some eastern philosophies view enlightenment as a fundamental topic. I was led to create the category in order to encapsulate a period in history. Should I be creating infoboxes instead of attempting to follow categories? Ancheta Wis 06:04, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Now what am I going to do with Eye of Providence? It is a perfect illustration piece for The Enlightenment. And what about its category, no less? Ancheta Wis 06:59, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I thought the Eye was a freemason symbol. As "The Enlightenment" is just a redirect to Age of Enlightenment, that should be the proper title for a category on that period. Furthermore, I just read the description you added to the category, and your focus on the Enlightenment as just something that provided the foundation for the American Revolution is too narrow. The Age of Enlightenment was first and foremost a European phenomenon that had effects in the colonies. Postdlf 09:51, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The difference is that the Americans did something with The Enlightenment; they started a country. That reaction then immediately reflected back to Europe and turned into something more serious, so that not even Thomas Paine could halt the murders of the French Revolution and the succeeding wars over the next two centuries. Category:The Enlightenment presents a supercategory for Category:Enlightenment Philosophers. The article Age of Enlightenment presents both names, btw. "The E, or Age of E" Ancheta Wis 12:43, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

OK, that's just _totaly_ American centric POV ;-) The Americans didn't start anything. The Native Americans had been living in North America quite happily for a fair few centuries. It was the British, French and Spaniards who did all the modern country establishment, the Americans just stole it because they didn't like the taxes and caught Europe on the hop whilst they had some internal problems. You didn't even start the ball rolling on revolutions, as Postdlf says, that was down to Europe. Britain had a revolution over 100 years before the Americans even thought of it (and largely before the Age of Enlightenment) — we were just ahead of our time and didn't make it stick :-)   -- Solipsist 20:03, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I am starting to understand something:Richard Feynman is currently Categorized as a US Philosopher, which is ludicrous, because he despised them. When I worked on this article, I left this categorization alone. Based on my recent experience on this very Category page, I will strike Richard Feynman from the mis-categorization. Ancheta Wis 06:48, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree that looks odd. Feynman was added to Category:Philosophers on 16 Jun 2004, which would be quite early on in categorising. Since then a few people have refined the category, but until now no one has had the sense to remove him entirely. -- Solipsist 09:29, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• Here's the category's current description, btw: "This category lists factors which aided the rise of the American Revolution. See The Enlightenment for positive factors; there were countervailing factors which led to the violence of the French Revolution, possibly due to social stratification in Europe." Sounds more like the subject of an article than a category. Is this just intended to be the intersection of the Age of Enlightenment with the American Revolution? It's not named as such, and I don't see how that can composed as a proper classification. Postdlf 10:37, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree that my writing is more in the spirit of an article, and that the mindset needed for Categorization is new to me. But the very names of Categories are at stake here. Those who wrote the article allowed that both names are used. The administration of the names should not be grounds for deletion. It comes across as an affront. Ancheta Wis 12:43, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

OK, serious hat on now. I've been doing a fair bit of work on Eye of Providence today. As far as I can tell its an interesting subject, but an irrelevance in terms of the current discussion — its really got a long history back to the Eye of Horus and isn't rooted in Age of Enlightenment thinking. As far as I can tell there is no strong connection between the Age of Enlightenment and the Eastern/Buddhist concept of Enlightenment. There is a justification for a category such as Category:Age of Enlightenment to cover a movement of thought wider than Category:Enlightenment Philosophers, including political thought and possibly scientific and artistic developments, but it would probably need a but more more examination. The situation is similar to one I'm looking at in artistic category, where vaious artistic periods and movements affect the visual arts, architecture and music at different times. Its not trivial, but I'm leaning towards 'Keep' under the name Category:Age of Enlightenment. -- Solipsist 20:16, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Then it sounds as if I were to rename the category in the handful of articles, it could survive in a new incarnation? as in Cat:Age of E.? It's funny what comes across on the back of a Dollar bill. The Founders still are affecting the citizens of The Republic, in unconscious subliminal ways. By the way, I am starting to understand that view among the categorizers of Wikipedia is playful, as the category names are merely tags to be shuffled and re-dealt. Ancheta Wis 21:38, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Upon reflection, Category:The Enlightenment has an implicate order, in the words of David Bohm, which is explicitly not implied in Cat:Age of E. In fact Cat:Age of E. implies an end to Enlightenment, whereas there is room for Enlightenment in the past, present and future in Cat:The E. Ancheta Wis 05:55, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

But then it becomes more of a topic rather than a classificatory category, and one that would essentially be the equivalent of a personal essay, unless you can show that the groupings you intend are actually recognized in academia. The Age of Enlightenment is a distinct and recognized period in intellectual history. Enlightenment as a distinct concept reaching across cultures and time periods is significantly less so, and will mostly result in equivocation. Postdlf 22:26, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Actually there is documentation for this universal concept which exposes itself in the Western world, in Art. If you look at Kenneth Clarke's Civilisation, he shows how Enlightenment (he called it the smile of Reason) collided with European social structure (violence was the result in 1800), and we are seeing it now in our own time (terrorism, beheadings, war, 9/11 etc in 2000). But Asian cultures honor the concept. I agree that Age of Enlightenment is a distinct historical period of European intellectual history. That is exactly the point for freeing the implicate order from the explicate order. Ancheta Wis 09:19, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• Keep or rename. It's a valid and useful category to have. -- Beland 02:01, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
• Keep or rename. There are figures associated with the Enlightenment who are not philosophers -- notably the various Enlightened Despots -- and we kept having people stick the Category:Enlightenment Philosophers tag on them and having to remove it. -- Jmabel 07:43, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)
• (--Francis Schonken 16:47, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)):
  • Added "Classic era composers" as subcategory;
  • Categorized under "History by periods" and "Western art"
  • Rewrote category intro (NPOV: "as well...., as well.....,...")
  • Could some admin change category name to "age of enlightenment", as nobody seems to object to this? Oops, some do mind. In that case, I vote for keeping "The Enlightenment" as category name, with the new extended intro. Aditionally I created "Age of Enlightenment" as a REDIRECT category to "The Enlightenment" category (Is this allowed? It seems to work & it seems to solve any remaining problem from the discussion...)