Crossword clues for obscurantism
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Obscurantism \Ob*scur"ant*ism\, n.
The system or the principles of the obscurants.
--C.
Kingsley.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
n. 1 A state of opposition to human progress or enlightenment. 2 deliberate obscurity or vagueness.
WordNet
n. a policy of opposition to enlightenment or the spread of knowledge
a deliberate act intended to make something obscure
Wikipedia
Obscurantism ( and ) is the practice of deliberately preventing the facts of some subject matter from becoming known. There are two, historical and intellectual denotations to Obscurantism: (1) the deliberate restriction of knowledge — opposition to disseminating knowledge; and, (2) deliberate obscurity — an abstruse style (as in literature and art) characterized by deliberate vagueness. Therefore, an obscurantist is someone who actively opposes enlightenment and the consequent social reform, a type of anti-intellectual.
The term obscurantism derives from the title of the 16th-century satire Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum (1515–19, Letters of Obscure Men), that was based upon the intellectual dispute between the German humanist Johann Reuchlin and the monk Johannes Pfefferkorn of the Dominican Order, about whether or not all Jewish books should be burned as un-Christian heresy. Earlier, in 1509, the monk Pfefferkorn had obtained permission from Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor (1486–1519), to burn all copies of the Talmud ( Jewish law and Jewish ethics) known to be in the Holy Roman Empire (AD 926–1806); the Letters of Obscure Men satirized the Dominican arguments for burning "un–Christian" works.
In the 18th century, Enlightenment philosophers applied the term obscurantist to any enemy of intellectual enlightenment and the liberal diffusion of knowledge. In the 19th century, in distinguishing the varieties of obscurantism found in metaphysics and theology from the "more subtle" obscurantism of the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and of modern philosophical skepticism, Friedrich Nietzsche said: "The essential element in the black art of obscurantism is not that it wants to darken individual understanding, but that it wants to blacken our picture of the world, and darken our idea of existence."
Usage examples of "obscurantism".
I with obscurantism, with unreasoning fear, with the brainless cruelty of children?
To take an example from comparatively current events: we all know that it was not uncommon for a man to be considered a scarecrow of bigotry and obscurantism because he distrusted the Japanese, or lamented the rise of the Japanese, on the ground that the Japanese were Pagans.
The demagogues have called in all the reserves of obscurantism to extinguish the last gleams of good sense that lingered in the people, and to reduce them to imbecility.
When the moderns, drawing the blackest curtain of obscurantism that ever obscured history, decided that nothing mattered much before the Renaissance and the Reformation, they instantly began their modern career by falling into a big blunder.
This false show of science, this camouflage of ignorance, this babble about ectoplasm and other mythical products of the psychic imagination was mere obscurantism, the bastard offspring of superstition and darkness.
The word demands to be repeated almost obsessively to the point where one could be transported hundreds of years in the past, to an era of obscurantism and amorality.
In practice, this meant missing no opportunity to defend freedom of thought against the despotism of politics and the obscurantism of religion.
The conflict of opinions and parties, of privilege and freedom, of science and obscurantism, was transferred from the secret chamber of a small, privileged, professional, and sacerdotal coterie to the arena of the reading public.
In that time he would certainly have belonged to those who reproached it with Jesuitry and obscurantism.