This is all horseshit.
At 02:42 PM 6/27/2006 -0400, Charles Brown wrote:
The neo-cons' favourite philosophy had a distinctly seamy side
by John Gray
New Statesman (June 19 2006)
It is not surprising that Enlightenment thinking has become
fashionable again: in uncertain times, people turn to the security
promised by faith. For the signatories of the Euston Manifesto as for
American neoconservatives, the cure for our contemporary ills is
clear: back to the Enlightenment. For these people the Enlightenment
is a holy amulet, able to ward off the evil forces of terrorism and
religion while offering sanctuary to endangered liberal values.
They are half right: liberal values are certainly at risk, but it is
silly to look to the Enlightenment to safeguard them. It was a hugely
complex movement, and some of its most influential thinkers were
enemies of liberalism. Karl Marx allowed liberal values only a
transitional role in human development, while Auguste Comte, founder
of the influential positivist movement, rejected ideals of toleration
and equality. Yet this was not simply a battle of ideas. In the late
19th and early 20th centuries, the anti-liberal strand of
Enlightenment thinking gave birth to the "scientific racism" that
would be adopted by the Nazis. This ideology can be traced back to
Kant's lectures on anthropology, published in 1798, in which he
maintained, for instance, that Africans are inherently disposed to
slavery.
As an intellectual movement, the Enlightenment has always had a
distinctly seamy side. In its political incarnation, it was one of the
factors that shaped modern-day terror. Right-thinking French
philosophes campaigned for the prohibition of torture, but their ideas
also gave birth to the Jacobin Terror that followed the French
revolution. Later, Enlightenment ideas animated some of the most
repressive and murderous regimes of the 20th century. Contrary to
views often voiced on the left, state terror in the Soviet Union and
Maoist China was not produced by national traditions of despotism. It
resulted from the utopian character of communism itself. The tens of
millions who starved or were killed under communism perished for the
sake of an Enlightenment ideal.
What is needed today is not the return to faith beloved of
Enlightenment believers and born-again Christians alike. It is realism
and doubt - especially regarding the myth of progress in ethics and
politics. A couple of hundred years ago, this myth may have been
useful. Today, after the disasters of the 20th century, it is merely a
sedative. How many times has one heard the plaintive cry "If I didn't
believe in progress I couldn't get up in the morning"? The
Enlightenment revival is not a return to rationality. It is fuelled by
the emotions, and above all by fear.
The Enlightenment also produced some great sceptical thinkers,
however. David Hume had no hopes of humanity ever being ruled by
reason. A genial and tolerant soul, he would surely have been
entertained by the spectacle of today's rationalists clinging
frantically to an irrational faith in progress. We should follow his
example, and look on the true believers in Enlightenment with a smile.
Copyright (c) New Statesman 1913 - 2006
http://www.newstatesman.com/200606190044
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