The Paradox of Trashing the Enlightenment
Looking down on giants from atop their own shoulders
As cultural and political attitudes continue to rapidly mutate, Enlightenment liberalism is losing public confidence across the political spectrum. On the political right, populist authoritarian movements have become a mainstay. In left-of-center circles, the successor ideology continues its spread, capturing institutions and young minds alike. Amid this, the right still pays lip service to the idea of the Enlightenment, or of classical liberalism, even if they make a mockery of it. The left, by contrast, increasingly disdains the Enlightenment openly. In doing so, however, these critics of the Enlightenment reveal a paradox that illustrates why Enlightenment liberalism matters.
Briefly, the Enlightenment was the prevailing Western philosophical movement of the 18th century, also drawing from some 17th century thinkers, that elevated scientific principles, reason, secularism, and liberalism above the authority of monarchs or religion. It dominated intellectual spheres, winning the war of ideas and forming the foundation of modern Western civilization and liberal democracy. The ideas that the Enlightenment originated, popularized, or laid the groundwork for include rationalism, tolerance of differences, objectivity, empiricism, individual freedom, consent of the governed, and human rights, among others.
The problem the successor ideology has with Enlightenment liberalism is twofold. The first and more superficial grievance is that Enlightenment thinkers were predominantly European, white, cis-gendered, straight men. Men who, though moral giants relative to the world they lived in, were nevertheless products of their own time, and whose views and practices included some no longer ethically acceptable in ours. In other words, many of the men of the Enlightenment were not woke by 2021 standards, and some of them owned slaves. The deeper critique is that the world built atop these Enlightenment foundations is one that perpetrated imperialism, colonialism, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, slavery, segregation, and bigotries of all varieties. Enlightenment liberalism, for all its highfalutin professions of lofty ideals, is in this view a fraud; little more than a Eurocentric playbook for racism and the exploitation of marginalized peoples. And thus, the paradox is invoked.
It is true that the men of the Enlightenment were far from perfect, and that the post-Enlightenment world they helped deliver was, and remains, deeply flawed. If you want to tear down statues of Thomas Jefferson because of his ownership of slaves and his relationship with Sally Hemmings, fine — but realize that it was thinkers like Jefferson who laid the intellectual framework by which we can even judge them in hindsight! Without the intellectual inheritance the Enlightenment has bequeathed to us, we would lack the philosophical, moral, and political tools to critically evaluate the shortcomings of the Enlightenment or its major thinkers.
Without empirical evidence, how can we determine that John Locke was an investor in the slave trading Royal African Company? Without skeptical inquiry, how would we question traditionalist narratives? Without the values of individual freedom and human rights, how can we condemn slavery or the theft of land? Don’t act like it’s a no-brainer. From the dawn of civilization until a couple hundred years ago, these were widely accepted facts of life. Without the value the Enlightenment placed on the consent of the governed, would we even have a voice with which to complain? And without reason, how could we make sense of any of this, or of anything at all? Without reason we are left with no avenues to dispute anything save for violence, appeals to authority, or foot-stamping proclamations that we don’t like it. “Why don’t you like it, Timmy?” “I just don’t!” We so take for granted the tools, values, and ideals of the Enlightenment, that we forget just how essential they are. It’s like using words to express the belief that language is useless.
This trap tells us something significant. These are not “white” values, or the ideas of dead white men — these are fundamental building blocks for making sense of the world and flourishing in it. The Enlightenment does not belong to any one group. These ideas were not the unique inventions of particular people, but rather truths about the world that were discovered.
If Mozart had never lived, his music, a singular creation of his own imagination, would never have been exactly made by anyone else, it would simply have been lost to us. Empiricism is different. Truths about the world are discoveries waiting to happen. The artist is esteemed for creating something no one else could. The scholar is esteemed not for creating truth, but for being the first to discover it, or the most successful in spreading it. If the first person to formally lay out the idea of empiricism had never done so, others would have in time, and in fact have. If you want to make an intelligible argument that evidence or reason don’t matter, you’ll find that you need evidence and reason to do so. Pause for a moment and appreciate that. Concepts this indispensable cannot belong to their discoverers. They belong to all of us.
Consider the unfathomable poverty of any worldview that would reject virtually the entirety of human thought outside the narrow confines of its own contemporary sensibilities. An ideology that can only swallow ideas whole, and so is unable to eat around the pit to get at the fruit of wisdom. The Enlightenment created an intellectual basis for a sustainable, knowledge-producing, error-correcting, iterative system of understanding the world. It was not an instant utopia; it was a process for gradual improvement over time. And improve it has. Yes, the Enlightenment led to a society that tolerated slavery, as nearly every civilization in history had. It also led to a society that abolished it. Yes, the Enlightenment thinkers believed and did some bad things. They also gave us the tools to learn from their mistakes and improve. If we can judge the thinkers of the Enlightenment and do better, it is because of their ideals. The foundation of a building may not be as lofty as the 30th story penthouse, but if you demolish it, the penthouse will tumble down with it.
It is every child’s aspiration to surpass their parents, and every good parent’s dream to be surpassed. It seems arrogant, and more than a little ungrateful, for we surpassers to sneer back at or disown our intellectual forebears, and proclaim that they don’t matter. If we can see further than them, it is by standing on their shoulders.
See also: “The Liberal Arts Crash Course”
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