There is is a peculiar strain within nationalism which sees the enlightenment as the root of all of our current woes, the beginning of the end. By so doing, many confuse the enlightenment view of liberalism with the modern interpretation of that word. Others confuse classic liberalism with civic nationalism, as many of their modern day advocates overlap, but the two are not ideologically connected.
The enlightenment was our gradual emergence out of many centuries of superstition, theocracy, and near absolute monarchy, which followed the fall of Rome. A world of papal indulgences and witch burnings. A world of subsistence farming, grinding poverty, widespread illiteracy, slow technological progress, ignorance and want.
How did we lift ourselves out of these desperate circumstances? By observing the world through our senses and applying our God given reason to it. By carefully studying nature to discover how the world works, and then using this knowledge to bend the natural world to our will. To harness the power of nature, and set it to work for us.
Once our superpower had been unlocked the speed of advance was exponential.We went from Newton's Laws of Motion to the first steam engine in under a century. From Faraday and Clark-Maxwell's work on electromagnetism to the telegraph and then the mobile phone and Wi-Fi in a century or two more. After millennia in the doldrums, Western man had finally found his true calling. No more would our finest minds scribble away in monasteries grappling with obtuse and unprovable questions of theology. Instead they would be set to work making material improvements to the physical world.
Hand in hand with the scientific enlightenment was the intellectual enlightenment. Great minds applied themselves to the creation of a freer and more prosperous society. Adam Smith theorised on how best to structure the economy to achieve maximum prosperity. Other thinkers concerned themselves with balancing maximum personal freedom with the maintenance of an orderly society.
The zenith of the political enlightenment probably lies in the US constitution. A document which comes as close as any to setting out the ideal principles for the maintenance of a free, prosperous, and orderly nation. America's greatest blessing was to be founded at the peak of the enlightenment. I dread to think what a constitution written today might look like. The BBC's equality and diversity plan most likely.
The unifying thread in all of these endeavours was reason and empiricism. The furtherance of knowledge through experiment. The scientific method applied to matters of man as well as nature.
It is the wise application of these values, in conjunction with his inherent physical and mental traits, which allowed Western man to dominate the globe. These values predominated, as did Western man, until the mid 20th century when they began to be replaced by the more woolly minded, feminine, values of equality and kindness. Of the rejection of empirical evidence if its conclusions might hurt someone's feelings. The move away from enlightenment values was the beginning of western civilisation's decline.
I despair of "scientism" being decried as a negative. Science confirms racial differences. Science knows that the sexes are fundamentally different. The problem is the corruption of science to meet the political orthodoxy of the day. This is the opposite of data driven empiricism. Fearless, empirical science is the solution to our current problems. We need more science, not less.
Another, misguided, charge commonly raised against the enlightenment is that its version of liberalism, meaning maximum personal freedom under the law, is somehow analogous with modern day liberal progressivism. Notions of racial or sexual equality would have been viewed as utterly absurd by these 17th and 18th Century gentlemen. When they spoke equality they meant equality of opportunity and dignity for white men, and white men only.
It must also be remembered that notions of liberty in the 17th and 18th Century were tempered by religion, social morality, and a sense of responsibility to one's family and duty to one's country. Liberty set in this strong social framework does not lead to the extreme degeneracy we see today. It is the failing of these other pillars of society in recent times which have caused our problems, not liberty itself.
The ideal of liberty sought by the enlightenment was not the opportunity for wanton personal degradation. It was free speech, free conscience, and the free exchange of ideas. Liberalism does not mean libertinism. What we have done now is to replace classical liberalism with libertinism. We have lost our freedom of conscience and expression and had them replaced with a torrent of filth and obscenity. The regime under which we now live is thoroughly illiberal and would have horrified the bewigged gentlemen who promulgated the enlightenment.
Another, related, complaint is the that the individualism attendant to personal liberty is somehow undesirable. I find this to be a strange complaint. If you do not want to be free to make your own choices, just who is it you want to make those choices for you? Are you really asking for some king, bishop, or dictator to make your personal decisions for you? What if he makes choices you dislike or are contrary to your best interests? Such a position is, to my mind, absurd.
There
are even some who appear to wish to return to pre enlightenment times
and live a life of agrarian poverty under feudal oppression, untroubled by technology or modernity. If that is
the lifestyle they would prefer it remains freely available throughout much
of the third world.
The fact that modern society has become corrupt does not mean that its philosophical underpinnings were misguided or doomed to fail from the outset. These values created the greatest period of progress and prosperity humanity has ever experienced. We need to go back to what has been proven to work, not attempt to concoct some new societal foundation out of whole cloth.
The British are fundamentally an individualist and freedom loving people. From Magna Carta, to the Declaration of Arbroath, to Brexit, it is baked into our DNA. We are not like our collectivist cousins on the continent who are prepared to sacrifice their freedoms in the interests of conformity and cohesion, far less the ant people of Asia. Daring to be different is why we innovate and why our record of achievement is unsurpassed.
For all of the criticisms that have been raised against the enlightenment and classical liberalism, I have yet to hear anyone set out a preferable alternative. These values are not for everyone of course. They are certainly not universal. They require a population with a high IQ, good moral character, and self discipline. They have taken centuries of work by our greatest minds to create. They are the cornerstone of our civilisation. They are of our people, by our people, and for our people.
