Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Conservatism, the Enlightenment, and the Enlightenment’s Enemies


Jonah Goldberg has a book titled 'Suicide of the West'. I haven't yet read it. But I probably will, in view of how much I liked his book Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change. Given that Goldberg labels the rise of the modern West “The Enlightenment Miracle,” I assume Goldberg is defending the Enlightenment. 

That view is confirmed by a critical review of the book, posted on The Federalist, that caught my attention. It’s an amazing review. Written By John Daniel Davidson, here is an excerpt from the review, The West Isn’t Committing Suicide, It’s Dying Of Natural Causes.

Jonah Goldberg’s 'Suicide of the West' fails to acknowledge that the threat to liberal democratic capitalism is far deeper than tribalism or nationalism gone awry.

"If Goldberg wants to preserve the Miracle, he’s going to have to do a better job of explaining how it happened. To do that, he’s going to have to look back further than 300 years and rediscover the old morals and virtues that informed the pursuit of happiness, that gave shape to human flourishing and gave people something greater than themselves to belong to. Western civilization depends on sturdier stuff than material wealth, or individualism, or even democracy."

Davidson asserts that The Enlightenment gave us “hyper-individualism,” but also communism!

This is shocking. But then, maybe not. Given that Davidson’s work has appeared in National Review, and he has condemned Ireland’s recent popular vote to repeal that nation’s constitutional ban on abortion as “a reminder that without Christianity, liberalism descends into brutality,” we can assume that he is a conservative. 

The pursuit of happiness? Looking back further than 300 years, a time of “the old morals and virtues,” don’t we rediscover a time of perpetual economic stagnation, uncontained infectious diseases, vulnerability to climate danger, 30-year life expectancies, regularly occurring famines, and so on--a life that was poor, nasty, brutish, and short? Wasn’t that the time of tribalism, superstition, and perpetual religious warfare and strife? Wasn’t that a time before businessmen started turning the knowledge of the scientific revolution into material goods that began enriching the lives of “the masses”? Old morals? I think, as we witness the slow deterioration, if not suicide, of the West, Ayn Rand’s warning should be heeded by conservatives of Davidson’s ilk: 

“Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. Yes, you are bearing punishment for your evil. But it is not man who is now on trial and it is not human nature that will take the blame. It is your moral code that’s through, this time. Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley at the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you now need is not to return to morality—you who have never known any—but to discover it.”

Robert Tracinski responds brilliantly to Davidson. In Dear Conservatives: The Enlightenment Is Not The Enemy, also published at The Federalist, Tracinski writes:

It’s quite a trick for the Enlightenment to bring us both hyper-individualism and communism. . .

Well, thanks, guys. You just took the entire moral and intellectual authority of the Enlightenment and handed it over to the commies, a feat they could never have managed on their own.

This is the big mistake of American conservatism, its original sin. In an attempt to reassert the role of religion in American society, they grant to the Left the status of defenders of reason and freedom and describe them as the inheritors of the Enlightenment.

It’s instructive to read Davidson’s review of Goldberg’s book. As an antidote to your nausea—assuming you’re a person of reason—read Tracinski’s rebuttal.

Related Reading:

Atlas Shrugged--Ayn Rand

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress--Steven Pinker [I don’t agree with much of Pinker’s analysis. But the main value of his book is his irrefutable account of the unimaginable benefits that the Enlightenment made possible.]



Related Viewing:

Yaron Brook Show: Brook discusses with Onkar Ghate & Greg Salmieri Prager U’s Video on the Enlightenment

3 comments:

Mike Kevitt said...

The Enlightenment was a breaking out of reason, as a more formal process of human consciousness, bringing on science, the products of which included a new idea of central control of human relations by physical force: unalienable individual rights.

But the Enlightenment left ethics unchanged. So, the ethics of religion were merely secularized.

Enter collectivism, which has shown what the ethics of religion, of any religion, really mean in actual life, namely, death. But, the proponents of reason (the Enlightenment) tried to graft individual rights onto religious ethics. So, collectivism could not offend proponents of reason, at least, not ethically. The proponents of reason adhered to reason only partially and, as central control of human relations by force is concerned, superficially, ignoring the ethical and most fundamental philosophical bases upon which individual rights depend.

So, individual rights and western civilization IS dying of natural causes. It can't live on pseudo ethics and pseudo philosophy. But, it's also suicide. EVERYBODY knows of actual ethics, in short, of self-interest, but, they all reject it and ferociously cling to the pseudo-ethics, willing and eager to throw away the wonders of reason and of the Enlightenment, because of a pseudo-ethics. People are eager to commit suicide before they might die naturally. They refuse to live by choosing a rational ethics and fundamental philosophy, and the resulting individual rights, to justify those wonders and to extend them in perpetuity.

No. Everybody is religious, just like collectivists and adherents of religion. They are billions of tons of meat with their meat hooks on the physical power. They will not be talked out of it. They are impervious to reason. They are Homo-sapiens, but without reason, therefore, not fully human, but just non-reasoning automatons. What good does talk do, when trying to deal with them?

principled perspectives said...

We just have to hope that free speech continues and, as a corollary, that there are enough people of reason left to pursuade so that we could save the Enlightenment in spite of the not-fully-human. Rational self-interest was implicit in the Enlightenment and in the Declaration of Independence, but there was no thinker around to devote full time to developing and spreading the new ethics. We can keep advocating and activating, while we only hope that Ayn Rand didn't come along too late to save America.

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