A new enlightenment?
We may have failed to live up to Enlightenment ideals, but that doesn't mean we should abandon them completely. Robert Louden hasn't given up on the quest for human fulfilment.
The phrase '21st century enlightenment' rings hollow for many historically attuned ears. Haven't the past two centuries thoroughly discredited this project? Isn't the enormous gap between Enlightenment hopes and current realities more than sufficient evidence that we need a fundamentally different strategy for social reform? Yet, while several of the more ambitious Enlightenment ideals have not met with success, I believe that the informed adaptation of their hopes to current realities still constitutes humanity's best chance for serious social reform. Looking back, what is most impressive about the Enlightenment is its critical commitment to fundamental change in the face of adversity and its experimental attitude to bringing this about, rather than the precise letter of its prescriptions.
In international relations, Enlightenment intellectuals hoped for a future world of peace where disputes between nations would be resolved through arbitration. Nations would rush to join a world federation dedicated to the abolition of war, and together member states would create a transnational military force that would uphold the federation's decisions in those rare cases when arbitration and sanctions failed. During the 17th and 18th centuries, 36 different peace projects were published in France alone.
The development of modern international law out of the medieval natural law tradition was a second major strategy that Enlightenment intellectuals advocated for achieving peace. All states, they predicted, would eventually submit to the jurisdiction of an international justice regime, by means of which war itself would be brought within the bounds of law and human rights would be protected. Jeremy Bentham, for example, proposed replacing the phrase "law of nations" with "international law" in an important footnote in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1780).
And now? The devastation of World War I gave birth to the League of Nations, but it essentially collapsed in 1939, unable to stand up against the aggression of Mussolini, Hitler and the Japanese militarists. Its successor institution, the United Nations, was established immediately after World War II. Today, the UN survives but hardly thrives, and its success in achieving its primary goal of saving "succeeding generations from the scourge of war" is poor. In its 65 years of existence, more wars have been fought than in the 65 years prior to its founding. As for global jurisdiction, although the International Criminal Court finally became an institutional reality in 2002, it did so without the blessing of the world's two most powerful nations, the US and China, and its accomplishments thus far are meagre. The allure of peace has proven weaker, and the attraction of national sovereignty far stronger, than Enlightenment intellectuals could foresee.
In religion, while most proponents of the Enlightenment were far from the militant secularists that some subsequent commentators have claimed, it must be admitted that the kind of religious faith they embraced was quite different from that of subsequent generations of religious believers. Enlightenment intellectuals did not call for the death of religion; rather, they hoped for the development of a universal natural religion where sectarian differences would no longer be a source of hatred and enmity; a more rational and less divisive conception of faith that would promote peace between peoples rather than wars. From Lord Edward Herbert of Cherbury – the so-called 'father
of deism' – to the German playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Enlightenment philosophers and writers all propagated some form of broader faith.
Yet here as well, the pull of particularist traditions has proven stronger, and the claims of universal reason weaker, than Enlightenment intellectuals predicted. The most telling objection to Enlightenment religious ideals has been the unexpected growth of numerous fundamentalist and evangelical sects, and the related decline of many liberal religious outlooks. For instance, within present-day Christianity, which represents approximately a third of the world's population and is still the largest single religious group (though it is losing ground to Islam, which is growing at a faster rate), the highest annual growth rates are found among Pentecostals and Evangelicals. Unitarianism – a sect that, perhaps more than any other, embodies the spirit of Enlightenment religiosity – saw its membership decline by 20 percent during the last quarter of the 20th century. This dual phenomenon of marked religious growth in fundamentalism and evangelicalism and shrinkage of more liberal sects has occurred not only within Christianity, but also within Islam, Judaism and other religions. So, while the sheer persistence of religion in modernity would neither surprise nor dismay Enlightenment intellectuals, the specific shapes that religion has assumed since their time is another story. The deistic fantasy of a universal religion is not about to be realised any time soon.
Enlightenment reformers pinned particularly strong hopes on education. The growth of education, according to thinkers such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, would not only eradicate illiteracy but would also help to create a critical and engaged public: enlightened and civically engaged citizens who (as Kant argued in his 1784 essay An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?) had acquired the courage to make use of their own understanding and would consistently exercise this courage in public. They would present and defend their views before others, subjecting all authority – political, religious and scientific – to critical scrutiny and would speak freely on all matters.
Today, most human beings do live in a schooled (indeed, universitied) world, but this was definitely not the world of the 18th century. It is estimated that fewer than half of the white settlers in colonial America had any formal schooling at all, whereas 87 percent of US adults have completed an upper secondary education. Universities in the western world today educate almost 50 percent of young adults, whereas in the late 18th century, only about 1 percent of western adults even attended a college or university. While the battle against illiteracy has been largely won, there are still huge disparities: in 2000, the total adult literacy rate was 97 percent in industrialised countries, but in the least developed countries it was still only 48 percent. Moreover, the explosive growth of education since the Enlightenment has led not to an engaged public sphere but rather to a privatised consumer culture. Increasingly, education at all levels is being reduced to a Brotstudium: something valued for its economic utility alone, rather than for its possibilities of civic and moral transformation.
Misplaced faith?
In the sphere of economics, Enlightenment intellectuals placed rather too much faith in the magic of the market. They believed that a robust commercial society (constrained, to be sure, by principles of justice) would bring not only economic benefits, by raising the living standards of all, but also moral benefits, by expanding freedom and equality. Additionally, commerce would make people more civil and cordial, creating new bonds of union and friendship across national boundaries. Over time, people would become less violent and destructive, less hateful and distrustful. The activity of commerce – though driven by individuals' self-interested desires to better their own financial positions – would gradually force peace upon the peoples of the world. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) is by far the most influential Enlightenment work in economics, but scores of other Enlightenment authors - from Jefferson to Kant - also helped to popularise the alleged connection between commerce and peace.
And now? Although we live in a world increasingly brought together through commerce and trade, it is clearly not one of peace. Economic globalisation has not led to moral globalisation. Even the predicted economic benefits of less fettered commercial activity and international trade are not always easy to see. Nicolas de Condorcet's bold prediction (in The Future Progress of the Human Mind, 1793) of the abolition of inequality between nations and the progress of equality within nations has not come true. The liberalisation of trade and commerce has not eliminated poverty or narrowed the gap between the developed and developing world. Quite the contrary. Over the past two centuries, the world economy has in fact become far more unequal: according to some recent estimates, the gap between rich and poor countries has grown from about five to one to 400 to one. While the proportion of the world's population living in extreme poverty has fallen since the Enlightenment (in 1800, approximately five out of six human beings lived in extreme poverty; at present, the figure is closer to one out of six), the total number of people now living in poverty is greater than ever, and growing annually. More people today are hungry than ever before, and this cannot be good news for the Enlightenment hope of eliminating poverty.
We seem to find one of the few uncontestable bright spots for Enlightenment hopes in the political arena, at least when judged from a simple quantitative perspective. Enlightenment authors were strong advocates of republicanism: shorthand for a constellation of political ideals including representative government, popular sovereignty, the rule of law and the separation of government powers. Take Kant's Zum ewigen Frieden, whose "first definitive article for perpetual peace" reads: "The civil constitution in every state shall be republican." Kant believed republican regimes held out the best prospect for peace, because in such states war depends on the consent of citizens, which is not likely to be forthcoming.
The success of democratisation in the 20th century – whether this means only minimalist electoral democracies without constitutional safeguards or more maximalist liberal democracies that come closer to the ideal of Enlightenment republicanism – bodes well for Enlightenment political hopes. Today, nearly two-thirds of the world's population lives in electoral democracies and slightly more than a third lives in liberal democracies. In the late 18th century, there were only three partial or restricted liberal democracies (France, Switzerland, the US) among the 50-odd recognised sovereign nations of the world. Without the qualifier 'partial or restricted', the number drops back to zero. But while the claim that "democracy is the best form of government" enjoys overwhelming support at present, this should not blind us to the fact that the spread of republicanism has not achieved everything that Enlightenment intellectuals hoped it would. Democracies have only occasionally reduced inequalities between citizens, and they have certainly not produced morally better individuals.
The near-fourfold increase in the number of sovereign states since the late 18th century would also seem to be a vindication of both the Enlightenment political ideal of the right to self-government and its concomitant critique of colonisation and empire-building. Colonies, as Smith and Bentham argued, are not cost-effective – and, as Kant and de Condorcet believed, they are also unjust. But tagging along behind the proliferation of sovereign states has been the phenomenon of failed states. The long anti-colonial revolution, intensified after World War II, has put the world in pieces, and some of the younger pieces are not doing well. Life does not necessarily get better once one breaks free from the yoke of political and economic dependence.
The above summary of Enlightenment intellectuals' hopes and current world realities, though by no means exhaustive, does indicate their primary concerns as well as the multidimensional scope and moral underpinning of their ambitious project. Enlightenment authors advocated not just political reform, but religious, economic, educational and legal reform as well. They anticipated that progressive changes in one sphere would help trigger much-needed changes in others, and that cumulative effects would outweigh solitary ones. Contrary to what its critics maintain, the Enlightenment was neither a misguided scientistic attempt to control human life by means of the technocratic state nor an imperial masquerade aiming to subdue the world under a false universality. Rather, it was a morally motivated effort to expand human freedom and equality and establish a lasting peace.
Only once we have succeeded in retrieving more accurate versions of Enlightenment aspirations does the hard work begin, however. Why, after more than two centuries of often favourable reception and endorsement by subsequent generations, have
the ideals of Enlightenment thinkers still not been realised? Why has history not ratified their forecasts? How is it, as Friedrich Schiller asked in a 1795 essay, that we remain barbarians?
Explaining failure
It is always easier to show that something has not been achieved than it is to explain why this is the case, and the task of assessing accurately humanity's failure to realise ideals seems fated to remain an imprecise art rather than an exact science. Does the problem lie in the means chosen to realise the ends, or are the ends themselves somehow not consistent with human nature? Has the passion and patience for fundamental social reform simply faded over time and, if so, to what extent are we ourselves to blame? How much time should be granted before a verdict is rendered regarding the realisation of an ideal? If, as generally seems to be the case, subsequent generations have implemented the ends and/or means not in their original form but in some compromised, less-than-ideal form, how should this complication of compromised implementation best be factored into the final assessment? Last but not least, controlled and repeatable experiments are not feasible in the 'unlaboratory' of history. Any judgements rendered by philosophical historians concerning humanity's efforts at realising ideals will be forever inconclusive at best.
With these complications in mind, let us wager three hypotheses:
1) At present, insufficient numbers of people are committed to Enlightenment ideals – including peace, the elimination of poverty, an engaged civic culture and the reduction of inequality - to make clear progress in realising them. The predicted global extension and deepening of commitment to these ideals via institutional reform and the growth of education has not happened.
2) This lack of commitment to Enlightenment ideals itself points to a weakness in Enlightenment intellectuals' 'moralisation thesis' – the belief that external institutional change would produce the desired changes in attitude. At present, many of the institutions exist, but people remain much the same as they were. Moral transformation, if it is aided by institutional reform, is slower and more uneven within humans than Enlightenment intellectuals assumed would be the case. More simply put, Enlightenment authors overestimated the plasticity of human nature.
3) The past two centuries of historical experience also indicate several problems with Enlightenment ends and means. In some cases, subsequent experience indicates that Enlightenment goals are simply not consistent with human nature. The most obvious example is religion. Most human beings are not receptive to the idea of a universal religion. This particular Enlightenment ideal has been firmly and steadily resisted by subsequent generations. In other cases, historical experience indicates that the means chosen to achieve the ends have proven to be inefficacious. Clear examples here include the Enlightenment faith that a free market would bring world peace and eliminate poverty.
But where does this assessment leave us? The means and ends advocated by Enlightenment intellectuals were never intended as eternal truths standing outside of history. Rather, they were put forward in the spirit of experimentation: "Here is a proposal for social reform: let's see if it works." Their ideals, and the means advocated for realising them, are always subject to correction, and this self-correcting experimentalist method is one of the chief virtues of Enlightenment thinking - one that clearly distinguishes it from the methods of dogmatic opponents on both sides of the ideological spectrum. The human animal, Hume observed, "improves upon his discoveries, corrects his mistakes and makes his very errors profitable" to a much greater degree than other creatures. In those cases where subsequent human experience indicates a fundamental problem with either the means or ends advocated by Enlightenment authors, it is our responsibility to correct their mistakes. This is what they would have wanted.
The task that is now before us is to rethink Enlightenment ends and means in the light of current realities, as well as to consider possible alternatives to Enlightenment strategies. Should we give up trying to create a better world and do nothing? Or should we develop blunter tactics for change? Enlightenment philosophers did not seek merely to interpret the world but to change it. Their prescription for change, however, was quite different from the one that Karl Marx later advocated. The Enlightenment approach to changing the human condition relies on free inquiry, public debate, consensus building and gradual reform, and is constrained by respect for basic human rights and democratic processes. Social reform efforts guided by these concerns will rarely be smooth, fast or unilinear, but they are preferable to other options.
Given that Enlightenment intellectuals were wrong in some of their assumptions about how to reach their ideals, and that some of these do not seem to fit with human nature as revealed over the span of two centuries, can their texts really still be our best source of inspiration for fundamental social reform? At the risk of appearing irreparably nostalgic, let me answer with a qualified yes. These texts do remain our best starting point for serious reflection on improving the human condition by peaceful and open means, but they should not be the sole source or the endpoint of our investigations. They contain errors that we can correct, and many new problems face us today that Enlightenment intellectuals did not anticipate. What existed for a brief period during the Enlightenment, however, was an enviable level of international consensus on, and commitment to, making a moral world – a new force in history that has yet to be matched. Whether humanity will ever succeed in matching this force again remains to be seen. But if we give up trying, we are lost.
Robert B Louden is professor of philosophy at the University of Southern Maine and president of the North American Kant Society. His book, The World We Want: How and Why the Ideals of the Enlightenment Still Elude Us, was published by Oxford University Press in 2007.
The phrase '21st century enlightenment' rings hollow for many historically attuned ears. Haven't the past two centuries thoroughly discredited this project? Isn't the enormous gap between Enlightenment hopes and current realities more than sufficient evidence that we need a fundamentally different strategy for social reform? Yet, while several of the more ambitious Enlightenment ideals have not met with success, I believe that the informed adaptation of their hopes to current realities still constitutes humanity's best chance for serious social reform. Looking back, what is most impressive about the Enlightenment is its critical commitment to fundamental change in the face of adversity and its experimental attitude to bringing this about, rather than the precise letter of its prescriptions.
In international relations, Enlightenment intellectuals hoped for a future world of peace where disputes between nations would be resolved through arbitration. Nations would rush to join a world federation dedicated to the abolition of war, and together member states would create a transnational military force that would uphold the federation's decisions in those rare cases when arbitration and sanctions failed. During the 17th and 18th centuries, 36 different peace projects were published in France alone.
The development of modern international law out of the medieval natural law tradition was a second major strategy that Enlightenment intellectuals advocated for achieving peace. All states, they predicted, would eventually submit to the jurisdiction of an international justice regime, by means of which war itself would be brought within the bounds of law and human rights would be protected. Jeremy Bentham, for example, proposed replacing the phrase "law of nations" with "international law" in an important footnote in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1780).
And now? The devastation of World War I gave birth to the League of Nations, but it essentially collapsed in 1939, unable to stand up against the aggression of Mussolini, Hitler and the Japanese militarists. Its successor institution, the United Nations, was established immediately after World War II. Today, the UN survives but hardly thrives, and its success in achieving its primary goal of saving "succeeding generations from the scourge of war" is poor. In its 65 years of existence, more wars have been fought than in the 65 years prior to its founding. As for global jurisdiction, although the International Criminal Court finally became an institutional reality in 2002, it did so without the blessing of the world's two most powerful nations, the US and China, and its accomplishments thus far are meagre. The allure of peace has proven weaker, and the attraction of national sovereignty far stronger, than Enlightenment intellectuals could foresee. In religion, while most proponents of the Enlightenment were far from the militant secularists that some subsequent commentators have claimed, it must be admitted that the kind of religious faith they embraced was quite different from that of subsequent generations of religious believers. Enlightenment intellectuals did not call for the death of religion; rather, they hoped for the development of a universal natural religion where sectarian differences would no longer be a source of hatred and enmity; a more rational and less divisive conception of faith that would promote peace between peoples rather than wars. From Lord Edward Herbert of Cherbury – the so-called 'father
of deism' – to the German playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Enlightenment philosophers and writers all propagated some form of broader faith.
Yet here as well, the pull of particularist traditions has proven stronger, and the claims of universal reason weaker, than Enlightenment intellectuals predicted. The most telling objection to Enlightenment religious ideals has been the unexpected growth of numerous fundamentalist and evangelical sects, and the related decline of many liberal religious outlooks. For instance, within present-day Christianity, which represents approximately a third of the world's population and is still the largest single religious group (though it is losing ground to Islam, which is growing at a faster rate), the highest annual growth rates are found among Pentecostals and Evangelicals. Unitarianism – a sect that, perhaps more than any other, embodies the spirit of Enlightenment religiosity – saw its membership decline by 20 percent during the last quarter of the 20th century. This dual phenomenon of marked religious growth in fundamentalism and evangelicalism and shrinkage of more liberal sects has occurred not only within Christianity, but also within Islam, Judaism and other religions. So, while the sheer persistence of religion in modernity would neither surprise nor dismay Enlightenment intellectuals, the specific shapes that religion has assumed since their time is another story. The deistic fantasy of a universal religion is not about to be realised any time soon.
Enlightenment reformers pinned particularly strong hopes on education. The growth of education, according to thinkers such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, would not only eradicate illiteracy but would also help to create a critical and engaged public: enlightened and civically engaged citizens who (as Kant argued in his 1784 essay An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?) had acquired the courage to make use of their own understanding and would consistently exercise this courage in public. They would present and defend their views before others, subjecting all authority – political, religious and scientific – to critical scrutiny and would speak freely on all matters. Today, most human beings do live in a schooled (indeed, universitied) world, but this was definitely not the world of the 18th century. It is estimated that fewer than half of the white settlers in colonial America had any formal schooling at all, whereas 87 percent of US adults have completed an upper secondary education. Universities in the western world today educate almost 50 percent of young adults, whereas in the late 18th century, only about 1 percent of western adults even attended a college or university. While the battle against illiteracy has been largely won, there are still huge disparities: in 2000, the total adult literacy rate was 97 percent in industrialised countries, but in the least developed countries it was still only 48 percent. Moreover, the explosive growth of education since the Enlightenment has led not to an engaged public sphere but rather to a privatised consumer culture. Increasingly, education at all levels is being reduced to a Brotstudium: something valued for its economic utility alone, rather than for its possibilities of civic and moral transformation.
Misplaced faith?
In the sphere of economics, Enlightenment intellectuals placed rather too much faith in the magic of the market. They believed that a robust commercial society (constrained, to be sure, by principles of justice) would bring not only economic benefits, by raising the living standards of all, but also moral benefits, by expanding freedom and equality. Additionally, commerce would make people more civil and cordial, creating new bonds of union and friendship across national boundaries. Over time, people would become less violent and destructive, less hateful and distrustful. The activity of commerce – though driven by individuals' self-interested desires to better their own financial positions – would gradually force peace upon the peoples of the world. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) is by far the most influential Enlightenment work in economics, but scores of other Enlightenment authors - from Jefferson to Kant - also helped to popularise the alleged connection between commerce and peace.
And now? Although we live in a world increasingly brought together through commerce and trade, it is clearly not one of peace. Economic globalisation has not led to moral globalisation. Even the predicted economic benefits of less fettered commercial activity and international trade are not always easy to see. Nicolas de Condorcet's bold prediction (in The Future Progress of the Human Mind, 1793) of the abolition of inequality between nations and the progress of equality within nations has not come true. The liberalisation of trade and commerce has not eliminated poverty or narrowed the gap between the developed and developing world. Quite the contrary. Over the past two centuries, the world economy has in fact become far more unequal: according to some recent estimates, the gap between rich and poor countries has grown from about five to one to 400 to one. While the proportion of the world's population living in extreme poverty has fallen since the Enlightenment (in 1800, approximately five out of six human beings lived in extreme poverty; at present, the figure is closer to one out of six), the total number of people now living in poverty is greater than ever, and growing annually. More people today are hungry than ever before, and this cannot be good news for the Enlightenment hope of eliminating poverty.
We seem to find one of the few uncontestable bright spots for Enlightenment hopes in the political arena, at least when judged from a simple quantitative perspective. Enlightenment authors were strong advocates of republicanism: shorthand for a constellation of political ideals including representative government, popular sovereignty, the rule of law and the separation of government powers. Take Kant's Zum ewigen Frieden, whose "first definitive article for perpetual peace" reads: "The civil constitution in every state shall be republican." Kant believed republican regimes held out the best prospect for peace, because in such states war depends on the consent of citizens, which is not likely to be forthcoming.
The success of democratisation in the 20th century – whether this means only minimalist electoral democracies without constitutional safeguards or more maximalist liberal democracies that come closer to the ideal of Enlightenment republicanism – bodes well for Enlightenment political hopes. Today, nearly two-thirds of the world's population lives in electoral democracies and slightly more than a third lives in liberal democracies. In the late 18th century, there were only three partial or restricted liberal democracies (France, Switzerland, the US) among the 50-odd recognised sovereign nations of the world. Without the qualifier 'partial or restricted', the number drops back to zero. But while the claim that "democracy is the best form of government" enjoys overwhelming support at present, this should not blind us to the fact that the spread of republicanism has not achieved everything that Enlightenment intellectuals hoped it would. Democracies have only occasionally reduced inequalities between citizens, and they have certainly not produced morally better individuals.
The near-fourfold increase in the number of sovereign states since the late 18th century would also seem to be a vindication of both the Enlightenment political ideal of the right to self-government and its concomitant critique of colonisation and empire-building. Colonies, as Smith and Bentham argued, are not cost-effective – and, as Kant and de Condorcet believed, they are also unjust. But tagging along behind the proliferation of sovereign states has been the phenomenon of failed states. The long anti-colonial revolution, intensified after World War II, has put the world in pieces, and some of the younger pieces are not doing well. Life does not necessarily get better once one breaks free from the yoke of political and economic dependence.
The above summary of Enlightenment intellectuals' hopes and current world realities, though by no means exhaustive, does indicate their primary concerns as well as the multidimensional scope and moral underpinning of their ambitious project. Enlightenment authors advocated not just political reform, but religious, economic, educational and legal reform as well. They anticipated that progressive changes in one sphere would help trigger much-needed changes in others, and that cumulative effects would outweigh solitary ones. Contrary to what its critics maintain, the Enlightenment was neither a misguided scientistic attempt to control human life by means of the technocratic state nor an imperial masquerade aiming to subdue the world under a false universality. Rather, it was a morally motivated effort to expand human freedom and equality and establish a lasting peace.
Only once we have succeeded in retrieving more accurate versions of Enlightenment aspirations does the hard work begin, however. Why, after more than two centuries of often favourable reception and endorsement by subsequent generations, have
the ideals of Enlightenment thinkers still not been realised? Why has history not ratified their forecasts? How is it, as Friedrich Schiller asked in a 1795 essay, that we remain barbarians?
Explaining failure
It is always easier to show that something has not been achieved than it is to explain why this is the case, and the task of assessing accurately humanity's failure to realise ideals seems fated to remain an imprecise art rather than an exact science. Does the problem lie in the means chosen to realise the ends, or are the ends themselves somehow not consistent with human nature? Has the passion and patience for fundamental social reform simply faded over time and, if so, to what extent are we ourselves to blame? How much time should be granted before a verdict is rendered regarding the realisation of an ideal? If, as generally seems to be the case, subsequent generations have implemented the ends and/or means not in their original form but in some compromised, less-than-ideal form, how should this complication of compromised implementation best be factored into the final assessment? Last but not least, controlled and repeatable experiments are not feasible in the 'unlaboratory' of history. Any judgements rendered by philosophical historians concerning humanity's efforts at realising ideals will be forever inconclusive at best.
With these complications in mind, let us wager three hypotheses:
1) At present, insufficient numbers of people are committed to Enlightenment ideals – including peace, the elimination of poverty, an engaged civic culture and the reduction of inequality - to make clear progress in realising them. The predicted global extension and deepening of commitment to these ideals via institutional reform and the growth of education has not happened.
2) This lack of commitment to Enlightenment ideals itself points to a weakness in Enlightenment intellectuals' 'moralisation thesis' – the belief that external institutional change would produce the desired changes in attitude. At present, many of the institutions exist, but people remain much the same as they were. Moral transformation, if it is aided by institutional reform, is slower and more uneven within humans than Enlightenment intellectuals assumed would be the case. More simply put, Enlightenment authors overestimated the plasticity of human nature.
3) The past two centuries of historical experience also indicate several problems with Enlightenment ends and means. In some cases, subsequent experience indicates that Enlightenment goals are simply not consistent with human nature. The most obvious example is religion. Most human beings are not receptive to the idea of a universal religion. This particular Enlightenment ideal has been firmly and steadily resisted by subsequent generations. In other cases, historical experience indicates that the means chosen to achieve the ends have proven to be inefficacious. Clear examples here include the Enlightenment faith that a free market would bring world peace and eliminate poverty.
But where does this assessment leave us? The means and ends advocated by Enlightenment intellectuals were never intended as eternal truths standing outside of history. Rather, they were put forward in the spirit of experimentation: "Here is a proposal for social reform: let's see if it works." Their ideals, and the means advocated for realising them, are always subject to correction, and this self-correcting experimentalist method is one of the chief virtues of Enlightenment thinking - one that clearly distinguishes it from the methods of dogmatic opponents on both sides of the ideological spectrum. The human animal, Hume observed, "improves upon his discoveries, corrects his mistakes and makes his very errors profitable" to a much greater degree than other creatures. In those cases where subsequent human experience indicates a fundamental problem with either the means or ends advocated by Enlightenment authors, it is our responsibility to correct their mistakes. This is what they would have wanted.
The task that is now before us is to rethink Enlightenment ends and means in the light of current realities, as well as to consider possible alternatives to Enlightenment strategies. Should we give up trying to create a better world and do nothing? Or should we develop blunter tactics for change? Enlightenment philosophers did not seek merely to interpret the world but to change it. Their prescription for change, however, was quite different from the one that Karl Marx later advocated. The Enlightenment approach to changing the human condition relies on free inquiry, public debate, consensus building and gradual reform, and is constrained by respect for basic human rights and democratic processes. Social reform efforts guided by these concerns will rarely be smooth, fast or unilinear, but they are preferable to other options.
Given that Enlightenment intellectuals were wrong in some of their assumptions about how to reach their ideals, and that some of these do not seem to fit with human nature as revealed over the span of two centuries, can their texts really still be our best source of inspiration for fundamental social reform? At the risk of appearing irreparably nostalgic, let me answer with a qualified yes. These texts do remain our best starting point for serious reflection on improving the human condition by peaceful and open means, but they should not be the sole source or the endpoint of our investigations. They contain errors that we can correct, and many new problems face us today that Enlightenment intellectuals did not anticipate. What existed for a brief period during the Enlightenment, however, was an enviable level of international consensus on, and commitment to, making a moral world – a new force in history that has yet to be matched. Whether humanity will ever succeed in matching this force again remains to be seen. But if we give up trying, we are lost.
Robert B Louden is professor of philosophy at the University of Southern Maine and president of the North American Kant Society. His book, The World We Want: How and Why the Ideals of the Enlightenment Still Elude Us, was published by Oxford University Press in 2007.
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