EDITORIAL: Do We Need a New Enlightenment for the Twenty-First Century?

• Autorzy: Allinson Robert Elliott
• Języki publikacji: EN

Abstrakty

EN

The perspicacious thinker, Isaiah Berlin, once wrote that, “The intellectual power, honesty, lucidity, courage and disinterested love of the truth of the most gifted thinkers of the Eighteenth century remain to this day without parallel. Their age is one of the best and most hopeful episodes in the life of mankind.”1 If this is true, and much can be said on its behalf, this age, its values, and, as Isaiah Berlin emphasizes, the sincerity and love of truth of its thinkers, is a philosophical role model for the 21st century. In contrast, our present day intellectual peoplescape is pervaded by ideologues and propagandists, advocates of this group or that group, and most worrisome, the rise of demagogues propagating non-scientific theories and guiding the masses to an age of anti-intellectualism and prejudice fueled by fear and hate. Although the Enlightened Age featured barbaric atrocities epitomized by the Reign of Terror in France, arguably spurred on by readings, however spurious, of its intellectual heroes, the values heralded by the Age itself were ones that praised the accomplishments of Humankind and sang praises of the capacities of humankind to achieve the heights of reason and science. It was an age that, in its intent, wanted to throw off the shackles of medieval thinking and promote the flowering of human inquiry and the actualization of the human ability to realize the capacities of reason to its very fullest extent. How unlike this state of affairs are the values of our present age. The values of the Enlightenment, a belief in the authority of Reason and Science, an optimism regarding the possibility of the Progress of Human Civilization and the importance of the recognition of Universal Human Rights were the contributions of the philosophes of the European Enlightenment. In our contemporary times, there are significant storm clouds gathering that foreshadow the loss of sight of the need to adhere to these values. Our allegiance to democracy as a form of government, our extension of human rights to all the peoples of earth and our faith in science are all beginning to show increasingly worrisome signs of deterioration. Even more true now than then is the adage that Kant wrote, “We live in the Age of Enlightenment, but ours is not an Enlightened Age.” The net effect of this crumbling of the foundation for ethical values, of the lost Enlightenment, fasion de parler, is that the dominant attitude of value formation today is nihilism, either in the form of the retreat of philosophers to meta-ethics, to denounce work by philosophers on normative ethics, and to conclude in a faint image, however distorted, of Kant, to relegate normative ethics to the sermons of preachers, priests and rabbis. In the hands of the hoi polloi, this value deformation results in, at best, anti-intellectualism and at worst, an allegiance to forms of fundamentalism that heartily endorse prejudice and violence and their politicization. This is the sad, final note of nihilism that signifies the end of civilization as we know it, and the foreboding prospect that it will end, not as T. S. Eliot poeticized, with a whimper, but with a colossal bang. Whence the Enlightenment? The Enlightenment and its philosophes, though rightfully praised, were also criticized in our first issue on the Enlightenment (31 (2)) both for not extending their values to every human being and for not acknowledging that the values that they extolled were gained at the expense of the exploitation of other human beings whose slave labors provided the leisure class with the opportunity to propound those self-same values. In the current Dialogue and Universalism issue professors and authors from universities and locations as world-wide as Australia, France, China, the U.S.A., Hong Kong, Italy, Norway, Poland, Bulgaria, the U. K. and Finland focus on topics including Female Emancipation, the Non-European Enlightenment, Reason and Religion and the Metaphysics of Enlightenment to provide an informative and thought-provoking examination of the values of the Enlightenment and their relevance for the Twenty-first century. Section 1. Female Emancipation We take our lead with three notable authors who are women philosophes, writing, in two instances, about women philosophers and one on a male philosophe of the Eighteenth century. (Six of the authors of thirteen articles in this issue are female authors or philosophers). Professor Debra Berghoffen’s, The Body of Rights: The Right to the Body, thoroughly examines the Enlightenment philosophe Mary Wollstonecraft, a woman as she writes, both of and out of sync with her times, Wollstonecraft used her century’s ideas of the body, the soul, the mind and God to argue that women were fully human and entitled to the same rights as men. Professor Bergoffen begins by stating that “the idea of human rights, that human beings possess certain rights simply by virtue of being human, is one of the lasting legacies of the Enlightenment.” She points out how “By substituting the terms ‘Human Rights’ for the Enlightenment phrase ‘Rights of Man,’ the UNDHR attempts to sever the idea of rights from its colonial, racist, and sexist baggage.” She cites Mary Wollstonecraft’s works as an inspiration to the idea that women’s rights are human rights and includes an important discussion of women’s bodies—counter to Enlightenment notions that still pervade today—as part of human rights and argues that human rights for females must be fought for in order to be recognized. Professor Bergoffen writes of Mary Wollstonecraft, “Out of sync with her times, Wollstonecraft used her century’s ideas of the body, the soul, the mind and God to argue that women were fully human and entitled to the rights of man.” Professor Berghoffen quotes from Mary Wollstonecraft, “As a woman of the Enlightenment, Mary Wollstonecraft [… argued …] that denying the rights of women was an act of tyranny … and that the progress of civilization would be stymied so long as the subjugation of women continued.” Professor Berghoffen makes the important observation that “Wollstonecraft […] was not mistaken in seeing that solving the class issue would not solve the matter of women’s oppression.” In this, in my editorial comment, Wollstonecraft and Berghoffen side with the mature view of Simone de Beauvoir. Professor Berghoffen argues against Rousseau that, “We are not born free. We are born both dependent and unfree with the right to develop the capacity to become independent and free.” With this insight, in my editorial comment, Mary Wollstonecraft anticipates Mao Zedong’s concept of the origin of human rights which, for Mao Zedong, was the human action of the working class and the peasants.3 In her article, Professor Berghoffen holds that the degradation of women’s bodies is a political issue. In a pointed section on rape, she states that, “… rape emerges clearly as a terrorist tactic used by some men, serving to perpetuate the power of all men over women.” She adds to Mary Wollstonecraft’s feminism which was coupled with a Cartesian concept of mind with the idea that, “… women’s demand that sexual violence be treated as a critical human rights issue was enabled by today’s embodied concept of personhood” as opposed to the Cartesian concept of the identification of person as a disembodied mind. Finally, Professor Berghoffen cites Mary Wollstonecraft as arguing that “… women should not/could not wait for men to grant them independence but must, like other revolutionaries, fight for it …” Professor Karen Green’s, Restoring Catherine Macaulay’s Enlightenment Republicanism?, examines Catharine Cockburn to argue that rational altruism rather than rational egoism represented by Macaulay’s optimistic utopianism in political theory, with Professor Green’s own commendable adaptations, is a much needed restoration of the ideas of representative democracy. Professor Green writes that “… Macaulay is a trenchant critic of Hobbes. Her views are utopian, looking forward to a society in which the common good will be the common care.” Professor Green argues that “Naturalist accounts of political authority tend to be realist and pessimistic, foreclosing the possibility of enlightenment. Macaulay’s utopian political philosophy relies on belief in a good God, whose existence underpins the possibility of moral and political progress.” The guiding question of her article, Professor Green notes is “… whether, or to what extent, a rearticulation of her [Catherine Macaulay’s] idea of a representative democracy, grounded in a social contract, can retrieve something of the moral underpinnings of her enlightenment republicanism, without falling back, as she did, on suspect theological assumptions.” This is, in my editorial comment, the core question of the Enlightenment to which many thinkers in this issue ponder: how can we rekindle and nourish the values of the Enlightenment in an age that veers away from theological foundations. In terms of ethical values, Professor Green refers to Macaulay in a critique of sexism not only from a feminist point of view, but also from the viewpoint of universal humanism. She extrapolates from Macaulay that “… If one does not recognize the existence of moral principles, which transcend simple calculation of long-term self-interest, then one cannot criticize the oppression of women by men …” In my editorial comment, in light of the au courant decline in the valuation of democratic political values, as Professor Green starkly notes, losing “faith in reason can only be replaced by the inevitability of war.” Such a warning from Catherine Macaulay signifies the importance of returning to intensive research into the values of the Enlightenment. The third essay in this trio of women philosophers is that of Professor Odile Richard. In her essay, Reading Diderot’s Novels and Correspondence: What Can This Philosopher Teach Us about the Education of Young People? written, if I may say so, in the Eighteenth century lovely salonière style, Professor Richard makes an extensive study of the works of the most famous encyclopaedist, Diderot, to discover his views on education, particularly sexual education, and particularly the sexual education of women. Professor Richard reveals the ideas of Diderot, as she weaves a tapestry through his various literary works including novels and letters through which we learn his notions of how to educate women, particularly his own daughter, the ideas on sexual education for whom he chooses to transmit to her through his mistress. The essay, which includes many revealing cameos of the life of Diderot including his description of Catherine II of Russia of whom he states, “has the soul of Caesar and the seductiveness of Cleopatra” (my translation), is candid in its depiction of the struggle of the inner soul of Diderot between a traditional and a more avant-garde view of sexual education. With regard to the avant-garde choice, Diderot’s concepts include an explicitly frank sexual education more so than is common today and for this, as well as the honest struggle between two sides of the question, make for a valuable contribution to sexual education for today and a plea for the equality of all females. His description of Catherine II is an excellent portrait of the equality of males and females and, if you like, is a poetic harbinger of the blending of genders we observe today. We learn from Professor Xing Guozhong’s and Shang Chen’s, Light Through Time and Space: The Influence of Confucian Humanism on the European Enlightenment, how the non-European civilization of China provided the philosophes with the ideas that formed the foundation of the European Enlightenment. The co-authors quote from key figures from the European Enlightenment in an eye-opening demonstration of the influence of Chinese Confucianism on the thinking of the philosophes of the Enlightenment. Professor Xing and Shang Chen point out Voltaire remarked that Confucianism was “free from superstition, from absurd legends, from dogmas, both insulting to reason and nature.” The authors quote Montesquieu who praised China for stressing the obligations each person had of the obligations he owed to his fellow citizens. The joint authors quote Leibniz as stating that, “Chinese Confucianism was a natural theology that did not oppose Christian faith but based it on reason and experience, thus escaping the fanaticism and obscurantism of religion.” Professor Xing and Shang Chen argue it was Chinese Confucianism that inspired the turn of the European Enlightenment toward reason and freedom. Freedom, for Confucianism, included the fundamental care for other person’s rights. In my editorial comment, it is important to pay attention to the concept of 仁 (ren) as it is the essential concept of Confucianism. The radical for human being on the left, combined with the radical for the number 2 on the right signifies the meaning of ren is that humanity is inherently benevolent, that is, defined by its relationship to the other. The pronunciation of the Chinese characters for man and for benevolence is identical although the composition of the radicals are different, thus making these two words homophones and nearly homonyms. The joint authors correctly translate ren into English as benevolence, a translation that concurs with that of the distinguished translator and my former, longtime colleague, D. C. Lau. The renowned scholars, Wingtsit Chan and D. C. Lau consider that ren is the central concept of Confucianism and for these authors ren is the cardinal feature that constituted the essence of what it means to be a human being. The choice of the English translation as benevolence is much closer to the actual meaning of the most central idea of Confucianism than the choices, for example, of “authoritative conduct” or “consummate conduct.” These latter translations are, in my editorial comment, confusing both in terms of their being awkward adjectival descriptions instead of a simple descriptive noun and systematically misleading connotations, implying authoritarian conduct in the one case—nothing could be more opposite in connotation from the meaning of ren—or an empty meaning in the case of the other; i.e., consummate in what sense, a consummate cook or a violinist? The genuine translation of ren must precisely connote that true humanity could not (and does not) exist without essential care for the other.5 Professor Xing and Shang Chen quote from Article 4 of the French Declaration of Human Rights, which states: “Freedom means the right to everything that is not harmful to others.” These observations of Professor Xing and Shang Chen are significant in light of distinguishing the concept of freedom from license by including the crucial point that free action does not ever include action that brings harm to others.6 The article of Professor David Chai, Shitao and the Enlightening Experience of Painting, on the Chinese painter Shitao of Eighteenth century China presents a revealing contrast of the concept of enlightenment as spiritual enlightenment versus intellectual enlightenment as characterizing the 18th century European Enlightenment. Professor Chai’s interpretation of Chinese Enlightenment as illustrated by Shitao is unique in the sense that enlightenment is understood as an experiential, ongoing process, as enlightening, associated with an artistic activity. In a word, it is brought about through and by the active creation of art practiced in a certain way; i.e. that embodies the concepts of traditional Chinese philosophy. By the same token, it is necessary that the attitude of spiritual enlightenment and the concepts of traditional Chinese philosophy, be present for such art work to be created in the first place. It is to be especially noted that this is the first essay on the work of Shitao written in the English language. Professor Chai quotes from classical Chinese philosophy to illustrate how Shitao’s painting techniques embody the key concepts of traditional Chinese philosophy of Laozi, Zhuangzi and the Yijing (the Book of Changes) and demonstrates his studied familiarity with the great classics of the Chinese philosophical tradition. This essay demonstrates in the view of the editor that we need to complement the ideas of the Western Enlightenment with the ideas of spiritual enlightenment more characteristic of Eastern philosophy. Such a complementarity of the views of Enlightenment, in my editorial comment, would do much to heal the tension between Eastern and Western civilizations that threatens to tear apart the unity of the world community today. In contra-distinction from other articles in this issue, Professor Chai does not focus on how the Chinese Enlightenment preceded and/or influenced the European Enlightenment, but rather how the Chinese Enlightenment is an altogether different, distinct and highly unique kind of enlightenment, one of which Western European thinkers should take more notice and engage in more deep thought and scholarly research. The implicit message is that artistic activity of a certain kind might play a significant role in enlightening, that is, in bringing enlightenment into being through imparting Chinese philosophy through the activity of art. Dag Herbjørnsrud’s two articles, The Quest for a Global Age of Reason. Part I: Asia, Africa, the Greeks and the Enlightenment Roots, and The Quest for a Global Age of Reason. Part II: Cultural Appropriation and Racism in the Name of Enlightenment, comprise the most extensive and comprehensive contributions in the journal and undertake the ambitious goal of providing copious illustrations of non-European global enlightenments, an undertaking that moves us away from the standard monolithic idea that there was a single, European Enlightenment. In particular, Dag Herbjørnsrud highlights both civilizations and individuals of color whose contributions, though heralded at the times, have been largely forgotten. By so doing, Dag Herbjørnsrud opens the door to a wider appreciation of intellectually neglected regions of the world and their denizens, of the history of civilizations and of individuals who have made truly remarkable and foundational contributions to the civilization of the globe. To highlight one particular contribution from each of Dag Herbjørnsrud’s two articles, it is apropos to first mention from Dag Herbjørnsrud’s first article, The Quest for a Global Age of Reason. Part I: Asia, Africa, the Greeks and the Enlightenment Roots, the quotation of the Muslim Mughal ruler Akbar the Great (1542–1605), “an inquiring skeptic who believed in ‘the pursuit of reason’ over ‘reliance on tradition,” telling his liberal Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian scholar Abul Fazl (1551–1602): “The pursuit of reason (‘aql) and rejection of traditionalism (taqlid) are so brilliantly patent as to be above the need of argument.”7 It is appropriate to mention from Herbjørnsrud’s second article, The Quest for a Global Age of Reason. Part II: Cultural Appropriation and Racism in the Name of Enlightenment, the work of the Arab philosopher scientist Al-Haytham of whom Herbjørnsrud comments that “Arab scholars tend to make errors, AlHaytham underscored, which is why they disagree so often. Hence, the Arab scholar emphasized that one should be both critical towards the ancients and toward oneself. Therefore, it is one’s ‘duty’ to ‘attack’ all texts, including one’s own, from every side.” This is the epitome of Enlightenment thinking, to attack one’s own thinking to ensure its rigorous pursuit of truth. A further refinement is introduced by Professor Selusi Ambrogio whose article, Discording Enlightenment on China: Pierre Bayle’s Skepticism vs Johan Jacob Brucker’s Exoticism, contrasts the views of Johan Jacob Brucker and Pierre Bayle and asks us to choose which Enlightenment model to follow. After a detailed and scholarly critique of the Jesuit’s misunderstanding of Chinese thought, one of his key foci is on the opposing views of China presented by Bayle and Brucker. For the Enlightenment philosophe Bayle, “The Chinese were natural atheists; they did not undergo the history of superstition and intolerance of their European counterparts.” Professor Ambrogio contrasts this with the view of the Jesuits and the perennialists who were looking for the “divine wisdom” in other civilizations. Bayle, in contrast, “… searched for the original ‘secular’ conscience (i.e. rationality) of humankind, not perverted by religious intellectual or physical violence.” Bayle even claims that an “atheist King could be more tolerant and open to religious and moral diversities. The Chinese Emperor clearly belongs to the second kind of kingship.” Brucker’s narrative, Professor Ambrogio relates, “… is extremely effective in excluding extra-European views because of their presumed theological infancy and philosophical inaptness.” Brucker is an example of clearly demarcating the West as the only valid repository of philosophy. In the end, Professor Ambrogio considers Bayle’s skepticism as the model of the Enlightenment to adopt for our age as it conduces to tolerance. Professor Ambrogio’s contribution is significant in that he provides a persuasive, scholarly argument as to why Pierre Bayle’s view of China is the one we should follow instead of succumbing to the prejudicial view of China presented by Johan Jacob Brucker that was to possess such influence on later thought. Discovering the fundamental roots of prejudice is the first step we need to take toward its elimination. With the elimination of the roots of prejudice our minds are opened to become aware of the rich contributions of a civilization that can then be understood on its own terms. Professor Alexander Cook’s article, History as Ideology or History as “Idéologie:” C. F Volney and the Uses of the Past in Revolutionary France, focusses on the polymath Enlightenment luminary, Constantin-Francois Volney, to illustrate that there was already a critique of the Enlightenment from within the Eighteenth Century European Enlightenment itself. Of Rousseau, Professor Cook writes, “According to Volney, it should be no surprise that among the greatest practitioners of violence during the Revolution, the great number were, or described themselves as, admirers of Rousseau.” Volney criticized the historiography of his times. According to Volney, history was “… one of the most fecund sources of […] prejudice and […] errors.’ Cook quotes the telling statement of Volney’s: “If we calculated all the errors of men,” he claimed, “I would suggest that for every thousand, 980 relate to history.” For Volney, Professor Cook relates, history had to become more cosmopolitan. Volney, Professor Cook writes, points to the need to expand Enlightenment conceptual boundaries and quotes from Volney that we must “re-situate Europe within its Afro-Eurasian context—integrating Egypt, Babylon, Persia, India […] as well as China and Japan” and “this race of black men, today are slaves and the objects of our contempt is that to which we owe our arts, our science, and even the use of language.” Of Thebes, Cook relates that Volney writes, “It was there that a people since forgotten, while all others were barbarians, discovered the elements of the arts and sciences; and that a race now rejected from society, because they have frizzy hair and black skin, founded on the study of the laws of nature the civil and religious systems that still rule the Universe.” For too long, Professor Cook writes, “European scholars of the ancient world had focused exclusively on Romans, Greeks and Jews.” He points out overlooked facts of history such as the fact that “Athens had four slaves for every free man.” Professor Cook cites Volney as saying that “A more critical historiography would help to free humanity from its illusions about the past.” Contrapuntally, voices are heard that defend certain of the pilloried Enlightenment philosophers from the attacks upon them. Meng Zhang’s article Passionate Enlightenment Redeeming Modernity through David Hume is a defense of the Enlightenment against such criticisms as are leveled above. She herself refers to her paper as a “partial redemption of the Enlightenment via David Hume.” She confines her defense of the Enlightenment to Hume’s philosophy which, she argues in various subtle ways, is largely immune to the types of criticism to which the Enlightenment is liable. Her first defense is pitted against the charges that are related to the critique that the Enlightenment thinkers are overly reliant on Reason. Here, she points out that Hume relies upon “affective tendencies to derive a standard of moral values.” She quotes from Hume that “… the most important feature of humans as passionate animals is that we have the ‘propensity […] to sympathize with others” that is, to resonate with the passions of others (italics added). Sympathy is a mechanism that enables humans to share passions …” For Hume, she argues, all humans resemble each other in their humanity, so even with no other resemblance, humans are more or less influenced by the feelings of their fellow human beings. Her second defense is lodged against the charge that the Enlightenment project is historically and culturally conditioned. Hume, Zhang argues, presents a philosophical world view that is both flexible and, in my editorial comment, adaptable to accommodating diverse cultural perspectives. In Zhang’s wording, “… Hume’s moral framework has a built-in sensitivity to culture and tradition.” Section 3. Reason and Religion In this next section, we are still preoccupied with the Enlightenment as the period of the Great Wall of separation between Reason and Religion. A third position is elaborated in which the debate between the secularization of religion and the concept of religious rationalism is, in my editorial comment, demonstrated to be a moot conflict, though leading to a variety of different implications. Professor Anna Tomaszewska’s article, Spinoza’s Critique and the Making of Modern Religion in the Enlightenment Era, raises the question whether the Enlightenment enhanced the cause of Religion or did it foster the primacy of the secular world, as it is frequently interpreted. Professor Tomaszewska analyzes the work of Spinoza to sort out the answer to this question and illustrates from Spinoza’s works that on the one hand, “he argues that Moses could not have drafted the Pentateuch, which contains descriptions of his death …” and yet on the other hand he states that Christ “communed with God mind to mind […] and was “the mouthpiece of God.” These quotations appear, in my editorial comment, to reflect the moot nature of the answer to the question that she raises. She points out that for Kant, as Spinoza, the core of religion is constituted by ethics. On the other hand, she points out that “a faith in which morality plays a less, or indeed no central role—such as Judaism—will not count as a true religion in Kant’s will.” It is clear, in my editorial comment, that one can find misunderstandings of Judaism and antisemitic comments in Kant’s writings as well as praise for certain ideas of Judaism. Professor Tomaszewska’s argument is that Spinoza’s influence on the Enlightenment is the impact of his ideas on rationalizing religion, but not dismissing it altogether. For Professor Tomaszewska, “Spinoza’s ideas would become a powerful tool of religious reform.” This idea of Professor Tomaszewska takes the best from both worlds, from rationality and religion, and provides us with a direction that enables us to maintain and cherish the insights that both reason and religion have to offer. Professor Brian Klug’s article, Do We Need a New Nathan the Wise?, raises the ante on the theme question of the journal, Do We Need a New Enlightenment for the Twenty-first Century? Professor Klug examines the role of Nathan in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s play, “Nathan the Wise” (1779) and engages in both a philosophical and a literary analysis of the play to address the questions: is Nathan wise, is Nathan Jewish, and, if I may, what is the point of the play. The characters of the play, Sultan Saladin (Islam), the Knight Templar (Christianity) and Nathan (Judaism) dialogue on the question of what is the difference between the three religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This dialogue may be taken, in my editorial comment, as a microcosm of the question of the Enlightenment; to wit, is there something universal common to all three religions, or is this universalism an abstract quality relating to none of the religions under question. If it is the former, then this raises the question of what is the relation between Nathan’s goodness and wisdom and his religion? The question to which this question gives rise is, what is the relation between any particular religion and the concept of universalism? To this question, if I may invert the order of Professor Klug’s article, he provides a rabbinical answer from a rabbinical story, with which he begins his article, one that is both all views are correct, and, that it is impossible for all views to be correct if they contradict each other. This last answer, which is Professor Klug’s first answer, if I may interpolate, is that Truth is something that is reflected in each individual viewpoint and in so doing, makes all eligible viewpoints equal. Somehow, this is the key to tolerance as it at once enables all those who hold competing belief systems to live in peace with each other. In the end, Professor Klug points out that in the play, there is an unfolding of the heritage of the various characters and a revelation that they are in truth related to each other except for Nathan. It is not clear what meaning this has except to indicate that the differences between us lie on the surface and that we are all truly part of one family of humankind, but that those who are Jewish fall outside of this family of humankind. This complicates the plot, or in Professor Klug’s judgement, loses the plot altogether. Perhaps, in my editorial comment, this signifies that the question of religion, reason and morality is subject to endless unravelling and thus is in substantial need of perennial knitting. Section 4. The Metaphysics of the Enlightenment In Professor Alessandro Pinzani’s exposition of Kant in his article, Do We Need a Metaphysics of Morals? On the Actuality of Kant’s Project of Grounding A Priori Practical Principles. On the actuality of Kant’s project of grounding a priori practical principles, he stresses that Kant represents the embodiment of the Enlightenment in that he holds we need a system of moral duties that are grounded on rationality. We need a metaphysical grounding for our morality and we cannot rely on assigning to ourselves isolated moral precepts such as “be sincere” or “practice benevolent actions” which would constitute a “fragmentary collection of moral precepts.” Reliance upon isolated precepts would, for Kant, not constitute an adequate foundation for our morals. If our morality were to be grounded on reason, if it were due to the demands of reason, it would be established on a more secure foundation that would not admit so readily of possible deviance. Professor Pinzani expounds that for Kant as he claims in his Doctrine of Virtue, there are two ends that we set for ourselves, namely, our own moral perfection and the happiness of others. The combination of these two ends, in my editorial comment, supersedes the false dichotomy of deontological and utilitarian ethics. To utilize the vocabulary of negative and positive freedom, for Kant, negative freedom is “independence from being restrained by another’s choice” and positive freedom is to “… act externally that the free use of your choice can coexist with the freedom of everyone in accordance with a universal law.” Rationality, in short, “… regulates the coexistence of individual choices so that there are no privileges, nor unjustified discriminations, and so that individuals have full freedom in everything that does not violate the rights of others.” This, Professor Pinzani concludes demonstrates that Kant’s philosophy articulates the central value of the Enlightenment, which is respect. In my editorial interpolation, Professor Pinzani is arguing that by grounding ethics on a metaphysical foundation instead of relying on isolated precepts that lacked a foundation, Kant proposes that the foundation of reason provides the pathway that, if embraced, holds forth the promise of ameliorating the ethical ennui that characterizes present day society. Professor Ollie Koistinen’s article, Spinoza’s Ode to Reason, implicitly calls for a return to Spinoza’s unique vision of philosophy, the quest for an intuitive vision of the Divine, to lift us to a higher plane of understanding that can point the way to escape from our present predicaments of relativism and nihilism. We may say, in an editorial comment, that Professor Koistinen’s exposition of Spinoza presents a certain dimension of the Enlightenment, that is a connection between reason and religion, in short, a rational religion. Professor Koistinen writes, “Spinoza no doubt valued Reason highly. In fact, it is not exaggerated to say that his short philosophical life was dictated by the desire to make sense of the world.” Spinoza, was “fundamentally driven by a religious motive: by the desire to be united with the infinite entity he thought to be in touch with it.” Professor Koistinen lays out the path Spinoza takes to realize this ambition. He discusses Spinoza’s three kinds of cognition, first, sensory perception, imagination or opinion, second, common notions of reason, and third, intuition. He demonstrates that reason is involved in its apprehension of common notions, universal to all humanity, and states that they form a stairway to ascend to intuition which is the highest form of cognition. It is Reason, as Professor Koistinen states that “… shows our finitude. There is much we would like to understand and we find ideas in us that are confused. And Reason, through the teaching of the ethics, shows that our essence, or power, is a part or degree of God’s infinite power. It is this finite in the infinite experience that is the source of the intellectual love of God.” For Professor Koistinen, all along it has been Reason that leads us on this path and, hence, the title of his contribution, Spinoza’s Ode to Reason. The ultimate achievement of Reason is the attainment of the third kind of knowledge which is the intellectual love of God. The achievement of the third results in the blessedness of Humankind and reveals the convergence of the intellectual love of God with God. As Professor Koistinen writes, “… in such experience striving ceases and we are one with God. We partake in God’s perfection and feel love in the infinite.” CONCLUSION It may be argued that this issue of thinking through the philosophes of the Enlightenment, to adapt a Wittgensteinian allusion, leaves philosophy as it is. Presentations from the rich multiple perspectives of these scholars, again and again, return to the battle between reason and religion, with eloquent discourses showing the merits of secularism, eloquent narratives pointing to the merits of religion, and equally eloquent narratives pointing out, in rational fashion, the merits and demerits of both vantage points. However, to depart from Wittgenstein, there are a number of essays that point to the need to broaden the scope of the Enlightenment beyond its narrow Western Eurocentric boundaries and include landmark inspirations from the Far East, Africa, what is now being referred to as the Global South, in short, all over the globe, all throughout the epochs of history, requiring us to reconsider both our human history and our historiography. It points to our urgent need both to reconstruct and to expand our narrative. To make a completely fresh start, as Aristotle would say, there are essays that point to the need for full female liberation and herald feminine philosophes who have been, despite the recognition given to them in their own Enlightened age, largely the underappreciated philosophers of the Eighteenth century. It is in these last two forms of contribution, of understanding and heralding the wider horizons of the inspiration for the Enlightenment that stretch far beyond its Eurocentric boundaries, and in acknowledging and fighting for full female emancipation, that we can perceive the formulation of a new Enlightenment, one, though just beginning to dawn on our global horizon, may augur or at least plead for a much broader philosophical landscape for the values of the 21st century.

• Wydawca: Instytut Filozofii i Socjologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk; Fundacja Filozofia Na Rzecz Dialogu
• Czasopismo: Dialogue and Universalism
• Rocznik: 2021
• Numer: 3
• Strony: 5-17

Twórcy

autor

Allinson Robert Elliott

• Soka University of America