The source of these tensions within the Enlightenment lies in its relationship to capitalism as a historical system. Critics of the Enlightenment have no doubts that there is a connection, although they are less certain what it is. Faced with reductive arguments of this sort, it is tempting to deny that any connection exists. The transition displayed marked geographical and temporal unevenness between initiation and completion across or even within the nations, but each of these cultural and ideological sequences tended to manifest themselves simultaneously, or after only brief delays, on the international scene.
As a result, their class content and social meaning differed depending on whether the nation in question was nearer to the beginning or the end of the process:. Insofar as it is possible to ascribe to it a common programme it was reformist. Insofar as it was undermining the reigning feudal order it was revolutionary. Albert Hirschman has demonstrated that many of the arguments used in favour of capitalism by Enlightenment thinkers in Scotland and France were based, not on any admiration of capitalism itself, but on the political and social benefits which economic development would supposedly bring:.
Ever since the end of the Middle Ages, and particularly as a result of the increasing frequency of war and civil war in the 17th and 18th centuries, the search was on…for new rules of conduct and devices that would impose much needed discipline and constraints on both rulers and ruled, and the expansion of commerce and industry was thought to hold much promise in this regard.
The triumphant system had to suppress the radicalism of the Enlightenment, or at least transfer it from the social to the natural world. By the time this was written the bourgeoisie were concerned to limit the application of Enlightenment doctrines, particularly by claiming that it was simply a mistake, a dangerous illusion, to imagine that there could be anything beyond capital.
Under the pressure of capitalist contradictions, the universalising thought of the bourgeois democracy, of its boldest, most honest, and farsighted representatives, rises to the heights of a marvellous renunciation, armed with all the critical weapons of bourgeois science. There are still attempts by liberals and social democrats to restore the sundered whole of the original Enlightenment. This is literally utopian: we cannot return to the world of or I wrote earlier that the issue of predestination was no longer at the heart of our contemporary concerns, but there are certainly people in the Anglo-Saxon world—currently sponsoring City Academies in England and running School Boards in the US—who would like to see it restored to that position.
How seriously should we take this threat? Let us take one recent assessment from an impeccably establishment source, Lord May of Oxford, who has at various times been a professor of zoology at Imperial College, the Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK government, the head of the Office of Science and Technology, and is currently a member of the House of Lords.
He is not, in other words, someone who can be easily suspected of secretly plotting the downfall of Western civilisation. In the West, it is in the US that the threat has assumed the most menacing proportions. Given the attention paid to the supposed irrationality of Islam, it is worth emphasising the extent to which the US is also increasingly home to pre-Enlightenment views, with millions of Americans cleaving to precisely the type of religiosity that the Enlightenment sought to challenge.
Eighteen percent believe in reincarnation, including 10 percent of born-again Christians, which suggests an uncertain grasp of their own belief system. The explanation for this may lie in the way in which the US has always had the most unrestrained form of capitalism and the American people have been the least protected by collective provision.
The relatively brief period of welfare capitalism roughly between the s and the s was followed by a ferocious reversion to a situation where families and communities were ripped apart by exposure to naked market relations.
The psychic wounds caused to individuals by such devastation invite the healing touch of faith. The neo-liberal onslaught experienced by the Americans is now the form of capitalism which is being exported everywhere.
The University of Helsinki estimates that 2 million Chinese every year are converting to evangelical Christianity and that the number of new converts may reach million—a fifth of the current population. There is, however, an important difference between resurgent religion in the US and in the developing world. The fundamentalism of, for example, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, contributes to the oppression of Iranians; the fundamentalism of the US president, George W Bush, contributes to the oppression not only of Americans, but of peoples across the world.
They may be equal in the irrationality of their views, but not in the extent of their powers. The problem remains of how to deal with the irrational beliefs that a section of the ruling class tries to manipulate. Enlightenment thought on organised religion, which Dawkins essentially reproduces, assumes that it continues to exist because the majority of people are incapable of resisting indoctrination by their priests, presbyters, rabbis or imams.
But adherents of any religion are unlikely to respond positively to a critique which casts doubt on their intelligence and ridicules their beliefs. Post-Enlightenment thinkers, notably Marx and Freud, who saw themselves as building on what the Enlightenment had achieved, sought to explain the social and psychological needs that make people require religion, and therefore suggest alternative courses of action, rather than simply denouncing believers for their irrationality.
It is certainly senseless to begin by trying to do away with religion by force and at a single blow. The believer will not let his belief be torn from him, either by arguments or prohibitions. And even if this did succeed with some it would be cruelty.
A man who has been taking sleeping drafts for tens of years is naturally unable to sleep if his sleeping draft is taken away from him. Michael Shermer, editor of Sceptic magazine, tells a salutary story of an occasion when he publicly debunked a famous television spiritualist. The man was doing ordinary conjuring tricks and duping people into thinking he was communicating with dead spirits.
The Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman provides us with an example. Then she added a phrase which still haunts me. The task of holding aloft the banner of the Enlightenment has been appropriated by a rightward-moving section of the liberal left, typically based in the media rather than the academy. This campaign is not, of course, one waged only by a handful of newspaper columnists. The law to ban the wearing of the hijab in French schools and colleges was supported by many French teachers, much of the left and even the Trotskyist organisation Lutte Ouvriere.
Nevertheless, it is among media commentators that arguments about the need to protect the secular heritage of the Enlightenment have gained the greatest currency. The most striking thing about these arguments is their lop-sidedness. The main targets are not, for example, the campaign to introduce creationism into the science curriculum of American schools, or the refusal by the US government to take global warming seriously. Rather, it is the supposed threat to Western civilisation from Islamic fundamentalism.
Some supporters of the New Enlightenment realise that that it is highly implausible to attack only Islamic fundamentalism without also attacking the Western variants. And so it goes. The issue simply vanishes from the diatribes against the left which follow. To Muslims, no mercy; to the established order, endless indulgence. It just so happens that the irrationality of the powerful tends to receive rather less attention than that of the powerless. Why have so many one-time Marxists collapsed back into this highly selective version of the Enlightenment?
Does Kettle actually know anyone who takes this position? It is a classic example of Stalinist tactics retained by repentant Stalinists. Evidence John Locke argued that labor by an individual is what turns the common into private property, and Tocqueville points out the city where "at every turn human liberty shows its capricious creative force," The North and the Big City, Individuals now express greater political rights through more democratic governments, however it is labor that individuals daily express their position in society.
The bourgeois and the proletariat are assigned to an individual according to how much an individual puts out in terms of labor. Tocqueville and Ure are very critical of the conditions of the factory workers, the proletariat, because of the lack of "adaptation of labour to the different talents of men, is little thought of in factory employment," Blessngs of the Factory system, This contradicted Enlightenment belief that individuals shouldn't be exposed to the whim of another, though the "whim of another" became an abstract system rather than a tangible individual.
Capitalism inherently contradicts the belief of personal liberty creating an equal society and that is why Marx believed that the worker would rise in revolt. However, the beliefs of what society should be as expressed in the Enlightenment argue for both equality and personal property, and in practice these two are hard to exist side by side. MIT I think it is interesting that Marx articulated that the Enlightenment ideals were not achieved and that yet again revolution was needed.
Is there a better path? We are at a unique point in history where we can make this move. A new sense of urgency, combined with the technological advancements of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, provide a unique opportunity for enlightened leaders to develop 21st century organizations. The expectations of future generations that will dominate much of our economy and society are distinctive. They long to for a sense of identity, authenticity and connection - while desiring financial success.
They realize that in a networked economy, everything becomes relational: how well I can fulfill my own needs depends on how well I can cater to the needs of others. It is thus in my enlightened self-interest not to be too self-interested — a shift towards an " enlightened circle of needs". This thinking does not only apply to people in affluent areas in the West.
Teaching others gives them a deepened purpose - to many at least as valuable as an increased income. Many NGOs have got this wrong, focusing too narrowly on resources rather than the opportunity to live a dignified life. People seek meaningful jobs where they can give as much as they take. Consumers want products that are produced ethically.
More and more high net worth individuals seek to invest with purpose. But leaders are often lost when trying to find a way to build businesses that do well and do good. People nowadays are sick of inauthentic value statements.
Genuine, shared values need to be integrated into recruitment, promotion, and sales processes.
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