The Enlightenment's Failure: Morality and Value Pluralism

Introduction: Hope and Failure of the Enlightenment

The relationship between the 17th century and our contemporary world began with an early, optimistic outlook — a hope and promise of a better future, exemplified by movements such as the Enlightenment, the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, culminating in the Information Age, environmental awareness, and globalisation. It is during this period that a paradigm shift from faith (religion) to reason as the principal source of legitimacy and authority occurred (Badger). The shift took place against the backdrop of ideals such as science, tolerance, liberty, democracy, secularism, free will, and humanism. However, the period is also scarred with false starts and failures — violent schisms, world wars, imperialism, terrorism, irrational nationalism, extreme religious conflict, information overload, pollution, and the threat of nuclear annihilation — all of which indicate the failure of the rational model promised by the Enlightenment. On the premise of this dichotomy of hope and failure, this essay critically demonstrates the failure of the Enlightenment project, especially from a social and moral perspective. The essay particularly considers how the Enlightenment has led to the destruction of morality.

MacIntyre and the Disorder of Moral Values

In his book After Virtue, Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre presents a strong argument that the Enlightenment project has not succeeded in fulfilling its promise and has caused the disorder of moral values in modern Western society. MacIntyre argues in particular that the overemphasis on individualism and free choice has resulted in a shift from virtue ethics to rule-governed ethics, and from communitarianism to social individualism, thereby destroying morality. In a similar vein, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno argue in their book Dialectic of Enlightenment that humanity, instead of advancing towards a truly human state, has been descending into a new version of barbarism, and that the Enlightenment is largely to blame (p. xi). The reason for this is that, though the Enlightenment has inculcated a culture of reason, it has simultaneously undermined morality (Rasmussen 3).

Reason Without Alternatives: Weakening Faith and Tradition

Rasmussen further points out that the Enlightenment has weakened religion and tradition without providing alternatives beyond what he terms a "misguided confidence in reason" (p. 3). Instead of championing a reformation of existing traditions, advocates of the Enlightenment envisaged a new society in which faith and tradition would have no place. While the contribution made by reason to the advancement of the world in all spheres — from the political to the economic and social — cannot be undervalued, the danger of such a viewpoint is that it ignores the historical and social context in which mankind is embedded (Bunnin and Yu 210). As Rasmussen explains, this viewpoint often results in precarious social engineering (p. 3).

The danger inherent in replacing faith with reason has been confirmed by the unparalleled growth of human power, particularly in the realms of science and technology. Coupled with the progression of moral relativism, this power has turned modern man into what Rasmussen refers to as "a blind giant" (p. 4). In essence, the Enlightenment has progressively weakened the glue that once bound Western morality together.

Conclusion

The fact that the Enlightenment has, to a large extent, determined what human beings are, what they think, and what they do today cannot be denied. Indeed, it is quite unimaginable how the world would look without it. Even so, the other side of the coin cannot be disregarded. The Enlightenment has significantly undermined the morality of Western civilisation. Divergences in values and beliefs relating to issues such as same-sex marriage attest to this.

Works Cited

Badger, Phil. "What's Wrong with the Enlightenment?" Philosophy Now, 2010. Web. 9 September 2016.

Bunnin, Nicholas, and Jiyuan Yu. The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Print.

Gray, John. Enlightenment's Wake: Politics and Culture of the Modern Age. New York: Routledge, 1995. Print.

Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. John Cumming. London: Verso, 1997. Print.

MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. 3rd ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2007. Print.

Rasmussen, Dennis C. Contemporary Political Theory as an Anti-Enlightenment Project. [University], n.d. Web. 9 September 2016.