Of Emmaus and Enlightenment
Writing in separate Wall Street Journal articles during the past month, George Weigel and Yoram Hazony discussed the roads through Emmaus (4/1/18) and through the Enlightenment (4/8/18), respectively. The initiation of a gradual legalizing of Christian belief and practice from the time of Constantine I to Theodosius I (300’s A.D.) is typically attributed to Constantine’s perception of a divine mandate for, or at least of an administrative convenience accruing to, such legalization. On this account, this legalization began shortly after Constantine’s victory over his western competitor at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge on October 28, 312 A.D. Weigel finds that the revolutionary effect of Jesus of Nazareth on his disciples on the road to Emmaus and elsewhere nearly three centuries earlier had galvanized the first Christians to become “a dominant force” within the Roman Empire.
In contrast, defining the time, place, and content of Enlightenment thought may be more contentious. The first roots of the Enlightenment seem to extend to the early modern period of Western philosophy, when Descartes (1596 – 1650) issued his clarion call for systematic doubt before accepting absolutely certain, true beliefs into a foundation for knowledge in all areas of inquiry. Locke (1632 – 1704) reduced the foundational requirements from certainty to probability in empirical areas of inquiry. Synthesizing both rational and empirical outlooks, Kant (1724 – 1804) famously became a transcendental idealist in order to remain an empirical realist. We assume here that the full flowering of the Enlightenment occurred from 1715 (death of the French “Sun King”) to 1789 (start of the French Revolution).
The supposedly irrefutable, cutting-edge arguments promulgated by the French Enlightenment philosophes included statements to the effect that “man is a machine” (Julien de La Mettrie) and that “the brain secretes thought like the liver secretes bile” (Pierre Cabanis). Following up on a remark by the philosophical historian Frederick Copleston, one observes that Cabanis must have found a truly remarkable bile-analog if it could serve as a “litmus test” for truth! Hazony finds that contemporary advocates of the Enlightenment oversell the benefits of unfettered reason (because beneficial trends in science, medicine, and politics had already started before the Enlightenment) and underestimate the contributions of tradition, religion, and national identity (because any arrangements that could have prevented the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, and the Russian Revolution would have been highly desirable). How could things have gone so wrong?
Regarding politics, in 1784 Kant authored the highly regarded essay, Was ist Aufklärung? (What is Enlightenment?), in which Kant self-servingly praised Frederick the Great (1712 - 1786): It turns out that true Enlightenment freedom pertains to the public speech that Frederick granted to academics such as Kant, even while all others might appropriately be required to espouse the party line of the institutions employing them.
Regarding religion, in 1793 Kant wrote the book, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloβen Vernunft (Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone), in which he predicted that that the Enlightenment would lead people to cast aside dogma, authority, and tradition in favor of the rational principles that he believed formed the basis of all religions. According to Kant, for example, it is not ritual or doctrinal profession that makes one pleasing to God, but rather having a rigorously disinterested moral attitude. Such an approach to religion, however, entails a comprehensive demythologization in which Jesus’ presence on the road to Emmaus is symbolic at best, and the “dominant force” seen by Weigel is nowhere to be found. Although Kant sees that historical faith has served as a vehicle for spreading elements of the rational faith, he seems to have hoped for a time when mankind can finally dispense with such vehicles.
Ultimately, Kant never managed to cancel at least one contradiction in his thought: Frederick, Kant had enthused in 1784, was the only ruler “who is himself enlightened … [and] who likewise has at hand a well-disciplined and numerous army to guarantee public security.” So far from boldly discarding all authority, Kant relied on princely heroes who would encourage Kantian academic debate, establish increasingly liberal parliaments and state churches, and enforce obedience to the state - - all by virtue of their princely authority. But if authority is allowed to temporal sovereigns in the 1784 analysis, why should it be denied to historical religions in the 1793 book? As Hazony concludes, “national and religious institutions may not fit with the Enlightenment, but they may have important things to teach us nevertheless.”