Judd Owen has written a plaintive book trying to reconstruct the Enlightenment Mind after it has been ravaged by the acids of post-modernism. It is a noble venture, doomed to failure. But the author's effort is heroic, akin to the Charge of the Light Brigade into the valley of death. It's hard not to feel sympathetic.
The fundamental problem is that the Enlightenment Mind asserted the objective authority of human reason. Truth and Reason were roughly equivalent concepts. If something were rational, it must be true. Yet we now all know this is a nonsense.
Rationalism is subject to assumptions, starting points, biases, pre-commitments, and suppressed premises. Moreover, rational thought is acutely limited insofar as it is a circular enterprise. Man must presuppose the autonomy and final authority of the human mind in order to assert it or prove it.
Historically, the rationalism of the Enlightenment was anti-religious, or anti-clerical. Religion bespoke ignorance. Rationalism bespoke enlightenment--or so we have been told.
Judd writes:
The liberal institutions concerning religion--the separation of church and state, religious pluralism, religious freedom--were originally justified on the basis of a revolutionary comprehensive philosophic doctrine, covering human nature, the purpose of political society, and the proper domain of religious faith. The liberal doctrines concerning religion were the product of the Age of Reason or the Enlightenment. These doctrines were the cornerstone of the Enlightenment's political philosophy, as well as its political project. [J. Judd Owen, Religion and the Demise of Liberal Rationalism: The Foundational Crisis of the Separation of Church and State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), p.1.]But no longer.
Today, belief in the comprehensive philosophic teaching of the Enlightenment appears to lie in ruins, and few hope that any other comprehensive philosophy could successfully replace it. This despair is, to a considerable extent, due to a radical critique of reason as such. According to this critique, there are no evident and certain principles in either natural, moral, or political science. [Ibid.]It turns out the post-modern world has seen with startling clarity what the pomposity of the Enlightenment failed to see. The Enlightenment carried baggage, a suitcase full of assumptions, suppressed premises, beliefs, and values which it borrowed without warrant--stole, one might say--from the Christian faith. It grandly assumed that these could be grounded in Reason, rather than divine revelation. It was little more than a conjurer's trick.
Autonomous Reason has started to be self-critical. It has been eaten out from the inside by its own acid. At one time Autonomous Reason grandly rejected the existence of miracles (who had seen one? and--besides--belief in miracles was implicitly irrational because miracles breached Natural Law). Now Autonomous Reason has turned in upon itself and seen itself as fundamentally irrational, prejudicial, and clinging to faith-based values. Bye, bye the Rationalist pie.
The belief in the very possibility of science and of a life and society guided by rational norms must therefore be said to be rooted in a prejudice or faith. This critique may thus seem to cut to the heart of the Enlightenment. [Ibid.]Too true.
Rationalism is a religious faith in its own right. But it is built on irrational foundations. It hangs on sky hooks in mid-air, as insubstantial as a wisp of cloud. It is why the West is crumbling. It is why educational institutions everywhere are substituting authoritarian compliance in place of academic freedom. New orthodoxies emerge requiring comprehensive, indefatigable compliance. Global warming is one. Reject it, say recent voices, and you should be prosecuted.
Judd's book on the demise of liberal rationalism is sad in many ways, almost plaintiff. At the very least he stands commended for having the courage to face up to what many refuse to see: that they are merely repeating old orthodoxies as a comfort blanket. The Enlightenment is a crock. Rationalism is a religion.
Judd feels the bite of the acid. It behoves us Christians to pour gallons of the stuff upon the foolishness of the Enlightenment's step children.
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