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STATES OF MATTER A touch of ‘Enlightenment’ At a time when most pundits are given to despair over the near-collapse of global order, psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker sees immense scope for human betterment
masses under their benign sway. The American declaration of independence sukumar is an apt metaphor for what went wrong in the muralidharan Enlightenment project. Agreeing on its reson ant formulation that all men are “created equal” and endowed with “certain inalienable rights”, was the easy part. The waffl ing began the moment it came to making this principle operational in the citizenship law. The US “nat uralisation” law adopted in 1790 — a mere 14 years since the declaration of independence — restricted the right of citizenship to “free white persons” of good character. This was foretold in the doctrine pro nounced by Kant and its curious insistence that Enlightenment lies in the “free” submis sion of all to universal laws, leading to the civic state in which every man would be equal and autonomous and “compelled to be a good citizen”. Kant begins with a notion of “free” submission of all mankind to the universal laws — whatever be his moral attributes — and ends with a certain force of “compulsion” that makes him a good citizen. That force of com pulsion would be subtle in some instances, overt and explicit in others. Kant for instance, saw private individuals as meriting the status of citizenship only if they were free, ie, unconstrained by the need to dis pose of their labour power in the market to keep body and soul together. He was con vinced moreover, that children and women did not possess the “requisite quality” for cit izenship, a doctrinal blindness that fatally damages his notions of freedom and equality. If Enlightenment was about man escaping Sunny side up Pinker’s thesis is very simple: the current times look bleak only because we have brief memories from tutelage and assuming his inalienable harvard university/rose lincoln, harvard staff photographer right of “free thought”, there were some among the species more fi tted to remain in voice of hope is always welcome in ness that would only be dispelled by another thrall to those of greater wisdom. That was the times of turmoil. Steven Pinker, the epic bloodletting. ambiguity that allowed Enlightenment doc AHarvard University psychologist A text that Pinker quotes with the utmost trine to seamlessly segue into an ideology of and linguist has a new book out reverence is the answer that Immanuel Kant slavery, racism and ultimately, colonial con titled Enlightenment Now, embellishing an published to the question “What is Enlighten quest and subjugation of “lesser people”. already established reputation as the world’s ment?” in 1784. But if that were to be taken as In the breathless ardour of his advocacy, optimist in chief. Since at least 2011, when he the defi nitive statement of doctrine, it has Pinker does not pause to consider these troub published The Better Angels of Our Nature — a taken a rather long time for humanity to learn ling ambivalences. He turns his fury on those work that takes its title from a deeply evocat how to exercise its natural inclination to he sees contesting the possibilities of irrevers ive speech of Abraham Lincoln’s — Pinker has wards “free thought”. Kant believed that this ible human progress merely through the rote been identifi ed with a sunny view of today’s proclivity exists as a germ in every human be repetition of centuriesold formulations. And possibilities of progress. At a time when most ing, which “gradually acts upon the mind of he glosses over the restoration of a deeply in pundits are giving in to handwringing des the people”, transforming them egalitarian discourse in the lib pair over a collapsing global order, Pinker sees into agents “capable of acting in eral democracies of the West, enormous possibilities of human betterment freedom”. Eventually, when the such as the easy acceptance in in the growing infl uence of the values of the government gains Enlighten the current US administration, of PQinker’s sunny “Enlightenment”. ment, it begins to treat man, the 1790 principle of the “free conclusions have Pinker’s thesis is simple: the current times “who is now more than a ma white person” being uniquely been contested on look bleak only because we have brief memor chine, according to his dignity”. suited for the rights of empirical grounds ies. We have gone through worse times and Well over a century since Kant citizenship. the trajectory of the global community is to wrote those lines, governments After two global holocausts in wards greater reason and progress. Human al in Europe were inducting cit the 20th century, the Enlighten truism, an integral part of the Enlightenment izens as cogs in the massive R ment that Pinker champions doctrine, continues to be a powerful force for killing machines they assembled for indus gained a new lease of life in the U S, though the good. trialscale warfare. That is really not a serious without quite ironing out its inner contradic Pinker’s sunny conclusions have been con diffi culty for Pinker. Warfare on an industrial tions. The US today seems on the pathway to tested on empirical grounds. Cataclysmic scale may have been an unfortunate applica wards acting out those contradictions with a world events are like “black swans”: everybody tion of Enlightenment science, but reason has renewed venom, promising not a new dawn of is convinced that they do not exist until they since achieved greater levels of diff usion. “reason, science, humanism and progress”, wade into the fi eld of human experience. Though European in origin — and enshrined but their negation. Nobody quite foresaw when war broke out in for the fi rst time in the American declaration Europe in 1914, that it would last quite as long of independence — reason and science are uni sukumar muralidharan teaches at the school of as it did, and would leave a sediment of bitter versal values, progressively bringing greater journalism, OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat