The Origin of Modernity
S. T. Karnick, The National Interest
In the last several decades, modernity–the period initiated by the Enlightenment–has come under increasing criticism. Most prominently, of course, the postmodernists have put together a critique of pure reason, as it were, that uses logic to question the rationality of modern, Enlightenment-based philosophy. In arguing that all reasoning is based on attempts to gain, sustain or increase power, postmodernists openly seek to obliterate the very foundation on which the modern world was built: the supremacy of reason.
The provenance of modernity is a vitally important matter, because a West based on a lie can hardly be seen as worth defending. It is especially important when Western civilization is being challenged from without by forces that, like the postmodernists, see the West as uniquely and inexcusably oppressive. Might the seeds of modernity’s problems be located in the original premises of the Enlightenment? If they are, knowledge of the mistakes of that era might help us to remedy our own.
In The Roads to Modernity, Gertrude Himmelfarb journeys back into the past to uncover the Enlightenment roots of the modern world and discern whether a healthy, defensible image of modernity and the West can be found. Although the common view of the Enlightenment assumes that modern Americans, Britons and Continentals have the same cultural and philosophical origins, we come to very different conclusions on many (if not most) matters today. The recent disagreement over the war in Iraq, both within the United States and with “Old Europe”, exposed powerful fault lines in the West. Similarly, the European Union’s plan to build itself into a bulwark against American power suggests more than just geopolitical maneuvering. It reflects a deep unease with America’s desire to sow political liberty and representative democracy on ground that Europe considers to be insufficiently fertile.
Two of the most obvious differences between America and Europe today are in the areas of economic freedom and religious observance, with the United States scoring significantly higher in both–and Britain appearing to be somewhere in the middle, identifying with both America’s economic freedom and Europe’s secularity. Himmelfarb addresses the possible origins of these differences, starting with the premise that our common Enlightenment background is not as unitary as we think. She posits that there were actually three Enlightenments: a British one representing “the sociology of virtue”, a French one based on “the ideology of reason”, and an American one pursuing “the politics of liberty.”
Himmelfarb makes clear that the sources of our current woes are to be found fully developed in Enlightenment ideas. Consider, for example, the tendency of the modern Left to feel passionate about distant problems but ignore those close to home. As Himmelfarb observes, Rousseau wrote in Emile that “To prevent pity from degenerating into weakness, it must . . . be generalized and extended to the whole of mankind.” Rousseau also anticipated today’s leftist disdain for parental authority. As Himmelfarb explains his attitude, education “was too important to be left to the ‘understanding and prejudices’ of mortal fathers, for ‘the state maintains, and the family dissolves.’ Thus public authority had to take the place of the father and assume the responsibility” of educating the children… Read the full text >>>
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Christie Davies, The Strange Death of Moral Britain (Somerset, NJ: Transaction, 2004), 264 pp., $39.95.
Arthur Herman, How the Scots Invented the Modern World (New York: Three Rivers, 2002), 480 pp., $14.95.
Gertrude Himmelfarb, The Roads to Modernity (New York: Knopf, 2004), 304 pp., $25.