Tolerance and the Use and Abuse of the Enlightenment

Tolerance and the Use and Abuse of the Enlightenment Olomouc, Czech Republic; IP Programme, Euroculture 24 June, 2015 The theme of this year s )P, as we know, is the Uses and Abuses of the Past. For me, as a Germanist, my first association when considering this topic was with Friedrich Nietzsche s 1874 essay On the Use and Abuse of (istory which contrasts the ideas of living historically and unhistorically. Nietzsche asks his readers to consider that the unhistorical and the historical are equally necessary to the health of an individual, a community, and a system of culture . On the one hand, the power of forgetting and the ability to live unhistorically in the present is crucial and important for our happiness, as an excess of history can be burdensome and making life maimed and degenerate. However, he also recognizes that we nevertheless need history and a knowledge of the past for the service of the future and the present . )n many ways, though, Nietzsche s essay is really about historical education and the necessity to learn from the past: Modern man, he writes, carries inside him an enormous heap of indigestible knowledge-stones that occasionally rattle together in his body . That internal rattling, though, reveals a most striking aspect of modern men: the opposition of something inside them to which nothing external corresponds, and the reverse (23). In essence, what Nietzsche is speaking of here is the need for applicability—how to make history relevant to the present and how to relate the present, external world to historical knowledge. This is the topic that I would like to speak about today, particularly in regard to recent debates in Europe about tolerance and the fundamental principles of the Enlightenment as a foundation to European identity. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings, the Copenhagen shootings and the violence in Texas in the aftermath of the Copenhagen debate, Europe (and the secular West) has begun struggling with the legacy of the Enlightenment, which somewhat paradoxically advocated both for freedom of religion as well as for the freedom from religious doctrine and orthodoxy. With the rise of immigration and the spread of globalization, a fundamental question about the limits of tolerance in a post-secular Europe have shaken the foundations of Western society. The increased secularization of Western society was once thought to be the norm in the new millennium, as societies moved further away from identities based on religion in favor of what J“rgen (abermas has called Occidental rationalism, rooted in Enlightenment thinking. However Habermas himself has come to reconsider this idea and in 2008 he published an essay arguing instead that we now live in a post-secular society: global changes and the visible conflicts that flare up in connection with religious issues, he writes, give us reason to doubt whether the relevance of religion has waned. As a result, new tensions have arisen between secularist thinkers in the tradition of the Enlightenment, who reject the imposition of religious ideology and who wish to maintain a strong separation between church and state, and multiculturalists, who emphasize the importance of individual freedom, tolerance of difference and the plurality of cultures. But how can Europe reconcile this division, stay true to its Enlightened heritage and embrace a unity in diversity, the motto that it has adopted for the EU? Article of the European Union s Lisbon Treaty from declares that the EU was founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values have a long tradition in Europe dating back to both Renaissance and Enlightenment thought, when the notion of universal human rights and tolerance of individual difference was first posited. Recent laws in Europe though banning religious symbols in the public sphere have sparked a renewed debate over the importance of individual freedom and the limits of tolerance in democratic societies. Ironically, philosophers and intellectuals on both sides of the issue have utilized the values of the Enlightenment to further their argument. One of the more interesting debates arose in 2006, when British historian Timothy Garton Ash published a review of two books dealing with the seeming incompatibility of Islamic and European values. The two books in question, Ayan (irsi Ali s The Caged Virgin and )an Buruma s Murder in Amsterdam, take very different approaches to the issue of tolerance and multiculturalism, the former warning of the dangers that Islam presents to the Enlightened European tradition and the need to remain steadfast against it, while the latter considers both the need for as well as the limits of tolerance in a liberal democracy. While Garton Ash reviewed Buruma s book favorably, he was more critical of (irsi Ali s autobiographical work, going so far as to call her an Enlightenment fundamentalist, echoing a phrase that Buruma himself used in referring to the Somali-born member of Dutch parliament. Hirsi Ali, who grew up Muslim and later fled Kenya to escape an arranged marriage, had gone from one ideological extreme to another, Garton Ash argued, making her a heroine to many secular European intellectuals. Such fundamentalists, he feels, wrongly …believe that a Europe based entirely on secular humanism would be a better Europe . Garton Ash sets up an age-old dichotomy of faith versus reason, writing: For secular Europeans to demand that Muslims adopt their faith—secular humanism—would be almost as intolerant as the Islamist jihadist demand that we should adopt theirs. But, the Enlightenment fundamentalist will protest, our faith is based on reason. Well they reply, ours is based on truth. Such arguments between the church and secular powers over faith and reason were common in the 18th century, and they have re-surfaced again today in the multicultural discourses and the tension between individual freedom and toleration, perhaps most notably in Pope Benedict s controversial university. 6 Regensburg speech on the subject of faith, reason and the But what exactly is an Enlightened fundamentalist ? )n the European tradition fundamentalists were those deemed lacking a critical intellectual or ideological view of their own position. The Counter Enlightenment attacked thinkers who they felt embraced reason and rationality in an uncritical manner. The term has been utilized in more recent political debates and has gained currency, especially in Holland, in the wake of the attacks on World Trade Center in 2001. It was then that the discussion shifted to multiculturalism, cultural relativism and the defense of traditional European values, which has a long and poisonous history in European politics. The Enlightenment in particular, Buruma notes, …has a particular appeal to some conservatives because its values are not just universal, but more importantly, ours, that is European, Western values. Already by the s, the political rhetoric in Europe had become exclusionary particularly of immigrants from the developing world, who were viewed as a threat to the national identity and values of the host countries because of their cultural and often religious differences. Such conflicts in and of themselves are not new—they often arise in the context of immigration and the fear of losing or diluting one s native culture—but Buruma s and Garton Ash s pejorative use of the Enlightenment, and linking it to fundamentalist thought, was something new and antithetical to Enlightened thinking. After the appearance of Garton Ash s review, one of France s leading nouveaux philosophes Pascal Bruckner published a scathing reply attacking both Buruma and Garton Ash and accusing them of a new form of racism. Bruckner was particularly appalled by what he saw as a rejection of the Enlightenment in favor of postmodern moral relativism. In his defense of Hirsi Ali, Bruckner declared that Buruma and Garton Ash were enemies of freedom who want to deny the benefits of democratic rights to those in society belonging to another religion or ethnic group. Bruckner makes a philosophical argument against the rise of Anglo-Saxon multiculturalism, which he views as a form of legal apartheid, in that it does not afford the same freedoms to all. (e goes on to praise the superiority of the French model laïcité which does not engage in the questionable worship of diversity. Bruckner offers a lengthy defense of the Enlightenment and humanistic secularism and closes by citing Kant s seminal essay Was ist Aufklärung? and its oft-quoted motto sapere aude. A culture of courage is perhaps what is most lacking among today s directors of conscience, he writes, a courage that would defend (irsi Ali and her fight against people chained to their cultural roots and against the encroachment of religion into modern European secular society. Bruckner s argument was supported in the ensuing debate by several other intellectuals and philosophers, including noted Dutch philosopher and law professor Paul Cliteur, who similarly argued for universal secular values and ethics. Multiculturalists, like Garton Ash and Buruma he maintained, …reject the universality of the Enlightenment ideas of democracy, human rights and the rule of law and replace it with the glorification of otherness. )n essence, Cliteur writes, if Western societies think they have no core values important enough to fight for (by peaceful means), then there is no reason for immigrant minorities to accept them. Only by recognizing and embracing the core values of the Enlightenment—democracy, the rule of law, and human rights—can the West fight off the assault directed at these values by a religion, Islam, that denies some people these rights. What is interesting in this debate is the use (or abuse) of the Enlightenment as an axis around which the arguments are constructed. )n Garton Ash s equally scathing response—rather sarcastically entitled Better Pascal than Pascal Bruckner —he suggests that Bruckner …speaks in the name of the Enlightenment, but […] betrays its essential spirit namely critical thinking and the freedom of expression without taboos. Both Cliteur and Buruma recognize that Islamic fundamentalism and Enlightenment fundamentalism are both radical ideologies, but whereas Cliteur see the superiority of the latter over the former, Buruma stresses that …one of [the Enlightenment s] greatest achievements is the rejection of dogma, of any kind. But is the Enlightenment another kind of dogma or does it represent an ethic of tolerance? Are we in the West simply seeking to embrace the worship of a secular ideology over a religious one? While most of the participants in this debate made reference to the Enlightenment and principles of Enlightenment thought, few actually defined which 18th century thinkers or which philosophies underlie their argumentation and thus which Enlightenment they mean. Is it the Enlightenment of tolerance and acceptance that we find in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing s Nathan the Wise? Or is it the Enlightenment that opposes religious dogma in favor of critical debate and inquiry in the spirit of Spinoza and Diderot? The former advocates a kind of multiculturalism that Bruckner rejects while the latter would favor a society with a strict separation of church and state, which Garton Ash and Buruma find questionable. To be sure, the Enlightenment has always been a contested, even a contradictory project. On the one hand, Enlightenment thought defended individual freedom and liberty, yet it also promoted universality of human rights and values. Similarly it argued for the autonomy of the individual and free will but also defended religious tolerance. As recent scholarship has shown, there were in fact at least two Enlightenments: the mainstream Enlightenment of Kant, Locke and Rousseau and the radical Enlightenment of Condorcet, Diderot and Spinoza. At the heart of the issue, as Kenan Malik has argued, is the question of whether reason reigned supreme in human affairs, as the radicals insisted, or whether reason had to be limited by faith and tradition – the view of the mainstream. Today we still see echoes of this split in current debates over multiculturalism and the role of religion in Europe, with the Anglo-American theorists falling more into the mainstream, while the French nouveaux philosophes, follow the tradition of the French laïcité, arguing for the supremacy of human reason. But is there a middle ground and the possibility of reconciling both sides of the debate without sacrificing the central values of the West and the European Union? One of the leading intellectuals to confront that challenge has been the FrancoBulgarian philosopher Tzvetan Todorov, whose recent work on cultural identity is deeply rooted both in the Enlightenment (In Defence of the Enlightenment, and in Europe s humanistic tradition (The Fear of Barbarians, 2010). In Defence of the Enlightenment presents an argument for the importance of these 18th century principles as a foundation for a modern European society that is both enlightened and multicultural. Todorov writes that there are three ideas found at the base of the Enlightenment project: autonomy; an awareness of the humanistic purpose of our actions; and universality. Each of these is important in their own way but they also play into the larger discourse of Enlightened thought. For instance, a central tenet to our autonomy is that the individual must be free to examine, question and challenge all institutions and dogmas. Enlightenment thinkers, he reminds us, were especially critical of religious dogma and orthodoxy and they rejected the submission of society and individuals to any authority whose legitimacy came from gods or ancestors. At the same time, however, they did not reject religion per se, rather felt that religion must withdraw from the realm of the state but not from the individual. Hence freedom of religious belief and practice was still paramount. Todorov recognizes, however, that the autonomy of the individual can be threatened not only by religion, but also by the state and by the family. Whereas Enlightenment fundamentalists focus on the oppressive threat of religion and of familial tradition, multiculturalists see a similar threat of oppression from the state and laws that limit an individual s free expression of religious belief. This dichotomy is at the heart of the debates over laws limiting veiling and wearing religious symbols: are these laws designed to protect the freedom and autonomy of the individual from religion and tradition or are they merely an intolerant form of religious repression by the state? Todorov acknowledges the threat that fundamentalist Islam poses to secularism and sees terrorist acts and the oppression of women as the most pernicious (whereas the former is a political act while the latter often represents the tyranny of family and cultural tradition). But in The Fear Barbarians, he turns toward an exploration of the humanistic tradition of Western thought and the need to respect the humanity of each individual. After first exploring the Greek origins of the word barbarian as others or foreigners, he shows us that the barbarian has come to mean one who denies the full humanity of others; in other words, one who doesn t recognize the universality of human rights. And in our globalized world today, Todorov warns us, our fear of the other, of the barbarian threatens to make us barbarians ourselves, in that we risk denying the humanity of those different from us. The influx of immigrants and the growth of religiosity in Western society has increased that fear, and caused the West to amputate the real tradition of the Enlightenment, namely combining the universality of values with the plurality of cultures. As a result, the West increasingly fears losing its culture and national identity, which has fueled the rise of far-right wing, anti-immigrant parties in the EU and increased the animosity toward the faceless barbarian who embodies that threat. Much like the philosophers of the counter-Enlightenment, we see a renewed rejection of the universality of principles and emphasis instead the particularism of national identity. Not surprisingly Greece s Golden Dawn, France s Front National and Germany s NPD attract disaffected citizens who view non-nationals as a threat to their traditional values and cultural identity. The danger of course is that these parties also threaten the unity in diversity that the EU seeks to embrace and in doing so, they diminish civil discourse. Habermas recognizes this dilemma as well: (ow should we see ourselves as members of a post-secular society, he asks, and what must we reciprocally expect from one another in order to ensure that in firmly entrenched nation states, social relations remain civil despite the growth of a plurality of cultures and religious world views? This is certainly one of the greatest challenges facing the EU in the 21st century. But it must meet that challenge without sacrificing the Enlightenment values of universality upon which it was built. The American philosopher Martha Nussbaum has argued in fact that this debate has set up a false dichotomy between universality and multiculturalism. In her study The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age, she addresses France s headscarf and burqa ban directly, refuting the various arguments made in favor of the ban, and argues instead for consistency in applying the law. In this way, there would be no discrepancy between the universality of values and the plurality of cultures. Few have written as eloquently on this issue as the German-Iranian writer and Islam scholar Navid Kermani. In his acceptance speech for the prize from the Helga und Edzard Reuter-Stiftung, awarded for achievements in international understanding, Kermani makes the case for a compromise between advocates of a Leitkultur guiding cultural values and multiculturalism. (is speech, entitled Why the West should spread its Leitkultur evangelistically and why Germany should allow its teachers to wear a headscarf, subverts traditional thinking about universality and particularism in that he argues that the singularity of Western culture is its particularism. Unlike religion, he notes, which has its own claim to universality, the European intellectual and cultural tradition allows for the diversity of religions and religious beliefs. The greatest collective achievement of Europe and the West, he feels, its true Leitkultur, is having developed a political system that not only tolerates different religions and world views but radically treats them the same. As if in answer to Paul Cliteur, who wondered if there were any fundamental principles in Western culture that multiculturalists would find worth fighting for, Kermani argues that this, in and of itself, is worth fighting and advocating for, as the political system in the West demonstrates the superiority of the Western system in that it grants Muslims the freedoms that Christians in Islamic countries are too often denied. In conclusion this debate among European intellectuals invites us to consider the fact that if Europe is to achieve a true unity in diversity, it must recognize the rights and freedoms of all individuals. In doing so, it will not be relinquishing its fundamental values, rather as Kermani has suggested it will be embracing them. After all, the relative health of a democracy and the strength of its civil society can be measured by the openness towards minorities and minority communities and the equality afforded them. The struggle for civil and human rights in the West has been a long struggle, but one that has in the end actualized the goals and universal values of the Enlightenment. Western democracies are founded on laws rooted in these values, ones that guarantee individual freedom and respect for humanity. However it is imperative that these laws be applied consistently and fairly, for by doing so, the West will stay true to its political and cultural heritage, thereby making our societies stronger—and better for all.