thinker who took a radical version of the Enlightenment project to its conclusion. 41
Unlike his early intellectual idol Arthur Schopenhauer, who turned his back on Christianity and mounted a devastating criticism of modern humanism, Nietzsche never escaped from the Christian-humanistworld-view he attacked. His idea of the Superman shows him trying to construct a new redemptive myth that would give meaning to history in much the same way that other Enlightenment thinkers did. But as the
fin de siècle
Viennese wit Karl Kraus observed, ‘The superman is a premature ideal, one that presupposes man.’ 42 The idea of the
Übermensch
is an exaggerated version of modern humanism and shows what Nietzsche had in common not only with the Nazis but also with Lenin and Trotsky.
The links between liberal values and the Enlightenment that many people today are keen to stress are more tenuous than they believe. Voltaire may be the exemplary Enlightenment thinker. 43 Yet he saw the liberal state as only one of the vehicles through which human progress could be achieved; in many circumstances, he believed, enlightened despotism was more effective. For Voltaire as for many other Enlightenment thinkers, liberal values are useful when they promote progress, irrelevant or obstructive when they do not. Of course there are many conceptions of progress. Among Enlightenment thinkers of the Left, liberal society was seen as a valuable stage on the way to a higher phase of human development, while among Enlightenment thinkers of the Right it was viewed as a condition of chaos that at best served as a transition point from one social order to another. For Marx, progress was conceived in terms that applied to humankind as a whole, while for those Enlightenment thinkers who subscribed to ‘scientific racism’ it excluded most of the species. Either way, liberal values were destined for the rubbish heap.
The French Positivists were among the most influential Enlightenment thinkers, and they were thoroughgoing anti-liberals. 44 The founders of Positivism, Henri de Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte, looked forward to a society akin to that which existed (they imagined) in the Middle Ages, but based on science rather than revealed religion. Saint-Simon and Comte viewed history as a process in which humanity passed through successive stages – from the religious to the metaphysical, and then on to the scientific or ‘positive’. In this process there were ‘organic’ and ‘critical’ phases – times when well-ordered societies existed and times when society was in chaos and disarray. The liberal era belonged in the latter category. Saint-Simon and Comte were bitterly hostile to liberalism, and they transmitted this animusto generations of radical thinkers on the Right and the Left. The society of the future would be technocratic and hierarchical. It would be held together by a new religion – the Religion of Humanity, in which the human species would be worshipped as the Supreme Being.
It may seem that the Positivists diverged from the mainstream of Enlightenment thinking – for example, in their admiration for the medieval Church. 45 But what they admired in the Church was not the faith it embodied. It was the Church’s power in unifying society, which the Religion of Humanity tried (without success) to emulate. They believed the growth of knowledge was the driving force of ethical and political progress and celebrated science and technology for expanding human power. Rejecting traditional religions they founded a humanist cult of reason. This was the creed of the eighteenth-century
philosophes
restated for the nineteenth century. If the Positivists were distinctive it was not in their attitude to religion –many Enlightenment savants including Voltaire cherished the absurd project of a ‘rational religion’ – but in their belief that, as human knowledge advanced, human conflict would wither away. Science would reveal the true ends of
Unlike his early intellectual idol Arthur Schopenhauer, who turned his back on Christianity and mounted a devastating criticism of modern humanism, Nietzsche never escaped from the Christian-humanistworld-view he attacked. His idea of the Superman shows him trying to construct a new redemptive myth that would give meaning to history in much the same way that other Enlightenment thinkers did. But as the
fin de siècle
Viennese wit Karl Kraus observed, ‘The superman is a premature ideal, one that presupposes man.’ 42 The idea of the
Übermensch
is an exaggerated version of modern humanism and shows what Nietzsche had in common not only with the Nazis but also with Lenin and Trotsky.
The links between liberal values and the Enlightenment that many people today are keen to stress are more tenuous than they believe. Voltaire may be the exemplary Enlightenment thinker. 43 Yet he saw the liberal state as only one of the vehicles through which human progress could be achieved; in many circumstances, he believed, enlightened despotism was more effective. For Voltaire as for many other Enlightenment thinkers, liberal values are useful when they promote progress, irrelevant or obstructive when they do not. Of course there are many conceptions of progress. Among Enlightenment thinkers of the Left, liberal society was seen as a valuable stage on the way to a higher phase of human development, while among Enlightenment thinkers of the Right it was viewed as a condition of chaos that at best served as a transition point from one social order to another. For Marx, progress was conceived in terms that applied to humankind as a whole, while for those Enlightenment thinkers who subscribed to ‘scientific racism’ it excluded most of the species. Either way, liberal values were destined for the rubbish heap.
The French Positivists were among the most influential Enlightenment thinkers, and they were thoroughgoing anti-liberals. 44 The founders of Positivism, Henri de Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte, looked forward to a society akin to that which existed (they imagined) in the Middle Ages, but based on science rather than revealed religion. Saint-Simon and Comte viewed history as a process in which humanity passed through successive stages – from the religious to the metaphysical, and then on to the scientific or ‘positive’. In this process there were ‘organic’ and ‘critical’ phases – times when well-ordered societies existed and times when society was in chaos and disarray. The liberal era belonged in the latter category. Saint-Simon and Comte were bitterly hostile to liberalism, and they transmitted this animusto generations of radical thinkers on the Right and the Left. The society of the future would be technocratic and hierarchical. It would be held together by a new religion – the Religion of Humanity, in which the human species would be worshipped as the Supreme Being.
It may seem that the Positivists diverged from the mainstream of Enlightenment thinking – for example, in their admiration for the medieval Church. 45 But what they admired in the Church was not the faith it embodied. It was the Church’s power in unifying society, which the Religion of Humanity tried (without success) to emulate. They believed the growth of knowledge was the driving force of ethical and political progress and celebrated science and technology for expanding human power. Rejecting traditional religions they founded a humanist cult of reason. This was the creed of the eighteenth-century
philosophes
restated for the nineteenth century. If the Positivists were distinctive it was not in their attitude to religion –many Enlightenment savants including Voltaire cherished the absurd project of a ‘rational religion’ – but in their belief that, as human knowledge advanced, human conflict would wither away. Science would reveal the true ends of
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