After Utopia

The Decline of Political Faith

Judith N. Shklar

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780691200866
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

A political philosophy classic from one of the foremost political thinkers of the twentieth century After Utopia was Judith Shklar's first book, a harbinger of her renowned career in political philosophy. Throughout the many changes in political thought during the last half century, this important work has withstood the test of time. In After Utopia, Shklar explores the decline of political philosophy, from Enlightenment optimism to modern cultural despair, and she offers a critical, creative analysis of this downward trend. She looks at Romantic and Christian social thought, and she shows that while the present political fatalism may be unavoidable, the prophets of despair have failed to explain the world they so dislike, leaving the possibility of a new and vigorous political philosophy. With a foreword by Samuel Moyn, examining After Utopia 's continued relevance, this current edition introduces a remarkable synthesis of ideas to a new generation of readers.

CHAPTER I

Introduction: The Decline of the Enlightenment

IN THE BEGINNING was the Enlightenment.” Any study of contemporary social thought might well begin with these words. Yet nothing is quite so dead today as the spirit of optimism that the very word Enlightenment evokes. Indeed, we are faced not with the mere end of the Enlightenment but with the prevalence of theories that arose in opposition to it. If the Enlightenment still figures in the realm of ideas it is as a foil for attack, not as an inspiration to new ideas. Romanticism, the earliest and most successful antagonist of the Enlightenment, has numerous successors today, especially in existentialism and in the various philosophies of the absurd. The revival of social thought that was almost forced upon Christians by the French Revolution is still active today. But the gradual decay of the radical aspirations of liberalism and the evaporation of socialist thought have left the Enlightenment without intellectual heirs. The Enlightenment is the historical and intellectual starting point of contemporary social theory, but only because a great part of our thinking today is based on ideas, romantic and Christian, that were from the first consciously directed against it.

In retrospect the Enlightenment stands out as the high point of social optimism from which we have gradually, but steadily, descended, at least philosophically. The less reflective public, certainly until 1914, remained cheerfully indifferent to the intellectual currents of despair that had been swelling throughout the 19th century. Moreover, the Enlightenment is not just an historical point of departure. Consciously, or often only half-consciously, the Enlightenment is still the intellectual focus for many who no longer share its beliefs, and who develop their own viewpoint in refuting the attitudes of a past era. For the romantic the rationalism associated with the Enlightenment is still an object of scorn. The orthodox Christian still finds its unreligious, if not actively anti-religious, radicalism abhorrent. It is therefore still worthwhile to ask oneself what is meant by the term Enlightenment. What matters here is not what it really was in all its internal complexity, but only those of its aspects which stand out in retrospect, and which, from the very first, entered into controversy.

The three cardinal traits of the Enlightenment were radical optimism, anarchism, and intellectualism. The optimism rested in the belief that the moral and social condition of mankind was constantly improving. Progress was not only a hope for the future but a law that marked the entire course of history. Though the philosophers of the Enlightenment were extremely critical of the institutions and mores of their own age, they had no sense of alienation from European history as a whole. The darkest ages of the past were but steps to a brighter time. Though the present might seem deplorable, it was infinitely better than the past, for history, like individual man, was rational, and reason was bound to manifest itself to an ever greater extent. This faith in reason made the Enlightenment thinker feel secure in his society and in history as a whole.

“The 18th century is imbued with a belief in the unity and immutability of reason. Reason is the same for all thinking subjects, all nations, all epochs, and all cultures. From the changeability of religious creeds, of moral maxims and convictions, of theoretical opinions and judgments, a firm, lasting element can be extracted which is permanent in itself, and which in this identity and permanence expresses the real essence of reason.”¹

If progress was inevitable it was not, however, a matter of supra-personal forces. It was not as a “law” of economic development or of biological evolution but as the commonsense notion that men learn through experience that the Enlightenment believed in progress. Its hopes were truly radical, which is not true of the pseudo-scientific theories of progress, for the essence of radicalism is the idea that man can do with himself and with his society whatever he wishes. If he is reasonable he will build a rational society; if ignorant he will live in a state of barbarism. To the Enlightenment the political and economic future were open. And since everywhere its proponents saw the growth of useful knowledge, they assumed that knowledge had merely to increase and spread until it was put to social use. Though the philosophers were not prophets of violence they were a great deal more radical in their philosophy than later social revolutionaries, for they did not regard men as the agents of historical destiny, but as the free creators of society.

The intellectualism of the Enlightenment was an integral part of this optimism. Even those who believed that utility, rather than reason, governed human action agreed that a purely intellectual appeal was sufficient to perfect conduct. Condorcet argued that since all political and moral errors were based on philosophical fallacies, science, by dispelling false metaphysical notions and mere prejudices, must lead men to social truth and virtue as well.² There was, however, another side to this intellectual optimism. If reason was the supreme guide to progress, the intellectuals, as the most reasonable of men, were entitled to a position of leadership in society. Indeed, many intellectuals felt that they were achieving this goal. Marmontel declared quite frankly that the philosophers had already succeeded a negligent clergy in its “noblest function,” that “of preaching from the roof-tops the truths that are too rarely told to sovereigns.”³ And Duclos could not conceal his pride when he considered the importance of philosophers: “Of all the empires that of the intellectuals, though invisible, is the widest spread. Those in power command, but the intellectuals govern, because in the end they form public opinion, which sooner or later subdues or upsets all despotisms.”⁴ This “empire of the intellectuals” was, moreover, inhabited by only one group of the species. The poets, the artists, like the clergy, were excluded. It was only “reasoned,”—scientists and philosophers, the professional moralists—who were truly enlightened and reasonable, “lumières,” as they called themselves in France.

The notion of the secular moralist as the ideal intellectual was not an accident. It sprang directly from the Enlightenment’s attitude to both religion and art. After all, “enlightenment” meant the illumination of minds hitherto beclouded by religion. Opposition to the Roman Catholic Church was the strongest bond uniting the philosophers. Here rationalists and utilitarians, deists and atheists, were at one. Reason meant “non-religion,” and the rational, harmonious universe was free from the arbitrary interference of its Creator. Thus, the sane society would be without an established church, at the very least; at the extreme, it would be delivered from all priests. In aesthetics the Enlightenment philosophers accepted, in the main, the canons of neo-classicism inherited from the 17th century, with all the restrictions on the poetic imagination that this implied. Indeed, at the beginning of the century Fontenelle had declared prose supreme, and had relegated poetry to a very inferior literary position. Even if the Enlightenment as represented by Voltaire and Marmontel, for example, did not go so far, it continued to subordinate art to the demands of philosophy. In a sense they made art superfluous by demanding that it be totally realistic—that is, follow the pattern set by a supposedly harmonious natural universe. The stage was to show nothing but the probable, the typical, the general—in short, only themes of universal significance. Moreover, the purpose of art was to instruct, to moralize. Shakespeare was condemned alike by Voltaire and by the conservative Dr. Johnson for a lack of decorum. Homer was disliked and Vergil praised on the same grounds. Taste, not strength, was the final criterion. Even Diderot and Lessing, who modified Aristotelian theory by the demand that drama should stir the audience emotionally, did not abandon the prerequisites of ethics. The spectators were to be moved only to virtuous feelings, especially to pity. The addition of sentimentality to literature was only an educational device, not a concession to the spirit of poetry.⁵ The vocation of the intellectual was, in the eyes of the Enlightenment, to reform and to teach society until all mankind was free from irrational urges, whether of an artistic or a religious sort.

This feeling that they were destined to redeem mankind naturally inspired the philosophers of the Enlightenment to work energetically at drawing up projects for the imminent betterment of society. Philanthropy is the term that best describes this zeal for practical reform. It was a passion that seized a rather simple man like the Abbé de Saint-Pierre no more severely than sensible or profound people like Bentham or Kant. Indeed, it was the good Abbé who gave currency, in the earlier years of the century, to the word, “bienfaisance” which was to become so dear to the writers who followed him.⁶ Though in France and Germany, especially, there was no scope for political activity on the part of intellectuals, the dream of citizenship, and especially of political leadership, was intensely felt. It was a profoundly political age.

The politics of the intellectuals were, however, of a peculiar nature. They were the politics to end all politics. Force was not only unnecessary in a society composed of reasonable persons; it was the prime instrument of unreason. Anarchism was the logical attitude for those who felt so great a confidence in intelligence in general and in the professional intellectual in particular. All existing political and religious institutions were irrational, obsolete, and so “unnatural,” designed to prevent an inherently self-regulating society from achieving universal felicity. Coercive institutions, especially the traditional state, were not only unnecessary; they actually prevented an orderly social life. The function of the state was to be educational and its repressive activities were to be limited to protecting society against unenlightened nations and against those few aberrant persons whose anti-social urges led them to a life of crime. The radical aspiration of the Enlightenment was to substitute the educative leadership of the intellectuals for the state that was based on power and habit. Education and legislation were identical to Helvetius.⁷ Once the art or science of educative legislation was mastered, social perfection would be at hand.

The “invisible hand,” so easily laughed at now, was not really a mysterious mechanism. It merely implied that social harmony was inevitable in a society of perfectly free and reasonable persons. To be sure, there was some inconsistency in believing that educational restraint was necessary in political but not in economic life.⁸ But even in the latter realm, monopoly was regarded as so reprehensible that society had a right to prevent it and punish those who practiced it. Freedom, however, was regarded as the necessary condition of human development in all areas, just because it allowed the best, the most reasonable, impulses to assert themselves in every sphere of action. Moreover, the Marxist contention that the Enlightenment was nothing but the bourgeoisie coming into its own finds little support in the writings of that period, and is forced to rely almost exclusively on Voltaire’s frequently expressed contempt for the “canaille.”⁹ Most of the writers of the 18th century, by no means Rousseau alone, felt that great differences in wealth were scandalous, and that one of the chief blessings of the abolition of the existing state was to be a reduction of these discrepancies. Almost all agreed with Helvetius that bad legislation alone created excessive economic inequalities, and that these could be mitigated by law.¹⁰ Among the many charges that Tom Paine brought against all the prevailing forms of government was that “in countries that are called civilized we see age going to the workhouse and youth to the gallows” as well as “a mass of wretchedness that has scarcely any other chance, than to expire in poverty or infamy.”¹¹ It was not that the Enlightenment was indifferent to poverty, but that it blamed it exclusively on obsolete and immoral legislation. With the exception of monopolists, Adam Smith spoke of no one with greater contempt than of politicians.¹² Beneath his accusation lies the common anarchism of the Enlightenment, which essentially amounts to a belief that society is inherently good, but that governments, and they alone, prevent it from flourishing.¹³

While nothing was more sacred to the philosophers of the Enlightenment than individual liberty, they were not individualists. The word does not appear in their writings. For, though they saw a clear conflict between society and the state, between conscience and power, they did not envisage a similar tension between the individual and society. The inevitability of such a struggle, and the entire doctrine of the inviolability of individuality, were unknown to the Enlightenment. That the individual’s conscience, his moral will, or at least his sense of utility were the ultimate arbiters of all public as well as of private action was taken for granted. There was, however, no suspicion of a necessary conflict between private and public interests, between individual freedom and social needs. For the utilitarians there was only a conflict between immediate and long-term interests, not between altruistic and self-regarding motives, and this conflict was to be resolved easily by education and by a few laws. The utilitarians regarded freedom as a necessity because it was in the interest of society no less than of the individual. Those who believed in an absolute moral law, on the other hand, saw freedom as the imperative first condition of all ethically valid action. In the last resort both schools thought freedom essential because man was a rational and social being.

Though it has become a cliché,...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword to the 2020 edition by Samuel Moyn
• Preface
• CHAPTER I: Introduction: The Decline of the Enlightenment
• CHAPTER II: The Romantic Mind
• CHAPTER III: The Unhappy Consciousness in Society
• CHAPTER IV: The Romanticism of Defeat
• CHAPTER V: Christian Fatalism
• CHAPTER VI: The End of Radicalism
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index