Mario Vella
Catching up with Enlightenment
The Enlightenment, Kant wrote in a popular text, is our “emergence from self-imposed nonage”. He then goes on to explain that by “nonage” (Unmündigkeit) – which some translate as “immaturity” – he means “the inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance”. His definition goes on as follows: “This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one’s own mind without another’s guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) ‘Have the courage to use your own understanding,’ is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment.”
You may recall that the last time we met on this page, on the last Monday before the referendum of May 28, I shared with you what one of the intellectually sharper media personalities intimately associated with the Nationalist Party told me several months ago. The problem with Eddie Fenech Adami, he said, is that he never came to terms with the Enlightenment.
What an extraordinarily candid and profound admission from someone who, in the first 10 years or so of Dr Fenech Adami’s premiership, had worked to present the PN as the political party that was triumphantly leading Malta towards an epoch beyond “mere” modernity, to nothing less than the age of post-modernity. I have often referred to PN publications in the first half of the 1990s carrying contributions by respected Maltese academics announcing the failure of what Lyotard had over 10 years earlier characterised as the meta-narratives of modernity.
The divorce referendum campaign confirmed that not only are the leaders of the post-Borg Olivier PN not the post-modern vanguard they were presented as – in contrast to Labour leaders depicted by PN apologists in the 1990s as intellectual dinosaurs hopelessly trapped in obsolete 18th and 19th century projects – but, rather, that the PN leaders were themselves desperately defending positions that Kant had already criticised as obsolete in 1784.
The referendum campaign has confirmed that the PN’s leadership has not, as at 2011, emancipated itself from a hopelessly pre-modern and pre-Enlightenment mind-set. By “leadership” I do not refer only to its present leader and to Dr Fenech Adami – who, though no longer formally the PN’s leader, is evidently still its moral leader – but to its members of Parliament and to the majority of the members of the PN executive committee that, on February 12, voted in favour of a motion declaring the party’s position against the introduction of the right to divorce.
Having said this, it must also be said that not all those that identify themselves with the PN are as backwards as the party’s leadership as broadly defined above. There are many thinking Nationalists who are understandably bewildered and confused with what the leaders of the party they consider as their own have said and done on the issue of divorce. Not all of these “thinking Nationalists” – as I referred to them in my previous contribution to this column (www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110523/opinion/Gonzi-and-thinking-Nationalists.366724) – would make use of the right to seek divorce when the right to divorce finally becomes law.
No thinking Nationalist, however, would agree to denying this civil right to those that need it, choose it and qualify for it.
This distinction is an important one and goes beyond the PN. Let’s pause briefly on it. You can be for the passing of a divorce law on grounds that this would enable persons who need it, choose it and qualify for it, to seek it as a right and you can also – at the same time and coherently – assert your personal choice not to make use of this right. This is not a fine distinction. It is a fundamental one. Not to appreciate this distinction is not to have come to terms with the Enlightenment, 227 years after Kant (What better example of the great achievements of European thought?) published his Was ist Aufklärung? (What is Enlightenment?) and, much later, if we take the Enlightenment, as some do, to have its roots in the mid-17th century.
Let us come back to the position of thinking Nationalists today. There are many very fine brains indeed among them. Many of them knew all along that the leadership of the PN was not the best of all possible leaderships. The admission by the media personality I referred to above will not have surprised many of them. Few of them, if any at all, would today – and possibly not since a number of years ago – pretend to be intellectually inspired by anyone in the PN leadership: neither by any of the older ones nor by any of the younger ones, certainly not by the likes of, say, a Fenech Adami fils.
Some will migrate to the Labour Party, most will simply continue to lose interest in Maltese politics and in Malta generally but some others will resist the temptation to despair and will attempt to drag their party to the second decade of the 21st century. Or as close to it as possible. Kant, in the essay I quoted above, also wrote: “One may postpone one’s own enlightenment but only for a limited period of time. And to give up enlightenment altogether, either for oneself or one’s descendants, is to violate and to trample upon the sacred rights of man.”
Dr Vella blogs at http://watersbroken.wordpress.com .
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Mr Bernard Cauchi
Jun 11th 2011, 18:34
Speaking about Kant, have a look at Dr Michael Asciak's article 'The categorical imperative' in this newspaper of Friday, October 29, 2004. The former PN member of parliament cited the German Enlightenment philosopher in defence of the nomination of EU Justice Commissioner designate Rocco Buttiglione from Italy. Perhaps this will enlighten Messrs. K.M. Edwards and Alex Ellul.
Mr Bernard Cauchi
Jun 9th 2011, 06:36
This analysis highlights another important problem, the involvement of 'intellectuals' in political, economic and social scenes in general. Their absence (in general) has been conspicuous in the divorce debate. Was it fear? What should they fear? To lose their esteemed 'objective' position? As Vella argues, 'many would lose interest in Malta in general', when many of them are distinctly paid by taxpayers to do just the opposite.
As for the PN, I would add a pre-Vatican council view of religion... the triumph of American neo-conservatism amongst their consciences!
Keith Pisani
Jun 8th 2011, 07:21
Messrs. K.M. Edwards and Alex Ellul must either be joking or should go back to school. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is commonly regarded as one the most outstanding figures in Western philosophy. His commitment to human freedom, human dignity and the principle that moral law derives not from human authorities or desires, but only from reason, is known to every beginner in philosophy. I suspect the two gentlemen's knowledge of Kant is limited to some quirky internet source.
Mr K.M Edwards
Jun 7th 2011, 17:24
The problem with your erudite analysis Dr Vella is that you fail to establish why Kant of all philosophers should be the benchmark of a truly enlightened political mind.
As Mr Alex Ellul correctly points out, he was one of the philosophical fathers of the Nazis and the Eugenics movement, along with Nietzche.
If you can demonstrate why Kant is the standard bearer our society must hold up to, you may have a case.
As it stands however you don't and in spite of the false watershed you attempt to impose as a standard for us to judge by,EFA stands miles above that as the Maltese electorate amply agreed with for over a decade from 1987.
You might have picked more of a philosophical "winner" than Kant ...
Mr Michael Grech
Jun 8th 2011, 07:43
I do not think Dr Vella 'capriciously' selected Kant as the benchmark of the truly enlightened political mind. Most scholars and historians of philosophy agree that the German was the Enlightenment's (whereby by enlightenment one is not referring to the state of one's mind as you seem to imply in your first sentence, but to an 18th century intellectual movement) highest representative.
The article is not an argument as to the desirability of having Kant or the Enlightenment as our 'standard bearer', something that one may legitimately question. It uses the Enlightenment as benchmark since Modern Europe which, in Conservative and Nationalist pseudo-liberal mythology we 'became part of' in 2004, is shaped around the ideas and ideals of the Enlightentment. Hence, what the article boils down to is a comparison between the ideas, ideals and forma mentis of the Enlightenment's greatest representative and those of the person who in this mythology represents the Moses who lead us to this promised land. It is about consistency; not about whether one set of beliefs or ideals (the Enlightenment ) is better or worse than any other. To use the example I gave, what the argument is claiming is that our Moses, the one who supposedly lead us to Jahweh's promised land, is infact a heathen pagan, worshipper of Egyptian gods and idols! To claim that the gist of the article is about anything apart from this inconsistency is either to fail to understand it or worse to dishonestly misinterpret it.
The article is also about how misconceived the pictures and impressions of Europe (whatever this term means) many of us have are; how peripheral, caricaturistic and out of date they tend to be.
Moreover, cliaming that Kant was some kind of philosophical father of Nazism is intellectually dishonest if not right-down farcical. Kant may have had his contradictions; some dispariging remarks about Jews and black skinned people are actually sickening even though shared by most Europeans of his day. Yet to claim that the philosopher who placed as the kernel of his moral philosophy the dignity of the human being, through the maxim 'to treat humanity in oneself and in others as an end, never as mere means' as the father of Nazism is like cliaming that Jesus, the prince of peace, is one of the founding fathers of this murderous regime, since many Nazis used Christian rhetoric and many Nazi sympathisers (including many bishops, prelates as well as, locally, exponents of Mr Fenech Adami's party) considered Nazism as a bulwark of Christian Europe against atheistic Communism. Moreover Fascism and its variants (including the German variant) were many a time considered as political models that may set the clock backwards, towards a more ordered and pre-1789 kind of society, believing that European society required restoration to some kind of paradise that was lost with....the Enlightenment and the Revolution associated to it!
Mr Alex Ellul
Jun 7th 2011, 13:15
The enlightenment movement's ideology is just a milder form of Eugenic Ideology, based on a feeling of superiority. "I am superior than thou becuase I am enlightened". This is a very dangerous ideology.
Human society did not commence its rise to the present standard of living becuase of the enlightenment movement. This movement isonly, at best 200 years old. During its existence we have seen at least two great world wars and one cold war that were precipitaded by ideologies based on superiority of one person over another. Nazism was the logical sequence or consequence of Eugenics, an ideology that peoposed the elimination of the weak, the handicapped, the sick, the infirm, even the old. Nazism took it to its extreme, adding semites to the list.
The enlithened ones believe that they are superior to others because they think that they have more powwer of thought, better minds, better education, therefroe better than others who do not believe in the same prinsiples.
The enlightnement movement is a very dangerous ideology. It is already criminalising Christianity in the old democracies. UK being the worst culprit were Christians are being barred from working in hospitals, teaching in schools, adopting children etc etc.............
Enlightenment is just another excuse for dominance.
Mr Michael Grech
Jun 8th 2011, 08:23
I do not know whether these comments result from failure to understand or from intellectual dishonesty. The enlightenment had its failures, shortcomings, contradictions and double standards. But to reduce the whole of it to the claim 'I am superior than thou because I am enlightened' is ridiculous to say the least. Indeed, one of the key beliefs of the enlightenment was the ideal of 'spreading' learning; the belief that 'light' should not be the reserve of some clique or elite. Obviously, in practice, many a representative of the movement (Kant, Hume, etc) came to believe that some group 'may not receive this light', with the resulting double-standards. But there others inspired by the same enlightenment ideals, who claimed that this was contradictory and should not be. To take a very concrete example, the first nation founded on the Enlightenment ideals, the US, admitted slavery. One hundred years later, the Abolitionist movement attached this institution partly because it contradicted the enlightenment ideals of equality, human rights and freedom the country was supposed to be founded upon. Such contradictions are typical of any intellectual movement. Christians, upholding a religion founded on the teachings of the Prince of Peace, sanctioning the Inquisition. Followers of Islam, a religion whose name comes from the same root as the word peace, carrying out terrorism.
Obviously, human society did not '.... commence its rise to the present standard of living because of the enlightenment movement'. Still, the Europe we know would be unthinkable without this movement and its legacy; secular politics, modern democracy, the right to self-determination, legal equality, human rights, freedoms of speech and conscience and the belief in progress in all fields (including the medical one....whereby you had the belief that the sick may be cured....not eliminated or left to a destiny of divine sanctioned suffering). Indeed, one of the movements which started the second major war you mentioned was viewed by many as a social order to could take Europe back to the 'good old' pre-enlightenment and pre-French revolution days! Moreover, it was defeated by governments who were founded on values and ideals derived form...the Enlightenment!
You also seem to suggest that the Enlightenment is fundamentally Anti-Christian. To answer you, I quote the words of the former Abbott of the San Paolo Basilica in ROme, Giovanni Franzoni: "
Though the Enlightenment contained Deist, minor atheist and anti-Christian streams, I do not believe that the Enlightenment was intrinsically anti-Christian. The Enlightenment was not a monolithic and homogenous movement. Apart from the deist and atheist trends, there was a religious enlightenment, aiming to cleanse religion of superstitions, corruption and false beliefs and ideas.
Indeed, the foremost Enlightenment thinker, Immanuel Kant, came from a Pietist background, considered himself a good Christian. Even though he abandoned certain aspects of pietist beliefs and practices, Kant not only believed that his work (including his refutation of what he considered to be unsatisfactory argument for the existence of God, the unsatisfactory nature of which leads to unbelief) cut the ground from beneath atheism, but presented moral arguments for the existence of God and wrote a book through which, he believed, he had shown that certain fundamental tenets of religion can be sustained through reason alone. Moreover, his moral work, while relying on pure reason rather than faith or revelation, is thought by many to represent a supreme rational buttressing of the moral tenets of Christianity; ideas like the belief that each person has an intrinsic worth, the un-instrumental commitment towards other human beings, and so on. In his latest encyclical letter Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict himself notes Kant’s concern for the establishment of the Kingdom of God."
As to the claims that in the UK Christians are suffering some persecution, I am a Christian myself who lived in the UK for one year, and can safely say that this is but a figment of your imagination! Obviously, there are legal shortcomings, but to claim that this amounts to 'criminalising Christianity' (Christianity is still the country's major religion; and the past three Prime Ministers at least, were practicing Christians).
Mr Rudy Sollars
Jun 7th 2011, 12:22
The question of locating Maltese cultural and mental evolution in comparison with that of mainland Europe has always troubled me. Could it be that as a nation, we are actually experiencing a particular social turbulence more akin to the European Renaissance, rather then the European Enlightenment? a movement in our history which is seeing a number of parallel protagonists provoking the current social changes, such as our own: Francesco Petrarch, Giovanni Pico, Desiderius Erasmus, Martin Luther, Michel de Montaigne and last but not least, our infamous Dominican priest - Giordano Bruno?
Ms Lina CARUANA
Jun 7th 2011, 06:37
What kind of enlightenment? That of picking lose ends from broken connections and constructions through radical destruction when well intentioned labourites migrated to the PN? Or the invective against the Church hoping to eradicate one's throbbing conscience by suppressing it ? intelligent discourse of today leaves much to be desired because it is sometimes out of tune with the same so called progress going on around us when others have learnt from their own mistakes and we follow suit , he is enlightening others.adlong without even following Marxist's evolution into a convergent form of thinking which
Ms pat muscat
Jun 6th 2011, 17:22
Separation between State and Church were part of the enlightenment; in Malta, however,we are still in darkness, though, to be fair, the people who voted 'yes' have shaken the stability of beliefs held explicitly as articles of faith.
Mr William Flynn
Jun 6th 2011, 11:45
Whatever the PN needs to do, it has to be done at warp speed. But can anyone see anyone in the Jesuit group of the party, who hold every position of power worth holding, doing anything at warp speed; except perhaps getting their rosary beads out?
What a great indictment on Maltese politics that we are reading about the party in power having to catch up with a revolution in thought that took place well over 200 years ago.
And speaking of thought, a quick glance at the comments in this or any previous publication will produce the usual cut and paste imbeciles declaring, like those at the top of the PN structure, some morality argument from a Bronze Age shaman culture to support their debate.
The only alternative leader kow-towing to the Catholic church during his speech yesterday almost leads one to despair.
But then I remember 112,000 who voted yes and 90,000 who didn’t do what they were told by the embodiment of the antithesis of enlightenment; the bishops.
Perhaps they might have started something pushing in the right direction on 28 May; perhaps.
Dr Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando kicked a great… no…historic goal; but which party will take the initiative to mirror what happened on 28 May by removing Article 2 from our Constitution?
Article 2 makes every Maltese person anti and ante The Enlightenment.