To the Tooting Station

Ideological Nonsense About Right and Other Trash*

You know you sometimes get intellectual doubts, you're not entirely sure of your position, people will expose your faulty reasoning, you welcome criticism as you would the presence of a loyal puppy or the finest truckle of cheese, your levels of self-awareness or truly something to behold? Yes? Hmm. Ok, that's good.

Friday’s Indy was spot-on when it called this an “unhealthy obsession with counting the days“.

The definition of obsession clearly being something other than:

1. Establishing a Facebook group (Christ on a friggin stick)
2. Encouraging readers to sign the Amnesty petition (it is, after all, not far off the Gulag)
3. An understated and entirely un-obsessive interest in anti post-28 days blog buttons (oh for fuck's sake)
4. Pleading by any other means

*Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme

Mill, Marx, and multiculturalism

Is Ken Livingstone’s support of multiculturalism in keeping with Millian liberalism? Or is it, as David Cameron claims, a Marxist and ‘discreditable attempt by an ageing far left politician to hang on to a narrative about race that sees people from ethnic minorities as potential agents of revolutionary change’?

Now, there’s a lot to untangle here. Livingstone uses the term multiculturalism referring to both the fact of multiculturalism – that modern society comprises many different cultures, races, traditions and religions – and the project of multiculturalism – that government and its agencies should not only permit the existence of these cultures, traditions and religions, but that it also has a responsibility to promote these cultures, traditions and religions through policies of diversity, group rights, difference-friendly liberalism, cultural programmes and the establishment of quotas. The interchangeability simply obfuscates two issues, in turn confusing two distinct objections: those from the lobotomized fringe of the hard right objecting to the very fact of multiculturalism, and those objections from progressive leftists that see multiculturalism as as a departure from a philosophy of individual rights, individual autonomy, universalism, difference-blind liberalism, and an embrace of relativism .

Livingstone declares that multiculturalism is simply a contemporary manifestation of Mill’s principle of liberty:

That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. (J S Mill, Stefan Collini (ed.) On Liberty, 1989, p.13)

For Livingstone, this simply means:

Multiculturalism asserts the right of a person to live their life as they wish, including culturally. If they wish to live in classically "English" style, then this is fine. But it is also fine if they want to lead a more Indian lifestyle, or a more Jamaican one, or if they wish to organise their life more around the ideas of Buddhism or Judaism. This is the basic principle of multiculturalism.

And the basic principle of liberalism. So why invent the new term? Is there any difference between Millian liberalism and multiculturalism? Certain elements are in keeping with the Millian legacy: the state has no warrant to interfere in matters of culture and tradition, and freedom of association is sacrosanct. So in this sense of a weak multiculturalism, Livingstone’s claims seem to stack up.

Yet this liberal principle was qualified by Mill. Mill sought to extend some of the state’s power to hitherto excluded areas. Mill was, in particular, scathing about men who regarded the family as his personal fiefdom, writing of the ‘almost despotic power of husbands over wives’. (J S Mill, Stefan Collini (ed.) On Liberty, 1989, p.105) In The Subjection of Women he noted: ‘[…] man had anciently […] the power of life and death over his wife. She could invoke no law against him: he was her sole tribunal and law.’ (Ibid. p.146) This clearly has implications for those promoting or embracing conservative cultures – would Mill really have welcomed this as a contribution to diversity, despite its subordination of liberty?

The notion of positive interference is even more problematic. In a sense, the notion of group rights, difference-friendly liberalism, and positive discrimination betray a certain Marxist critique of liberalism. Marx contended that oppression was primarily economic, that only through the overthrow of the capitalist forces of production, would oppression end. Because oppression was primarily economic, he declared notions of political individual rights to be both ‘ideological nonsense’ and ‘obsolete verbal rubbish’ – this seemingly fictitious legalistic freedom was contrasted with real freedom to be gained under Communism. Theorists of group rights and difference-friendly liberalism cling to a similar logic – oppression is practised against otherwise excluded minorities. While these groups possess a formal freedom, inequality and oppression remains. Only by bringing these minorities into a full and proportionate participation in the spheres of politics, economics and culture can the real root of oppression be erased.

Yet both Mill and Marx are quite opposed to any promotion of existing cultures. While Mill regarded cultural encumbrances as unavoidable, he also emphasized the importance of individual autonomy and the creative fashioning of the self. He spoke of the ‘despotism of custom’ as being opposed to the ‘spirit of liberty’ (Ibid. p.70). Mill called for ‘experiments of living’:

Where, not the person’s own character, but the traditions or customs of other people are the rule of conduct, there is wanting one of the principal ingredients of human happiness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and social progress.

[…] He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice. He gains no practice either in discerning or in desiring what is best.

[…] He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation.(Ibid.p.57-59)

Marx is largely at one with Mill here – he lamented the role of tradition: ‘Tradition from all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.’ (T. Carver ed., Marx: Later Political Writings,1996, p.32) So clinging onto the remnants of any culture is quite an un-Millian position. This isn’t an argument against specific cultures as such – rather it’s an argument for an individualist, rather than a communitarian, mode of living. This isn’t, then, simply an argument against non-Western religions and cultures, but against all communitarian, anti-individualists ways of fashioning the self.

For Mill, diversity is never a good in itself. It’s a good if it highlights alternative modes of living that free individuals could potentially adopt. It also contributes to the search for truth and the revitalisation of thought. Yet these diverse modes of living are only a good when they express the individual’s chosen path, not the dictates of custom: ‘… his own mode of laying out his existence is the best, not because it is the best in itself, but because it is his own mode.’ (J S Mill, Stefan Collini (ed.) On Liberty, 1989, p.67)

So that’s the theory. In practice, Livingstone strays even further from Marx and Mill. He not only promotes all sorts of benign cultures and religions, but also embraces the malignant ones, embracing those leaders of a fundamentalist Islamism. Livingstone’s just a little too keen on, for instance, Yusuf al-Quaradawi, the latter a diverse proponent of wife-beating - ‘[…] far from being in any way countenanced by the principle of liberty, it is a direct infraction of that principle, being a mere riveting of the chains of one-half of the community, and an emancipation of the other from reciprocity of obligation towards them.’ (Ibid. p. 91-92) -  clitoridectomy, death for apostasy, suicide bombing, and something of a hard-line opponent of the liberty principle for homosexuals. Mill, or Marx for that matter, wouldn’t have embraced any of this nonsense.

There might be the odd Millian or Marxist kernel within multiculturalism. But with Livingstone it appears it’s not only standing on its head, but performing intellectual pirouettes.

Adam Smith on money

Wouldn't get over-excited about getting one of these:

Power and riches appear then to be, what they are, enormous and operous machines contrived to produce a few trifling conveniences to the body, consisting of springs the most nice and delicate, which must be kept in order with the most anxious attention, and which in spite of all our care are ready every moment to burst into pieces, and crush in their ruins their unfortunate possessor.
(Adam Smith, Theory of the Moral Sentiments, IV, p.249)

 

Historiosophistry

It's a mere 32 years old, but still a bit too relevant - Leslez Kolakowski on Edward Thompson's 'double standards of evaluation' (pdf):

And when I say "double standards" I do not mean indulgence for the justifiable inexperience of the "new society" in coping with new problems. I mean the use, alternatively, of political or moral standards to similar situations and this I find unjustifiable. We must not be fervent moralists in some cases and Real-politikers or philosophers of world history in others, depending on political circumstances.

... I simply refuse to join people who show how their hearts are bleeding to death when they hear about any, big or minor (and rightly condemnable) injustice in the US and suddenly become wise historiosophists or cool rationalists when told about worse horrors of the new alternative society.

If you like scorn, spleen and contempt, you should probably read it all. (via Norm)

Being choosy (and right)

A couple of weeks back in the New Statesman John Pilger railed against the apparent lies of, you know, the usual. His attacks range from the ‘fantasy’ of al-Qaeda, Iraq, Lebanon, to New Labour’s outsourcing of GP services. Pilger called for a ‘critical public intelligence and moral sense’, an "insurrection of subjugated knowledge" (quoting Vandana Shiva). The call may have a bit more weight if, say, some of the evidence had what used to be called a factual basis. This paragraph in particular:

In Iraq, in contrast to the embedded lie that the killings are now almost entirely sectarian, 70 per cent of the 1,666 bombs exploded by the resistance in July were directed against the American occupiers and 20 per cent against the puppet police force. Civilian casualties amounted to 10 per cent. In other words, unlike the collective punishment meted out by the US, such as the killing of several thousand people in Fallujah, the resistance is fighting basically a military war and it is winning. That truth is suppressed, as it was in Vietnam.

It goes without saying that the whole paragraph is one of the more distasteful examples of left-jihadism. Yet it’s simultaneously – and un-coincidentally – a slippery enough paragraph that’s almost impossible to falsify. For instance, that 70% of bombs are targeted against the US military doesn’t disprove the predominance of sectarian fatalities. Are these civilian casualties the total number of civilian casualties, or the number of civilian casualties from the ‘1,666 bombs’? Pilger fails to offer us any source for these assertions – we’re really left to take his word for it, which, under the circumstances, is more than unfortunate. Yet, as Pilger seems to be contrasting the truth with the ‘embedded lie’ of sectarian killings, it wouldn’t be a wild step to examine these figures.

If we go to Iraq Body Count, the total number of fatalities for July 2006 is between 1,130 and 1,202. This includes between 214 and 224 fatalities from the Iraqi police. Being generous to Pilger – although I doubt if this would be reciprocated – the total number of civilian deaths for the period ranges from 916 to 978, or around 80% of fatalities.

These figures are in broad agreement with those from Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. They report a maximum figure of 1,280 for total security and civilian deaths in July 2006. ICCC report the total police and military deaths as 217 (83%), in the mid-range of the IBC figure.

ICCC also provide details of military fatalities and casualties. In July 2006, a total of 46 military personnel were killed in Iraq – this includes 43 US servicemen, 1 UK and 1 Other.

Therefore, including civilians, police and the military, total war-related fatalities for July 2006 therefore range from 1,176 (min IBC) to 1,326 (ICCC). Military deaths range from 3.5% to 3.9% of fatalities for the period. Civilian deaths – if we exclude Pilger’s charmingly termed ‘puppet police force’ – range from 913 to 1066, or 77.6% and 80.3%.

So, as it turns out, Pilger is comprehensively incorrect. The very ‘resistance’ he supports is actually killing more Iraqis than US soldiers. Far from ‘winning’, it is destroying Iraqi civil society, and one man, apparently on the left, seems wholly unashamed of his role in the process.

An unreasonable offence

From the Hitch:

Most of all, throughout his address to the audience at Regensburg, the man who modestly considers himself the vicar of Christ on Earth maintained a steady attack on the idea that reason and the individual conscience can be preferred to faith. He pretends that the word Logos can mean either "the word" or "reason," which it can in Greek but never does in the Bible, where it is presented as heavenly truth. He mentions Kant and Descartes in passing, leaves out Spinoza and Hume entirely, and dishonestly tries to make it seem as if religion and the Enlightenment and science are ultimately compatible, when the whole effort of free inquiry always had to be asserted, at great risk, against the fantastic illusion of "revealed" truth and its all-too-earthly human potentates. It is often said—and was said by Ratzinger when he was an underling of the last Roman prelate—that Islam is not capable of a Reformation. We would not even have this word in our language if the Roman Catholic Church had been able to have its own way. Now its new reactionary leader has really "offended" the Muslim world, while simultaneously asking us to distrust the only reliable weapon—reason—that we possess in these dark times.

Provincial relativism

There’s that relativist argument that asserts that humans are solely products of history, culture, the economy, politics, language, etc…; that humanity, or rather ‘humanity’, is the most immensely pliable material; that there are no features of humanity that could possibly be regarded as uniform or constant; everything that occurs is simply a product of these extraneous circumstances – how these circumstances even come into being is never quite explained, only by way of some vaguely tautologous nod to previous historical, economic, cultural or linguistic circumstances. Human agency never quite enters the fray: all that exists is the unceasing flux of anti-humanist historical contexts.

This historical argument is easily transposed, forming cultural relativism. And from these assertions come all sort of ill-judged conclusions: judgement is merely the historically-determined assertion of specific peoples in specific times; there is little prospect of intelligibility between historical periods; all cultures and beliefs are equally valid and equally incommensurable; there exists no possibility of objectivity; there are no historical or culturally-independent facts. History becomes just a further display of the phalocentric, logocentric, Eurocentric – take your historically-determined pick – mindset.

Now, on its own terms, the argument is barely intelligible. I mean, if historical periods (or cultures) are absolutely different, and if humans are only able to peer into other histories from the fortified confines of their current historical position, how could you know these periods were different? Could you write any history at all or might you simply be mirroring the absurd intellectual vogue of your historical location? If other eras are that different and unintelligible, how can an even remotely intelligible history of these periods ever be written? If history is nothing but, well, history, isn’t the entire enterprise doomed from the start?

Equally, how should the statement that everything is historical be viewed? Is that simply a historically-determined view? Or is it a fact? If it’s the latter, fair enough – although how it becomes so is slightly mysterious. If it’s the former, is there even any point in making it? After all, your assertion will inevitably be consigned to the rubbish-bin of history: the only point is either to try and persuade those that miraculously do fall into precisely the same culture and historically period as yourself, and might be able to find some sense in it, of its importance; or that you’re simply speaking for the sake of speech itself, that the air-conditioning’s on the blink and you need to somehow ventilate your head.

And there’s a further problem with this view. While it aims at some understanding of the ‘Other’, it’s simply an expression of its own overwhelming provincialism. Not everything is difference: history is intelligible because there remain some constants; cultures are intelligible as there exist some non-cultural similarities. For instance, in Truth: A Guide for the Perplexed, Simon Blackburn notes:

It is the provincial who finds the ways of the rest of the world too baffling to understand, or who gratuitously reads only the minds of his own narrow circle back into the wider past. … in turn this has a political message. Both Hume and Collingwood hold that it is only when we can find enough in the others as ‘conversible’, that is, in thinking beings susceptible to the considerations we advance, partners in cooperative political enterprises. Otherwise they remain alien, and our only reaction is that of managing them with whatever force we need to muster to stop them from being an obstacle or danger to ourselves.

A realist-cum-universalist can recognise both the constants and the differences. A provincial should probably get out a bit more.

No borders

Eve Garrard posted on the notion of cultural relativism (some of the more outlandish examples being this and this) over at Norm’s a couple of weeks ago (real life's unfortunately intruded on the possibility of an earlier response). It’s pretty good stuff - but in one way it seems to go not nearly far enough, in another, too far.

When we talk of Enlightenment values – universalism, the prioritisation of reason, individual autonomy, the free-flow of ideas, freedom of thought, individual rights, the liberal rule of law – are these values solely and uniquely Enlightenment values? For instance, some of these values – the prioritisation of reason – are not necessarily unique to the Enlightenment. Some display a stubborn permanence over long swathes of human history – they are not confined to the one historical period and its subsequent intellectual and political heritage. So these values might not necessarily be described as solely Enlightenment values. Amartya Sen made this point a few years ago:

… once we recognize that many ideas that are taken to be quintessentially Western have also flourished in other civilizations, we also see that these ideas are not as culture-specific as is sometimes claimed. We need not begin with pessimism, at least on this ground, about the prospects of reasoned humanism in the world.
(Amartya Sen, in NYRB July 2000, pp.33-38)

Describing them as Enlightenment values as such can give the impression – however misleading - of some sort of ‘imposition’ on other, somehow alien, cultures.

Many of the values referred to as Enlightenment values are important in themselves, regardless of their provenance, or not, in the Enlightenment. Just as things like British values aren’t important because of their Britishness: their significance stems from the fact they are, broadly speaking, good universal values. Eve says as much in her second point.

But if this is true, that some of these Enlightenment values are universal, then the third point on the porousness of cultural borders is not a necessary condition of the second point regarding the indigenous sources of these values – you might even argue that by stressing the growing inter-relatedness of cultures, their permeability, you almost undercut the second point of universality: the apparent universality is more of a process of universalisation. If Enlightenment values are universal and good, and can emanate from indigenous sources rather than from foreign impositions, interactions, etc… it could be expected that these values are present, to some degree or another, in most nations, almost irrespective of the degree of cross-cultural dialogue. Kwame Anthony Appiah convincingly argues this in the Ethics of the Identity (p.269) – for instance:

Skepticism about the genuinely cosmopolitan character of the view I have been defending may flow in part from the thought that it seems so much a creature of Europe and its liberal tradition. So it may be well to insist… that my own attachment to these ideas comes, as much as anything, from my father, who grew up in Asante, at a time when the independence of its moral climate from that of European Enlightenment was extremely obvious. Now, it would be preposterous to claim that he came to his cosmopolitanism or his faith in human rights and the rule of law unaffected by European traditions. But it would be equally untenable to deny that the view he arrived at had roots in Asante….

So you might argue this the other way around: that the inter-relatedness of culture is a permanent feature of human life; that the immutable things are the constant flows from one to culture to another and vice versa; yet the world’s open borders are not a necessary precondition of the spread of Enlightenment values, but are symptomatic of its pre-existing universal applicability. Rather than borders being open, in some respects they simply don’t exist.

They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented

What is it with the Guardian and democracy? First, there was Madeleine Bunting (yep, her again) in her attack on the ‘cheerleaders’ of the Iraqi war. Bunting’s case against the Iraqi war was based on the apparent impossibility of establishing democracy in a liberated Iraq – Iraq, it seemed, doesn’t (or at least didn’t) possess democratic foundations:

This callow arrogance about the political cultures of other countries, more than any other issue, prompted my opposition to both wars.

… Francis Fukuyama's new book admits the error of the assumption that "democracy was the default condition to which societies reverted once coercive regime change occurred".

Then we had Martin Jacques musing over the incompatibility of democracy with non-Western societies:

The idea that western-style democracy is universally applicable in the world today is mistaken: it is a product of a desire to impose our system on cultures which are quite different and which require an indigenous form of democratic process that will often be very protracted and certainly very distinct from our own.

Now Jacques’ at it again:

In short, globalisation has brought with it a new kind of western hubris - present in Europe in a relatively benign form, manifest in the US in the belligerent manner befitting a superpower: that western values and arrangements should be those of the world; that they are of universal application and merit. At the heart of globalisation is a new kind of intolerance in the west towards other cultures, traditions and values, less brutal than in the era of colonialism, but more comprehensive and totalitarian.

The idea that each culture is possessed of its own specific wisdom and characteristics, its own novelty and uniqueness, born of its own individual struggle over thousands of years to cope with nature and circumstance, has been drowned out by the hue and cry that the world is now one, that the western model - neoliberal markets, democracy and the rest - is the template for all.

In one sense democracy always has to be ‘imposed’, whether it be internally or externally. Democracy didn’t exist at the dawn of time, it had to be established. Yet its introduction has to take the form of an imposition - it’s simply impossible for democracy to conjure itself into being any other way. While the imposition may be popular – even, you could say, democratic – there must be a prior acceptance of democracy for it to democratically occur, which would, in turn, require a prior democratic imposition. You end up in some infinite regression to the first stage when democracy was imposed.

But why does Jacques refer to this as an ‘imposition’? If democracy always has to be created, was its creation in Europe and the US an imposition? Was it incompatible with the previously (un?)-democratic culture? Do we regard it as being imposed, or simply a reflection of these underlying cultures? When historians refer to the creation of democracy in the West, its development tends to be celebrated in slightly less pejorative, more progressive, terms. Couldn’t this progressive narrative be equally transferable to other nations, even cultures?

For Bunting and Jacques the problem is cultural incommensurability – democracy is an integral element of Western culture. The world is neatly divided up into camps each possessing differing cultures and, subsequently, differing political, economic, legal forms - the erstwhile Marxist Jacques has simply replaced the economy with culture as the determining substructure. Yet this categorisation isn’t the only one available - why specific national cultures? Why not a class-based analysis? Or maybe one that primarily deals with political affiliations irreducible to national culture? Or economic interests? Or even one of universal interests? These could, after all, be opposed to the determinant monoculture that Jacques seeks to theoretically impose. As Amartya Sen has reiterated:

In fact, of course, the people of the world can be classified according to many other partitions, each of which has some—often far-reaching—relevance in our lives: nationalities, locations, classes, occupations, social status, languages, politics, and many others. While religious categories have received much airing in recent years, they cannot be presumed to obliterate other distinctions, and even less can they be seen as the only relevant system of classifying people across the globe. In partitioning the population of the world into those belonging to "the Islamic world," "the Western world," "the Hindu world," "the Buddhist world," the divisive power of classificatory priority is implicitly used to place people firmly inside a unique set of rigid boxes. Other divisions (say, between the rich and the poor, between members of different classes and occupations, between people of different politics, between distinct nationalities and residential locations, between language groups, etc.) are all submerged by this allegedly primal way of seeing the differences between people.

But why is there even the temptation to begin from the assumption of difference? Isn’t it at least equally plausible that humans have some interests that are irreducible to things like culture, economics, politics, territory, etc…? That some values are universal? If democracy is possible in South Korea and Iceland, why not in Iraq or North Korea?

When you begin to empirically test the theory, things start to get worse. For even on their own premise – that Western forms of government (not necessarily confined to democracy) are incompatible with non-Western cultures - wouldn’t you have to logically oppose any non-Western government with even minimal (and seemingly inexplicable) traces of Western influence? Why is it that only democracy is opposed? After all, the Ba’athist government of Iraq was a murderous blend of Nazism and Stalinism. On the basis of Bunting’s and Jacques’ argument, shouldn’t that have been opposed as a Western imposition and subsequently replaced with something more in tune with Iraqi culture?

And what happens when you run into people from non-Western cultures that – despite your careful analysis – want democracy and insist on universal rights? Once again, you could deploy an enormously condescending Marxist term – false consciousness. You could casually inform them how they’re betraying their undemocratic culture – and I’m sure most would welcome the insight. Or you might want to revert to an older notion of solidarity, siding with the victims of oppression, rather than its very perpetrators:

Thomas Mann used to say that Hitler didn’t land on German ground like a meteor, and so Germany, as a result, could never simply rid itself of Nazism. He added, however, that he too was Germany. Rather than trying to sweet-talk fanatics with dishonorable pieties about The Other and respecting The Other, it is incumbent upon us to affirm unceasing solidarity with all the Thomas Manns of the Muslim world.

Guardian columnist seeks enlightenment

‘I need some help’ – yep, for once she’s bang on. Madeleine’s been getting down with Muslim intellectuals: they’re getting edgy about the Enlightenment tradition being ‘used (implicitly or explicitly) against Islam’:

These Muslims then argue that the Enlightenment was a process of European definition in the face of the Ottoman Empire; it was shaped in opposition to Islam and hence has an inbuilt anti-Islamic bias.

It’s the classic Orientalist argument, so all well and good. But… Accusing the Enlightenment of being anti-Islamic is a bit like accusing a curmudgeonly misanthropist of having it in for blondes – it’s not the hair that’s the unique object of enmity. Similarly with the Enlightenment - when it was atheist, it was against religion per se: Islam wasn’t a unique target. In fact, the Enlightenment’s main target was European Christianity, clericalism, and monarchy – the arbitrary authority of theistic tradition and social conservatism in eighteenth-century Europe.

When the Enlightenment did address non-European cultures, it was far from disdainful, without falling into some proto-Buntingesque relativism. It accepted cultural and religious diversity, yet simultaneously held to a limited universalism. It could sometimes indulge religious thought, yet believed religion should be subjected to the appeal of reason. And it also sought to establish institutions and laws to guarantee freedom of religion, freedom of thought, the free flow of ideas, etc…. When Enlightenment thinkers analysed non-European societies, they refused to place cultures in a hierarchy of development, in some crude Hegelian-cum-Darwinian fashion. Far from being uniquely hostile to religion, the Enlightenment established conditions for private religiosity:

Usually deists rather than atheists, concerned with fostering tolerance rather than embracing any type of dogma, most philosophes considered religious faith nothing more than superstition, but they were content to leave matters of belief to the individual. Hardly any of them were concerned with abolishing religious forms of identification and most implicitly understood the difference between “religiosity” and “religion.”

Enlightenment thinkers wished to temper the power of religious institutions by privileging the secular state and, for this reason, traditionalists and dogmatic defenders of the faith – all faiths – have criticized them unmercifully ever since…. Such a stance involves recognizing faith as a private conviction…. For those committed to the Enlightenment legacy, indeed, religion turns into a problem only when it strays beyond the private sphere and identifies its concerns with those of the public weal. (Stephen Eric Bronner, Reclaiming the Enlightenment, 2004, pp.166-167)

But what the Enlightenment balked at was the idea that religion should ever intrude into the public sphere, that it should subsume government and law.

Bunting describes a debate between Bronner – also author of an impassioned, if sometimes rather ranting, diatribe against the Iraqi War – and Jonathan Ree: Bronner sees the Enlightenment positioned

… at the heart of all democracy. It forms the basis of freedom and human rights, for example its views on torture. It argued that we temper our worst tendencies through reason. It was not against religion, but against fanaticism, and argued that religion should be kept in the private sphere…. He concluded by saying we need to pick up the Enlightenment legacy and adapt it.

Yet for Bunting this is all superfluous. Despite holding to some Enlightenment values – free flow of ideas, the appeal to evidence, some notion of what is a true argument, and, the courage to use her own (admittedly tenuous) understanding – she’d rather embrace the irrationality of Freud, Nietzsche and Foucault.

Then we come to this un-enlightened flourish:

… why do people think an understanding of rationality which is over 200 years old is useful now?

Oh, I don't know? Maybe because of all the above? Why does 200 years old become the arbitrary cut-off point? Of course, it doesn’t: if it did, why would Madeleine pay any attention to Islamic thought (1400 years old). Why would Freud (80 years old), Foucault (30 years old) and Nietzsche (120 years old) sneak in through the back door with their theories of irrationality? And why would people still persist in writing (and unfortunately reading) interminable nonsense, despite all the available evidence suggesting they should probably desist?