Friedrich Nietzsche on German hostility to the Enlightenment (1881) / Zeev Sternhell on the price to be paid for cultural differentialism
German hostility to the Enlightenment - Let us consider the intellectual contribution to general culture made by the Germans of the first half of this century, and let us take first the German philosophers: they retreated to the first and oldest stage of speculation, for, like the thinkers of dreamy ages, they were content with concepts instead of explanations - they brought to life again a pre-scientific species of philosophy. Secondly, the German historians and romantics: their general endeavour was to bring into honour older, primitive sensibilities and especially Christianity, the folk-soul, folk-lore, folkspeech, the medieval world, oriental asceticism, the world of India.
Thirdly, the natural scientists: they fought against the spirit of Newton and Voltaire and, like Goethe and Schopenhauer, sought to restore the idea of a divine or diabolical nature suffused with ethical and symbolic significance. The whole great tendency of the Germans was against the Enlightenment and against the revolution in society which was crudely misunderstood as its consequence: piety towards everything that exists sought to translate itself into piety towards everything that ever had existed, to the end that heart and spirit might once more become full and no room be left for future and novel goals.
The cult of feeling was erected in place of the cult of reason, and the German composers, as artists of the invisible, emotional, fabulous, unsatisfied, built at the new temple more successfully than any of the artists of words or of ideas. Even if we take into account the enormous quantity of individual achievement, and the fact that since that time many things have been judged more fairly than they were before, it must nonetheless be said that there was no small danger involved when, under the appearance of attaining a full and final knowledge of the past, the movement as a whole set knowledge in general below feeling and - in the words Kant employed to designate his own task - ' again paved the way for faith by showing knowledge its limitations'. Let us breathe freely again: the hour of this danger has passed!
And strange: it is precisely the spirits the Germans so eloquently conjured up which have in the long run most thwarted the intentions of their conjurers – after appearing for a time as ancillaries of the spirit of obscurantism and reaction, the study of history, understanding of origins and evolutions, empathy for the past, newly aroused passion for feeling and knowledge one day assumed a new nature and now fly on the broadest wings above and beyond their former conjurers as new and stronger genii of that very Enlightenment against which they were first conjured up. This Enlightenment we must now carry further forward: let us not worry about the 'great revolution' and the 'great reaction' against it which have taken place - they are no more than the sporting of waves in comparison with the truly great flood which bears us along!..
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE; Daybreak (Book III, Sec 197); 1881 (CUP 1997)
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Extract from Zeev Sternhell; The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition: Just as the manuscript of this book was about to be sent to the publisher, I found in a Parisian bookshop a collection that had just come in, Kant cosmopolite, edited by Charles Zarka and Caroline Guibet Lafaye (Paris: 2008). In one of the essays in this collection, “Cultural Pluralism and Cosmopolitanism in Kant,” Monique Castillo (pp. 39 - 40) speaks of the very high price to be paid for cultural differentialism. What is required, she says, “by the idea of the cultural equality of all cultures, is the reduction of humanist universalism to a mere prejudice and unilateral cultural violence.
In a word, the ultimate
foundation of differentialism is the negation of humanism as the supreme
legitimation of the equal dignity of all men. Above the equal dignity of men, differentialist
pluralism places the cultural equality of all national particularisms.”
According to (Charles) Taylor and his friends, particularism constitutes a new kind of
liberalism: this kind, to use Michael Walzer’s terminology in his commentary on
Taylor, is “Liberalism, no. 2,” as opposed to “Liberalism, no. 1,” which is a
liberalism that “is committed in the strongest possible way to individual
rights and, almost as a deduction from this, to a rigorously neutral state,
that is a state without cultural or religious projects or, indeed, any sort of
collective goals beyond the personal freedom, and the physical security, welfare,
and safety of its citizens. The second kind of liberalism (“Liberalism, no.
2”) allows for a state committed to the survival and flourishing of a
particular nation, culture or religion, or of a (limited) set of nations,
cultures, and religions - so long as the basic rights of citizens who
have different commitments or no such commitments at all are protected”
(Michael Walzer, “Comment,” in Gutmann [ed.], Multiculturalism, p. 99).
The preference of both Taylor and Walzer is clearly for “Liberalism, no. 2.” One should add here that already in the 1960s and 1970s, when the contemporary cult of Herder and his multiculturalism or pluralism began with (Isaiah) Berlin, Claude Levi-Strauss showed - as Costillo very rightly points out on p. 41 - that it is impossible both to promote a humanistic ideal of communication between cultures and to maintain the incommunicable and inimitable originality of each culture. Levi-Strauss was conscious of the antihumanist and antiuniversalist role played by cultural differentialism.
In a truly Herderian text, he wrote: “We cannot close our eyes to the fact that, despite its urgent practical necessity and the high moral goals it has set itself, the struggle against all forms of discrimination is part of the same movement that is carrying humanity toward a global civilization -
a civilization that is the destroyer of those
old particularisms, which had the honor of creating the aesthetic and spiritual
values that make life worthwhile.” If it wishes to avoid cultural and spiritual
decadence, humanity “must learn once again that all true creation implies a certain
deafness to the appeal of other values, even going so far as to reject them if
not denying them altogether. For one cannot fully enjoy the other, identify with
him, and at the same time remain different. When integral communication with
the other is achieved completely, it sooner or later spells doom for both his
and my creativity”: Claude Levi-Strauss, The View from Afar, trans. by
Joachim Neugroschel and Phoebe Hoss (New York: Basic Books, 1985), pp. 23–24. See also his “Race and History” in a
collection edited by UNESCO in 1956: The Race Question in Modern Science,
pp. 125–132. In their struggle against the
Enlightenment, Herder, de Maistre, and Spengler used very similar arguments.
Obviously, these arguments can be invoked for very different purposes, but
basically they have the same principle.
Zeev Sternhell; The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition; (2009); Endnote # 24 to Introduction: pp 450-451
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The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition;
Chapter 6, The Intellectual Foundations of Nationalism; pp 282-3:
A nation is a
totality, a living organism, and that totality finds its most perfect
expression in language. The question then arises, If language is the storehouse
of the thought of each nation, does thought still have a universal significance
and vocation? Thought can only have universality if one accepts the Voltairian
conception of the instrumentality of language. Herder, while focusing his
interest on the particular, also had aspirations to universality, but he was a
German first of all, and he thought that just as God alone could embrace the
whole of mankind at a glance, so he alone could penetrate the spirit of foreign
languages and cultures. This cult of the particular, the individual, and the
specific, this new and original Herderian contribution, which gives a
revolutionary meaning to the very idea of collective identity, was to play an
important role in the rise of cultural and political nationalism. That is why
Herder was a much more modern figure than de Maistre, and contrary to Isaiah Berlin’s
opinion, Herder’s intellectual contribution to the war against natural rights
and the principles of 1789 was much greater than that of the writer of Soirées
de Saint-Pétersbourg. De Maistre’s reaction was less dangerous because less
credible, seeking to defend an Old Regime that one knew had gone forever,
whereas Herder’s rejection of the Enlightenment heralded the rise of the new
forces of nationalism. The nationalism of the turn of the twentieth century was
undoubtedly based on Herder’s idea of the nation, not on de Maistre’s appeal to
papal sovereignty.
We saw earlier that, despite the great clarity with which the idea was originally expressed, the accepted opinion is still that one of Herder’s greatest claims to fame, apart from his “invention of the historical world,” was his invention of pluralism and diversity. This explains his supposed respect for non-European peoples and cultures. Herder is thus contrasted with the Enlightenment’s supposed Eurocentrism and supposed disdain for the non-European world.
He is also made
out to be the prophet of all civilizations and all periods. In reality, Herder’s
position was far less advanced than Voltaire’s. He did not see all values as
equal; he simply set up a different scale. To the rationalism, individualism,
and secularism of the Enlightenment, he opposed the Christian, Germanic, and
medieval alternative. Whereas for the philosophes progress was uniquely due to
the human spirit, he saw the evolution of humanity as governed by Providence
and the realization of a divine plan. Herder’s system can be viewed as the
final outcome of the Christian philosophy of history that, since the conversion
of the Roman state and the evangelization of the barbarians, had tended to
identify historical reality with the will of God, to the detriment of human
liberty. After Vico, Herder was the representative of the Christian philosophy
of history in the eighteenth century. That is the reason why the Far East is
absent from Another Philosophy and has only a marginal role in Ideas.
On the other hand, no
other author gave so important a place to non-European peoples as Voltaire. At
the very beginning of An Essay on the Manners, he objected to the idea
of the inferiority of the peoples of America and Africa, whom the Europeans
regarded as savages:” The so-called savages of America are sovereigns who
receive ambassadors... They are acquainted
with honor, which our European savages have never heard of.”….
The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition; Chapter 6, The Intellectual Foundations of Nationalism; pp 282-3
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STANISLAV
MARKELOV - Patriotism as a diagnosis
Julien Benda: Our age is the age of the
intellectual organization of political hatreds
José Vergara’s “All Future Plunges to the
Past: James Joyce in Russian Literature”
Vijay
Tankha: On Socrates' birthday, what can be said about the philosopher whom
nobody has read?
Science,
society and related matters: an exchange
Two lectures on time and ideology: January
23 and 24
A pre-history of post-truth, East and West.
By MARCI SHORE
Michiko Kakutani - The death of truth: how
we gave up on facts and ended up with Trump
Farewell to reality - WHY WE’RE POST-FACT
by Peter Pomerantsev
Why can’t we agree on what’s true anymore?
By William Davies
Alexander Klein: The politics of logic
Walter Benjamin:
Capitalism as Religion (1921)
