Following the myths about ‘rationality’, discussed previously, there is a consequential myth about the Western Enlightenment. In this narrative, the Enlightenment was about the rise of ‘reason’ and the project of reforming the world in accordance with it. There was at this point two clever and deliberate misconstructions. In its origin, ‘the light of reason’ was a spiritual faculty, but almost secular in that it did not subordinate itself to a clerical institution. It mirrored in status one’s individual conscience. There were other religious traditions that did not subject the congregation to the absolute rule of the clerics. That would have been one option for the direction to go.
There were, however, two contrary forces. First, Western imperialism created a demand for a cultural narrative that put the West on top. Second, the emergence and rise of a technocratic class to organise the state according to modern industrial procedures required the management of the state to be taken away from sectional classes, financial, landed or royal. In the Comtean revolution, the new state would be administered by technically and scientifically educated elites. These two forces could be merged. First, the ‘light of reason’ was replaced by reason as a calculating machine. This had the advantage that calculation offered one correct answer, which only the technical elite could discover. History needed to be rewritten, that the fight had been against religious obscurantism on behalf of scientific reason, but only White Western males could fully grasp this ‘reason’. Any contrary history, such as that many of ideas associated with the Enlightenment came from native Americans and that many inventions had been made elsewhere than in Europe would be suppressed. Note 4
This new story was so thoroughly inculcated into students that after a few generations, it became so instilled that when bits of truth were discovered, any explanation for the suppression of the truth was lost. For example, vaccination and early epidemiology was learnt from Africa. English medical authors deliberately revised their draft manuscript to keep Africa out. Note 5 This was not unusual at the time. Adam Smith revised the first chapter of Wealt of Nations to take out Indian Princes and replace them with African chiefs when explaining that the poorest English workmen was better off than X. Note 6 Today’s Western scholars noticing this behaviour, put it all down to ‘racism’ rather than understanding a much broader and quite important engagement. Note 7
This myth of the Enlightenment is of great importance. It is reimagining Western scholars as heirs of the fight against power on behalf of reason. Western academia still presents itself as the school of objective reason. As Jeff Sachs put it, Western philosophers were in fact scribes of power and he gives as an example JS Mill who was a committed imperialist though he is presented in the Western academy as a champion of liberal values. If the self-image of Western scholars is as champions of ‘reason’, this becomes a very powerful narrative weapon and explains the motive of arguing, however implausibly, that Asians (or non-whites generally) cannot think properly or lack full rationality. It is not just racism at work, there is a complicated theoretical and historical background involved,
- Old Myths about the Age of Enlightenment
https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/myths-about-the-enlightenment-that-refuse-to-die
- Three myths about the Enlightenment
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/three-myths-enlightenment/ - Jeff Sachs ‘Trump’s Defeat in Iran & Decline of US empire
32:23. ‘interesting from the point of view of the history of thought. Philosophers inadvertently or not inadvertently often really are just the scribes of power. ‘ - https://www.livinganthropologically.com/history-of-humanity/indigenous-critique/
- ‘Maladies of Empire’ Jim Downs 2021
- ‘Racism in White sociology’ Wulf D Hund in ‘Racism an dSociology’. 2014
- ‘Dawn of Everything’ – David Graeber, David Wengrow – Penguin 2021