GHIA NODIA: The End of the Postnational Illusion. [PDF]

So, what did we get wrong? Are we not rational creatures? Did the Enlightenment not really change the world? Should we give up on its legacy? No, there is no need to go that far. I am very far from being a proponent of “postmodernist” (that is, post-Enlightenment) thinking. The Enlightenment itself, however, can be understood in different ways. Our perception of it is too much defined by the ideas of the eighteenth-century French philosophes. Theirs is not the only way to respect progress and rationality; one can do that without enforcing too strict an opposition between reason and anything that looks like “prejudice.”

The Scottish (and, more broadly, the British) version of the Enlight- enment suggests a more nuanced approach that allows for development based on the spread of education, support for individual freedom, and toleration of differences, but without rejecting religion or respect for cultural traditions.14 The Scotsman David Hume was a great Enlighten- ment thinker and a friend of progress, but he also said this scandalous thing about reason: “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”15 Contrary to what one might think, this does not imply a celebration of irrational instincts, or of any kind of “prejudice,” but al- lows for a more realistic understanding of the place of rationality within the structure of human nature.

The other general supposition that underpins the expectation of the coming decline of nations is the idea that human nature itself is largely constructed. Again, I will refer to Marx, who believed that there is no such thing as “human nature,” but only the “ensemble of social rela- tions.”16 We are all shaped by “social forces.” Some combination of these has made us nationalists, but some other combination will “cure” us of that, as well as of any tendency to be religious, or even (so Marx be- lieved) to be selfish. Humanity is plastic, the thinking runs. It can be made over, and made better. This Marxian vision is the wellspring of the social constructivism that has become so influential in the social science of our day.

The belief that humanity is plastic implies that some few should have the power to mold the rest.