The idea of enlightenment entails liberty, equality, rationalism,
secularism, and the connection between knowledge and human well
being. In spite of the setbacks of revolutionary violence,
political mass murder, and two world wars, the spread of
enlightenment values has become the yardstick by which moral,
political, and even scientific advances are measured. Indeed, most
critiques of the enlightenment ideal point to failure in
implementation rather than principle. By contrast, David Stove, in
On Enlightenment, attacks the intellectual roots of enlightenment
thought, to define the limitations of its successes and the areas
of its likely failures.
Stove is not insensitive to the many valuable aspects of
enlightenment thought. He champions the use of reason and
rationality, and recognizes the falsity of religious claims as well
as the importance of individual liberty. What he rejects is the
enlightenment's uncritical optimism regarding social progress and
its willingness to embrace revolutionary change. What evidence is
there that the elimination of superstition will lead to happiness?
Or that it is possible to accept Darwinism without Social
Darwinism? Or that the enlightenment's liberal, rationalistic
outlook will ever lead to the kind of social progress envisioned by
its advocates.
Despite their best intentions, social reformers who attempt to
improve the world as a whole inevitably make things worse. He
advocates a conservative "go slow" approach to change, pointing out
that today's social structures are so large and complex that any
widespread social reform will have innumerable unforeseen
consequences. For example, the welfare state may diminish
individual initiative, the use ofpesticides may increase the food
supply while polluting the water supply, the popularizing of
university education may lead to a decline in academic standards.
Since government has a virtual monopoly on large-scale change, it
follows, in Stove's view, that its powers must be limited in order
to prevent large-scale damage. Instead, he argues that reforms,
when they are to be made at all, must be realistic, local,
necessary and never coercive.
Writing in the conservative tradition of Edmund Burke with the
same passion for clarity and intellectual honesty as George Orwell,
David Stove was one of the most precise, articulate, and insightful
philosophers of his day.
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