Maharani (not verified) — Thu, 10/23/2008 - 10:10am

@Rafiq Mahmood
>"Religion, custom and tradition form the basis >for morality."
>On what basis does the learned scholar make this absurd proposition?

It's actually not an absurd proposition. Historically, religion did form the basis for public morality. Concepts like the Locke's "social contract" were developed in a background of declining altruism due to the perception that religion was not a 'rational' means of organizing society.

I would argue that instead of looking at broad intellectual frameworks, such as "the Enlightenment" or "Religious values" it is important to look at specific histories, specific examples. In the case of Indonesia, as elsewhere, we should examine places that have achieved the goals we desire - tolerance, education, development - when starting from roughly similar circumstances.

One thing we need to ensure is that reforms we implement have the support of the people, rather than being reforms we impose on the people. One of the main problems of third world reform is that international donor agencies and local elites take over the process of reform and direct it towards goals that do not have the support of the people, making these projects wildly successful on paper while failing miserably in implementing change. If Islamic idiom is more likely to inspire the people of indonesia, then we should use that to inspire them, rather than adopting a language that is alien to all but the secluded, secular elite.

John Hargreaves (not verified) — Sun, 10/19/2008 - 1:04pm

The 20th century can be viewed as a report card on the fruits of the enlightenment across a wide range of “subjects”.

Millions of people, especially in those countries most influenced by enlightenment thinking, enjoyed longer lives than people ever had before. They were able to plan their own, and their children's, lives, knowing that the risk of fatal or debilitating disease was low. Compared to people in previous centuries, they enjoyed tastier and safer food, clean water, more educational opportunities, more rewarding careers (in many cases), safer working conditions, more varied leisure and advantages from a whole host of new communication media and labor-saving devices.

The belief of enlightenment thinkers that "applying scientific methods in all areas of human thought would lead to radical improvement in the human condition" was thus fully vindicated.

Of course, not all people enjoyed all these advantages, and not all those that did became wonderfully happy as a result; human beings are not designed to experience constant happiness just from long life expectancy. But everyone can recognize that feeling that one's children are plentifully supplied with food and medicine is a lot better than feeling that one's children are hungry and prone to disease.

On the social and political front, the enlightenment also produced huge gains. Slavery was abolished in Europe and North America in the nineteenth century and the death penalty was abolished in most Western countries in the twentieth. Opportunities for poor people to participate in political life and to advance economically expanded as never before and women achieved greater economic, social and sexual independence.

This does not mean that twentieth century people were morally superior to eighteenth century people, but mainstream enlightenment thinkers did not claim that they would be.

Rousseau argued that arts and science were corrupting influences that encouraged excessive pride and the exploitation of knowledge to achieve domination.

Hume wrote that "moral virtues are equally involuntary and necessary with the qualities of the judgment and the imagination" so that "legislators, and divines and moralists have endeavored to produce additional motives for being virtuous." (A treatise of human nature, Book III Part III Section IV). In other words, to promote virtuous behavior requires judicious laws and social constraints, since one cannot much alter people's moral nature.

And Kant outlined the promotion of "perpetual peace" as a political, not a moral, project, requiring such measures as the institution of constitutional republics.

Enlightenment thinkers emphasize the importance of promoting a better life for all through the abolition of oppressive political structures, not a program for the creation of new, morally superior humans.

One way to promote a better life for all is to reduce the risk of war. Evidence suggests that states governed under the more liberal systems generally favored by enlightenment writers fight each other less than states governed under more authoritarian systems.

That 20th century wars caused greater destruction than wars of earlier centuries is unquestionable. But that is because destructive technology, including nuclear weapons, advanced so much, and because the Second World War, especially, directly involved so many of the world's countries.

But the lesson that technological ambition without psychological responsibility leads to tragedy is as old as the myth of Icarus. The instinctive appeal of that lesson is one reason why, for example, airplane crashes, whether caused by accident or terrorism, exert such a grip on popular imagination.

To correctly assess the impact of enlightenment ideas on the Second World War, we need to be more selective.

On one hand, we can see that some enlightenment-type ideas, such as the Third Geneva Convention on the treatment of Prisoners of War, had some worthwhile effects on the conduct of that war.

On the other hand, the German genocide of European Jews is a low-point in world history. But the Holocaust was the culmination of many centuries of European anti-Semitism originated, propagated and encouraged by the Christian churches, not by enlightenment thinkers like Spinoza. The Holocaust reflects the insufficient absorption of the teachings of the enlightenment rather than the excess of them.

Turning to the 21st century we see that devotion to superstition and religion continues to be a cause of wars. Both George Bush and Tony Blair have stated that “God” prompted their decision to invade Iraq. Enlightened advisers could have told them that sending tens of thousands of troops into years of life-threatening combat is not a decision where “divinely-inspired” intuition should replace observation and reason.

And the conduct of NATO’s war in Afghanistan is heavily contaminated by the “War on Drugs”, an enterprise if ever there was one in which superstition and tradition have pushed reason almost completely out of the picture.

Besides seeking historical balance, we should also seek greater clarity on the subject of morality.

The article claims that “religion, custom and tradition form the basis for morality” while “reason”, which is here confused with atheism, leaves us “without any basis for morality”.

It is true that religion and custom have been sources of moral codes followed by many social groups, but the ultimate basis for morality is human nature. Without the human instinct to behave “morally”, however that is construed, no system of morality could gain acceptance or be followed consistently.

What the enlightenment teaches us is that reason can be used to build and test moral systems which are widely applicable and which take into account scientific understanding of human nature. Moral systems derived only from custom and religion, in contrast, are the product of political and economic circumstances in the particular society in which they originate, and easily become oppressive or counterproductive when applied inflexibly in different societies.

The idea presented here that choosing between reason-based morality or superstition-based morality means choosing between “living without any basis for morality” or living with a basis for morality is pure sophistry.

Moreover, the one concrete example of morality mentioned, the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, is largely irrelevant.

Certainly constraints on sexual behavior are central in most societies’ moral codes. But they are also especially likely to change according to the needs and circumstances of the ruling classes (or sometimes the common people!) of the time.

Javanese sultans, for example, often had dozens of wives and concubines without being thought immoral. John Kennedy, half a century ago, is believed to have had extra-marital relationships but was never pressured to resign over them. Other cabinet ministers in some Western countries both before and since have indeed resigned over such affairs.

The latitude for sexual indulgence given to society’s rulers is a matter of social and political fashion and culture as much as of morality. Obsession with other people’s sexual peccadilloes does not equate to a profound commitment to morality. So the Clinton-Lewinsky affair cannot be seen as a key indicator of the state of morality in modern America.

Nor is the characterization here of Japanese and Korean values convincing. The point that Japan “acquired technology but retained their cultural strengths” needs further elaboration. The Meiji Emperor actually oversaw a cultural revolution, including the abolition of the Tokugawa shogunate and the feudal system and the adoption of Western technology.

South Korea’s spectacular economic success cannot possibly be due chiefly to its “traditional cultural values”, otherwise North Korea, which has an identical culture, would be just as successful. But North Korea is burdened with a quasi-religious system of idolatry, which prevents government based on reason, while South Korean governments have pursued policies based on economic pragmatism and intensive scientific education.

East Asian countries have not merely “appropriated” Western technology. They have brought the spirit of scientific experiment, observation and improvement deep into their education system, a fact reflected in the recent Nobel prize awards to Japanese-born physicists and chemists. The hope apparent in statements of some Muslim leaders that Muslim countries can somehow graft modern technology onto quasi-feudal social systems without accepting reason, experiment and critical thinking as core national values is a vain one.

For Indonesia, achieving “glory”, or, more usefully, widespread prosperity, does not require the maintenance of traditions for their own sake. Rather, it requires sound reason and astute observation to combine those traditions which are valuable with modern scientific concepts, while transforming or rejecting those traditions which are based only on dogma and superstition.

Rafiq Mahmood, Bogor (not verified) — Thu, 10/16/2008 - 10:34am

It is time to grow up.

We don’t need the illusion of capitalist greed to bewilder us. But we also don’t need ancient shamans or prophets to tell us what is right or wrong.

European wars were fought using the mass deception of nationalist and racial myths. They were not due to the European renaissance of a few centuries earlier and to suggest they were is absurd.

The renaissance was a struggle to throw off the yoke of religious orthodoxy and get people to think for themselves. The conservative forces of Islamists and American creationists are locked in a struggle for us to come under that yoke once again.

God gave us a brain and made us human, not sheep. We should reject all absolutist dogma which blinds our reason – whether it is the corporate capitalist myth, the myth of nationalism or totalitarianism, the myth of divine law or the myth of tradition or cultural superiority.

I am not saying that there is nothing to learn from the teachings of religion or philosophy or from the traditions of any particular country or people. They are all part of the rich corpus of human thought. But there are no shortcuts, no packages of absolute truth. We have to learn to ponder and select and make our own way.

Our laws should be based on reason, compassion and fairness; to open opportunities for human development not to suppress them; to protect ourselves from exploitation and stupidity. We have to learn from our own and other people’s mistakes. That is why history is so important: the recent disasters of the twentieth century are in grave danger of being repeated. Human development is a continuous process. There is no final law.

Rafiq Mahmood, Bogor (not verified) — Wed, 10/15/2008 - 5:58pm

"Religion, custom and tradition form the basis for morality."

On what basis does the learned scholar make this absurd proposition?