Introduction
Age of reason or Age
of Enlightenment, with the central massage that the universe and the
worldly phenomena can be better and authentically understood by application of
reason, scientific observation and analysis than on the basis of traditional
beliefs, dogmas and religious values or theological principles, was an
intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated
the world of ideas in Europe during what is called the long 18th century. The
movement was quite skeptical about the prevalent religious belief under the
powerful Catholic Church; divine rights of the monarchs and hereditary
aristocracy. The scientific revolution and the Renaissance that looked at the
world more concretely and closely and introduced the new motifs of secular
principles of cause effect relationship and radical doubts set the stage of the
Enlightenment revolution. That is why the Renaissance accompanied by the
scientific revolution of Copernicus, Galileo and Newton is said to be the
transitional phase between the theological medievalism and enlightened
modernism. One of the democratic qualities of
the Renaissance (15th-16th century), preceding the
Enlightenment, in Europe was the abolition of the birth qualification. The
invention of printing press abolished the monopoly of clergy over the
scriptures and the invention of gun powder ended that of nobility over warfare.
The Renaissance also witnessed the emergence of a new species of the heroes,
the hero of the finance. This peripheral Renaissance hero was going to occupy
the center-stage in the next 150 years and become the Hero, as the
capitalism went ahead gaining the foothold and usher into industrial age from
mercantilism, under the new relations of production. An account of rise and
growth of capitalism is beyond the scope of this paper, its brutalities;
cunningness; treachery; and duality of standards are well depicted in many
contemporary novels. Most of the liberal thinkers agreed to the new miseries
and agony of the people but argued in its favor in the name good future for
all. It’s first acknowledged, spokesperson; John Locke declares that
governance is a serious matter that can be entrusted with only those who have proved
their worth by amassing sufficient wealth[1].
The Enlightenment (mid
c. 17th – early 19th) was an intellectual revolution
that emphasized the reason and utility as the basis of explanation of the
phenomenal world over the tradition and faith, is concurrent with the rise and
growth of capitalism. Emergent capitalism that was erected on the ruins of the
variety of feudal structures needed the rationality against tradition and
faith, the ideological source of the validity of the feudal dominance. And
hence the Enlightenment rationally is also the rationalization of capitalism
and the consequent new inequalities; forms of domination and exploitations;
unfreedoms in place of old ones. Enlightenment rationality is also the
rationality of private ownership of the means of production and ‘free wage
labour’ with twin freedoms – a worker is free to sell his labour-power and
equally free to kill himself, as capitalism has freed him from the means of
labour. The celebration of individual of Renaissance humanism was not the celebration
of ordinary but of spectacular, successful, extraordinary intellectuals, people
with heroic deeds, women with extra-ordinary beauty and of princes. It
celebrated the success and not only did not sympathize with the failures but
had disdainful contempt towards ordinary people that was subsequently going to
turn into haughty bourgeois contempt for the producing masses.
With the erosion of theological explanation of socio-historical events of the
phenomenal world, in the context of transition from feudalism to capitalism,
new explanations were needed.
In feudal monarchies, God was the source of validity of the
authority, the religion its ideology. With the erosion of theological
explanations, God vanished as the source of validity of rule. The liberal
political economists, David Hume to Adam Smith, worked out a four-stage theory
of development in terms of procurement of sources of livelihood -- hunting,
pastoralism, agriculture and commerce. The four-stage
theory in Marx’s hands becomes historical materialism. Classical Political
economists defined the value in terms of labour time Marx took the argument
further that it must belong to those whose labour time is expended into it, and
hence the proletarian revolution to take back the control over the products of
their labour. Marx’s economic works are critique of political economy.
Bourgeois (liberal) political theorists, beginning with Thomas
Hobbes and John Lock in the 17th century took up the task of
finding the replacements God and religion as the source of validity and
ideology of authority respectively. They found the replacement of the abstract
idea of God in the abstract concept of the people as the
source of validity of the liberal (bourgeois) state and the ideology of
religion was replaced by the ideology of nationalism. Liberal
political economists and political theorists not only provided explanations of
capitalism but also its justification and under TINA syndrome (there is no
alternative), its inevitability. Marx proved that the live communities are
never without alternatives. Central to liberalism is self-centered
individualism and natural right to property. With exception of Rousseau’s
dissenting voice most of the enlightenment thinkers fall in Gramscian category
of organic and profession intellectuals of capitalism and in response Marx
became the organic intellectual of the working class.
[1]
Sudipta Kaviraj, The Concept of Man in Political Theory, Social Scientist, Dec.
1979 and Jan. 1980
