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PARTISAN REVIEW
The historical villain of the piece is the age of Enlightenment. "Existen–
tialism is the counter-Enlightenment come at last to philosophic
expression; and it demonstrates beyond anything else that the ideology
of the Enlightenment is thin, abstract, and therefore dangerous."
This summing-up of the significance of existentialism is, I believe,
misleading: it makes for a one-sided interpretation of existentialism
and a one-sided reading of the Enlightenment, which I do not share.
It is, of course, true that the simple eighteenth-century faith in
reason, production, and education as the chief vehicles of human
progress has exploded in the H-bomb; it is also true that the abstract
rationalism of mathematical science and the technological apparatus has
contributed to the alienation of modern man; finally, there is no doubt
that a principal objective of the existentialist movement, from Marx
to Sartre, has been to reverse this process of alienation. But after we
have recalled these truths, it is perhaps also time to take a new look at
the Enlightenment. For the official and popular interpretations of this
age frequently reflect conventional stereotypes which only serve to re–
inforce the irrationalism of our own culture. In pointing to the
deficiencies of the Enlightenment, we may see the mote in the age of
reason, but not the beam in the ages of unreason.
Thus it is also worth recalling that ages of Enlightenment have been
relatively brief and rare in the history of mankind. The heavenly city
of the eighteenth-century philosopher was a brief interlude, too, preceded
and superseded by ages in which magic, mystery, and authority predom–
inate. It is a vast overstatement, if not a gross error, to suggest that
the fatal flaws in our culture are due to the spirit of rationalism prop–
agated by the Enlightenment. Secondly, after we have exposed the
dangers of science and technology, we should not forget that they
are
also
vicious and destructive because they operate in a world devoid
of reason. Of course, they helped to create this brave, new world;
but who used them and why? Thirdly, it is another stereotype to
think that the shadow-world of man did not exist for the philosophers
of the Enlightenment. Voltaire and Hume were not blind to irrationalism,
superstition, and madness. Kant, who wrote a brilliant essay in defense
of human enlightenment, was just as obsessed with the radically evil
nature of man. "It is hard to suppress a certain disgust," he confessed,
"when contemplating men's action upon the world stage. For one
finds, in spite of apparent wisdom in detail, that everything taken
as a whole is interwoven with stupidity, childish vanity, viciousness
and destructiveness. In the end, one does not know what kind of concep–
tion one should have of our species which is so conceited about its
