T svetan T odorov
THE DEFLECTION OF
THE ENLIGHTENMENT
The history of European thought over the past two centuries–
and, by the same token, the history of Europe itself--contains something ofan
enigma. To evoke it, we need to recall a few well-known facts. In the course
of the eighteenth century, a doctrine emerged which was the combined result
of a secularization of Christian ethics and the first victories of rationalism.
This doctrine proposed a twofold ideal which may still be considered valid
today, and on which a defense of human rights the world over can be based:
on the one hand, the acknowledgment of the equal rights of all human beings,
rooted in the fact that they belong to the same species, and, on the other, the
acceptance of a plurality of cultures-or more exactly the claim that no one
culture is a priori superior to the others. Such was the humanist ideal which, in
France, was crystallized by the writings of Montesquieu and Rousseau .
Though not unanimously endorsed, it was gradually to
carry
the adhesion of
Europe's best minds; later, it would serve as ideological ferment for both the
American and the French revolutions, thus coming to be associated with the
birth of modern democratic states-which is to say, the majority of European
countries.
Such, then, was the "input" around 1750. However, tuking a look two
centuries later at the "output" -the characteristic features of recent European
history-we cannot help but be unpleasantly surprised. For between these
two dates there have been sanguinary national wars within Europe, con–
quests and colonial exploitations in the rest of the world, and the appearance
of two distinct totalitarian systems-immense machines of repression and ex–
termination which gave rise to some of the most horrendous events
in
human
memory. How is it possible to account for the jarring contrast between such
promising intentions and such disastrous results-between so generous a
theory and so deplorable a practice?
Two hypotheses have been advanced here: according to the first, the
Enlightenment cannot be held responsible for the catastrophes that ensued,
for it was vanquished in turn by that newcomer known as Romanticism–
which alone is to blame for all the subsequent misery. According to the
second, the Enlightenment itself is guilty: by virtue ofa diabolical dialectic, the
