What Is Anti-Enlightenment? This Is a Break with Freedom of Ideas, Speech and the Removal of Diversity of Views

Kant’s Call for Intellectual Maturity

Immanuel Kant’s short essay What is Enlightenment? (1784) is probably the most important text of modern philosophy. The famous phrase “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity” defines the titular phenomenon as synonymous with adulthood, taking responsibility for one’s behavior and beliefs. Those who fail to do so fall into a kind of secondary childhood – according to Kant, they go back to the “playpen for infants,” where comfort and lack of independence keep them, and the possibility of relying entirely on others. Kant also contrasts Enlightenment with the “the harlequin bells of perpetual immaturity” as he calls everything that disrupts rational reflection on the world. The essay ends with Horace’s appeal Sapere aude, which means: “Dare to know” (or “Have the courage to use your own reason.”) According to Kant, we are obliged to remain rational even when threatened with criminal sanctions or public disapproval. It matters not that calls to refrain from thinking and instead believe (religion), follow orders (from the authorities), and pay (the state) resound from everywhere. Our primary responsibility, as humans, is to think independently, using our reasoning without relying on guidance from another. 

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Pursuit of Truth: “High-Quality” Happiness

Similar reflections can be found in John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty (1859), written 85 years later. Kant and Mill start from different ethical premises. Kant required rational reflection preceding action, believing that ethics operates in the realm of intentions. An act is proper when it fulfills two moral imperatives: that the principle of an act could become a universal law, and that everyone, including oneself, should always be treated as an end, never merely as a means. Mill, on the other hand, was a utilitarian, assuming reflection on the anticipated consequences of an act. According to the English philosopher, an act is morally right when it brings the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people, which also includes the maximum possible reduction of suffering. Unlike earlier utilitarians, Mill assumed that types of happiness differ not only in intensity or frequency but also in quality. Personal development and the pursuit of truth belong to his “high-quality” types; therefore, “it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.” 

Freedom of Ideas. The Courage to Think Boldly

The reflections in the On Liberty essay relate precisely to this dimension of utilitarianism. Mill writes, among other things, that “He who lets the world, or his portion of it, choose his plan of life for him has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation.” Only by making individual choices do we learn what ethics is about. According to the philosopher, “The world loses in the multitude of promising intellects combined with timid characters, who dare not follow out any bold, vigorous, independent train of thought, lest it should land them in something which would admit of being considered irreligious or immoral?” However, persisting in independently developed opinions can also have negative consequences. Well, “he who knows only his side of the case knows little of that.” What, then, does this thinker recommend as developing for the individual and society? Exactly the same as in Kant, “making public use of one’s reason at every point,”, that is, not only having one’s own opinion but also participating in discussions when one has something to say or when one has arguments against the prevailing opinion.

Freedom of Ideas: The Right to Be Wrong

Both Kant and Mill considered dangerous uniformity of the views imposed by the state and religion. This stemmed from the fact that public opinion in the 18th and 19th centuries looked quite different than today. Views that violated the prevailing consensus included, for example, atheism or feminism, advocated by Mill, as well as cosmopolitanism, expressed by Kant. The philosophers were not aiming to impose these ideas, but to allow for their expression – for freedom of speech. Today’s “harlequin bells” confuse actions with words, demanding that words be subject to what is right only about actions. Words can be wrong and even should be if we are to learn to think and discuss, while actions should be right because their consequences, unlike words, are irreversible – what is done cannot be undone. If this swap was applied to Kantianism, one could not say anything that could not become a universally binding law, while utilitarianism based on this swap would have to prohibit views that cause distress to a large group of people. 

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Shielding the Marginalized: The Ethics of Restricted Speech

Today’s ethics, standing in opposition to freedom of speech, assumes a specific kind of equality – equality of recognition. Certain identities should be particularly protected from words that may hurt them, evoking reminiscences of past mistreatment. These identities include inhabitants of formerly colonized countries, ethnic and religious minorities in America and Europe, as well as women, especially those not conforming to stereotypical patriarchal scenarios. Added to this are transgender individuals who were not recognized at all before the second half of the 20th century. Therefore it is difficult to say that they were harmed by contemptuous words.

How to avoid inappropriate words toward the first of these groups? Clearly, by avoiding statements that people of a certain origin or faith are subhuman. However, this is not enough today, and one should refrain from any terms referring to one’s origin or faith. “The situation of women in the Islamic countries is harmful,” “black men in the United States are often imprisoned,” and “in Far Eastern countries, fertility rates are very low,” – these statements are considered stereotypical, despite being factually accurate. 

Words and Actions

Treating words like actions equates such formulations with something akin to refusing someone employment based on religion or ethnicity, or even inciting violence against them. Consequently, one cannot even offer a compliment referring to ethnic difference – such as “I like Arab cuisine” or “Afro hair feels nice to touch” – without offending the guardians of the new morality, who are most often… white and affluent Most people from the mentioned minorities do not want to be protected through censorship; rather, they care about freedom of speech for… themselves. 

Exactly, the same applies to women. We are all tired of the sexism that has seeped from high and low culture, as well as from table conversations and social events, since our childhood – regardless of how long ago that was. Mocking women and reducing the female sex to physical attractiveness should be consigned to the dustbin of history, alongside theories of Jewish conspiracies and the slave nature of black people. However, this does not mean that women do not differ from men or that the word “woman” cannot be used in the context of the sexual dimorphism of the homo sapiens species, that is, the most important, real division of people into men and women. 

Freedom of speech and the new censorship

Yet the new censorship demands precisely this. It aims for a form of common language, in which we will all be neutral “persons,” not old-fashioned “women” and “men.” Here too, it is mainly women, including feminists, who oppose the proposed neutrality. For feminism, and a realistic view of the world in general, femininity is primarily not a harmful social construct, but a material reality. One can overlay it with contemptuous stereotypes, or even reduce it to them. However, one can also describe it adequately, as one of two equivalent forms of human existence.

Understanding transsexualism as an oppressed identity, harmed by any mention of the biological nature of sex, is a continuation of this enforced blindness to sex. It finds expression in referring to everyone as a “person,” and in the case of women – “person with something” or “person in some state” (“with a uterus,” “menstruating”). Men are almost never described in “inclusive” newspeak by their prostate or their role in fertilization. When a male identifies as a woman, we are forced to refer to him as a “woman” and “she,” not as a “person with something” or even a “trans person.” Those who do not speak this way are accused of “hatred toward trans people,” and sometimes even of “opposing their existence.” How to proceed in such circumstances? If we treat “pronouncing” as a courtesy, we can speak to trans people as they wish. However, if we mean to strictly refer to facts, we should not speak this way, as it is inconsistent with them. This is precisely where the weakness of this ethics becomes apparent, as the realization of what it considers good is at odds with truth.

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A New Moral Imperative to Lie

In his essay On Liberty, Mill criticizes a particular paradox of Victorian law: the prohibition of atheists from testifying in court. It was assumed that people who did not swear on the holy book had no reason to tell the truth, as they did not fear posthumous punishment for perjury. This way, English courts forced non-believers to lie about being believers in order to give (truthful) testimony at all. Here we have something very similar. In order to be credible as “inclusive” individuals, worthy of participating in discussions among enlightened people, we must lie that sex is irrelevant to being a woman or a man. Is this not the best example of anti-Enlightenment, the “harlequin bells” that require us to treat speaking untruth as a moral imperative?

Moreover, “inclusive” ethics like to invoke diversity that is allegedly denied by gender “essentialism” of sex derived from biology (rather than stereotypes or self-identification). By prohibiting opinions contrary to the accepted one, even if they were absurd – and in this case, the accepted one is evidently absurd! – one denies diversity rather than expressing it. In this context, it is worth recalling Mill’s perhaps eternally relevant statement that “mankind speedily becomes unable to conceive diversity when they have been for some time unaccustomed to seeing it.”

Freedom of Ideas and Unwelcome Voices?

Finally, one more issue is worth discussing. People criticizing “inclusive” censorship are often accused not only of “hatred” towards groups about whom they said nothing bad but also of irony or mockery. I myself constantly face such accusations, usually in the context of discussions with opponents who believe they need not adhere to any rules because, firstly, they are right, and, secondly, they are combating views unworthy of existence. For them, too, I have a quote from Mill that perfectly applies to the current state of discussion. 

“With regard to what is commonly meant by intemperate discussion – namely, invective, sarcasm, personality, and the like – the denunciation of these weapons would deserve more sympathy if it were ever proposed to interdict them equally to both sides; but it is only desired to restrain the employment of them against the prevailing opinion; against the unprevailing they may not only be used without general disapproval, but will be likely to obtain for him who uses them the praise of honest zeal and righteous indignation. Yet whatever mischief arises from their use is greatest when they are employed against the comparatively defenseless; and whatever unfair advantage can be derived by any opinion from this mode of asserting it, accrues almost exclusively to received opinions. The worst offense of this kind which can be committed by a polemic is to stigmatize those who hold the contrary opinion as bad and immoral men. To calumny of this sort, those who hold any unpopular opinion are peculiarly exposed, because they are in general few and uninfluential, and nobody but themselves feels much interested in seeing justice done them;” 

As one of those few and powerless non-conformists, I cordially greet all who would like to exclude me from the discussion! 

Translation: Marcin Brański

All quotes from What is Enlightenment? by I. Kant translated by Lewis White Beck

Polish version: Czym jest antyoświecenie? To zerwanie z wolnością słowa i usuwanie różnorodności poglądów