James Hrynyshyn is a freelance science journalist based in western North Carolina, where he tries to put degrees in marine biology and journalism to good use.
On the one hand, it's kind of sad that early 21st-century society is in need of frequent reminders of just how important reason is. Israelis and Lebanese are slaughtering each other. Iraq is in the midst of what can best be described as a civil war. American politics is dominated by those who believe a flag-burning prohibition is among the most urgent issues facing the country. On the other, it's good to know that some of our media gatekeepers recognize the need for those reminders. Required reading this week for children of the Enlightenment is an essay on the significance of Baruch Spinoza, in Saturday's New York Ttimes.
Spinoza played in a big part in inspiring John Locke, among other early developers of liberalism and democracy. And it was Locke who can claim to have inspired Thomas Jefferson, among other founders of the American realization of those ideas.
Spinoza's faith in reason as our only hope and redemption is the core of his system, and its consequences reach out in many directions, including the political. Each of us has been endowed with reason, and it is our right, as well as our responsibility, to exercise it. Ceding this faculty to others, to the authorities of either the church or the state, is neither a rational nor an ethical option....... he argued that a government that impedes the development of the sciences subverts the very grounds for state legitimacy, which is to provide us physical safety so that we can realize our full potential. And this, too, is why he argued so adamantly against the influence of clerics in government. Statecraft infused with religion not only dissolves the justification for the state but is intrinsically unstable, since it must insist on its version of the truth against all others.
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's essay concludes with a sobering observation.
Spinoza's dream of making us susceptible to the voice of reason might seem hopelessly quixotic at this moment, with religion-infested politics on the march. But imagine how much more impossible a dream it would have seemed on that day 350 years ago.
Email this entry to a friend
View the Technorati Link Cosmos for this entry
Comments
That's great!!
Posted by: Jose | August 1, 2006 8:47 AM
Good stuff: if Spinoza could have hope for the ascendancy of reason in his time, we certainly shouldn't despair.
Posted by: dogscratcher | August 1, 2006 9:48 AM