(1804 words)

Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song in the course of History of Modern Philosophy at Washington College.

In the first unit of the course, we discussed Kant’s “What is Enlightenment,” and explained why religious matters lie at the center of the Enlightenment thinking. Using a few sentences of the essay, Kant argued that state and church should be separated, and the ruler of a state has no business to order what religion its citizens need to follow. In Kant’s word, “salvation is none of his business.”

In the lineage of Enlightenment thinking in early modern Europe, we find that Kant’s idea derives from John Locke, who, in the year of 1686, reflected upon the rampant phenomenon of religious persecution during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), England Civil War (1642-1651), and also in other European states. He wrote “A Letter about Toleration,” which put forward a systemic argument about why the powers of church and state should be separated, and why disagreement on religious matters among citizens should be tolerated in order to secure a peaceful civic order of a state. In a certain sense, reading Locke’s work is like probing the very rocks upon which the American society was built, since his thought was so influential among the founding figures of the country. We can also readily find the collegiality of the first amendment of the American constitution on religious freedom with the ideas of tolerance expressed by Locke’s letter. So, in this second unit of the history of modern philosophy, let’s read Locke’s letter, and deepen our understanding on how our modern society is structured according to these enlightenment philosophers’ ideas.

The separation of church and state, per Locke’s argument, means the ruler of a state cannot use force to command faith upon its citizens. The business of the ruler, called the magistrate by Locke, is to secure a just legal environment for citizens to conserve their life, liberty and property, which interests can all be measured by materials and possessions in this world. However, the business of the church is to take care of people’s soul, and in particular, secure their salvation in their eternal afterlife. According to Locke, the salvation in question must be based upon people’s sincere belief in and practice of religious doctrines and rituals, and therefore, even if a ruler knows a true path towards salvation, the path cannot be imposed upon citizens by force, because once again, salvation is solely based upon faith, and faith cannot be generated by force.

Three major premises underlie Locke’s argument:

• Firstly, humans live in two worlds, a bodily this world, and a spiritual other world. Therefore, different authorities need to be obeyed in these two different worlds, viz., one is the state magistrate and another is one’s church.
• Secondly, Only God knows what is the genuine path to salvation for each human individual, and hence, the state magistrate is no more knowledgeable than any of the church leaders or church goers regarding their religious destiny. Therefore, no one can claim an absolute religious authority to impose faith upon human fellows using force. This also means if a church goer isn’t persuaded by a church’s doctrines any more, the most a church can do is to excommunicate her, expel her, yet with no legitimate ways to impose punishment to her physical life or property.
• Thirdly, salvation is out of faith, faith is out of persuasion, and persuasion cannot be forced.

Seen as a whole, these major moments of Locke’s argument for the separation of church and state are almost what a philosopher can do in his best at that very peculiar historical situation of rampant religious persecutions in early Modern Europe. Since the principle was engraved as part of the American constitution, and when the American government could indeed refuse to impose laws and restrictions on citizens’ private religious practices, religious freedom has been indeed by and large secured, and we didn’t witness similar religious persecutions as severe as in early Modern Europe. In this way, nowadays’ regular Americans need to give credit to Locke’s hard enlightenment thinking, and be grateful to the right they enjoy to practice religions freely.

However, just as we have done to Kant’s enlightenment philosophy, I have to point out that there are intrinsic flaws in Locke’s argument, and in time, these flaws may turn out to be unfit for new situations of human society, which also means if we do not adapt our understanding of religion and politics in time, the organizing principle of the separation of church and state may be proven not being robust enough to support the peaceful civil order of a state.

Firstly, Locke’s understanding of religion is premised upon the division of body and mind, this world and other word, this life and after life. Obviously, this conception is modeled upon Christianity, and its varying denominations such as Catholics and varying Protestants. However, among existing world religious traditions, it is not the case that all traditions share this binary mindset. A tradition, such as Greek stoicism or Asian Confucianism, may not put much thought on humans’ afterlife; instead, how to live a good human life here and now against the backdrop of the entire universe is the central spiritual concern of these traditions. On the other hand, even if it may have some ideas on humans’ after life or their life in another world, a tradition, such as Judaism or Mahayana Buddhism, may not prioritize it, and hence does not conceptualize the function of religious organizations as mainly consisting in taking care of humans’ other-worldly life. Even within Christianity, different theologians and denominations have very different ideas about afterlife and other mythical elements in the Christian scriptures. In other words, if a religion does not prioritize the other world over this world, and if it instead puts a civic, harmonious, and flourishing human society as the front and center of its religious concern, I do not think religious people of this kind would like to follow Locke’s logic. Today, multi-culturalism, religious pluralism, and globalization all become increasingly prominent in each human society, and therefore, the mentioned reluctance to follow Locke’s logic should become a problem to address, rather than a fact to disregard.

Secondly, Locke urges all church leaders to preach tolerance as a central religious tenet within their churches, and hence, anyone who does not preach it as such and thus undermines the very foundation of civil order should not be tolerated. However, since church and state are separated from each other, and especially the system of public education organized by the state is by default not involved in any serious learning or debate about religious matters, there is just no way to discern whether a church or other similar religious organization promotes tolerance and cherishes the very value of peaceful civil human life. The only thing a state can do is to punish religious people who fail to do so after they are evidenced to have committed serious civil crimes against their human fellows on the basis of religious reasons. In other word, the institutional structure designed by Locke’s thinking on the separation of church and state can only punish evil deeds after they happen, but cannot sow the seeds of genuine kindness towards religious others within people’s heart, viz., it cannot prevent evil deeds beforehand. Again, in an increasingly diverse human society, the consequence of this failure cannot be overestimated. An obvious question is that: if you belong to a religious minority, would you like to continue living in a society where a significant larger number of people, because of their different religious beliefs, curse you into hell in their heart, but just have to tolerate your being around in appearance? This would be simply like putting a fire near a gunpowder barrel, or sitting on a dormant volcano, hardly describable as a joyful way of human living.

Thirdly, which I believe as the most consequential flaw of Locke’s argument, is that the mentioned second premise implies that no one truly knows the genuine religious path except God. Therefore, each church is orthodox to itself, heterodox to others, and hence, there is no way for them to argue with each other on religious matters. In other words, religious matters are completely out of the reach of human reason, and whether to take this path or that would entirely depends upon individual persuasion, which basically means everyone is entitled with their own religious opinions among which there is no way to discern truth or falsity.

I say this is the most consequential flaw of Locke’s argument because given certain kind of institutional support such as the universal suffrage of a liberal democracy, it can undercut the very purpose of the separation of church and state, and thus, undermine the very essence of Locke’s philosophy on toleration. Let’s use a thought experiment to explain why this is so. Since there is no way to argue religious matters in public outside the walls of churches, there would be no hurdle either for any individual to choose to believe in one or another faith, and thus, to participate one or another church. For one church that happens to manipulate a higher persuasive power, it can become increasingly large, and thus, constitute the largest voting bloc of a democracy. For obvious reasons, we can imagine that voters affiliated in the church would succeed to elect a party or a supreme leader who advocate laws and public policies which comply with major interests of voters affiliated in that church on a variety of issues. If voters in that church happen to be intolerant towards religious minorities, and if the legitimacy of a government entirely rests upon the majority vote of “the people,” then, theocracy would be readily in vision.

To avoid this dire situation which is contrary to any institutional design of a democracy, enabling citizens to freely, frequently, and effectively debate religious matters using human reason, rather than to enforce religious beliefs among each other in resort to the sheer power dynamic of partisan politics and church authorities, remains crucial.

However, can Locke’s thought on toleration provide methods on how to nurture the very ability of citizens to rationally think and practice religions? Isn’t the case that his thought, if interpreted literally following the words of his letter, run contrary to the needed regime of nurturing and cultivation of the civil virtues on religious matters? Based upon this and above reasons, I would ask the following question to conclude my lecture: in the human society which indicates a vastly different nature from the one which puzzled Locke and other enlightenment thinkers centuries ago, shall we come up with a better philosophy to address the very fundamental issues on the relationship between religions, and on the one between religion and politics?

Reference:

John Locke, “A Letter about Toleration,” edited by Jonathan Bennett 2017.

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Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song at Washington College. And Welcome to the course of “History of Modern Philosophy” at the spring of 2021. As modern philosophy constitutes the very foundation of so many crucial aspects of today’s human society at large, and American society in particular, let me celebrate your presence in the course and expect that we can all learn a great deal from it.

The course is organized with three major parts: Part I is called “enlightenment, war and peace,” Part II is “modern scientific revolution,” and Part III is “rationalism, empiricism and Kantian synthesis.” The rationale to organize it as such is to put the course in a narrative which answers the following three major questions: firstly, what is the most emblematic accomplishment of modern philosophy? How did modern philosophers get there? And What does modern philosophy look like in details? To put it briefly, the answers I try to furnish in the course for your own judgement and further learning are that: the most emblematic accomplishment of modern philosophy is the so-called Age of Enlightenment, and this accomplishment starts from modern scientific revolution when Copernicus decided to put the sun, rather the earth, at the center of his universe. Furthermore, continental rationalism, British empiricism, and Kant’s synthesis of both constitute the rich inner texture of what modern philosophy looks like in details.

So, in this first week of the course, let’s start to learn the narrative through reading Kant’s very famous, relatively short explanation of What is Enlightenment?

The “Enlightenment,” if understood narrowly, refers to those bunch of French “philosophes” such as Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, whose philosophically provoking and groundbreaking work prepares the French revolution in 1789. However, understood broadly, the Enlightenment as a philosophical movement spans almost every major intellectual hubs of the early modern Atlantic world: Scotland, Germany, America, etc. When Kant wrote this pithy yet impactful essay, it was 1784, rightly in the heyday of the Enlightenment.

Another background to understand the essay is that, as it indicates, religious matters lie at the front and center of such an essay which advocates humanity’s continuous independent use of of human reason on all human affairs. But why is religion so important here? Before this video, I post another one for you to learn the so-called Thirty Years’ war between 1618-1648. It speaks to another event which took place at the dawn of the modern world, and had such powerful repercussions over how modern society is structured. The event in question is the Protestant reformation, and the engendered religious Thirty Years’ war between varying Protestants themselves, and between Protestants and Catholics. The solution reached by the rulers of European states in the so-called Peace of Westphalia is to institutionally separate state and church, so that no matter what faith you hold on to, as an individual citizen, the state has no business to impose faith on you, and you are also hoped not to bring your faith into the state’s public business. However, this solution as implied by the Peace of Westphalia was purely strategic; European rulers at that time had to do so because otherwise, war would be endless. Intellectually and philosophically, those troubled Europeans still needed to figure out how to deal with the relationship between religion and politics as such. If we take consideration of the immense progress that natural science has made in the same period, not only the relationship between religion and politics, but religion and human reason in general becomes naturally a prominent theme for philosophers to ponder. Therefore, it would not surprise us why religious matters got such a prominent treatment in Kant’s summary of what is enlightenment. And this also speaks loudly to the central commitment made by enlightenment philosophers cross varying countries of the emerging modern world, that is, they rely upon human reason to prescribe laws to humanity themselves so as to organize an ideal human society of perpetual peace, progress and prosperity.

So, what is enlightenment according to Immanuel Kant? Kant gives the answer at the very beginning of the essay: “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance.” So, to put these two sentences together, and in consideration of the whole logic of the essay, we can put the answer in an even more succinct form: Enlightenment refers to the state of human mind which relies upon a courageous use of human reason in order to achieve the endless progress of human life.

Three concrete practical steps to realize this state of intellectual enlightenment are proposed by Kant: “think for yourself,” “argue in public,” and “obey in private, viz., in varying institutions.” To translate these three steps into a religious context, Kant’s appeal to the enlightenment comprises the following three guidelines: think for yourself so as to believe in the faith which you personally judge as the most reasonable, argue for your faith in public, but obey the leaders in your church. An implication of this guideline is that if you think your church contradicts your own faith to a significant extent, what you are suggested to do is either to collect public opinions in the church to reform it, or to simply leave the church. For Kant, the same practical guideline can be used to other modern institutions, such as government, school, hospitals, or even an international union of states (which will be our topic in two weeks).

Despite being short and pithy, the essay “what is enlightenment” is an exemplary writing of modern philosophy regarding the topic, and later scholars’ studies and debates about the writing are also multi-faceted and ceaseless. I attach a few recommended readings in this module of the class to give you a glimpse into the vibrant discussion of the essay and the topic of “enlightenment” in today’s scholarship. However, in the remaining part of this lecture, let me raise two points which I think particularly worth mentioning, which speak to some intrinsic flaw of the essay, and also, potentially, to why the enlightenment can be seen as an incomplete project even if measured against its own philosophical expression in Kant’s essay.

Firstly, Kant’s definition of enlightenment focuses upon the use of human reason in all human affairs. However, ironically, whether one human individual would like to use her reason, according to Kant, is determined by whether she has “courage” to do so. But “courage” is not a virtue derived from human reason, and it has nothing to do with either reaching a consistent conclusion from premises, or inferring true premises from empirical evidences, viz., two most prominent forms of human reasoning. Courage is actually about the sheer power of human will, which can be motivated by strong emotions such as love, pride, self-satisfaction, fear and hate, to channel human thought or behavior to one direction or another. Wouldn’t we think of it as being ironic that for a project to which the strengthening of human will is so pivotal, Kant almost has no concrete word to say about how to nurture the virtue of courage? As we will study later, within the entire system of Kant’s philosophy, emotions are indeed paid much less attention to compared to human reason. Understood as such, without a robust program of cultivating needed virtues or habits which lead to the courageous use of human reason, the philosophy of Enlightenment is incomplete.

Secondly, we hear much kudos given by Kant to the Frederic the Great, a monarch who reigned in the Kingdom of Prussia in the time when the essay was written. Doesn’t it sound very odd to contemporary readers that while defining the enlightenment as essentially a dissenting voice in public against varying institutional authorities, Kant’s final practical solution to how we can have that sort of needed public space of free thought and speech actually rests upon the existence of an enlightened monarch? If this is the only practical solution to how humans reach enlightenment collectively, then Kant needs to answer how we can expect to have this sort of enlightened monarch at the very first hand. Isn’t it just a random chance for a state to have its enlightened ruler, or something else can be done to guarantee the production of such leaders in the long run? However, even in a more democratic context such as ours, how the entire structure of a state can be organized so as to promote the continual realization of enlightenment among its citizens obviously remains an issue to resolve, rather than one to have been perfectly answered. In other words, without a robust practical commitment to installing a general institutional structure for sustaining the free and open public space needed for the enlightenment, the philosophy of Enlightenment is still incomplete.

Let me clarify my view before conclusion. My point is not that the philosophy of Enlightenment, as articulated by Kant’s thought, is complete, and it just needs time for human beings to figure out how to realize those noble ideals of enlightenment. Instead, according to the above analysis, the philosophy per se is incomplete, and thus, to genuinely take seriously what Kant and other enlightenment philosophers have said, we need to pass on the torch, try to make up what the philosophy per se is lacking, and then, seek a better human society based upon the enlightened state of each human individual. In my belief, we humanity as a whole obviously still have a long way to go before claiming we are in an age of enlightenment.

This article reviews Shaun O’Dwyer’s latest book, Confucianism’s Prospects: A Reassessment (SUNY, 2019). By critiquing philosophical theories of “Confucian democracy” and their shared sociological assumption that Confucianism still functions as a cultural matrix for East Asian societies, O’Dwyer argues that visions on the future of Confucianism alternative to what the currently fixed institutional infrastructure of liberal democracy entails are flawed. This is mainly because if unconstrained by the infrastructure, the hardwired paternalism and elitism of Confucian ethics would necessarily impose morally taxing burdens upon a de facto pluralistic society. This article assesses O’Dwyer’s counterarguments to “Confucian democracy,” and proposes a different approach to estimate the prospects of Confucianism in the contemporary world.

Song, B. (2020). Is Confucianism Beneath or Beyond Ethics and Politics?. Journal of World Philosophies, 5(2), 200–205