The belief that science can abolish immemorial evils is plainly magical thinking, and yet it continues to be widely accepted. https://t.co/Lyst5L2QMY
— New Statesman (@NewStatesman) 2018年11月11日
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For Wootton, the rise of science was the biggest paradigm shift of all – a cognitive revolution that altered the way humans think about the world completely and irreversibly. Between the 16th and 18th centuries the writings of Machiavelli, Hobbes and Smith established “an Enlightenment paradigm”, a system of beliefs about human beings as largely selfish creatures, sociable insofar as they feel sympathy for one another and realise that their welfare is intertwined, but essentially governed by the pursuit of their own desires.
In this system, the only rational goal of society is the maximum satisfaction of wants, and the only way of achieving this is a commercial society based on a market economy, private property and limited government. In this view, goodness is simply a set of strategies for pursuing whatever human beings most desire. Moral reasoning of the sort practised by Aristotle and Aquinas depended on the belief that there is an objectively good way of life. Once that belief has been given up, the pursuit of goodness is meaningless. All that remains is a utilitarian cost-benefit calculus.
Marx’s thought consisted in large part of a criticism of what Wootton defines as the Enlightenment paradigm. But Marx’s was an immanent critique of Enlightenment thinking, and the movements he inspired always regarded themselves as continuing an Enlightenment project.
Enlightenment thinking has continued in a variety of forms that Wootton’s narrow paradigm would exclude. At the same time powerful movements have arisen that promote a variety of counter-Enlightenment projects, of which he is dismissive:
The Enlightenment has resisted all efforts to kill it off.
Like Weber, Wootton exaggerates the rationality of modern life.
But it is also true that Western governments have been profoundly influenced by modes of thinking that reject instrumental reason.
If our world was ruled purely by rationality of the kind promoted by Machiavelli or Hobbes, some of the errors and follies of recent times might well have been avoided. Could anyone deploying cost-benefit analysis have dreamt up the ruinous invasion of Iraq? Ten minutes of instrumental reasoning would have shown that the impact of regime change was at best unpredictable and would most likely be disastrously chaotic
More than by bungling realpolitik, the Iraq adventure and its yet more disastrous rerun in Libya were inspired by strands in Enlightenment thinking that Wootton neglects – notably the persisting influence of ideas derived from Western religion.
A major ingredient in the intellectual melange from which these “wars of choice” sprang was the ideology of democracy promotion – the belief that human beings everywhere dream of being delivered from tyranny. Originating in core Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke and Immanuel Kant – whose political thinking was shaped by the universalistic evangelism of Christianity – this secular faith has been at least as influential in modern politics as utilitarian cost-benefit analysis.
The third of Wootton’s intellectual revolutionaries, Adam Smith, also relied on the formative ideas of monotheism. His argument for free trade deployed a Christian belief in a divine providence that placed peoples with different skills in different parts of the world so that they could trade with one another productively. Similarly, the Enlightenment of the American Founding Fathers depended on theistic assumptions about human rights being grounded in duties to God
Earlier types of thinking did not altogether disappear with the rise of the Enlightenment, they mutated
The belief that science can abolish immemorial evils is plainly magical thinking, and yet it continues to be widely accepted. How often have we been told that science can banish famines? No doubt new technologies can make physical shortage of food a thing of the past but science cannot prevent catastrophic famines of the kind that is now engulfing Yemen, for example. The causes of such famines are not in physical scarcity but human behaviour. If millions starve to death in that unfortunate country, it will be because of a reckless war. The growth of scientific knowledge does not make human beings more reasonable. It merely gives some of them more power to do what they want. Rather than irrational behaviour being eliminated, science has magnified the scale and consequences of human crime and folly.
、人間は利己的で、欲望の最大限の実現が唯一の善であり、そうするには、市場経済、所有権を確保し、政府の機能も制限された商業社会にするのがよいとい発想が誕生してきた。利害を功利的に計算し、欲望を達成する手段を考える知性こそ合理的精神である、というのがマキュベリー、ホッブス、アダム・スミス三大巨頭の発想の核心であり、以後のイデオロギーの流れをガラリと変えてしまった、という主張があるが、そうでもあるまい、と。
アメリカの建国の父たちのは神への義務という神観にたっていたし、功利的な計算で考えれば、イラク戦争などするはずもないが、計算を度外視して戦争にうってでたのは、、民主主義を拡散するというキリスト教の布教精神があったからであろう、と。以前の発想が消滅して、全く新しい発想にがらりとかわっていくわけではなく、以前の発想も形を変えて残存しているのである、と。
科学が悪を駆逐すると信じている人たちがまだいるが、科学が進歩しても、飢餓はなくならない。イエメンを見てみるがよい。科学的知識が増えたからといって、道理をわきまえたことにはならい。科学的によってある種の人々の欲望は達成させることはできるが、同時に、科学は、人間の犯罪と愚行を強化、拡大してしまったのである、と。
ー科学ってわりに意味が広いですから、この科学の悪徳的側面はテクノロジー科学技術という言葉を個人的には選択したい。
