The Limits of Reason, Individualism and Secular Morality

Why are Our Liberal Democratic Values Collapsing?

Reason, individualism and secularism are important components of civilisational development, although they are not the only components. The key focus for discussions about the development of civilisation should therefore be the limits of reason. Is the pre-modern heavy luggage slowing down development, or is it the foundational building block of civilisation as the primordial instincts of human nature cannot be transcended?

Between the modern and the pre-modern

The relationship between the modern and the pre-modern is the main issue when exploring the topic of sustainable development of civilisation. Does civilisational development entail the modern incrementally replacing the pre-modern or must modernity be built on the solid foundation of the pre-modern?

In the pre-modern era, society was organised on the foundation of religion, culture, and tradition to sustain the group identity and collective consciousness. In contrast, modernity is characterised primarily by reason and individualism, which arose with the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and liberal political revolutions.

Liberalism tends to consider civilisational development as the modern replacing the pre-modern. Reason replaces the instinctive, and individualism replaces the communitarian. John Stuart Mill cautioned against the “despotism of custom” as culture and traditions are an external authority that imposes constraints on the individual. Liberalism thus often scorns tradition as democracy for the dead as previous generations acquire intrusive influence over the present.

Yet, when building a society based on reason, it must be acknowledged that human beings are divided between reason and instinct, with the latter having evolved over tens of thousands of years and cannot be transcended. As Sigmund Freud acknowledged: “The primitive mind is, in the fullest sense of the word, imperishable”. The principal instinct in human nature is to organise in groups for security and meaning — a foundation for a thriving civilisation. From this perspective, modernity can only exist and thrive if it is firmly rooted in the pre-modern.

Emilie Durkheim observed during the industrialisation of France in the 19^th century that growing prosperity correlated with the rise of suicides. Similarly, how can we explain that the most developed state in the world today, South Korea, has the world’s lowest birth rate, among the highest suicide rates, and the state attempts to combat loneliness and the crisis of loss of meaning in society? The modern has exhausted the pre-modern. Much like a star, civilisations often shine the brightest when decadence has already commenced.

The Excesses of Liberalism

In the birthplace of European civilisation and democracy, Plato and Socrates cautioned that free societies would become increasingly free over time. This was a warning as freedom entailed the individual gradually liberating himself from all external authority and the hierarchies that sustained society. Freedom in its purest form would collapse society and replace democracy with tyranny.

Alexis de Tocqueville similarly referred to liberty and individualism as breaking the “chain” that connected all people in the pre-modern society, as the individual would seek to liberate himself from culture, family, and faith. In the victory of liberty, Tocqueville argued, the individual would “confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart”. Yet, Tocqueville considered American democracy to be successful as the spirit of liberty coexisted with and was balanced by the spirit of religion. Nonetheless, Tocqueville believed that the balance between the pre-modern and the modern was fragile as liberty as a revolutionary ideology would over time free itself from the pre-modern such as religion.

The success of the liberal nation-state reflects a similar balance between the pre-modern and the modern. The nation-state is largely based on the legacy of the pre-modern, as a political construct formed based on a shared kinship, history, culture, tradition, and faith. The nation-state became a powerful and sturdy vessel for Western countries to develop liberal societies based on reason and individualism. This contrast or balance was the recipe for successful civilisational development. Although as Plato and Tocqueville would have warned, over time liberalism would gravitate towards victory by decoupling from the nation-state and thus destroy itself.

Liberalism is an ideology of liberation, and thus thrived in opposition to outdated systems like the Monarchy. Without an opposition, liberalism can liberate society from the social structures it rests upon. The political scientist John Herz wrote in 1950 that international idealism “Paradoxically, [has] its time of greatness when its ideals are unfulfilled, when it is in opposition to out-dated political systems and the tide of the times swells it toward victory. It degenerates as soon as it attains its final goal; and in victory it dies”.

The contemporary divorce of liberalism from the nation-state represents the individual’s rejection of all imposition by external authority. Objective morality is replaced by moral relativism, the secular state transitions to radical secularism as Christianity is increasingly purged from society, unifying culture is replaced by multiculturalism, the family as the most important institution disintegrates, and the individual now even seeks to liberate itself from biological realities with the current gender ideology. As the individual increasingly identifies solely by itself, it produces a toxic combination of narcissism and nihilism that plagues social cohesion.

The balance between the citizens’ rights and duties collapses with unpredictable consequences as morality and meaning largely derive from the sense of duty to the group. Political liberalism was born in the French Revolution under the slogan of “liberty, equality, fraternity”, yet the communitarian ethos of fraternity is rarely acknowledged anymore as a condition for liberal ideals to survive. The French Revolution introduced both nationalism and democracy as the nation became a sturdy vessel to advance the rights of the individual. Can and should liberalism increasingly divorce itself from the external influences of the nation?

Culture represents the roots that sustain civilisations as it unites the group, ties people to a shared past, and culture is also what is worth transferring to the next generation. Max Weber warned that the rationalisation of culture would create a cultural crisis as what we pass on to the next generation is usually based on the divine and permanent, and rarely based on reason. Michelangelo’s paintings in the Sistine Chapel have been a cultural pillar for centuries and contributed to the development of civilisation. If Michelangelo had been born in the present time, devoted solely to reason, he would likely have used his artistic skills in crude commercial activity such as advertising without any contribution to culture. What does our culture produce today that will passed on to define and unify future generations?

Is Secular Morality Sustainable?

Secular morality deals with morality outside of religious traditions, and it is commonly argued that the West has replaced Christianity with the new religion of humanism. Laws replacing religion is thus commonly seen as civilisational progress.

The counterargument is that secularism results in moral relativism. Religion provides permanent truths and divine authority as the foundation for a unifying morality. When Friedrich Nietzsche referred to the rise of secularism as the “death of God”, and cautioned it would result in the collapse of traditional moral values as moral truths would lose their grounding. As a result, moral relativism would emerge as the would be devoid of absolute moral truths. This was also a popular theme by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, most famously expressed in Crime and Punishment in which the excesses of reason convinced the protagonist Rodion Raskolnikov that even murder could be considered moral if the wealth of a wicked old woman could be used for charity to make the world better.

Our laws and humanitarian principles were built on the foundation of religious truths that are eternal and universal. By uprooting the religious roots, can humanism exist independently? For example, the moral opposition to abortion was based on the value of the unborn child, which has since been successfully challenged by the rights of the woman to terminate a pregnancy. Protection of the child is similarly diminished, as for example, sterilisation of children is permitted to accommodate the rights or sensibilities of gender ideology. Where is the eternal and unifying truth and authority? The emergence of “woke morality” appears to be a clear indication of a rival morality that is in direct rivalry with more traditional morality. Furthermore, as these issues are framed as morality there is very little tolerance for dissent, which is deeply problematic as tolerance is the key condition for liberalism. Solzhenitsyn famously cautioned that laws could not replace spirituality as the foundation for morality, and cautioned the West could be on a path to totalitarianism as people would accept anything that was legislated.

The Collapse of Liberal Democratic Values

What are the most sacred values of liberal democracies: Our societies are largely defined by the secular morality of humanism, defined by human rights, free speech, democracy, and peace. However, how solid and durable are the sacred values under moral relativism?

In Germany, protesters are now beaten by the police for protesting against genocide as the protests are framed as being “anti-Semitic”. In France, the CEO of Telegram was arrested for refusing to abide by demands for censorship under the moral argument that “content moderation” is required to fight criminality. In Britain, the freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom to protest have been criminalised to fight “hate” without a clear definition or consistent implementation of the laws. NATO argues that weapons are the path to peace in Ukraine, while the EU openly punishes member states attempting to restore diplomacy and restart negotiations with Russia as this allegedly appeases and emboldens Russia. Collective punishment is permitted under the vague assumption that the entire population contributes to some extent economically or culturally to “Putin’s war machine”. Germany thus makes a moral case for even seizing the private belongings of tourists due to their nationality. Unthinkable practices like legalising the theft of a nation’s sovereign funds are permitted under the guise of helping the victim. In the US, the Democratic Party argues democracy can only be preserved by voting for their candidate, and even sabotaging candidates from their own party as the new leaders should be selected by a well-intentioned elite and not elected by the uninformed public. In Germany, the political-media elites are openly discussing the need to ban the main opposition party altogether as it allegedly does not conform to liberal democratic values. Humanitarianism no longer constrains the use of force, but is instead used to legitimise the use of force and exempt the West from abiding by international law.

It is evident that the moral arguments made in society and by our political leaders do not have any solid grounding and are not linked to anything permanent. Anything can be put into laws, but without a shared moral foundation these laws will rely excessively on coercion. As our most sacred values are now contested under the new moral relativism, should we question the durability of secular morality in terms of the ability to provide the foundation for a cohesive society?

This article is an edited / longer version of my previous article “Civilisational Development and the Limits of Reason” published in the Valdai Discussion Club

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/civilisational-development-and-the-limits/