Sapere Aude!

Sapere Aude! Enlightenment IV, Or, Two World Kluge

John Taylor; 2006 June 18

Last time we discussed a neologism from the world of high technology: "kluge," meaning "witty," a clever rig-up that serves during the modeling phase of the scientific advance, which in turn is a phase of the "religious method," since "how" and "why" serve each other, each feeding back to the other. The Qu'ran, we saw, advises those who understand to, "...listen to the word, then follow the best of it." (Q39:18, Shakir) The law of Baha'u'llah requires this morning and evening when we relate the experience of our day to the wisdom gained in prayer and reading Holy Writ. Baha'u'llah asked the leader simply to take this to the next level, to consciously choose advisors from among those who show justice and faith (that is, those who know how and why, who have scientific and moral qualifications), and then, "take thou counsel with them, and choose whatever is best in thy sight, and be of them that act generously." (Baha'u'llah, Summons, 209) This approach combines, we saw, the critical "hacker" spirit of Protestantism and the loyal, obedient integrating genius of Catholicism.

When the critical, protestant spirit predominates fractiousness picks love and community apart. Change comes rapidly but the center easily falls apart. Aristotle observed:

"For the law has no power to command obedience except that of habit, which can only be given by time, so that a readiness to change from old to new laws enfeebles the power of the law. Even if we admit that the laws are to be changed, are they all to be changed, and in every state? And are they to be changed by anybody who likes, or only by certain persons?" (Aristotle, Politics)

The hacker or protestant raises questions about habit that can only be answered by God Himself. Otherwise, sedition. Conflict is natural to our state of ignorance. As long as no common understanding exists, we naturally split apart, take sides and form permanent, battling factions. Soon the truth becomes a sideshow to the wrangling. The harm that political parties do was evident back in Aristotle's time; discussing the situation in Crete, he wrote,

"The nobles have a habit, too, of setting up a chief; they get together a party among the common people and their own friends and then quarrel and fight with one another. What is this but the temporary destruction of the state and dissolution of society? A city is in a dangerous condition when those who are willing are also able to attack her." (Aristotle, Politics, Book XI)

On the other hand when the holistic, conservative catholic spirit predominates there is little adaptation to change, or even acknowledgement that change is necessary. Kludges are taken as graven images, as dogma; science and faith come into conflict and an atmosphere of obscurantism dims the sun of enlightenment.

In order to marry questioning with order, with due reverence, loyalty and obedience, both justice and faith must be understood as successive stages in a single learning process. The ancient word "dialectic" describes this intellectual recycling, first a thesis, which is broken down into antithesis and finally it is replaced by a synthesis. Nothing, Shoghi Effendi said, is exempt, not our most precious ideals, institutions, assumptions, religious formulae or legal standards, nor political and economic theories. All are kludges and serve provisionally until the next, improved solution takes over. We apply the kludge and inadequacies show up, we learn, we dream, we redesign, we toss out the kludge and start anew, continually, eternally. Thus, to ask if faith contradicts evolutionary theory is to miss the point; since the Kitab-i-Iqan we know that faith is the kingpin of evolution, not only in theory but practice too. This brings us back to the words of the Bab that began our series on enlightenment:

"Through the radiance of His light God imparteth illumination to your hearts and maketh firm your steps, that perchance ye may yield praise unto Him." (The Bab, Selections, 155)

This is the Bab's answer to Kant's question, "What is Enlightenment?" The guidance of light is a loan that we invest, repay and then we are paid back in the wages of a steward, the favor of being able consciously and sincerely to praise our Lord. All things are of God, He owns everything. If He appears to give us a bounty we must know that it is a trust; we owe it to Him to repay our debt as stewards, talent for talent. Such a debt was paid on our behalf by the martyr-prophet Himself, then by His followers, and is it still being paid right now by Baha'is in Iran.

It is not a coincidence that deficits and national debts are exploding. The trust of wealth given all humanity is being openly shirked by nationalist leaders, the two most prominent of whom are professedly Christian. Sums owed accelerate out of control, worsened by, in the case of the United States, an illegal conflict that, as Al Gore points out, has so far cost almost a trillion dollars, the very sum that would have covered total retooling of the economy to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions. The latter is an investment, as it were a loan to mother nature. She repays such investments many times over in decades to come. Worse, not a penny is spent on establishing real justice, such as ending the slow motion genocide in Darfur. Paying for military actions without justice is worse than the steward who buried his talent, it is burying it where it will never be recovered. The master lent his talents and all know how angry he was in the parable when he got back only his original talent, paid in full without interest. Imagine having no talent at all in hand! That is when we have to hope that the parable will shift to that of the prodigal son.

Indeed, an important part of the Baha'i teaching, as put forward, for example, in the Peace Message, is that the root of the problem is our collective adolescence. The age of responsibility does not come in without a stage of abject irresponsibility. Not only a few leaders but all of us are in the precarious position of the prodigal son who having blown his inheritance must return home hoping only for a job as a menial. In this light, let us cite again the first paragraph of Kant's essay, "What is Enlightenment?" I consider it the Beethoven's Ninth, the "Ode to Joy" of philosophy:

"Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! `Have courage to use your own reason!'- that is the motto of enlightenment."

Tutelage or immaturity is a condition, Kant proposes, of abdicating reason by allowing past and future to dominate the present. The prodigal son dissipates his inheritance in mindless pleasure. The result, Kant says, is that the mind permits a book to take the place of understanding, a spiritual director takes over one's conscience, or a doctor determine one's diet. Being immature is culpable, a violation of our divine heritage. Being mature is being one's own master. A person who roots himself in reason and is therefore free; freedom, in Kant's definition, is "self-imposed lawful behavior."

As Michel Foucault in his own essay called "What is Enlightenment?" points out, Kant's understanding of enlightenment was a "modification of the preexisting relation linking will, authority, and the use of reason." Kant was proposing to his enlightened despot Frederick an implicit contract of "private" obedience in exchange for "public" freedom. Foucault says,

"We might think that there is nothing very different here from what has been meant, since the sixteenth century, by freedom of conscience: the right to think as one pleases so long as one obeys as one must. Yet it is here that Kant brings into play another distinction, and in a rather surprising way. The distinction he introduces is between the private and public uses of reason. But he adds at once that reason must be free in its public use, and must be submissive in its private use. Which is, term for term, the opposite of what is ordinarily called freedom of conscience." ("What is Enlightenment?," in Rabinow (P.), The Foucault Reader, New York, Pantheon Books, 1984, pp. 32-50, <http://foucault.info/documents/whatIsEnlightenment/foucault.whatIsEnlightenment.en.html>)

The reversal of the contract that Kant has in mind is from "do not think but obey," from "be a mere cog in the machine," to responsible obedience on a higher level, what we have been calling a kludge of protestant and catholic and what he calls, Sapere Aude, "dare to know," a contract stipulating: "obey and you will be allowed the full use of reason." Kant was in the middle of writing his critiques of reason and was well aware at the time that reason is flawed and subject to active modeling, testing and replacement. In the essay he spends most time on the example of a pastor who obeys "publicly" in his duties as a member of the church that he has agreed to uphold, but who in his "private" writing, in the books and articles he publishes, is allowed complete freedom to say whatever he wants, even if it contradicts the doctrines of that church. In his words, under an enlightened prince,

"...venerable ecclesiastics are allowed, in the role of scholar, and without infringing on their official duties, freely to submit for public testing their judgments and views which here and there diverge from the established symbol. And an even greater freedom is enjoyed by those who are restricted by no official duties. .... Men work themselves gradually out of barbarity if only intentional artifices are not made to hold them in it."

Reading this I was reminded of Douglas Martin, the only UHJ member that I have ever personally met, albeit long before he was elected onto the supreme body. Clearly, this man is a genius, and I can understand nine people like him sitting around a table acting as a confederacy of geniuses. Anyway, toward the end of his stay on that body he made some public comments that gave rise to vociferous protests among believers. The House wrote a letter -- read it yourself, keyword "Martin" -- pointing out in sum that if it had to consider the popularity of what its members say it would be obliged to muzzle all of their public statements. They were not prepared to do that. Next election, Mr. Martin was not eligible for re-election, the wording of the notice being, well, carefully worded. He was not sick unto death, as that exemption to membership was intended to allow for. I do not have any inside information on what happened, whether he quit or was fired, or indeed if he is healthy or sick. I will have to wait for his biography to come out. My point is only that here is an instance in the Cause of God Itself of tension between public and private freedom. Having had my own private opinions stir up a ruckus in the city of St. Catherines lately, I can sympathize with Mr. Martin.

We will continue with Kant's big question, "What is Enlightenment?" in future essays.

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John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com