It’s a strange and striking absence that I observe in some conservative voices when, in attacking Islamic fundamentalism, communism or wokisminvoke “the inalienable values of Western civilization”. In the enumeration that they usually make of the great pillars of it, they infallibly underline the Greek philosophy, Roman law and the Christian religion, but they always forget a fourth pillar just as essential as the three others, even if it is the latest and precisely for this same reason: the Enlightenment. oversight This seems unforgivable to me because the enlightened heritage, with all its excesses and deficiencies, is the one which shaped the world in which we live and the one which knew how to take into account the other three, treat them, temporize them and give them a practicality in our societies, our lifestyles and our political systems.
Kantian ethics coincides with the Christian morality in its universality, and defends us in an argumentative manner against those who claim legitimize the murder, racial discrimination or excision of the clitoris in the name of multiculturalism and respect for the particularities of barbarism. As he also defends us from those who, in the name of misinterpreted progressivism or secularism, tell us that “Everyone has their own morals”. On the other hand, the liberty, equality and fraternity proclaimed by the French Revolution do not differ from the Christian heritage if they do not come from it. José Antonio Marina says it in a book entitled “Dictamen sobre Dios”: “Ethics comes from religious morality…” Although he emphasizes: “…but it ends up becoming a criterion for evaluating religious morality itself.”
In front Islamic terroristwe refuse to disguise ourselves as a crusader, to theatrically brandish the cross and the sword, among other things because that is what this terrorist would like to wear “dispute” in the Middle Ages, to make one religious war and so that nothing is understood. What we will oppose will be our system of freedoms and rights, the values of liberal democracy, our modern society of tolerance, which finds its strength in its apparent weaknessthat is to say the legacy of this Age of Enlightenment which undoubtedly had its shadows, like every episode of human history.
No, I fear that the omission of enlightened heritage, when we talk about the pillars of our civilization, is not innocent. This undervaluation comes from certain reservations regarding French revolutionand its simplistic identification with the reign of terror, which create the fashion in these times of confusion and revision in which we live, where not only the left-wing populismbut also the one on the right with parallel and symmetrical movements. “postures”, This is what we call impostures today. It is one thing to notice the dark, sometimes inevitable chapters of history, and another to deny the value, significance and dimension of a movement that changed the history of humanity.
To deny the heritage of the Enlightenment as a pillar of our civilization is to throw stones at our democratic roof. It’s doing this one unusual clamp, Well, it is a prejudice in which, paradoxically, a certain religious fundamentalism coincides with a permanent Marxism for different reasons. Defend Europe freedoms disguised as Don Pelayo, Cid Campeador or Santiago Matamoros is not only a contradiction. It’s making a fool of yourself
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