The Age of Romanticism, Enlightenment and Reason

ARCHIVES 2012

By MT Webmaster On Jul 16, 2012

So, as I said, it is not just about electoral reforms and about voting in a new government. It is not just about voting in a corrupt-free (or lesser corrupt) government. It must also be about political reforms. And Malaysian politics sucks. We shall just be exchanging one control-freak government for another control-freak government, albeit a less corrupted one.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Dear RPK,

You use the term ‘political reform’ and assume that everybody understands what it means. Well, I, honest to goodness, don’t understand what you mean by the phrase ‘political reform’. Maybe the meaning is obvious to you, but as an engineer, the phrase ‘political reform’ is not part of my daily vocabulary. I suppose expecting a layperson to understand the meaning of ‘political reform’ is like expecting a non-engineer to know what the meaning of, say, a ‘pressure relieving device’.

I did read through The People’s Voice and The People’s Declaration you attached, but nowhere in those documents does it explain what is meant by ‘political reform’. So maybe you should explain the meaning of the phrase so that, you know, we’ll understand what the hell you’re trying to say. (A comment by ‘Petman’)

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The Age of Romanticism

Romanticism is an international artistic and philosophical movement that redefined the fundamental ways in which people in Western cultures thought about themselves and about their world.

The Romantic Movement was prominent in England and Germany. The early Romantic period thus coincides with what is often called ‘The Age of Revolutions’ — including the American (1776) and the French (1789) revolutions — an age of upheavals in political, economic, and social traditions, the age that witnessed the initial transformations of the Industrial Revolution.

The Romantic Movement affected not just literature, but all of the arts — from music to painting and from sculpture to architecture. (1)

The Enlightenment and The Age of Reason in Philosophy

Western Europe’s worship of reason, reflected only vaguely in art and literature, was precisely expressed in a set of philosophic ideas known collectively as the Enlightenment. It was not originally a popular movement. Catching on first among scientists, philosophers, and some theologians, it was then taken up by literary figures who spread its message among the middle classes. Ultimately, it reached the common people in simplified terms associated with popular grievances.

The most fundamental concept of the Enlightenment were faith in nature and belief in human progress. Nature was seen as a complex of interacting laws governing the universe. The individual human being, as part of that system, was designed to act rationally. If free to exercise their reason, people were naturally good and would act to further the happiness of others.

Accordingly, both human righteousness and happiness required freedom from needless restraints, such as many of those imposed by the state or the church. The Enlightenment’s uncompromising hostility towards organised religion and established monarchy reflected a disdain for the past and an inclination to favour utopian reform schemes. Most of its thinkers believed passionately in human progress through education. They thought society would become perfect if people were free to use their reason.

Voltaire personified the scepticism toward traditional religion and the injustices of the Old Regimes. His caustic pen brought him two imprisonments in the Bastille and even banishment to England for three years. On returning to France, Voltaire continued to champion toleration and actively crusaded against the church. He turned out hundreds of histories, plays, pamphlets, essays, and novels and an estimated correspondence of 10,000 letters.

The best known of all the philosophers was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Although believing in the general objectives of the Enlightenment, Rousseau distrusted reason and science. He gloried in human impulse and intuition, trusting emotions rather than thought, the heart rather than the mind. He also professed admiration for ‘noble savages’, who lived completely free of law, courts, priests, and officials. In his numerous writings, he spoke as a rebel against all established institutions. The most famous of these works, The Social Contract (1762), was Rousseau’s indictment of absolute monarchy. It began with the stirring manifesto: “Man is born free, but today he is everywhere in chains.”

Immanuel Kant, a contemplative professor of philosophy at the German University of Konigsberg, was thoroughly aroused by the sceptical and materialistic extremes of the Enlightenment. While appreciating science and dedicated to reason, he determined to shift philosophy back to a more sensible position without giving up much of its newly discovered ‘rational’ basis. His ideas, contained primarily in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), ushered in a new age of philosophic idealism. (2)

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Well, ‘Petman’, Mr Engineer, I trust the excerpts above helps you, to a certain extent, understand what is required when we talk about political reforms. If you need to read more then please go to the links below.

I suppose you are going to say that my ‘explanation’ has created even more confusion to your engineering mind. That would probably be quite true because the subject of political reforms is a complicated subject and not easily addressed in four or five pages. Nevertheless, allow me to attempt to summarise the issue in the briefest possible manner.

Different thinkers and philosophers see the issue of political reforms through different lenses. I have mentioned just a few names above although it is not confined to just these few. Basically, we are talking about the revolution of the mind. We need to break out of what we would consider ‘the established norms’. We need to ‘think out of the box’, so to speak. We need to break from tradition. We cannot keep doing the same thing and expect a different result.

The government needs to only govern. Laws are passed by Parliament, the lawmakers. Then the government machinery implements and enforces these laws. And that is where the role of government ends. The government must not dictate how we think. We must be free to think the way we want to think and lead the life we want to live. The government must not decide how we live our lives.

As what Voltaire said in ‘The Social Contract’, “Man is born free, but today he is everywhere in chains.” Basically, man creates his own prison. We imprison ourselves.

Government, in particular the Malaysian government, is about control. Religion is also about control. Thus, in Malaysia, we have two groups that are trying to control us — the government and religion. And this is what Malaysian politics is all about, control by the government and religious control, in particular in matters concerning Islam.

Hence, religion is heavily embedded in Malaysian politics, as it used to be in the west 200-300 years ago. And Malaysia is ‘one up’ on the west. We have race as a third element in Malaysian politics. Thus we have a government that tells us it knows best what is good for us and everything that we say and do must take religion and race into consideration.

A fourth element in Malaysian politics is the Monarchy, as it was in the west 200-300 years ago. We still have laws that make it a crime to speak out against the Monarchy, or what the Malaysia government would consider as ‘inciting hatred against the Monarchy’.

So we end up with a control-freak system of government with race, religion and the Monarchy as factors that determine what we can and cannot say and do. And if we oppose any one of these we will end up in jail. (Remember the three Rs, race, religion and Raja-raja, the stuff that Perkasa is made of?)

The government decides what we can and cannot read. Books are banned. School textbooks are rewritten and only the official government version is allowed. We cannot read books on Atheism or Communism. We are not allowed to become a Communist or Atheist. We will get arrested, especially Muslims.

We cannot have a ‘civil partnership’, especially Muslims. We cannot have a gay marriage. We cannot say that religion is a myth. We cannot propagate the end of the Monarchy and the creation of a Republic of Malaysia. We cannot insist that the race of our children be entered as ‘Malaysian’ on their birth certificates. The ‘race’ must be noted.

So there are just so many things that we cannot say, do, read, believe in, etc. The government decides everything. We need a government that will get out of our lives and leave us alone. Run the country. Enforce the laws. Maintain the peace and stability of the country. Then leave the rest to us.

Many say we need to kick Umno out, meaning also Barisan Nasional. Hence, to do that, we need to vote in Pakatan Rakyat. But is Pakatan Rakyat going to be any different from Barisan Nasional?

Sure, we say that Barisan Nasional is highly corrupted. Pakatan Rakyat is not so bad. The level of corruption in Pakatan Rakyat is very low. But that is looking at things from just one angle, corruption. Is that all there is to running the country, a corrupt-free government?

Would we be happy with a corrupt-free government if nothing else changes? Politics is still race and religion-based. You are still not free to choose the lifestyle that you want. You are still not free to believe what you want, whether it is religious doctrine (like becoming an Atheist) or political doctrine (like becoming a Communist). The government still decides, whether Barisan Nasional or Pakatan Rakyat.

Hence we need to know, before we vote, what type of government we are going to get. Okay, we will be getting a corrupt-free government (or lesser corrupt government) if we vote in Pakatan Rakyat. But is that enough? Is that all we want?

What is Pakatan Rakyat’s position on all the other issues? Once we vote in Pakatan Rakyat and the rampant and blatant corruption ends, what then? Will gays be free to get married? Can Muslims convert to Christianity? Can we revive the Communist Party of Malaysia? Can we write articles in support of a Republic of Malaysia? Can we write books debunking religion? Can the works of Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, etc., be part of the school syllabus? Will Malaysia uphold the Secular system of government? Can Islam be removed as the religion of the Federation and can the Constitution remain silent on the matter of religion? Will it still be mandatory for the CEOs of the Federation and the States to be Malays-Muslims?

We need to be free. Currently we are not free even if we change the political party in power. And Pakatan Rakyat has not promised us any changes other than lesser corruption. Reducing or eliminating corruption is just the first step. It is only the beginning. But currently we are treating that as if this is the end game.

That should not be the end game. So Pakatan Rakyat needs to tell us what the end game is going to be. At the moment that is not clear and even Anwar Ibrahim, the ‘Prime Minister-in-waiting’, does not dare tell us.

FOOTNOTES

1. http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/rom.html

2. http://history-world.org/age_of_enlightenment.htm