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Locke never had children. Neither did Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, or Kant. Rousseau had children but gave them all up for adoption. In other words, Enlightenment rationalism was the construction of men who had no real experience of family life or what it takes to make it work.
Most of Western political thought today revolves around the theory of the free, atomic individual, taking on obligations only when he or she consents.
This theory was invented by men who did live more or less this way. But anyone who has raised children knows this theory isn’t true. I’m not free to choose my children and they aren’t free to choose me. Very often obligation has little or nothing to do with consent.
The same is true of political society more generally. If my country is attacked, my obligation to defend it arises not from consent but from bonds of loyalty to family and neighbors and to a way of life I’ve inherited. This isn’t true for everyone, but it’s true for most.
How long will these simple, obvious truths be suppressed? Enlightenment rationalism teaches a political theory made in the image of unmarried, childless individuals.
The more people repeat the tenets of this political theory, the more they act like unmarried, childless individuals.
But no nation can endure this way. The freedom of unmarried, childless philosophers isn’t something that the people in a real nation can actually have.
Don’t we deserve a political theory that is based on real life? On the things we actually need, and the obligations we really have? How long until our universities and schools have something more intelligent to teach than the fantasies of the Enlightenment’s lifelong bachelors?
