Author | Steven Lukes |
---|---|
Language | English |
Published | 1995 |
Media type |
The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat is a book by Steven Lukes. It is a "comedy of ideas" which was published in 1995.
It is set in a fictional world, and its primary source of humour is based upon the allusions Lukes makes to this world. The plot follows Professor Nicholas Caritat, who is an allusion himself to Marquis de Condorcet, a French Enlightenment scholar.
In the military run country of Militaria, Professor Nicholas Caritat, a secluded Enlightenment scholar, is arrested because he has been giving hope to the Optimists, the nation’s enemies. Once in prison, he is rescued by Justin, a former student and current part of a guerrilla group called "the Hand," and given a mission: to find the best possible world. The mission leads him through three countries of political extremes that all claim to be the best.
Nicholas’s mission begins in Calcula, a city in the forward thinking, Utilitarian country named Utilitaria. The country has two parties: the Rule party, in government and the Act party, in opposition. The Ruler party follows John Stuart Mill’s idea of having society be ruled mainly by the most talented individuals. [1] The Act party encourages democracy as it follows Jeremy Bentham’s ideas of having everyone’s opinions count equally in government. [2] There is a group in the Northern area of the country called the Bigotarians which are focused on the past and want independence.
The only thing that matters to the people of Utilitaria is producing the greatest utility, as that will produce the greatest amount of happiness, following the ideas of early utilitarian thinkers. Classes are non-existent. Calculators and computers are used to calculate consequences and utility, despite the limitations and difficulties that occur when trying to do so. Everyone is cared for, provided that they contribute to the well-being of society. Those who cannot contribute are used as organ donors to help the working force.
On the third day of his visit, he is kidnapped by the Bigotarians. The group holds him for ransom as they think he is a Utilitarian ideologist. After thirteen days and two letters to the man he had been staying with, Nicolas realizes that Utilitaria, with its lack of regard for human rights, is not the best possible world. He is soon released and finds his way to Polygopolis, Communitaria with the help of Reverend Goddington Thwaite.
In Communitaria, society is based on equality and multiculturalism. People are greatly attached to their own ways of life, but recognize and accept others’. Everyone has a place in one of the thirty-four ethnic groups and seventeen religions. People cannot change communities to which they belong, but instead have to conform. The right to practice their culture is balanced by law with the responsibility to never offend another community.
Nicholas meets a rock star who is hiding because he had been excommunicated from his communities because he wrote a "satirical" rock opera. Satire is seen as sacrilegious, which is the worst crime in Communitaria, so he no longer has a place in society. Reverend Goddington Thwaite and the rock star look to Nicholas to help. When he talks to the two communities, though, he finds that individual rights do not exist in Communitaria. The only right that exists is the right the communities have to be respected.
Upon visiting the unidiversity (the Communitarians’ university), he is told that his mission undermines multiculturalism. It, according to the professors there, implies that one culture or society is better than another, which is impossible to do if one wants to have multiculturalism. Despite this, he is offered a temporary position lecturing on "Did the Enlightenment have to fail". The intent of this suggested topic is to warn students against ethnocentrism and the idea of civilization and universal reason. They view the Enlightenment as a way for one culture to oppress others, which is unacceptable in their world. One of the professors, Professor Bodkin, is an extreme feminist who argues that there is still oppression in the country on the basis of gender. Her peers avoid her eyes as she speaks of this, as they prefer to believe that there no longer is oppression.
When Nicholas meets a group of students, he finds that free speech is a punishable offence for fear of offending someone. He is invited to a secret club by another group of students, though, who argue against that. Through their stories, he finds the problem behind the Communitarian way of life: extreme separation of the communities. Marriage between members of different communities is frowned upon. People who try to change their community are shunned from society and called "rootless cosmopolitans". [3]
While trying to find the washroom, he finds Professor Bodkin in the shower. When she sees him, he stumbles out, making apologies. She mistakes his apologies for insults against her community. She presses charges against him, causing him to flee the country to Freedom. On the train ride to Freedom, he dreams of the perfect world. In the dream, he meets two men who show him around Proletaria. Like Marx’s ideology, the Proletarian class in Proletaria took over the government which caused the state to disintegrate and left complete communism. There are no classes, states, legal systems, wages, rights, or markets. People are free to do as they wish and are not confined to one particular area of labour or activity.
Upon waking, he finds himself heading towards Freedom, the capital city of Libertaria. Based on libertarian thinking, "society" no longer exists in the country; all that matters is the individual. People are completely left alone as the government does not believe in social programs. Everything is privatized, so schools and hospitals are closed to those who cannot pay for them. Freedom arises in that people are free to do whatever they like without interference from the government.
The market, as once stated by Steven Lukes, reproduces and creates inequalities. [4] This is shown in Libertaria through the difficulties people have living in society. The entire state is built on the privatization and trade of various programs and industries on the stock market. Due to this, it is difficult to find work. People often have to live on the streets, while students do not have enough money to buy books. The only way to make money is through stocks, but it is only the wealthy that have the money to do that, creating inequalities.
After limited success in Libertaria, he leaves to Minerva, and then starts to walk to the border. On his way, he is confronted by an owl who explains why each country failed to be the best it could be: they were all too focused on a single value. Since this is the Owl of Minerva, it is wise and philosophical. As dusk approaches, the owl flies away, symbolizing, as German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel says, that "philosophy understands reality only after the event." [5] Nicholas, demonstrating this, starts to comprehend all that has happened. His final letter to Justin places his experiences in context with his mission and ideas. He realizes that the best possible world would encompass all values and have its citizens willing to learn and think.
Patriotism or national pride is the feeling of love, devotion and sense of attachment to a homeland and alliance with other citizens who share the same sentiment. This attachment can be a combination of many different feelings relating to one's own homeland, including ethnic, cultural, political or historical aspects. It encompasses a set of concepts closely related to nationalism.
Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis of Condorcet, known as Nicolas de Condorcet, was a French philosopher and mathematician. His ideas, including support for a liberal economy, free and equal public instruction, constitutional government, and equal rights for women and people of all races, have been said to embody the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment and Enlightenment rationalism. He died in prison after a period of flight from French Revolutionary authorities.
The term multiculturalism has a range of meanings within the contexts of sociology, of political philosophy, and of colloquial use. In sociology and in everyday usage, it is a synonym for "ethnic pluralism", with the two terms often used interchangeably, for example, a cultural pluralism in which various ethnic groups collaborate and enter into a dialogue with one another without having to sacrifice their particular identities. It can describe a mixed ethnic community area where multiple cultural traditions exist or a single country within which they do. Groups associated with an indigenous, aboriginal or autochthonous ethnic group and settler-descended ethnic groups are often the focus.
Enlightened absolutism refers to the conduct and policies of European absolute monarchs during the 18th and 19th centuries who were influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment, espousing them to enhance their power. The concept originated during the Enlightenment period in the 18th and into the early 19th centuries.
"Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?" is a 1784 essay by the philosopher Immanuel Kant. In the December 1784 publication of the Berlinische Monatsschrift, edited by Friedrich Gedike and Johann Erich Biester, Kant replied to the question posed a year earlier by the Reverend Johann Friedrich Zöllner, who was also an official in the Prussian government. Zöllner's question was addressed to a broad intellectual public community, in reply to Biester's essay entitled: "Proposal, not to engage the clergy any longer when marriages are conducted" and a number of leading intellectuals replied with essays, of which Kant's is the most famous and has had the most impact. Kant's opening paragraph of the essay is a much-cited definition of a lack of enlightenment as people's inability to think for themselves due not to their lack of intellect, but lack of courage.
Montague "Monty" Bodkin is a recurring fictional character in three novels of English comic writer P. G. Wodehouse, being a wealthy young member of the Drones Club, well-dressed, well-spoken, impeccably polite, and generally in some kind of romantic trouble.
Amitai Etzioni is a German-born Israeli and American sociologist, best known for his work on socioeconomics and communitarianism. He founded the Communitarian Network, a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to supporting the moral, social, and political foundations of society.
Ecofascism is a theoretical political model in which an authoritarian government would require individuals to sacrifice their own interests to the "organic whole of nature".
Steven Michael Lukes is a British political and social theorist. Currently he is a professor of politics and sociology at New York University. He was formerly a professor at the University of Siena, the European University Institute (Florence) and the London School of Economics.
Eastern State Hospital is a psychiatric hospital in Williamsburg, Virginia. Built in 1773, it was the first public facility in the present-day United States constructed solely for the care and treatment of the mentally ill. The original building had burned but was reconstructed in 1985.
Harmony Day is celebrated annually on 21 March in Australia. Harmony Day began in 1999, coinciding with the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The day was introduced by the Howard Government to re-centralise a singular and unifying notion of Australian-ness within multicultural policy.
Kenan Malik is an Indian-born British writer, lecturer and broadcaster, trained in neurobiology and the history of science. As an academic author, his focus is on the philosophy of biology, and contemporary theories of multiculturalism, pluralism and race. These topics are core concerns in The Meaning of Race (1996), Man, Beast and Zombie (2000) and Strange Fruit: Why Both Sides Are Wrong in the Race Debate (2008).
Robert Alexander Nisbet was an American sociologist, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Vice-Chancellor at the University of California, Riverside, and an Albert Schweitzer Professor at Columbia University.
Professor Layton is a puzzle adventure video game series and transmedia franchise developed by Level-5. The property consists primarily of seven main video games, a mobile spin-off, an animated theatrical film, and an anime television series, while additionally incorporating an array of secondary titles and media including a crossover game with Capcom's Ace Attorney series.
Iosipos (Josephus) Moisiodax or Moesiodax was an 18th-century philosopher and professor and one of the greatest exponents of the modern Greek Enlightenment. He also became director of the Princely Academy of Iaşi.
Letter to M. D'Alembert on Spectacles is a 1758 essay written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in opposition to an article published in the Encyclopédie by Jean d'Alembert, that proposed the establishment of a theatre in Geneva. More generally, it is a critical analysis of the effects of culture on morals, that clarifies the links between politics and social life. Rousseau relates the issue of a theatre in Geneva to the broader social context, warning of the potential the theatre has to corrupt the morality in society.
Criticism of multiculturalism questions the ideal of the maintenance of distinct ethnic cultures within a country. Multiculturalism is a particular subject of debate in certain European nations that are associated with the idea of a nation state. Critics of multiculturalism may argue against cultural integration of different ethnic and cultural groups to the existing laws and values of the country. Alternatively critics may argue for assimilation of different ethnic and cultural groups to a single national identity.
Douglas Moggach is a professor at the University of Ottawa and life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge. He is Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney, and has held visiting appointments at Sidney Sussex College and King's College, Cambridge, the Centre for History and Economics, Cambridge, Queen Mary University of London, and the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Moggach has also held the University Research Chair in Political Thought at the University of Ottawa and the Killam Research Fellowship awarded by the Canada Council for the arts. He was named Distinguished University Professor at University of Ottawa in 2011.
An Introduction to Animals and Political Theory is a 2010 textbook by the British political theorist Alasdair Cochrane. It is the first book in the publisher Palgrave Macmillan's Animal Ethics Series, edited by Andrew Linzey and Priscilla Cohn. Cochrane's book examines five schools of political theory—utilitarianism, liberalism, communitarianism, Marxism and feminism—and their respective relationships with questions concerning animal rights and the political status of (non-human) animals. Cochrane concludes that each tradition has something to offer to these issues, but ultimately presents his own account of interest-based animal rights as preferable to any. His account, though drawing from all examined traditions, builds primarily upon liberalism and utilitarianism.
Ricardo Duchesne is a Puerto Rican-born Canadian historical sociologist and former professor at the University of New Brunswick. His main research interests are Western civilization, the rise of the West, and multiculturalism. Duchesne's views on immigration and multiculturalism have been described as racist and white nationalist, which Duchesne has denied.