The political heritage of the Enlightenment is utopian, for it was built upon three abstractions that were less concepts than illusions: universal morality, universal political ideology, and universal rationality. The Enlightenment promised that reason alone could erase the plurality of human histories, traditions, and faiths, and replace them with a single moral compass, a single political framework, and a single rational method valid for all people and all times.
Yet universals in politics are often veils for imperial designs. A morality declared “universal” is rarely neutral; it is the morality of one civilization projected onto the world. A political ideology declared “universal” is nothing but the ideology of a particular epoch masquerading as eternal truth. A rationality declared “universal” is not the common property of humanity, but the methodological bias of one culture enthroned as the yardstick of all cultures.
The nations that resisted this utopian seduction—by preserving their traditions, institutions, and cultural pluralism—retained the resilience to adapt and progress. They treated the Enlightenment not as destiny, but as one intellectual current among many. Those that accepted the creed of universals wholesale, however, soon discovered that such abstractions could not hold the weight of real societies. The result was political convulsion, social fragmentation, and the endless cycle of revolutions seeking a perfection that never arrives.
The lesson is stark: utopias, when enthroned in politics, do not liberate mankind but exhaust it. Civilizations thrive not by imposing universals, but by cultivating particular strengths, respecting inherited wisdom, and balancing reason with history. The Enlightenment’s dream of a universal order has left a long shadow; its promise of emancipation has too often become a machinery of conformity. The future belongs not to the pursuit of abstract universals, but to the recognition of plurality as the real condition of human freedom.
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