In the UK, Matthew Taylor of the Royal Society of Artists has come up with a brand new big idea, which is being touted as a call for calling for a "21st-century Enlightenment". This was my response to an article by Madeleine Bunting (guardian.co.uk, Sunday 13 June 2010 21.00 BST),  Comment is free - Hail the 21st-century Enlightenment - Ideas don't come much bigger. We need to live very differently, argues a bold new text. And that calls for nothing less than a revolution of the mind.

Here is my response:

Over the two decades we have seen leaders of western democracies failing to heed the lessons of history; we have seen the likes of Blair and Bush turn western enlightenment on its head in order to justify the unjustifiable, and the abuse and misuse of institutions born out the lessons of history and the spirit of the enlightenment.

Of course, the values and notions of empathy and empathic concern are not new, even though the results of scientific research have provided additional theoretical support – see Jeremy Rifkin, The Empathic Civilisation.

But, is Mathew Taylor really doing anything more than polymorphism to  represent a unified and repackaged view of  aspects of the enlightenment, evolutionary biology, neuro-cognitive science, pedagogy , child development, Judaeo–Christian values, etcetera, and in order to revive interest in the fundamentals of the original enlightenment and its impact on society, as it were, a re-launch of the enlightenment dressed in 21st century social-democratic clothing?

Of course, conspiring to pretend that 21st Century Enlightenment is new and as potentially significant as the first European Enlightenment, relies on a mirage, the mirage of the enlightenment seen from a 21st century perspective. That is, our current viewpoints and our modern references can be used to recreate the enlightenment, even to the extent of pretending all of this was invented by some bloke in New Labour in 2010. Of course it can be claimed to be new, but that is a mistake. From the fundamental aspects of its broad sweep of philosophy we can even call 21st century Enlightenment modern, but in reality, it is not something new, and is certainly something far older than New Labour’s philandering with bourgeois liberalism and it’s dalliances with the soulnessness and debasing influence of the third way.

Of course, I take issues with academics who take intellectual autism to extremes, and I find Gray’s criticism of Rifkin’s ideas to be somewhat problematic, because they seem to have been derived not only from an intellectual stance, but one that seems far from empathic. In addition, whilst agreeing that empathy (as defined by Simon Baron-Cohen, etc) is something very important in a decent society, there are other aspects and values that must also be considered, such as: gratitude, honesty, sincerity, responsibility, generosity, solidarity,  wisdom, learning, self-control, sensitivity, sacrifice, constructive criticism, detachment, optimism, love, compassion , responsibility, will, understanding, patience, friendship, loyalty, respect, joy, etc.

Simply stated, after the neo-liberal, neo-conservative and post-modern mugging that the European Enlightenment has suffered in the last decades, and with all the subsequent obfuscating spin, bluff and bluster that has been used against the values of the enlightenment, it’s perhaps time that we were reintroduced to the fundamental richness, values and the lessons that can be learned from the enlightenment.

But, my main concerns are thus:

1) Are the people who have brought it upon themselves to re-launch the enlightenment in the UK, really the most appropriate people to do so, and, does it matter?

2) Is this re-launch of the enlightenment going to be anything like the third way re-launch of Labour in its New Labour guise, a re-foundation that is deliberately designed to exclude a whole swathe of public and published opinion, whether they are atheists, liberal democrats, democratic-socialists or the Marxist left.

3) Is this a cunning way of reformulating the enlightenment by going  back and reforming Locke, picking and mixing some Rousseau and some Kant (conveniently forgetting the categorical imperative), and then fast forwarding to the future, conveniently missing out Hegel, Feuerbach and Marx, to name just three, and packaging it all in the same way that New Labour was branded?

Let’s hope this isn’t just some more cynical and expedient posturing and manoeuvring, eh.