Atheism and the Enlightenment:

Leszek Koakowski and the Intellectual Roots of the New Atheism

A paper given in October 2007 at an international symposium at All Souls

College, Oxford, to mark the 80th birthday of the Polish philosopher Leszek
Koakowski (1927-2009).

At the time of giving this lecture, Alister McGrath was Professor of Theology, Ministry,
and Education at Kings College London, and head of its Centre for Theology, Religion
and Culture. He is presently the Andreos Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the
University of Oxford, and Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion. An
edited version of this lecture is reproduced in Alister McGrath, Mere Theology: Christian
Faith and the Discipleship of the Mind. London: SPCK, 2010, 139-54; North American
edition published as The Passionate Intellect: Christian Faith and the Discipleship of the
Mind. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010, 169-85.

It is a great pleasure to be able to speak at this conference, which has been

convened to celebrate and debate the political philosophy of the great
Polish philosopher Leszek Koakowski a pleasure which is enriched still
further by his presence with us, as we reflect on the themes of his writings.
My own engagement with Koakowski began with my reading of the three
volumes of his work The Main Currents of Marxism (1976-8), now happily
republished in a single volume (2005).1 As a teenager, I drank deeply from
Marxist writers, and found Koakowskis analysis helpful in understanding
why I was so drawn to this intellectual movement in the late 1960s.

Leszek Koakowski, Main Currents of Marxism : The Founders, the Golden Age, the
Breakdown. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005.
1

So can Koakowski also help us as we reflect on what I think will be a more

transient intellectual movement, despite its high profile at the moment? I
refer, of course, to the New Atheism, associated primarily with Richard
Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, noted chiefly for its aggressive rhetoric
and slick sloganeering, accompanied by what I fear is a worryingly
superficial analysis of the scope of human reason, the deliverances of the
natural sciences, and the nature and characteristics of religion.

It seems to me that the driving force of the New Atheism is not

intellectual delight in a godless world, but a fear that the world has turned
its back on the supposedly secure and irrefutable worldview of the
Enlightenment. In October 2005, on the eve of the appearance of the New
Atheism, the World Congress of the International Academy of Humanism
took place in upstate New York. Its theme? Toward a New Enlightenment.
To judge from the conference publicity, its organizers had no doubt of the
urgency of their theme. Religion was regaining the ascendancy. A new dark
ages was about to descend on the human race. The speakers who
included Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris addressed a series of topics
reflecting concerns arising from the renewed global interest in religion. We
are facing a new dark ages. Can we learn from the lessons of the British and
French Enlightenment and help to bring about a New Enlightenment?

The godfather of the New Atheism is Paul Kurtz (born 1925), one of
Americas most prominent secular humanists,2 who played a leading role in
articulating the vision of this Congress. Kurtz was instrumental in reshaping

See, for example, Paul Kurtz, What is Secular Humanism? Amherst, NY: Prometheus
Books, 2006.
2

American humanism in a specifically secular direction during the late 1970s

and early 1980s, largely by suppressing its historic religious origins and
continuing religious associations and commitments. The original American
Humanist Manifesto (1933) made specific approving reference to
religious humanism.3 Kurtz vigorously advocated more secular forms of
humanism, and formed the Council for Secular Humanism to lobby for a
change in direction of the American Humanist Association. He was one of
the two primary authors of Humanist Manifesto II (1973), setting out a
vision for a form of humanism that was systematically evacuated of
religious possibilities and affirmations.

These themes can be seen clearly stated in an editorial Kurtz published in

his Free Inquiry magazine in advance of the World Congress. There was,
Kurtz declared, an urgent and pressing need for a New Enlightenment.4
The original Enlightenment, he argued, set out to abolish religious
superstition and dogmatism, hidebound social traditions, and repressive
morality. After listing the Enlightenments many achievements with an
enthusiasm unsullied by any awkwardness of historical realism, he comes to
his core argument: Unfortunately, there has been a massive retreat from
Enlightenment ideals in recent years, a return to pre-modern mythologies.
This must be opposed and reversed!

So who are the enemies of the Enlightenment? In terms worthy of the best
conspiracy theorist, Kurtz wrote darkly of powerful forces eager to
3

For an excellent account, see Mason Olds, American Religious Humanism. Minneapolis,
MN: University Press of America, 1996.
4
Paul Kurtz, Re-enchantment: A New Enlightenment. Free Inquiry Magazine 24/3
(April-May 2004).
3

overthrow the basic premises of the Enlightenment. Religion is resurgent,

and must be opposed! His greatest scorn, interestingly, seems to be
directed towards the vulgar post-modernist cacophony of HeideggerianDerridian mush. A new global ethic is required, based on principles drawn
from scientific inquiry and philosophical rationality. Those who challenge
the Enlightenment are portrayed, using a depressingly superficial rhetoric of
dismissal, as the enemies of reason and science, or the appeasers of
superstition and prejudice. Kurtz regularly emphasizes the importance of
rationality, interpreting this not in the cautious sense used by classic
Greek philosophy, but in the more ambitious terms associated with some
sections of the Enlightenment which held that all beliefs must be capable of
being proved.5

Kurtzs piece can be seen as presaging the core themes of the New
Atheism, particularly as found in the writings of Richard Dawkins and
Christopher Hitchens. Kurtzs programme for the rationalization of western
culture has negative and positive components, both of which are faithfully
reproduced by the leading representatives of the New Atheism. Most
media interest has focused on their withering ridicule of religion as toxic
superstition; after all, this makes for good headlines.

Yet the media has been virtually silent over the other leading features of
Kurtzs programme for a New Enlightenment above all, his critique of

For reflections on the importance of this development for Christian apologetics, see
Nicholas Wolterstorff, The Migration of the Theistic Arguments: From Natural Theology
to Evidentialist Apologetics. In Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment
edited by Robert Audi and William J. Wainwright, 38-80. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1986.
4

postmodernism as irrational nonsense, and a vigorous reaffirmation of the

ethical and social vision of the Enlightenment.6 A close reading of New
Atheist writings suggest that it is wedded to a fundamentally reversionary
hermeneutic of cultural development, urging a return to a highly idealized
and sanitized Enlightenment. Yet many would argue that this is
fundamentally utopian. What if the New Atheism is pursuing a pipe
dream, questing for a social and intellectual order that is now little more
than an illusion a dead times exploded dream (Matthew Arnold)?

It is not difficult to see how a plausible link can be suggested between the
rise of modernity and that of atheism. Indeed, historians of modern atheism
often interpret it as an integral aspect of the Enlightenment project.7 These
issues urgently need fuller analysis, if we are to gain an understanding of
the sociological factors which led to the emergence of the New Atheism
in the first place, and shape its reversionary appeal to the Enlightenment in
the second.

Although there are clearly some historical difficulties associated with the
term the Enlightenment (especially its use in the singular), it is still widely
used to refer to the great intellectual and cultural movement, originating in
the eighteenth century, that went on to sweep across much of Europe and

On this final point, see Hitchens plea for a New Enlightenment: Christopher
Hitchens, God Is Not Great : How Religion Poisons Everything. New York: Twelve, 2007,
277-83.
7
For an excellent discussion of the issues, see Winfried Schroeder, Ursprunge des
Atheismus: Untersuchungen zur Metaphysik- und Religionskritik des 17. und 18.
Jahrhunderts. Tubingen: Frommann-Holzboog, 1998.
5

North America.8 The recent scholarly recognition of the plurality of the

Enlightenment has opened up an important debate about whether we
should speak about a plurality of Enlightenments, or a plurality of outcomes
of the Enlightenment. Whatever the conclusion of this debate may be,
there is now no doubt that the movement was diverse in both
methodologies and conclusions.9 It is often seen as having shaped the
modern world, especially through its confidence in the power of human
reason, its commitment to individual freedom of expression against
ecclesiastical or royal tyranny, and its assumption that these values would
improve the human condition everywhere. The movement is often
considered to have inspired and justified the fundamental nineteenth- and
twentieth-century achievements of industrialization, liberalism, and
democracy.10

It is easy to see how this quest for intellectual and social liberation, when
linked with the social and cultural situation of western Europe or North
America, could manifest itself as a critique of belief in God and of the
church as an institution. Both were held by some Enlightenment thinkers
(though in different ways) to represent a challenge to human autonomy.
Yet it proves slightly more troublesome to map this approach onto the
realities of history, which can certainly be made to fit this simplistic

The English term Enlightenment came into general circulation in the late nineteenth
century to refer to the movement previously known as les lumires and die Aufklrung.
9
See, for example, James Schmidt, What is Enlightenment? : eighteenth-century answers
and twentieth-century questions, Philosophical traditions. Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1996, 1-44; Maiken Umbach, Federalism and enlightenment in
Germany, 1740-1806. London: Hambledon, 2000, 25-78.
10
For a careful and informed assessment of the historical evidence for such bold claims,
see John Robertson, The case for the Enlightenment : Scotland and Naples 1680-1760.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 1-50.
6

framework (with a little forcing here and there), but do not necessarily
generate it in the first place. For example, the French Enlightenments
critique of the notion of original sin has more to do with the concepts
negative implications for the vision of a rational and autonomous humanity
than its alleged intellectual imperfections.11

In this paper, I want to look at the Enlightenment in ways that are unlikely
to please the advocates of the New Atheism. Much criticism has already
been directed against the extraordinary selectivity which characterizes
Dawkinss and Hitchenss critique of religion. The well-known failings of
faith are trenchantly asserted as if that settled the matter. In most trials, it
is customary for the defence to be represented. But not, it seems, here. As
Terry Eagleton commented, with a sarcasm reflecting his obvious
exasperation at the God Delusions risible caricatures of religion: Such is
Dawkinss unruffled scientific impartiality that in a book of almost four
hundred pages, he can scarcely bring himself to concede that a single
human benefit has flowed from religious faith, a view which is as a priori
improbable as it is empirically false.12

But this extraordinary partisan bias is not my concern in this paper. Rather, I
want to consider the equally extraordinary selectivity evident in the appeal
to the Enlightenment characteristic of the New Atheism. We find the

11

Henry Vyvenberg, Human Nature, Cultural Diversity, and the French Enlightenment.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. An excellent discussion of the origins and
applications of this doctrine can be found in Tatha Wiley, Original Sin: Origins,
Development, Contemporary Meanings. New York, Paulist, 2002.
12
Eagleton, Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching. For Eagletons own perceptive and critical
comments on this important issue, see Terry Eagleton, Holy Terror. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2005.
7

Enlightenment presented as a lost golden age, a time of intellectual

prosperity and social progress. Small wonder that Hitchens yearns to return
to it. But is this vision sustainable? Is not the historical reality of the
Enlightenment rather more troubling?

There can be few better guides with whom to explore this question than
Leszek Koakowski, whose eightieth birthday we celebrate this weekend. By
the late 1940s, it was obvious that Koakowski was one of the most brilliant
Polish minds of his generation. Although initially strongly committed to
Marxism-Leninism, he became disillusioned with its intellectual failings and
political excesses. His revisionism led to his expulsion from the Polish
Communist Party, and the loss of his teaching position at the University of
Warsaw. He eventually settled in the west, including a long period as Senior
Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, making this an eminently
suitable location for this important symposium.

As I noted earlier in this talk, my own interest in Koakowski emerged

through his works on Marxism. I, like many of my age, was attracted to
Marxism during the late 1960s, and I initially found it a plausible and
attractive worldview. Although I ceased thinking of myself as a Marxist in
1971, I continue to find it an important dialogue partner and reference
point, especially in considering the link between cultural contexts and their
distinctive ideas. Koakowskis massive and authoritative treatment of its
themes and historical development was invaluable in opening up the origins
of these questions.13 He was a representative of the Enlightenment who
was sympathetic to its aspirations, welcoming of its successes, and ruthless
13

Koakowski, The Main Currents of Marxism.

8

in exposing its inconsistencies and failings. His writings on these matters are
of especial importance, as they emerged from his own first-hand experience
of an imposed godlessness in Poland, then a Soviet satellite state. So what
might Koakowski, the worthy subject of our celebrations this weekend,
want to draw to our attention? Let me briefly note three points, each of
which requires substantial expansion, which is sadly impossible in our
allocated timeframe.

1. Subjecting the Enlightenment to critical historical inquiry

One of the more puzzling features of the New Atheism is its dogmatic
assertion of the excellence of the Enlightenment. Yet this bold claim is
simply asserted, using diversionary rhetorical flourishes and prejudicial
historical caricatures to cover up its decidedly skimpy evidential basis.
These soundbites never become serious historical arguments. Yet precisely
such serious historical inquiry is absolutely necessary, not least on account
of the idealization of the Enlightenment within the New Atheism, and its
proposed reshaping of the future after its likeness.

In his 1986 Jefferson Lecture, entitled The Idolatry of Politics, Koakowski

made what many regard as his most important comments: We learn
history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know
who we are.14 Koakowski, while carefully acknowledging good political
and social outcomes of the Enlightenment project, insists upon telling the
whole story. Unlike Christopher Hitchens, he insists upon drawing attention
to its darker side, so easily overlooked by its apologists, lifting the veil away

14

Leszek Koakowski, "The Idolatry of Politics. In Leszek Koakowski, Modernity on

Endless Trial. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990, 146-61.
9

from what the New Atheism would prefer to remain concealed. For
example, Koakowski notes with concern that certain sections of the
Enlightenment came to believe that certain truths had been established
beyond question. On account of this hubris, he argues, Stalinism, Nazism,
Maoism, and other fanatical sects became inevitable.

Koakowskis point is familiar to postmodern critics of the Enlightenment,

who argue that the modernist metanarrative amounts to little more than a
totalizing view of things, with the potential for fostering oppression and
violence, and colluding with totalitarianism. This point, of no small
importance to both the New Atheisms critique of religion and its
proposed alternatives, needs to be explored in much greater detail.
Koakowskis analysis of the history of modernity exposes its complexities,
subverting the simple metanarrative of progress and ascent found, for
example, in the writings of Paul Kurtz.

Yet Koakowski saw history as a mirror in which human identity was

disclosed. We study history, as we noted above, so that we might know
who we are. History, however, does not disclose the simple bermensch
that Kurtz would like us to acknowledge. In fact, Koakowskis reading of the
history of modernity leads him to the conclusion that the concept of
original sin offers at least a partial explanation for its darker side:15
The fact that both affirmation and rejection of the concept of original
sin have emerged as powerful destructive forces in our history is one
of many that testify in favor of original sin. In other words, we face a

15

Leszek Koakowski, "Can the Devil be saved?. In Leszek Koakowski, Modernity on

Endless Trial. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990, 75-85.
10

peculiar situation in which the disastrous consequences of assenting

to either of two incompatible theories confirm one of them and
testify against its rival.

Koakowskis reading of history is not, of course, universally regarded as

true. Along with the metanarrative of progress and purity advocated by
Kurtz and his colleagues within the New Atheism, it represents one of a
number of possible readings of the Enlightenment. Yet the very fact that
the Enlightenment itself is open to multiple interpretations is an indication
of the need for critical examination of such readings. There is no selfevidently correct narrative of Enlightenment.

2. Recognizing the failings of reason.

Koakowski rightly acknowledges that the Enlightenment can be seen as a
passionate quest for true, reliable knowledge. This quest is something that
all can admire, in principle. But can our admiration extend beyond the
principle, to its implementation? I continue to find myself inspired by John
Lockes famous words in his letter to William Molyneaux, dated 10 January
1697: I know there is truth opposite to falsehood, that it may be found if
people will, and is worth the seeking, and is not only the most valuable, but
the pleasantest thing in the world.16 Yet can reason and science deliver
such reliable judgements?

It is widely accepted that part of the attitude of mind that shaped the
Enlightenment was an appeal to the universalities of reason and nature as
objective grounds of judgement, especially in the face of ecclesiastical
16

The Works of John Locke. 10 vols. London: Thomas Tegg, 1823, vol. 8, 447.
11

appeals to epistemic and hence social privilege. This represents a

tactical move away from the classical Greek model of reason as an
ordering principle inherent in reality, and its replacement with an
epistemologically inflated notion of a human faculty that submitted all
reality to the structures of the mind.17 Yet can this approach work?

An important criticism of the Enlightenment at this point is to be found in

the writings of Alasdair MacIntyre. The Enlightenment agenda is here
presented as something that is to be honoured and respected. Yet there is a
serious problem, which lies not in the question being put, nor the
honourable intentions that lay behind it. The Enlightenment quest for a
universal foundation and criterion of knowledge faltered, stumbled, and
finally collapsed under the weight of a massive accumulation of counterevidence. It simply could not be done; the vision simply could not be
achieved. MacIntyres historical research into the outcomes of the
Enlightenment project convinced him that its legacy was an ideal of rational
justification which it proved impossible to attain in practice.18 The goal it set
out to pursue was fundamentally correct; the problem was that its methods
and resources could not ultimately sustain that quest. The pursuit of truth
can hardly be abandoned because one particular strategy is now recognized
to have failed; the point is to find new strategies, or modify existing ones.

17

Louis K. Dupr, The Enlightenment and the intellectual foundations of modern culture.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004, 12-17.
18
Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? London: Duckworth, 1988, 6.
See further Jennifer A. Herdt, Alasdair MacIntyres Rationality of Traditions and
Tradition-Transcendental Standards of Justification. Journal of Religion 78 (1998): 52446.
12

This may seem a harsh judgement. But it is certainly one that Koakowski
would endorse, and might even extend. In fact, his disarmingly frank critique
of the very limited achievements of philosophical reasoning extends far
beyond a critique of the inflated notions of rationality entertained within
some sections of the Enlightenment, and extent to the philosophical
enterprise in general:19
For centuries philosophy has asserted its legitimacy by asking and
answering questions inherited from the Socratics and pre-Socratics:
how to distinguish the real from the unreal, true from false, good
from evil . . . There came a point, however, when philosophers had to
confront a simple, painfully undeniable fact: that of the questions
which have sustained European philosophy for two and a half
millennia, not a single one has been answered to general satisfaction.
All of them, if not declared invalid by the decree of philosophers,
remain controversial.

3. The re-emergence of the transcendent

Despite a formidable array of attempts to reduce, deconstruct, recategorize
or simply evade the notion of the transcendent, it remains central to
contemporary cultural and philosophical reflection.20 Indeed, the history of
ideas suggests that the assertion of the hegemony of materialist and cold
rationalist approaches to reality invariably creates a backlash, generating a

19

Leszek Koakowski. Metaphysical Horror. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001, 1-

2.
20

See the points made by Max Horkheimer in his interview with Helmut Gumnior: Max
Horkheimer, Die Sehnsucht nach dem ganz Anderen. Ein Interview mit Kommentar von
Helmut Gumnior. Hamburg: Furche-Verlag, 1971.
13

new interest in the domain of faith, imagination, the feelings, and especially
the transcendent.21 The quest for the transcendent is so deeply embedded
in the history of human thought that it will survive political and intellectual
attempts to suppress it. The reaction of Romanticism against the soulless
rationality of the Enlightenment is an illustration of this trend, but it is much
more widely encountered than this specific example.22

Koakowski both affirms the continuing importance of the transcendent,

and offers an explanation of this development. Gods unforgettableness,
he argued, means that He is present even in rejection.23 Developing this
point further, Koakowski suggests that the return of the sacred is a telling
sign of the failure of the ersatz Enlightenment religion of humanity, in
which a deficient godlessness desperately attempts to replace the lost God
with something else. In his 1973 lecture, The Revenge of the Sacred in
Secular Culture," Koakowski further suggests that the category of sacred
is essential for culture, in that it offers an ordering or organizing structure,
which cannot adequately be grounded in secular systems.24

21

As noted and illustrated by J. W. Burrow, The Crisis of Reason: European Thought,

1848-1914. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000, 56-67.
22
Graeme Garrard, Counter-Enlightenments from the eighteenth century to the present.
London: Routledge, 2006. Note especially the section dealing with the return of faith
and feeling (55-73).
23
Leszek Koakowski, Concern about God in an Apparently Godless Age. In My Correct
Views on Everything, edited by Zbigniew Janowski, 173-83. South Bend, IN: St.
Augustines Press, 2005. Quote at p. 183. For a more rigorous exploration of this theme,
see Charles Taylor, A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007.
24
Leszek Koakowski, "Revenge of the Sacred in Secular Culture. In Leszek Koakowski,
Modernity on Endless Trial. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990, 63-74.
Theological engagement with Koakowski at this point (or any, for that matter) is rare:
for a luminous exception, see Peter Hebblethwaite, Feuerbachs Ladder: Leszek
Koakowski and Iris Murdoch. Heythrop Journal 13 (1972):14361. Hebblethwaites
comparison with Murdoch on the issue of transcendence is proper and illuminating. The
comparison might profitably be extended to include John Dewey. See here Victor
14

Koakowskis reflections on the persistence of the transcendence are clearly

grounded in the Polish experience under various forms of Marxism, where
any recognition of the transcendent (especially when framed in terms of
God) was seen as politically unacceptable. Indeed, Koakowskis insight can
be seen to have been anticipated by Nietzsche, who pointed out that the
metaphysical pressure to discover God never departs, but lingers within
human culture and experience:25
How strong the metaphysical need is, and how hard nature makes to
bid it a final farewell can be seen from the fact that even when the
free spirit has divested himself of everything metaphysical, the
highest effects of art can easily set the metaphysical strings, which
have long been silent or indeed snapped apart, vibrating in sympathy
. . . He feels a profound stab in the heart and sighs for the man who
will lead him back to his lost love, whether she be called religion or
metaphysics.
Nietzsches own assertion of his freedom from such metaphysical needs
may well reflect what Peter Poellner calls the heroic posture of many
atheists.26 This reflects a contrarian attitude which deliberately courts
rejection and cultivates the posture of standing alone.

Kestenbaum, The Grace and Severity of the Ideal: John Dewey and the Transcendent.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
25
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, all too human : a book for free spirits.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, 153. For this metaphysical need, see
Tyler T. Roberts, Contesting spirit : Nietzsche, affirmation, religion. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1998, 49-53.
26
Peter Poellner, Nietzsche and metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 9.
15

The new interest in the transcendent is easily dismissed as a deplorable

lapse into irrational beliefs, reflecting an indefensible resurgence of
superstition. Yet this rhetorical faade is ultimately a projection of core
Enlightenment values, reappropriated by the New Atheism, which aims
simply to stigmatize, rather than engage with, this significant cultural
development. The new interest in the transcendent can be interpreted in a
number of manners, and one of them is a reaction against the spiritual
aridity of modernity.27 As has often been noted, the history of ideas
suggests that the assertion of the hegemony of materialist approaches to
reality invariably creates a backlash, generating a new interest in the
domain of the transcendent. Whether New Atheism likes it or not, this is
the agenda that is playing out in postmodern western culture at the
moment.

This brief engagement with Koakowski is enough to raise serious doubts

about whether the New Atheisms simplistic vision for a return to the
Enlightenment can be sustained. Sociologically, the ideas of the
Enlightenment must be regarded as deeply embedded in their original
cultural context, and cannot simply be transplanted to a radically different
environment. The ideas and values of the original Enlightenment cannot be
dissociated from the historical, social and cultural context of the
movement. Those schools of social theory which emphasise that ideas
emerge from and are shaped by their social context have noted the

27

Leszek Koakowski, Modernity on Endless Trial. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1990.
16

historically situated character of fundamental Enlightenment themes.28 It is

a sociological truism that there can be no going back to the Enlightenment,
no uncritical transfer of its ideas and values to another moment in history,
such as our own.

One of the more disturbing features of the attitudes towards the

Enlightenment found throughout the New Atheism is that there is no
recognition of the Standortsgebundenheit, the historically situated
character, of the Enlightenment project, leading to the curious belief that
the ideas and values of the Enlightement can somehow be transplanted
into the twenty-first century, as if they were detachable from its originating
context. Or that, because they were so widespread, they are correct for
that reason. As Zygmunt Bauman once wisely remarked, the sociologist
must challenge any prevailing ideological fashion of the day whose
commonality is taken for the proof of its sense.29 Social contexts change,
and with them prevailing intellectual fashions.

For reasons such as these, it is deeply problematic to argue for a New

Enlightenment, a concept which assumes almost totemic significance for
writers such as Christopher Hitchens. While conceding that the New
Atheism is more concerned to criticise others than to construct its own
positive proposals, it is important to note its intellectual and moral
utopianism in relation to the Enlightenment, given the defining role this

28

See, for example, the points made in Reinhart Koselleck, Critique and Crisis :
Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1988.
29
Zygmunt Bauman, On Writing: On Writing Sociology. Theory, Culture
& Society 17 (2000): 79-90; quote at 79.
17

movement plays in shaping the atheist vision of the future. Koakowski is a

powerful and informed voice in this conversation, raising serious doubts
about whether the New Atheism has a defensible positive vision to offer
as a means of displacing religious belief and institutions.

The New Atheism clearly has global aspirations. Why, then, has it locked
itself into such a western way of thinking and reasoning, which merely
imprisons it? The answer, I think, is not difficult to discern. The New
Atheism is wedded to the Enlightenment metanarrative, and loses
plausibility outside that specific context. Its not really surprising, then, that
they want a new Enlightenment. The old frameworks that gave them such
stability in the past are crumbling. Their only solution seems to be to try
and put them back up again. But culture has moved on in the west, and has
bypassed the Enlightenment altogether in many developing parts of the
world.

I must end; and I do so by quoting from a lecture what many regard as

marking the zenith of Koakowskis professional career. On 5 November,
2003, Koakowski was awarded the first Kluge Prize by the Library of
Congress for his lifetime achievement in the Humanities and Social
Sciences. The title he chose for his acceptance speech is acutely relevant to
our theme: What the Past is for. After a passionate defense of the place
of history in human reflection on meaning, he turned to restate his own
fundamental conviction that history discloses our true identity.30
We must absorb history as our own, with all its horrors and
monstrosities, as well as its beauty and splendor, its cruelties and
30

http://www.loc.gov/loc/kluge/news/Koakowski.html. Accessed on 11 August 2007.

18

persecutions as well as all the magnificent works of the human mind

and hand; we must do this if we are to know our proper place in the
universe, to know who we are and how we should act.
The New Atheism shows an astonishing lack of interest in history, which it
seems to treat as little more than a convenient source for its own ideas,
selectively quarried. Those who so mistreat history will simply end up
repeating its many past failures and add to the failed quests for Utopia.
The New Atheism aspires to create a godless New Jerusalem; if
Koakowski is right, it might just end up creating its own form of Stalinism.

19