Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
himself. After all, the article was written to explain why Freud's theories
were not being generally accepted.
Furthermore, in his defiant faith in the inevitable triumph of science
over the blind forces of irrational resistance to its discoveries, Freud can
be understood not merely as a scientist but an
Aufklärer
, a man of the
Enlightenment. The distinction rests on the observation that there is
nothing within the disciplinary confines of this or that science to direct
the historical fate of its discoveries. An Aufklärer is someone who
pursues increased understanding of a rational sort wherever it leads,
believing that it will lead somewhere beneficial. Enlightenment affect
(belief, hope, desire) is a surplus, a supplement, to scientific achievement.
An Aufklärer follows Immanuel Kant's dictum, “
Sapere Audere!
”—
“dare to know!”
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As Kant argued, enlightenment is simultaneously a
scientific, moral, and political undertaking. Such a project constitutes a
commitment to a kind of truth and a way of life linked to an under-
standing of the good. Enlightenment, one might say, is a culture, an
ethos, or a form of life. It is a form of life that can never be complete.
It is a form of life that is both arrogant and humble. It is arrogant insofar
as it acts for humanity with a confidence that it is right; it is humble in
that enlightenment is an infinite project whose achievement lies in the
future.
As such, an ethos of enlightenment is a way of life that requires a
certain understanding of maturity—that is to say, a view of the past, the
future, and the present that links them together in a hopeful manner, but
one whose proof can only lie in the future of humanity, not in any indi-
vidual life. The question is whether there is a corresponding ethos within
a scientific attitude. I will raise the issue of maturity and its relation to
science, enlightenment, and history recurrently in this chapter. The
reason for this repetition is that there are different and contrastive under-
standings of each of the terms. Those differences depend in part on an
evaluation of the history of science and enlightenment—and of the
present moment.
To return to Freud, he proposes “to describe how the universal nar-
cissism of men, their self-love, has up to the present suffered three severe
blows from the researches of science”
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—in other words, how the belief
in a fixed and knowable human essence that accorded it a superior rank
in the hierarchy of beings came under attack from various sides.
