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Anti-Enlightenment

⚔️ Broader ledger: The Right's Case Against the Enlightenment — this note handles the Haywood/postliberal version; that one covers the whole tradition (Burke → Maistre → the anti-liberal papacy → MacIntyre → Deneen/Trueman/Hazony) cross-walked to The Enlightenment - Ritchie Robertson. · Hub: 60.16 Enlightenment

Friends and Enemies

Haywood’s story about “the Enlightenment” basically turns a very messy, diverse, 150-year intellectual period into a single leftist caricature:

“The Enlightenment is about dissolving all unchosen bonds, enforcing egalitarianism, and building utopia.”

Young is right to say that’s historically wrong and strategically self-defeating. Here’s how and why.

1. What Haywood is actually claiming

From the christfriends transcript, Haywood’s working definition is:

  • Left = the “essence” of the Enlightenment, which he describes as
    • abolition of “unchosen bonds,”
    • forced egalitarianism,
    • pursuit of a man-made utopia that remakes society from the ground up.
  • Right = everyone who rejects that project.
    So if “the Enlightenment” just is that package, then Locke, Hume, Montesquieu, Kant, the American Founders, etc., are all proto-leftists whose thought must ultimately be defeated.
    Young pushes back by saying: that’s a bad history of the Enlightenment, and if you buy it you will end up aiming at the wrong target and throwing away intellectual tools you actually need.

2. Unchosen bonds: Enlightenment thinkers defend family and natural duties

Haywood’s first move is to claim the Enlightenment is about dissolving unchosen bonds (family, community, church, etc.). But the marquee figures he implicitly targets do almost the opposite.

2.1 Locke on marriage and parental duty

In the Second Treatise, Locke famously argues for political consent and against absolute monarchy – but when he talks about family, he:

2.2 Kant on family as a rightful relation

Kant is even more explicit about family as a rightful, structured bond, not something to “emancipate” yourself from:

  • In his social and political philosophy, Kant treats the spousal relation, parent-child relation, and master-servant relation as three basic juridical relations recognized by right. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  • Parents have a duty to nurture and educate their children; children have a right to be raised. They are not the property of their parents. (Pass)
    Again, that’s not “liberation from unchosen bonds.” It’s the opposite: a rigorous theory of why those bonds impose obligations and what justice requires within them.
    Good overview:
  • Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Kant’s Social and Political Philosophy”: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-social-political/ (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

2.3 Montesquieu and “intermediate bodies”

Montesquieu – a classic Enlightenment figure – defends all the stuff Haywood would call “unchosen structures”:

  • In The Spirit of the Laws, he insists that intermediate bodies – cities, provinces, churches, guilds, the nobility – are essential buffers between individuals and the monarch. A monarch respects these; a despot crushes them. (NBER)
  • He sees these inherited, corporate structures as the precondition of liberty; destroy them, and you get despotism.
    Good overview:
  • Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Montesquieu”: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/montesquieu/ (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
    So a huge swath of Enlightenment thought is about stabilizing and reforming “unchosen bonds,” not annihilating them.

3. Egalitarianism: moral equality ≠ leveling or enforced sameness

Haywood’s second claim is that the Enlightenment is about “forced egalitarianism.” There are egalitarian strands (especially in the radical French tradition), but the core Anglophone/continental mainstream is not about making everyone socially or materially equal.

3.1 Lockean and Humean “equality”

  • Locke argues that all men are equal in the state of nature in the sense of having natural rights to life, liberty, and property that no one else may violate without justification. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  • That moral equality is fully compatible with:
    • sharp differences in wealth,
    • social deference,
    • and structured hierarchies,
      as long as they emerge under just laws and free exchange. (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
      Hume likewise doesn’t want a flattened society:
  • His political theory starts from humans as “fundamentally loving, parochial, and also selfish,” and he focuses on realistic institutions that harness partiality and self-interest, not on equalizing outcomes. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
    Big picture: they’re after equality before the law and in basic moral status, not egalitarianism as a total social project.
    Good overviews:
  • Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Hume”: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/ (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

3.2 Kant and civic equality

Kant is more “egalitarian,” but in a legal sense:

  • Every citizen has an innate right to freedom compatible with the freedom of all others and should live under laws they could in principle will as universal. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  • He favors equal juridical status (no one is born a slave), not equal income, rank, or social role.
    So again: Enlightenment “equality” is typically about rights and jurisdiction, not about flattening all distinctions of rank, sex, profession, or wealth.

4. Utopianism: a lot of Enlightenment is anti-utopian

Haywood’s third move is to brand the Enlightenment as a utopian, world-remaking movement.
There are utopian strands (Condorcet, some radical Jacobins), but they are not the “essence” of the whole thing. Some of the most important Enlightenment figures are explicitly suspicious of utopianism.

4.1 Hume and the Scottish Enlightenment

  • Hume is often read as a realist who thinks the “primary aim of political theory” is an achievable standard for institutions, given real human behavior, not a blueprint for perfection. (johnjthrasher.com)
  • In the Scottish Enlightenment more broadly (Hume, Smith), there’s a recurrent theme: social improvement happens through unintended consequences, gradual reform, and tinkering – not grand plans to remake man. (adamsmithworks.org)

4.2 Montesquieu as anti-utopian

Montesquieu:

  • Puts huge weight on climate, history, religion, and mores; he explicitly says laws must fit the particular circumstances of a people. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  • He is “not a utopian” by temperament or conviction; his aim is a moderate, non-despotic government that preserves liberty, not a rationalist redesign of everything. (Studocu)
    That’s almost the opposite of the “Enlightenment as utopian central planner” image.

4.3 Kant’s “Perpetual Peace” as a regulative ideal

Kant’s Perpetual Peace looks utopian at first glance, but:

  • He presents it as a regulative ideal – a direction of travel (republican constitutions, rule of law, federations of states) – not as a concrete five-year plan to forcibly realize heaven on earth. (Wikipedia)
    So even where Enlightenment thinkers do talk about progress and improvement, it’s often incremental, institutional, and law-bound, not revolutionary, totalizing utopia.

5. Why this mis-history is strategically disastrous for the right

Young’s second point is strategic: even if you wanted to be brutally tactical in Haywood’s sense, treating “the Enlightenment” as the enemy is a targeting error.

5.1 You end up shooting at the wrong people

If you define the enemy as “Enlightenment ideology,” you are, in practice, treating as hostile:

  • The tradition that generated natural rights,
  • Separation of powers (Montesquieu), (Liberty Fund)
  • Constitutionalism and the rule of law,
  • The American Founding’s intellectual sources. (Constitution Center)
    That makes it almost impossible to defend the very things many on the right actually want to conserve: ordered liberty, independent institutions, limited government, strong families with legally recognized duties, churches that exist outside state control, etc.

5.2 You throw away useful anti-woke tools

A lot of the most effective critiques of wokeness rely on Enlightenment-style arguments:

  • Against arbitrary power: rule of law, due process, separation of powers.
  • For basic speech and conscience rights: protections for dissenters, religious liberty.
  • Against racialized caste systems: equal citizenship and color-blind public law.
    Those are recognizably Enlightenment moves. If you insist that the Enlightenment as such is the enemy, you’ve told yourself you can’t consistently use those arguments – or you must treat them as mere expedients, which weakens your own moral and rhetorical position.

5.3 You blur the difference between moderate and radical projects

Finally, if Locke, Hume, Montesquieu, Kant, Robespierre, and woke HR DEI are all just “the Enlightenment” in different costumes, you:

  • Erase the crucial distinctions between moderate, law-bound reform and revolutionary egalitarian projects.
  • Make it harder to explain why you reject, say, woke identitarianism without sliding into blood-and-soil or purely voluntarist politics as the only live alternatives.
    That’s exactly the dynamic Young is warning about: if you treat the entire Enlightenment as a monolithic leftist bloc, you make it easier for genuinely toxic right-wing currents to claim they’re the only real alternative.

If you want to go deeper

For longer background pieces you can park in Obsidian:

Based on the transcript provided, the anti-Enlightenment sentiments are primarily voiced by Charles Haywood and an audience member identified as “Athenian Stranger.” These arguments frame the Enlightenment as the root cause of modern “Leftist” destruction, specifically through the dissolution of social bonds and a misplaced prioritization of freedom over justice.

Below is an in-depth fact-check and analysis of these specific claims, utilizing counter-arguments provided within the text (primarily by Michael Young) and historical context to demonstrate where these definitions are incorrect or reductive.

1. The Claim: The Enlightenment Demands “Emancipation from All Unchosen Bonds”

The Argument: Charles Haywood defines the Left as the “essence of the enlightenment,” which he claims is an ideology that “demands total emancipation from all unchosen bonds”1. He argues that this philosophy inherently seeks to destroy organic connections (family, tradition) to create a utopia2.
Fact-Check & Analysis:
This claim is a reductive generalization that conflates specific radical strands of the Enlightenment (specifically Jacobinism) with the entire intellectual movement.

  • Evidence from the Text: Michael Young explicitly refutes this by citing legal scholar John Witte Jr.’s work on John Locke, a preeminent Enlightenment thinker3. Young points out that Locke grounded marriage and family not just in rights, but in “natural duties”4. Specifically, Locke argued it was a natural duty for parents to nurture and educate children—a bond that is arguably “unchosen” by the child and a binding obligation on the parent, not a total emancipation from responsibility5.
  • Historical Context: Many Enlightenment thinkers (including Montesquieu, Adam Smith, and Edmund Burke, who is often considered a child of the Enlightenment despite his conservatism) argued that social bonds were essential for a free society. They sought to free individuals from arbitrary tyranny (like the divine right of kings), not from the moral obligations of family or community. Haywood’s definition ignores the “Conservative Enlightenment” or the Scottish Enlightenment, which emphasized moral sentiments and social cohesion.

2. The Claim: The Enlightenment is Synonymous with “Forced Egalitarianism”

The Argument: Haywood asserts that the Enlightenment demands “total forced egalitarianism”6. He views this as the mechanism by which the Left seeks to create a “heaven on earth”7.
Fact-Check & Analysis:
This is historically inaccurate regarding the core tenets of major Enlightenment philosophers.

  • Inaccuracy: While the Enlightenment championed equality before the law and the concept of natural rights (that all men are created equal in dignity), it rarely advocated for “forced egalitarianism” (equality of outcome).
  • Contradiction: Figures like Voltaire, Kant, and the American Founders (Jefferson, Madison) were often elitist or believed in a natural aristocracy of talent and virtue. They designed systems (like the U.S. Constitution) specifically to prevent the “forced leveling” of society. Haywood is projecting the specific outcomes of the French Revolution’s “Terror” (which Haywood admits is his reference point 8) onto the entire philosophical era. As Michael Young notes, reducing the Enlightenment to this single destructive element ignores the philosophers who opposed “voluntary divorce” and supported traditional structures9.

3. The Claim: The Enlightenment Equates Freedom with the “Good” at the Expense of Justice

The Argument: The “Athenian Stranger” argues that the Enlightenment made “freedom itself… the telos or the purpose of human reason”10. He claims this “diluted” justice because philosophers like Kant, Hegel, and Locke prioritized freedom over the characteristic of God as “just”111111.
Fact-Check & Analysis:
This argument relies on a false dichotomy between freedom and justice.

  • Analysis: In Enlightenment thought, freedom was not an amoral license (doing whatever one wants) but was usually defined as “liberty under law.”
    • Locke: Argued that where there is no law, there is no freedom. His “freedom” was inextricably linked to the justice of Natural Law.
    • Kant: His categorical imperative is a strict moral duty, not a “do what you want” philosophy.
  • Refutation: The speaker claims these philosophers focused on “critiques of the bible” to promote this mistaken freedom12. While they did critique religious dogma, their goal was often to establish a justice system based on reason that could be universally applied, rather than one based on sectarian interpretation. The assertion that they could “barely ever hear… or understand what it means for something to be just” 13 ignores that their entire project was constructing a just political order (Constitutionalism) to replace the arbitrary justice of monarchs.

4. The Claim: The “Left” is the Only True Heir to the Enlightenment

The Argument: Haywood insists that defining the Left as the Enlightenment is accurate because the Left applies the principles first seen in the French Revolution14. He dismisses other Enlightenment elements (like those of Roger Scruton’s intellectual lineage) as exceptions, implying the “core” is rotten15.
Fact-Check & Analysis:
This is a logical fallacy (No True Scotsman) that attempts to purify the definition of “Enlightenment” to include only its most destructive elements.

  • Evidence from the Text: Michael Young argues that if the Right attacks the Enlightenment as a whole, they are “firing at the wrong thing” because there is “an awful lot of Enlightenment philosophers… whose work we could make excellent use of”16.
  • Correction: By ceding the entire Enlightenment to the Left, Haywood’s argument essentially hands over the intellectual foundations of the West (scientific inquiry, individual rights, constitutional government, free markets) to his political enemies. As Young notes, this targeting mechanism is wrong; plenty of Enlightenment philosophy is “right in the pocket” when fighting against modern “wokeness”17.

Summary of Errors

The anti-Enlightenment arguments in the transcript rely on:

  1. Cherry-picking: Selecting the French Jacobins as the sole representatives of a diverse 200-year intellectual movement.
  2. Strawmanning: Claiming philosophers who wrote extensively on duty and law (Locke, Kant) were actually promoting “emancipation from all bonds.”
  3. Anachronism: Blaming 18th-century philosophers for 21st-century “wokeness” and “transgenderism”18, ignoring the distinct evolution of postmodernism and critical theory which often attack Enlightenment rationality.

To refute Charles Haywood’s claim that the Enlightenment demands “total emancipation from all unchosen bonds” and represents a “dissolution of all bonds”, we can look directly at the primary texts of the era.
The following thinkers—cited by Michael Young and others in the debate as counter-evidence—demonstrate that the Enlightenment was often obsessed with duty, moral obligation, and social cohesion, rather than the atomized “freedom” Haywood attacks.

1. John Locke: The Duty of Parenthood

Haywood’s Claim: The Enlightenment seeks “total emancipation from all unchosen bonds”.
The Reality: John Locke, often considered the father of Enlightenment liberalism, argued that the “unchosen bond” between parent and child is the fundamental basis of society and cannot be broken by mere choice.
In his Second Treatise of Government (1690), Locke argues that parental authority is not a right of domination, but a duty imposed by God and Nature. A parent is not free to abandon this bond.

  • Direct Quote:

    “The power, then, that parents have over their children, arises from that duty which is incumbent on them, to take care of their off-spring, during the imperfect state of childhood. To inform the mind, and govern the actions of their yet ignorant nonage… is what the children want, and the parents are bound to.”

    — Second Treatise of Government, Chapter VI, Section 58.

  • Analysis: As Michael Young noted, referencing legal scholar John Witte Jr., Locke grounded the family in “natural duties” rather than just rights. Locke explicitly states that this bond is a “law of nature” that “commands the obedience of children” and the duty of parents, creating a structure of obligation that predates any political “choice” or social contract.

2. Edmund Burke: The Intergenerational Contract

Haywood’s Claim: The Enlightenment is an ideology of “total permanent elimination of all left power” and seeks a “utopia” by destroying the past.
The Reality: Edmund Burke, a Whig and a child of the Enlightenment who championed the American Revolution, argued that society is an “unchosen” partnership that binds the living to the dead and the unborn.
In Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Burke distinguishes between the destructive “French” Enlightenment (which Haywood attacks) and the “British” Enlightenment (which preserves tradition).

  • Direct Quote:

    “Society is indeed a contract… [but] as the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”

    — Reflections on the Revolution in France.

  • Analysis: This directly refutes Haywood’s definition of the Enlightenment as a movement that demands “emancipation from all unchosen bonds.” Burke argues that we are born into a massive web of unchosen obligations to our ancestors and our descendants. For Burke, true “Enlightenment” liberty was impossible without these inherited bonds.

3. Adam Smith: The Web of Mutual Sympathy

Haywood’s Claim: The Enlightenment is “total forced egalitarianism” and purely materialist.
The Reality: Adam Smith, a key figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, argued that human beings are naturally social and bound by “sympathy” (empathy), not just cold calculation or forced equality.
In The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Smith argues that our moral judgments come from an innate connection to others—an “unchosen” psychological bond.

  • Direct Quote:

    “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”

    — The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part I, Section I.

  • Analysis: Smith’s “invisible hand” is often cited by the Right, but his moral philosophy underpins it. He did not advocate for a society of isolated individuals (the “dissolution of bonds” Haywood fears). Instead, he described a society held together by the “impartial spectator”—an internalized social conscience that regulates our behavior towards our neighbors.

4. Immanuel Kant: Freedom as Duty (Not License)

The “Athenian Stranger’s” Claim: Enlightenment thinkers like Kant made “freedom itself… the telos or the purpose of human reason” at the expense of justice.
The Reality: Kant defined “freedom” (autonomy) not as “doing whatever you want,” but as obedience to the moral law that you give yourself.
In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), Kant argues that acting on impulse or desire is actually a form of slavery (heteronomy). True freedom is acting according to duty (The Categorical Imperative)

  • Direct Quote:2

    “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”3

    — Groundwork of the Metaphys4ics of Morals, 4:421.

  • Analysis: This is the opposite of the “emancipation from all bonds” Haywood describes. Kantian freedom binds the individual to a strict, universal moral code. If you cannot will your action to be a universal law for everyone (e.g., lying, stealing, abandoning children), you are forbidden from doing it. This is a system of rigid moral constraints, not the libertine “freedom” criticized by the debaters.

Summary of the Distortion

Charles Haywood and the “Athenian Stranger” rely on a definition of the Enlightenment that applies almost exclusively to the Jacobins of the French Revolution.
By ignoring the British, Scottish, and American Enlightenment thinkers (Locke, Burke, Smith, Madison) who emphasized duty, tradition, and moral sentiment, they create a “straw man” that allows them to categorize all “Enlightenment” thought as Leftist, thereby ceding the intellectual foundations of the American founding to their political enemies.

To refute Charles Haywood’s claim that the Enlightenment demands “total forced egalitarianism” (equality of outcome), we can look to the specific texts of the era’s most influential thinkers. Far from demanding a leveled society, these philosophers often argued that inequality of outcome was a natural, necessary, and even just result of a free society.
Here is an in-depth breakdown of the Enlightenment thinkers who explicitly argued against the “forced egalitarianism” Haywood describes.

1. James Madison: Inequality is the “First Object of Government”

Haywood’s Claim: The Enlightenment seeks “total forced egalitarianism.”
The Reality: James Madison, a key architect of the American Enlightenment, argued that the primary purpose of government is to protect the unequal faculties of individuals, which inevitably leads to unequal outcomes.
In Federalist No. 10 (1787), Madison directly contradicts the idea that the goal of the republic is to make everyone the same. He argues that because people have different abilities (“faculties”), they will inevitably acquire different amounts of property.

  • Direct Quote:

    “The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results.”

  • Analysis: Madison is arguing that “forced egalitarianism” is impossible without destroying liberty. If the government protects freedom (the “faculties” to work, invent, and build), then economic inequality (“different degrees… of property”) is the natural result. He explicitly critiques “theoretic politicians” (like the Jacobins Haywood detests) who erroneously believed that reducing men to “perfect equality in their political rights” would equalize their “possessions, their opinions, and their passions”.

2. David Hume: The “Pernicious” Nature of Perfect Equality

Haywood’s Claim: The Enlightenment aims for a “heaven on earth” via forced equality.
The Reality: David Hume, the Scottish Enlightenment giant, explicitly warned that any attempt to enforce “perfect equality” would lead to tyranny and poverty, destroying the very society it aimed to improve.
In An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), Hume dedicates a section to justice where he dismantles the idea of leveling society.

  • Direct Quote:

    “Historians, and even common sense, may inform us, that, however specious these ideas of perfect equality may seem, they are really, at bottom, impracticable; and were they not so, would be extremely pernicious to human society. Render possessions ever so equal, men’s different degrees of art, care, and industry will immediately break that equality.”

  • Analysis: Hume argues that “forced egalitarianism” requires a “most rigorous inquisition” to watch every inequality appear and a “most severe jurisdiction” to punish it, which would soon “degenerate into tyranny”. He argues that instead of helping the poor, forced equality would “reduce society to the most extreme indigence”. This directly counters Haywood’s assertion that the Enlightenment demands this outcome; Hume argued it was a recipe for civilizational collapse.

3. Thomas Jefferson: The “Natural Aristocracy”

Haywood’s Claim: The Enlightenment demands “total emancipation” from hierarchy.
The Reality: Thomas Jefferson, often considered the most radical of the American Founders, believed in a “natural aristocracy” of virtue and talent that should replace the “artificial aristocracy” of birth and wealth. He did not want a flattened society, but a meritocratic one.
In a letter to John Adams (October 28, 1813), Jefferson distinguishes between the hierarchy of the old world (kings/nobles) and the hierarchy of the new world (talent/virtue).

  • Direct Quote:

    “I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents… The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and the government of society.”

  • Analysis: Jefferson’s vision was not “forced egalitarianism” but an open competition where the best could rise. He believed the “best remedy” was to leave citizens free to elect the “real good and wise” (the natural aristoi). This confirms that even the “Left” of the American Enlightenment viewed hierarchy—based on merit—as essential for a functioning republic.

4. John Locke: Labor Creates Inequality

Haywood’s Claim: The Left (and thus the Enlightenment) demands equality of outcome.
The Reality: John Locke’s theory of property is fundamentally about exclusion and inequality derived from labor.
In the Second Treatise of Government (1689), Locke argues that the world was given to men in common, but that individual labor removes things from the common stock, making them private property to the exclusion of others

  • Direct Quote:23

    “The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is h5is own, and thereby makes it his property… [This] excludes the common right of other men.”

  • Analysis: Locke asserts that labor puts a “distinction” between private goods and common goods. He acknowledges that money allows for the “disproportionate and unequal possession of the earth,” which is agreed to by “tacit and voluntary consent”. For Locke, the inequality resulting from industriousness is not a defect to be fixed by “forced egalitarianism,” but a just outcome of natural liberty.

Summary

Charles Haywood’s definition of the Enlightenment relies on the specific excesses of the French Jacobins and the Terror, who did preach radical leveling. However, by applying this definition to the entire Enlightenment, he ignores the dominant Anglo-American tradition (Madison, Hume, Locke, Jefferson) which argued that:

  • Inequality of faculties is natural.
  • Government must protect the unequal acquisition of property.
  • Forced equality leads to tyranny and poverty.
  • A “natural aristocracy” is necessary for good governance.

Deep Research

The Conservative Enlightenment: A Dialectical Refutation of Post-Liberal Caesarism and the Critique of Rational Liberty

Executive Summary

The contemporary Western political landscape is marked by a profound bifurcation within the conservative intellectual tradition. On one side stands the established fusion of classical liberalism and traditionalism; on the other, a rising “Post-Liberal” or “Dissident Right” faction, exemplified by thinkers such as Charles Haywood of The Worthy House, who argue that the Enlightenment project itself is the root cause of Western civilizational decline.1 This report provides an exhaustive, dialectical refutation of the Post-Liberal critique. Through a deep-structure analysis of the foundational texts of the Anglo-Scottish and American Enlightenment—specifically the works of John Locke, Edmund Burke, Baron de Montesquieu, Adam Smith, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Immanuel Kant—we demonstrate that the “Enlightenment” attacked by Haywood is a strawman, a caricature that ignores the movement’s deep anthropological conservatism and its robust defenses against the very social atomization and “Woke” tyranny the Right seeks to combat.
Far from being a project of radical autonomy and blank-slate egalitarianism, the high Enlightenment was characterized by a commitment to “unequal faculties” 4, the “natural aristocracy” of virtue and talent 5, the “intergenerational contract” of the living, dead, and unborn 6, and the “juridical” protection of the domestic sphere.7 Furthermore, this report argues that the “Caesarist” alternative proposed by Haywood represents a regression to the arbitrary “Man of System” 8 that the Enlightenment successfully identified as the primary enemy of human flourishing. By abandoning the epistemological standards of the Enlightenment—empiricism, due process, and objective truth—the Dissident Right risks disarming itself against the “Woke” ideology, which is itself a rejection of Enlightenment rationality in favor of postmodern subjectivism.9

Chapter I: The Crisis of the Western Mind and the “Dark Enlightenment”

1.1 The Post-Liberal Indictment

The intellectual trajectory of the 21st-century Right has been undeniably altered by the perception of a totalizing cultural defeat. The rapid capture of institutions—academia, media, corporate governance, and the military—by the ideology of “Wokeism” or Critical Social Justice has led many conservatives to conclude that the “classical liberal” defense of free markets and free speech is insufficient. Charles Haywood, a prominent voice in this sphere, articulates a view that the “Enlightenment” is not the solution but the pathogen. In his view, the Enlightenment’s elevation of individual autonomy above the sacred, its secularization of public life, and its social contract theory inevitably dissolved the organic bonds of faith, family, and place, leaving the individual defenseless against the predatory state and the “Woke” mob.2
Haywood’s prescription is “Caesarism”—a “Red Caesar” who, utilizing the powers of the modern executive, will shatter the “Cathedral” (the progressive power structure) and restore a moral order based on “reality” rather than “ideology”.1 This view aligns with the “Dark Enlightenment” or Neoreactionary (NRx) movement, which posits that democracy is a failed experiment and that the only stable form of government is a sovereign corporation or monarchy.11

1.2 The “Enlightenment” Strawman

However, a rigorous examination of the primary sources reveals that the “Enlightenment” targeted by these critics is largely a fiction—or more precisely, it is a conflation of the moderate, empirical Anglo-American Enlightenment with the radical, rationalist French Enlightenment (and its Jacobin descendants). The critics ignore that the most ferocious attacks on utopian social engineering, leveling, and the destruction of tradition came from within the Enlightenment itself.
The “Conservative Enlightenment” was not a revolt against God or nature. It was an attempt to understand the laws of nature—both physical and moral—to build a political order that aligned with the reality of human nature. This reality included man’s fallen state, his limited reason, his need for property, and his tribal attachments. As we shall see, the architects of this order did not seek to atomize society but to create a “juridical” framework where the organic institutions of family and church could survive the encroachments of the absolute state.

Chapter II: The Anthropological Defense: Atomization vs. The Juridical Household

2.1 The Myth of the Anti-Family Contract

A central pillar of the Post-Liberal critique is the assertion that Enlightenment liberalism dissolves the organic family unit by applying the logic of the social contract—individual autonomy and consent—to the pre-political sphere of the household. Haywood and his contemporaries argue that by framing all relationships as contractual, the Enlightenment erodes the natural authority of parents and tradition, reducing the family to a voluntary association of individuals maximizing their utility.
This interpretation, however, fails to survive a confrontation with the text of John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, particularly Chapter 6, “Of Paternal Power.” Locke does not extend the social contract into the nursery. On the contrary, he engages in a sophisticated philosophical operation to insulate the family from the political sphere.
Locke opens his discussion by explicitly criticizing the terminology of “Paternal Power.” He notes that the term suggests the power resides wholly in the father, “as if the mother had no share in it; whereas, if we consult reason or revelation, we shall find, she hath an equal title”.13 By suggesting the term “parental power,” Locke is grounding the authority of the family in the law of nature and the positive law of God, citing the commandment to “Honour thy father and thy mother”.13
This is a critical distinction: Locke establishes that parental authority is antecedent to the state. It is not a grant from the sovereign, nor is it a temporary political office; it is a natural right and duty derived from the act of generation and the obligation to preserve offspring.13
Locke argues that while all people are born to an “equal right to freedom,” they are not born in a state of immediate freedom. Why? “Because they are born without reason, the tool that people use to survive in both the state of nature and society”.15 The authority of the parent is a duty imposed by nature to govern the child during the period of nonage. Locke writes, “The power, then, that parents have over their children, arises from that duty which is incumbent on them, to take care”.14 This power is temporary but absolute in its sphere, designed to cultivate the reason necessary for the child to eventually become a free agent.

2.2 Separating the King from the Father

The Haywoodian critique often conflates the Enlightenment’s rejection of the Divine Right of Kings with a rejection of all hierarchy. Locke’s specific intellectual project in the Two Treatises was to refute Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, which attempted to justify absolute monarchical power by equating the King with a Father.15
Locke’s counter-argument is that political power and paternal power are “totally different”.15

  • Paternal Power: Based on nature, affection, and the child’s lack of reason. It is temporary and educational.
  • Political Power: Based on consent, compact, and the protection of property among adults possessing reason. It is conditional and limited.
    By separating these spheres, Locke actually protects the family from the state. If the King is the Father, then the state can intervene in the family with the same absolute authority a father has over a child. By denying this equivalence, Locke creates a wall of separation that preserves the domestic sphere as a private, pre-political domain where the state’s writ does not run.15 The “Conjugal Society” is described as separate from political society; the “master and mistress of the household have power over everyone in that household,” though it is not the power of life and death (which belongs to the state).15 This preserves the family as an autonomous unit of governance.

2.3 Kant’s Metaphysics of the Household

Immanuel Kant, often accused by reactionaries of establishing a sterile, universalist ethics, provides an even more rigorous defense of the “Right of Domestic Society” in his Metaphysics of Morals. Kant categorizes the family not merely as a biological accident but as a “juridical relation” essential to human dignity.
Kant discusses “Parental Right” alongside “Marriage Right,” arguing that the duty to preserve and care for offspring follows directly from procreation.7 Kant’s formulation is stark: children are “persons,” not things. Because they are persons, they possess rights, but because they are helpless, parents have a coercive right to manage them. This “Right of Domestic Society” is a “personal right of a real kind” (ius reale), meaning it is a right against the world to protect the integrity of the family unit.7
The Post-Liberal claim that Enlightenment thought reduces human relations to mere economic exchange fails to account for Kant’s explicit rejection of the “instrumental” view of persons. In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant argues that one must “always respect the humanity in others” and never treat them merely as a means.17 This anti-utilitarian stance is the strongest possible philosophical bulwark against the commodification of the family.
By insisting on the “juridical” nature of the family, Kant elevates it above mere sentiment. It becomes a legal institution with standing. The “Woke” attack on the family—which seeks to dissolve parental rights in favor of state intervention (e.g., regarding gender transitions)—is a violation of this Kantian “Right of Domestic Society.” Haywood’s attack on the Enlightenment thus discards the very juridical tools (Lockean separation, Kantian rights) that are necessary to defend the family against the encroachments of the modern state.

Chapter III: The Intergenerational Covenant: Burke against Presentism

3.1 The “Primeval Contract” of Eternal Society

A recurring theme in the critique of the Enlightenment is that it is inherently “presentist”—that by basing government on the consent of the governed, it disenfranchises the past and the future. Haywood argues that true conservatism requires a recognition of the dead and the unborn, a continuity he believes is severed by liberal individualism. This critique, however, ignores the central text of conservative liberalism: Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France.
Burke, a Whig and a staunch defender of the Glorious Revolution (the political manifestation of Locke’s philosophy), explicitly defines society not as a temporary trade agreement for the trade of pepper and coffee, but as a “partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born”.6 This “great primæval contract of eternal society” is the definitive Enlightenment rebuttal to the idea of the “tabula rasa” state.
Burke’s argument is that the “consent” governing society is not merely the whim of the current majority (which leads to the “tyranny of the majority” Madison feared), but a tacit consent embedded in the institutions, manners, and customs inherited from ancestors.20 This “intergenerational justice” 19 is a limitation on the will of the living. The “municipal corporations of that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure… to separate and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate community”.6

The research material highlights the “phenomenological link” between the laborer and the product of his labor as a source of intergenerational solidarity.20 This Lockean concept of property—that one mixes one’s labor with the world to create value—is the basis of inheritance. When a man improves land or builds a house, he extends his personality through time. The protection of property rights (a core Enlightenment value) is thus the protection of the past (the ancestor’s labor) and the future (the heir’s inheritance).
Haywood’s call for “Caesarism” threatens this continuity. A Caesar, by definition, rules by decree and necessity.1 Property rights under a Caesar are subject to the will of the sovereign. If the “Worthy House” seeks to preserve the legacy of families, the “rule of law” (an Enlightenment achievement) is a far safer vessel than the arbitrary will of a “Red Caesar” who may decide that the family’s property is needed for the “good of the state.”

3.3 The “Dead” and “Unborn” as Constituents

Burke’s formulation provides a mechanism for resisting the “presentism” of the current age. If the contract includes the dead and the unborn, then the current generation is merely a trustee or steward.19 This “Stewardship Doctrine” has been used to argue for environmental conservation, fiscal responsibility (against debt), and the preservation of constitutional norms.
The “Woke” ideology is fiercely presentist, often seeking to “cancel” the past (the dead) for failing to meet current moral standards, and to mortgage the future (the unborn) for current equity. The Enlightenment conservative opposes this not by rejecting the social contract, but by enforcing its full temporal scope. Haywood’s rejection of the contract in favor of “Will” (Caesarism) actually aligns him with the Jacobin/Woke view that the present will is sovereign over the past.

Chapter IV: The Epistemology of Liberty: Wokal Distance and the Coffeehouse

4.1 The “Coffeehouse Culture” and the Marketplace of Ideas

One of the most potent defenses of the Enlightenment against the “Woke” charge comes from the analysis of “Wokal Distance” (Michael Young), a researcher at the Center for Renewing America.21 Young identifies the “Coffeehouse Culture” of the 17th and 18th centuries as the precursor to the Enlightenment and the birthplace of the “marketplace of ideas”.21 This culture was characterized by news reading, discussion, and the sharing of ideas—a decentralized network of intelligence that allowed for the “rapid rise of knowledge”.21
This “Coffeehouse” epistemology is the antithesis of the “Cathedral” or the “Woke” academy. It relies on the premise that truth is objective and discoverable through debate, evidence, and reason. It rejects the argument from authority (whether clerical or royal).

4.2 Wokeism as the Anti-Enlightenment

Haywood asserts that Wokeism is the logical conclusion of the Enlightenment’s trajectory.9 However, Wokal Distance argues that Wokeism is a rejection of the Enlightenment’s core epistemological and juridical values.

  • Rejection of Objective Truth: The Enlightenment is characterized by “Empiricism, Positivism, [and] Behaviorism”.9 The Woke worldview, influenced by postmodernism, denies objective truth, viewing claims of “reason” and “logic” as “white supremacist” constructs or masks for power.10
  • Rejection of Due Process: Wokal Distance explains that in Woke ideology, “Accusers… are always reliable—so due process need not apply… It’s not necessary to hear ‘both sides‘“.10 This stands in direct opposition to Locke’s insistence on a “common judge” and standing laws to prevent arbitrary violence.23
  • Rejection of Free Speech: Wokeism views free speech as an “oppressive concept” that elides power dynamics, preferring “de-platforming” to debate.10 The Enlightenment viewed free speech as the essential mechanism for error correction.

4.3 The Strategic Flaw of the Right

Michael Young argues that the Right’s “fundamental strategic flaw” is its inability to distinguish between the Enlightenment and the enemy.9 By attacking the Enlightenment, the Dissident Right abandons the very weapons that are most effective against Wokeism: evidence, logic, due process, and rights.
If the Right embraces “Caesarism” and the idea that “might makes right,” they validate the Woke premise that all politics is merely a struggle for power between identity groups. They retreat from the “universal” claim of truth to a “particular” claim of tribal dominance. This is a battleground where the “Woke” (who control the institutions of cultural production) have the advantage. The Enlightenment strategy—insisting on neutral principles, objective reality, and individual rights—forces the Woke onto the defensive, as their ideology cannot withstand empirical scrutiny.

Chapter V: The Sociology of Law: Montesquieu’s Particularism vs. Universalist Tyranny

5.1 The “Spirit” of the Laws as a Conservative Principle

A primary charge of the “Dissident Right” is that the Enlightenment universalizes Western values, forcing them on cultures where they do not fit, and conversely, stripping the West of its own particularity. This is the argument that “Human Rights” are a universal acid. However, this view is incompatible with the work of Baron de Montesquieu, whose The Spirit of the Laws is the foundational text of Enlightenment political sociology.
Montesquieu famously argued that laws “should be adapted to the people for whom they are framed… to the nature and principle of each government, to the climate of each country, to the quality of its soil, to its situation and extent, to the principal occupation of the natives”.24 This is the opposite of universalism. Montesquieu posits that a law that works in the commercial republic of England might be disastrous in the agricultural monarchy of France or the despotism of Turkey.
The “Spirit of the Laws” is not a metaphysical abstraction but a concrete reality formed by history, geography, and religion.25 Montesquieu emphasizes that laws must relate to “the religion of the inhabitants, to their inclinations, riches, numbers, commerce, manners, and customs”.26 This “sociological” approach to law respects the particularity of nations.

5.2 The “Climate” of Liberty

Montesquieu’s discussion of “climate” is often dismissed as archaic, but it represents a profound insight: that politics is downstream of culture and environment. He argues that “liberty” is not a single product that can be exported, but a “relation” between the constitution and the people. “Laws should have relation to the degree of liberty which the constitution will bear”.26 This cautions against the very “nation-building” and “democracy promotion” that Haywood rightly criticizes in the Neoconservative project.
However, Haywood attributes these Neoconservative errors to the Enlightenment per se. Montesquieu shows that the Enlightenment warned against imposing a foreign form of government on a people ill-suited for it. The “imperialism” of modern liberal democracy is a corruption of Enlightenment principles, which originally counseled modesty and adaptation to local circumstances.

5.3 Separation of Powers: The Anti-Tyranny Algorithm

Montesquieu’s most lasting contribution—the separation of powers—is dismissed by the Caesarists as a recipe for gridlock. Yet, Montesquieu identified that “political liberty… is that tranquility of mind arising from the opinion each person has of his safety”.25 This safety is impossible under Caesarism. When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, “there can be no liberty” because “apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner”.25
Haywood’s desire for a decisive leader to crush the “internal enemies” 1 is a desire for this very unity of power. While it may offer a short-term tactical victory against the “Woke,” it structurally guarantees the loss of liberty for the victors as well. The Enlightenment insight is that structure matters more than intent. A “good” Caesar has the structural power to be a tyrant; a President within a constitutional framework is structurally constrained from total tyranny, regardless of his intent.

Chapter VI: Natural Aristocracy: The Jeffersonian/Madisonian Answer to Equality

6.1 Madison and the Protection of “Unequal Faculties”

Perhaps the most significant misconception promoted by the Post-Liberal Right is that the American Founding was a project of radical egalitarianism that inevitably leads to the “Harrison Bergeron” style equality of outcome seen in “Woke” ideology. This is a falsification of the historical record. The Founders were obsessed with the danger of leveling.
In Federalist No. 10, James Madison identifies the “diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate” as an “insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests”.27 Crucially, Madison declares: “The protection of these faculties is the first object of government”.27
The first object of government is to protect the unequal faculties of men (intelligence, strength, industry) which lead to unequal outcomes (property). This is the diametric opposite of the “equity” agenda Haywood attributes to the Enlightenment. Madison argues that “factions” arise from this inequality, but the solution is not to destroy the inequality (which would destroy liberty) but to manage its effects through a republic.28

6.2 The Jefferson-Adams Correspondence: Natural vs. Artificial Aristocracy

The debate between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams further illuminates the Enlightenment’s commitment to hierarchy. In their famous correspondence, both men agree on the existence and necessity of a “natural aristocracy.” Jefferson writes: “The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society”.5
Table 1: Conceptions of Aristocracy in the Enlightenment
| | | | |
|---|---|---|---|
|Concept|Definition|Source|Role in Government|
|Natural Aristocracy|Based on “Virtue and Talents.” The “most precious gift of nature.”|Jefferson 5|To instruct, hold trust, and govern society.|
|Artificial Aristocracy|Based on “Wealth and Birth” without virtue.|Jefferson 5|A danger to be managed or excluded.|
|Talents (Adams’ View)|Includes Wealth, Strength, Beauty, Birth, as well as Genius.|Adams 31|Will inevitably command influence; must be recognized.|
|The “Man of System”|The planner who treats people like chess pieces.|Smith 8|A tyrant who destroys social order by imposing a plan.|
|The Caesar|The “Strong Man” ruling by necessity.|Haywood 1|A potential “Man of System” unchecked by law.|
Jefferson distinguishes the “natural aristoi” from the “artificial aristoi” founded on wealth and birth “without either virtue or talents”.5 He argues that the best form of government is one that effectively selects these “natural aristoi” into offices.30 Adams, more cynical, argues that “Education, Wealth, Strength, Beauty, Stature, Birth” are all talents that create influence, and that any republic will inevitably be led by an aristocracy.31
Haywood’s claim that the Enlightenment denies the “imago viva dei” and reduces men to equal atoms is contradicted by the Founders’ explicit reliance on virtue, talent, and leadership. They sought to replace the ossified hierarchy of feudalism (which often elevated the incompetent) with a dynamic hierarchy of merit. The modern “Woke” attack on meritocracy is thus an attack on the Jeffersonian Enlightenment.

6.3 The “Man of System” vs. The Statesman

Adam Smith’s critique of the “Man of System” is the ultimate rebuttal to both the “Woke” social engineer and the “Caesarist” dictator. Smith writes in The Theory of Moral Sentiments that the Man of System “is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it”.8
Smith warns that this planner forgets that “in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it”.8

  • The Woke “Man of System”: Seeks to arrange the pieces to achieve “equity” and “diversity” quotas, ignoring individual agency.
  • The Caesarist “Man of System”: Seeks to arrange the pieces to achieve “national renewal” or “order,” often through “extra-legal action”.3
    Both fail because they disrespect the “principle of motion” (liberty) of the individual. Haywood’s “Worthy House” is a “Man of System” project—it presumes a level of control over the complex emergent order of society that history suggests is impossible without totalitarian violence.

Chapter VII: The Caesarist Temptation: A Spenglerian Dead End

7.1 The Myth of the “Red Caesar”

Haywood’s specific prescription for the current crisis is “Caesarism”—a “Red Caesar” who will use extra-legal means to destroy the Left and restore order.1 He argues that this is “realism” and that Caesarism is a “natural, realism-based system”.1 He cites Oswald Spengler’s cyclic history as evidence that the “civilizational winter” makes Caesarism inevitable.2
However, if Spengler is the guide, then Caesarism is not a solution but a symptom of the end. Spengler viewed Caesarism as the death knell of a culture’s creative force, a descent into mere formlessness and power politics. To embrace Caesarism is to accept that Western civilization is dead and cannot be revived, only managed in its decline.

7.2 The Problem of “Necessity” and “Legitimacy”

Michael Anton, another thinker cited in this debate, defines Caesarism as “authoritarian one-man rule partially legitimized by necessity”.1 The appeal to “necessity” is the classic tyrant’s plea. As Pitt the Younger famously said, “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”
The Enlightenment solution—constitutionalism—was designed specifically to avoid the trap of “necessity.” By creating a system where power is checked by power (Madison), the Enlightenment ensures that “ambition [is] made to counteract ambition”.4 This is a “realist” acknowledgement of human sin. Caesarism, by contrast, relies on the idealist hope that the Caesar will be virtuous and remain virtuous while holding absolute power.
Locke identified that absolute monarchy (or Caesarism) is “inconsistent with civil society” because there is no judge to appeal to against the ruler.15 If the Caesar decides to take your property, or your children, there is no appeal. Haywood assumes the Caesar will be “on his side.” But a Caesar rules for Caesar. The “benefits of Caesarism to Caesar are obvious; to a nation, perhaps less so”.1

7.3 The “Athenian Stranger” and the Rule of Law

In Plato’s Laws, the “Athenian Stranger” (often identified as a wiser, more practical Socrates) argues that “Where the law is overruled or obsolete, I see destruction hanging over the community; where it is sovereign over the authorities and they its humble servants, I discern the presence of salvation”.32
This classical wisdom counters the NRx preference for “sovereignty” over “law.” The “Athenian Stranger” recognizes that the “Gold Age” of simple goodness is gone 33, and in the iron age of conflict, the Law must be the anchor. Haywood’s rejection of the “rule of law” as a liberal fiction 2 aligns him against the classical tradition he claims to defend. The Enlightenment did not invent the rule of law; it codified it (e.g., Magna Carta to Bill of Rights) to protect the subject from the arbitrary will of the Crown. Abandoning it is not a return to tradition; it is a return to barbarism.

Conclusion: The Worthy House Built on Sand

The exhaustive review of the primary texts and the contemporary debate reveals that Charles Haywood’s attack on the Enlightenment is a case of mistaken identity. He attacks a “Man of System”—a rationalist, centralizing, family-destroying engineer—and calls it “The Enlightenment.” But Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and James Madison attacked that very same figure two centuries ago.
The Conservative Enlightenment offered:

  1. The Protection of the Family: By distinguishing paternal from political power (Locke) and establishing domestic rights (Kant).
  2. The Sanctity of Tradition: Through the intergenerational contract (Burke) and the common law.
  3. The Recognition of Inequality: By protecting “unequal faculties” (Madison) and “natural aristocracy” (Jefferson).
  4. The Rejection of Universalism: By adapting laws to the “spirit” of the people (Montesquieu).
  5. The Critique of Power: By warning against the “Man of System” (Smith) and separating powers to prevent tyranny.
    The “Woke” tyranny Haywood opposes is not the result of these principles; it is the result of their abandonment in favor of a new, leftist “Man of System” who seeks to engineer “equity” by force. Haywood’s proposed solution—a Right-wing “Man of System” (Caesar)—is not a cure but a mirror image of the disease.
    The true counter to the “Woke” dissolution of the West is not to destroy the Enlightenment, but to reclaim it from those who have distorted it. It is to insist on the particularity of the American Constitution, the sanctity of the private sphere against the state, and the necessity of virtue for liberty. The “Worthy House” cannot be built on the ruins of the “City on a Hill”; it must be built on the foundations laid by the “wise master-builders” of the Conservative Enlightenment. By discarding these foundations, the Dissident Right risks building a house that will fall when the rains of tyranny—Red or Blue—inevitably descend.
Works cited
  1. The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return (Michael Anton) | by Charles Haywood (The Worthy House) | Medium, accessed November 26, 2025, https://medium.com/@charles_91491/the-stakes-america-at-the-point-of-no-return-michael-anton-debe72687d37
  2. A World After Liberalism: A Review - IM—1776, accessed November 26, 2025, https://im1776.com/2021/11/26/a-world-after-liberalism-a-review/
  3. Asylum ISSUE 1 | PDF | Nazi Germany | Franklin D. Roosevelt - Scribd, accessed November 26, 2025, https://www.scribd.com/document/850544645/Asylum-ISSUE-1
  4. Federalist No. 10 - Thomas Aquinas College, accessed November 26, 2025, https://www.thomasaquinas.edu/sites/default/files/2021-07/federalist-10-51.pdf
  5. Equality: Thomas Jefferson to John Adams - The University of Chicago, accessed November 26, 2025, https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch15s61.html
  6. Edmund Burke on intergenerational responsibility (small post) | Charles Mathewes, accessed November 26, 2025, https://uva.theopenscholar.com/charles-mathewes/blog/edmund-burke-intergenerational-responsibility-small-post
  7. The metaphysics of morals | Cambridge Core, accessed November 26, 2025, https://resolve.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/9264C19E216588A065AD0786DCD15BAF/9780511813306c10_p353-604_CBO.pdf/metaphysics_of_morals_1797.pdf
  8. Adam Smith on social change and “the man of system” (1759) | Online Library of Liberty, accessed November 26, 2025, https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/adam-smith-on-social-change-and-the-man-of-system-1759
  9. Comments - Friends and Enemies - Christopher F. Rufo, accessed November 26, 2025, https://christopherrufo.com/p/friends-and-enemies/comments
  10. Woke Ideology - P2P Foundation Wiki, accessed November 26, 2025, https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Woke_Ideology
  11. Steve Bannon and Elon Musk Are Battling for the Soul of Trumpism - New Lines Magazine, accessed November 26, 2025, https://newlinesmag.com/argument/steve-bannon-and-elon-musk-are-battling-for-the-soul-of-trumpism/
  12. On the “Dark Enlightenment,” and of Curtis Yarvin / Mencius Moldbug - Apple Podcasts, accessed November 26, 2025, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-dark-enlightenment-and-of-curtis/id1467085487?i=1000447607707
  13. Chapter VI: Of Paternal Power – Second Treatise of Government, accessed November 26, 2025, https://pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca/secondtreatiseofgovernment/chapter/6/
  14. CHAP. VI. Of Paternal Power. - Second Treatise of Civil Government, by John Locke 1690, accessed November 26, 2025, https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/politics/locke/ch06.htm
  15. Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government Chapters 6 & 7 Summary & Analysis, accessed November 26, 2025, https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/locke/section5/
  16. Two Treatises of Government - Wikipedia, accessed November 26, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Treatises_of_Government
  17. Immanuel Kant - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed November 26, 2025, https://iep.utm.edu/kantview/
  18. Beyond the Intergenerational Social Contract - Reflections - Yale University, accessed November 26, 2025, https://reflections.yale.edu/article/test-time-art-aging/beyond-intergenerational-social-contract
  19. Edmund Burke, Tom Paine, and generational rights., accessed November 26, 2025, https://www.conlaw.org/Intergenerational-II-2.htm
  20. Edmund Burke’s Eternal Society: A Philosophical Reflection - The Imaginative Conservative, accessed November 26, 2025, https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2016/12/edmund-burke-eternal-society-stephen-wolfe.html
  21. The Carousel Podcast - Substack, accessed November 26, 2025, https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/spotify/56de5a8b-23c7-43ea-a7fe-90a486a16d28/114152.rss
  22. Critical Race Theorists: All Systems Are Biased, Except For Ours, accessed November 26, 2025, https://americarenewing.com/critical-race-theorists-all-systems-are-biased-except-for-ours/
  23. Second Treatise of Government - Early Modern Texts, accessed November 26, 2025, https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/locke1689a.pdf
  24. Baron de Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed November 26, 2025, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/montesquieu/
  25. The Spirit of the Laws by Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu | Research Starters - EBSCO, accessed November 26, 2025, https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/literature-and-writing/spirit-laws-charles-louis-de-secondat-baron-de-la-brede-et
  26. Montesquieu’s Theory of The Separation of Powers | PDF - Scribd, accessed November 26, 2025, https://www.scribd.com/document/720228385/Montesquieu-s-Theory-of-the-Separation-of-Powers
  27. Commentary on Federalist 10 - Teaching American History, accessed November 26, 2025, https://teachingamericanhistory.org/resource/fafd-fed10-commentary/
  28. Analysis: Federalist No. 10 | Research Starters - EBSCO, accessed November 26, 2025, https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/communication-and-mass-media/analysis-federalist-no-10
  29. The Federalist Papers No. 10 - The Avalon Project, accessed November 26, 2025, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp
  30. The Unseen Significance of Jefferson’s Natural-Aristoi Letter to Adams, accessed November 26, 2025, https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/the-unseen-significance-of-jeffersons-natural-aris
  31. From John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 15 November 1813 - Founders Online, accessed November 26, 2025, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6198
  32. On the History of the Idea of Law - The Eye, accessed November 26, 2025, https://the-eye.eu/public%2FBooks/World%20Tracker%20Library/worldtracker.org/media/library/College%20Books/Cambridge%20University%20Press/0521854237.Cambridge.University.Press.On.the.History.of.the.Idea.of.Law.Nov.2005.pdf
  33. The Tragedy of the Athenian Ideal in Thucydides and Plato, accessed November 26, 2025, https://www.asau.ru/files/pdf/2503866.pdf

**

Books

Here are two clusters:

  • Books that mirror or reinforce Haywood’s storyline (Enlightenment/liberalism as dissolving bonds, empowering an anti-traditional elite, and tending toward soft totalitarianism).
  • Books that counter or complicate that narrative, defending Enlightenment/liberalism or showing it to be more plural and tradition-friendly than Haywood suggests.
    I’ll flag a handful as especially central for each side.

1. Books that mirror Haywood’s perspective

These tend to argue that liberalism / Enlightenment rationalism destroys inherited bonds, corrodes virtue, and leads to technocratic or totalitarian outcomes. They’re not identical to Haywood, but the family resemblance is strong.

Core postliberal / anti-liberal works

  1. Patrick J. Deneen – Why Liberalism Failed
    • Thesis: Liberalism hasn’t been “betrayed”; it has succeeded on its own terms, and that success dissolves traditional communities, family structures, and moral norms. Liberalism’s promise of autonomy hollowed out unchosen ties and created a ruling meritocratic overclass. (No Small Endeavor)
    • Why it mirrors Haywood: Deneen explicitly frames liberalism as a systematic solvent of unchosen bonds, very close to Haywood’s description of the Enlightenment as emancipation + egalitarian leveling.
  2. Ryszard Legutko – The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies
    • Thesis: Liberal democracy and communism, though opposed in rhetoric, share deep structural similarities: hostility to tradition and religion, desire to remake society, and pressure toward ideological conformity. (Amazon)
    • Why it mirrors Haywood: Treats liberal democracy as carrying soft totalitarian impulses; very close to Haywood’s sense that “the Enlightenment” is a utopian, anti-traditional project whose “essence” persists even in modern liberal regimes.
  3. Alasdair MacIntyre – After Virtue
    • Thesis: The “Enlightenment project” of grounding morality on autonomous reason universally failed, leaving us with emotivism and managerial/bureaucratic elites. MacIntyre calls for a return to Aristotelian, tradition-embedded virtue ethics. (The Metasophist)
    • Why it mirrors Haywood: MacIntyre’s diagnosis that modern morality and liberal individualism are the decayed products of a failed Enlightenment project is the most philosophically serious version of Haywood’s story (though MacIntyre is more careful historically than Haywood).
  4. Augusto Del Noce – The Crisis of Modernity (essay collection)
    • Thesis: Traces how secular modernity (including Enlightenment rationalism and later Marxism) slowly erodes Christian metaphysics and leads to a technocratic, hedonistic society.
    • Why it mirrors Haywood: Treats modern liberal societies as downstream from a philosophically corrupt early-modern/Enlightenment break with classical-Christian thought.
  5. James Kalb – The Tyranny of Liberalism
    • Thesis: Liberalism, by insisting on neutrality and individual autonomy, ends up enforcing a comprehensive ideological regime that delegitimizes tradition, religion, and inherited authorities.
    • Why it mirrors Haywood: Strong focus on liberalism as quasi-totalitarian and inherently hostile to thick communal bonds.

Nationalism and anti-Enlightenment statecraft

  1. Yoram Hazony – The Virtue of Nationalism
    • Thesis: Defends the nation-state and inherited loyalties against universalist “imperial” projects (Roman, Catholic, European Union, liberal internationalist). (New York Magazine)
    • Why it mirrors Haywood: Hazony explicitly contrasts biblical/protestant nationalist traditions with Enlightenment universalism, which he sees as abstract, empire-building, and corrosive of local loyalties.
  2. Yoram Hazony – Conservatism: A Rediscovery
    • Thesis: Argues that real conservatism is built on inherited obligations (family, religion, nation) and that Enlightenment liberalism is a rival tradition that undermines these in the name of individual autonomy. (Liberal Currents)
    • Why it mirrors Haywood: Frames “liberal Enlightenment” and “Anglo-biblical conservatism” as opposed constitutional traditions.
  3. Ryszard Legutko – The Cunning of Freedom (adjacent)
    • Thesis: Critiques modern conceptions of freedom as mere absence of constraint, tied to liberal individualism, and defends older, thicker notions of ordered freedom.
    • Why it mirrors Haywood: Again, liberal modernity dissolves substantive moral orders.

Historically inflected critiques of liberal/Enlightenment modernity

  1. Brad S. Gregory – The Unintended Reformation
    • Thesis: Connects the Reformation, confessional conflict, and early-modern intellectual changes to a fragmented, hyper-pluralist modernity governed by the market-state and subjective ethics.
    • Why it mirrors Haywood: Sees modern liberal orders as historically downstream from foundational breaks with pre-modern, unified religious and moral frameworks.
  2. Eric Voegelin – The New Science of Politics
    • Thesis: Reads modern political ideologies (including liberalism and totalitarianism) as secularized “gnostic” movements trying to immanentize eschatology.
    • Why it mirrors Haywood: Modern ideology = utopian attempt to remake reality, which fits Haywood’s “Enlightenment as utopian reordering” story.

2. Books that counter or complicate Haywood’s narrative

These either defend the Enlightenment directly, or show that there are multiple Enlightenments (some deeply friendly to family, religion, and tradition), or argue that liberalism itself grew out of Christian/communal roots rather than pure atomization.

Direct defences of the Enlightenment

  1. Steven Pinker – Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
    • Thesis: Empirical case that Enlightenment values (reason, science, humanism) have massively improved human life across metrics like health, wealth, violence, and rights. (Amazon)
    • How it counters Haywood: Denies that “Enlightenment = civilizational decay.” For Pinker, that package is responsible for most of what’s actually good in modern life, and its abandonment, not its success, explains current pathologies.
  2. Anthony Pagden – The Enlightenment: And Why It Still Matters
    • Thesis: Narrative history of 17th–18th century European thought arguing that Enlightenment projects around universal rights, critique of arbitrary power, and cosmopolitanism still provide crucial resources today. (Oxford University Press)
    • How it counters Haywood: Shows Enlightenment as internally diverse and heavily concerned with law, constitutionalism, and curbing absolutism – not a monolithic crusade to dissolve all bonds.
  3. Tzvetan Todorov – In Defence of the Enlightenment
    • Thesis: Concise, philosophical defence of Enlightenment ideals (reason, universalism, secular politics) against both postmodern relativism and technocratic distortions. (Amazon)
    • How it counters Haywood: Admits real Enlightenment excesses but argues that the best Enlightenment thinkers are precisely those who reject utopianism and respect limits—directly contradicting the “essence = forced egalitarian utopia” story.
  4. Gertrude Himmelfarb – The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments
    • Thesis: Conservative historian arguing there were three distinct Enlightenments; the British and American versions centered on virtue, religion, and “the sociology of virtue,” not radical antinomianism. (PenguinRandomhouse.com)
    • How it counters Haywood: Shows multiple Enlightenment lineages, some of which affirm family, religion, and hierarchy. This is basically the historical version of Young’s objection: Haywood is collapsing them into the French radical strain.

Enlightenment + religion, rather than Enlightenment vs religion

  1. David Sorkin – The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna
    • Thesis: Demonstrates that there was a “religious Enlightenment” in which Christian and Jewish thinkers embraced aspects of Enlightenment (reason, toleration, reform) while deepening confessional commitments. (Amazon)
    • How it counters Haywood: Directly undermines the premise that Enlightenment = secular assault on unchosen bonds. Here, churches and religious intellectuals are major Enlightenment actors.
  2. Larry Siedentop – Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism
    • Thesis: Argues that the idea of the morally equal individual arises from Christian theological developments, long before 18th-century philosophes; modern liberal equality is a downstream secularization of Christian ideas. (Amazon)
    • How it counters Haywood: Reverses the causal story. Instead of Enlightenment = anti-Christian egalitarianism, Siedentop argues Christianity itself “invented” the individual and moral equality, and liberalism codified that in law and politics.

Nuanced / internal critiques of liberalism without Haywood’s caricature

  1. Jonathan Israel – Radical Enlightenment / Democratic Enlightenment (multi-volume)
    • Thesis: Distinguishes between “moderate” Enlightenment (Locke, Montesquieu, etc.) and a “radical” Enlightenment (Spinoza, d’Holbach) which is more secular, egalitarian, and revolutionary.
    • How it counters Haywood: Gives you a taxonomy. If you want to criticize egalitarian utopian strands, you can target Israel’s “radical Enlightenment” rather than lumping everyone into one bucket.
  2. James Schmidt (ed.) – What Is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions
    • Thesis: Collects classic texts plus modern commentary on what “Enlightenment” meant to different people.
    • How it counters Haywood: Makes it impossible to treat “the Enlightenment” as a single project; you see multiple, competing self-understandings.
  3. Samuel Gregg – Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization
    • Thesis: Argues that Western civilization at its healthiest balances reason and faith, and that both the anti-religious Enlightenment and anti-rational religious reactions distort that inheritance.
    • How it counters Haywood: Places Enlightenment rationality and Christian faith in a potentially symbiotic relationship, rather than in pure opposition.
  4. Douglas B. Rasmussen & Douglas J. Den Uyl – e.g., Liberty and Nature and related works
    • Thesis: Aristotelian defence of classical liberalism: individual rights and limited government as necessary for people to pursue objective, plural human goods.
    • How it counters Haywood: Philosophically rebuts the idea that liberal individual rights must be hostile to the virtues or to teleological accounts of the good life.

How to use these against / alongside Haywood

If you’re mapping the landscape:

  • Closest to Haywood’s story (Enlightenment/liberalism as dissolving bonds and empowering technocratic elites):
    Deneen, Legutko, Hazony, MacIntyre, Kalb, Del Noce, Gregory, Voegelin.
  • Best historical counters to “the Enlightenment = leftist emancipation project”:
    Himmelfarb (three Enlightenments), Sorkin (Religious Enlightenment), Pagden, Todorov, Israel (moderate vs radical).
  • Best philosophical counters:
    Pinker (empirical defence of Enlightenment outcomes), Siedentop (Christian roots of equality), Rasmussen/Den Uyl, Gregg.
    If you tell me which side you want to read first (or what kind of critique/defence you care most about: historical, theological, philosophical, empirical), I can turn this into a reading sequence or an Obsidian-ready comparison table.

Handwritten Notebook Pages

Source

Open Anti-Enlightenment notebook pages — start at notebook p. 198 (file not included in this release).

Name audit: the handwritten heading says “James Haywood,” but the quoted argument is from Charles Haywood. The source interview transcript reproduces the same claims about the Enlightenment, unchosen bonds, forced egalitarianism, and utopia; Haywood’s published dialogue states the same thesis.