In a Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled “The Dark Side of the Enlightenment” (April 7-8, Weekend Edition), Yoram Hazony laments the proponents’ of pure reason failure to acknowledge the contributions of tradition, religion, and nationalism to human progress. He identifies Harvard Professor and cognitive psychologist, Steven Pinker, as an especial exemplar of this elevation of the Enlightenment to singular status, a status Mr. Hazony considers to be the height of arrogance. Discussing the significant positive role that tradition, religion, and other human institutions have made to human progress, Mr. Hazony concludes by stating that “[e]nlightenment overconfidence has gone badly wrong often enough to warrant serious doubts about claims made in the name of reason—just as doubt is valuable in approaching other systems of dogma. Such doubts would counsel toleration for different ways of thinking. National and religious institutions may not fit with the Enlightenment, but they may have important things to teach us nonetheless.”

Mr. Hazony’s opinion piece is exceptionally thought provoking and well worth reading. For me, his look at the dark side of the enlightenment brings to mind F. A. Hayek’s distinction between what he called “constructivist rationalism” – the belief that complex social problems, like engineering problems, can be solved by using human reason – and a more limited rationalism grounded in a recognition that no single human mind (or even a group of minds) has the capacity to grasp all of the variables that affect human interactions.  Hence, the more complex the social problem, the less adequate is human reason, properly understood, as a tool to solve the problem without adverse unintended consequences.  Hayek believed that those adverse consequences more often than not outweigh any good results.  Therefore, long-standing existing arrangements whose origins may not be precisely known should be given due respect, as they may be superior to what comes of rationalist intervention.  Regrettably, the elites in Washington, Brussels, and Davos are blind to this lesson.  Instead, these elites see no limitations to human reasoning (at least in their hands), exalt centralized planning, and look to state power (and themselves at the levers of this power) to implement their directives, always to the diminution of human freedom and often with long run results detrimental to the mass of people.