First, Gleiser's assessment of the
goal of Enlightenment philosophers strikes me as a little off. At least I doubt
they conceived of it in terms of multinationalism in the way he suggests. Their
goal was to promote the use of human reason above other forms of conceptualizing
the world, and they assumed that the capacity for human reason was universal. While
I agree that the capacity for reason is universal, this assumption carried with
it the assumption that Western ideas of reason were the only valid ones, an
assumption I would strongly contest.
Furthermore,
I take issue with "the need to create a global civilization with
shared moral values". No doubt, by "shared moral values,"
Gleiser means liberal Western values. Ostensibly, of course, part of this value
system is an emphasis on diversity, but if this value system is to trump all
others, then it ultimately collapses in on itself in a rubble of hypocrisy. Better
to celebrate and allow ourselves to be challenged by the ways in which the
moral systems of other cultures conflict with our own. That, I think, will lead
to a more healthy understanding of diversity.
Finally, in
celebrating the importance of the Enlightenment and how it was "far
removed from traditional religious precepts", he declares that we need a
new one based on "humancentrism", summed up by one of his closing
statements, "We matter because we are rare." Does not this ironically
echo the attestations of those same "traditional religious precepts"
that Earth and humanity must be at the center of the universe because man is
the peak of God
