Transhumanists, like Enlightenment partisans in general, believe that human nature can be improved but are conflicted about whether liberal democracy is the best path to betterment. The liberal tradition within the Enlightenment has argued that individuals are best at finding their own interests and should be left to improve themselves in self-determined ways. But many people are mistaken about their own best interests, and more rational elites may have a better understanding of the general good. Enlightenment partisans have often made a case for modernizing monarchs and scientific dictatorships. Transhumanists need to confront this tendency to disparage liberal democracy in favor of the rule by dei ex machina and technocratic elites.
The Enlightenment rationale for liberalism, most powerfully articulated in Mills On Liberty, was that if individuals are given liberty they will generally know how to pursue their interests and potentials better than will anyone else. So, society generally will become richer and more intelligent if individuals are free to choose their own life ends rather than if they are forced towards betterment by the powers that be. In order to ensure that all interests and views of the good are equally weighed in the marketplace of ideas and expressed in collective decision-making, society should guarantee free debate and equal legal and political empowerment. The most radical expression of these ideals was liberal and social democracy, which are often assumed to be the consensual political ideal of the Enlightenment.
In fact, Enlightenment philosophers were intensely conflicted about the virtues of powerful monarchies and technocratic elites versus popular democracy. Some believed an absolute state was the best form of governance. Thomas Hobbes argued that political absolutism was necessary to prevent the war of all against all. Voltaire said that he would rather obey one lion, than 200 rats of [his own] species.
Other Enlightenment thinkers argued against absolutism and the divine right of kings, but held out for the desirability of enlightened despots who had political legitimacy because they were pursuing their peoples interests. Free peoples, as individuals and democracies, often do not choose the ends that are in their best interests. As Spinoza said, the masses can no more be freed from their superstition than from their fearsthey are not guided by reason (Spinoza, 1670: 56). The benevolent rationale for authoritarianism has always been that rulers and their advisors understand the needs of the people better than the people do themselves.
Before the Enlightenment, the alleged source of this superior understanding was the rulers wisdom and spiritual guidance. After the Enlightenment, the idea that some people were more or less advanced on the path of reason and progress than others lent itself to justifications for enlightened monarchy, colonialism, and scientific dictatorships. Most Enlightenment philosophers placed their hopes for progress in the benign governance by modernizing monarchs and reformed aristocrats, certainly not in radicalized peasants. If society needs to be rationally re-organized it is far more straightforward to make existing elites and monarchs the agents of Reason than to try to convert the masses and establish Reason from the bottom up; once society is rationally reorganized from the top, the masses will find their way to Reason that much more easily—or so the argument goes.
A number of monarchs, such as Frederick II of Prussia, Joseph II of Austria, and Peter the Great and Catherine the Great of Russia, were directly influenced by and friendly towards the Enlightenment. These enlightened absolutists believed that the monarchical state could embody and advance the new science and Reason. They promoted public education, social reform, and the modernization of laws, economies, and militaries (Outram, 2005). Frederick II of Prussia promoted religious tolerance and abolished serfdom. Joseph II centralized the Austrian state, restricted the power of the Catholic Church, and abolished serfdom.
The American revolution was a step forward from enlightened despotism in Enlightenment political thought. But the founders of the American republic also were almost all suspicious of mobocracy, and the American state is carefully constructed to cripple direct democracy. The separation of judicial and executive power from legislative power, following the ideas of the Baron de Montesquieu, ensured that the wisdom of landed male elites would temper the passions of the mob as they continue to do today. Even within the legislative branch, the Senate was a landowners body, originally appointed by state legislatures, to check the potential of radical populism from the House.
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