Can Enlightenment Morality be Justified Teleologically?

Abstract

In this article I aim to provide a teleological defence of some basic Enlightenment principles of political morality. More precisely, I want to show that these principles can be defended on teleological grounds in so far as teleological justifications of moral principles are valid at all. My adversary in this debate is Alasdair Maclntyre, whose well-known claim that the Enlightenment Project ‘had to fail’ is largely based on a negative answer to the question that forms my title.¹ My critique of Maclntyre will make some use of textual evidence, taken, above all, from Condorcet, and to a lesser extent from Kant and Rousseau. However, my general aim is to provide a plausible analysis and reconstruction of what Maclntyre calls the ‘Enlightenment Project’, rather than an accurate historical account of it.