Arthur Schopenhauer and Academic Freedom

Speech given at the FVD Spring School, 31 May 2025

Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, friends,

Today, I would like to say a few words about Schopenhauer and academic freedom. First, let me explain a little about the subject. When Peter van Duyvenvoorde approached me some time ago with the request to give a lecture for you, my thoughts turned to the subject of ‘cultural Marxism’. I edited a book on cultural Marxism in 2018, which was published in a second edition in 2021 by Aspekt Publishers. Cultural Marxism is an easy subject for me because it opens up the possibility of making some comments about our culture as a whole. 

Cultural Marxism is actually the transformation of Marx's own economic Marxism into a form of Marxism that focuses on changing culture, a process that has been taking place since the 1960s in universities, schools, museums and other cultural institutions. 

But one of the others was already going to speak on that subject. So the question arose: could I talk about something else, about Schopenhauer, for example? I can do that too. Although I will touch on cultural Marxism, albeit indirectly.

In correspondence on this subject via the app between me and Thierry Baudet, it was further suggested to me that you should ‘learn’ something from me today. This means that I should not primarily present ‘opinions’ with which you may or may not agree, but rather I should ‘give’ you something you had not yet thought of and with which I can stimulate a thought process in you.

I can do that too. At least, I am still overconfident enough to think that I can.

I will then go back to the year 1984. In 1984, I started working as a university lecturer at Leiden University, a university to which I have been affiliated for almost 40 years, the last 20 years as a professor of Jurisprudence. At the time, I was influenced by a philosopher I was reading who would greatly influence my view of the world, namely Arthur Schopenhauer. I wrote an article about Schopenhauer in 1984 in the Hollands Maandblad. Back then, that was still possible. I could write in the literary magazine Hollands Maandblad. I could also write on all the opinion pages of the mainstream newspapers at the time. I was given a column in Trouw. I wrote on the opinion pages of newspapers such as NRC and De Volkskrant. I also wrote in all the legal journals. At that time, the media were not yet so ideologically compartmentalised, divided according to the left/right divide.

Compared to the enormous ideological compartmentalisation of today, there was a sea of journalistic freedom at that time. At the university, too, for that matter. Today, universities are strongholds of left-wing woke indoctrination. Not then, or less so.

Quick scan of Schopenhauer

I will give a quick scan of Schopenhauer. German philosopher. Lived from 1788 to 1860. Not affiliated with a university. Lived off his father's capital. Author of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1818). Great influence on writers and artists in particular. Himself one of the greatest stylists in the history of philosophy. What am I saying? The greatest stylist (not even Nietzsche excluded).

My tip: don't start with his magnum opus. Start with the smaller essays (Parerga und Paralipomena). I started in 1984 with ‘Über die Universitätsphilosophie’. It was about philosophy at universities. Which Schopenhauer was against. And in concrete terms, ‘university philosophy’ at that time meant: Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Schopenhauer was against all three. But what was characteristic was that in 1984 I learned that you can also simply disagree with ‘great philosophers’ (i.e. Fichte, Schelling and Hegel). You can also contradict those people. Even contradict them very strongly (as Schopenhauer did). I learned from him that philosophy is the art of taking very firm positions. Also taking a position against authorities.

It may sound strange, but it is very good for a young intellectual in the making to hear: ‘It is your task to think critically’. And thinking critically also means taking a position. And taking a position also means opposing certain authorities.

History of philosophy

The history of philosophy, as described by Émile Bréhier, Johannes Hirschberger, Ernst von Aster and Bertrand Russell, is therefore not a history of great figures whom you must not contradict, but a succession of thinkers, and it is up to you to find out who your thinker is. This also means that there are thinkers who are not your thinkers. Thinkers you can fight against. You must challenge them. In your quest for intellectual maturity. To find out where you stand, who you are.

I have therefore benefited greatly from Schopenhauer's Über die Universitätsphilosophie and also from his Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life. And I have been fortunate to have been introduced to Schopenhauer very early in my life, who has guided me throughout my life.

Schopenhauer and freedom of thought

I will now move on to the theme of Schopenhauer and the freedom of the university. Or Schopenhauer and freedom of thought. Or Schopenhauer and freedom of expression or freedom of speech.

I would like to warn you now about what I am not going to do with regard to Schopenhauer. I will also tell you what I am going to do. What I am not going to do is give an overview of Schopenhauer's work. Tell you which books he wrote. What the content of those books is. What I am going to do is comment extensively on one of his quotations. And I am going to hang many other things on that quotation. I will also show the great significance of the quotation I am going to comment on, including its political significance. And I will conclude with a remark about cultural Marxism.

I am referring to the following quotation:

‘Descartes is rightly considered the father of modern philosophy, first and foremost because he taught reason to stand on its own two feet by teaching people to use their own heads, for which until then the Bible on the one hand and Aristotle on the other had functioned (...)’ (Sämtliche Werke, IV, p. 11).

This quote is primarily an explanation of why all histories of philosophy have modern philosophy begin with Descartes. With Descartes' experiment to make a new beginning. He does this by doubting everything he can doubt. What remains? That he cannot deny that doubting is a form of thinking. So he thinks. And if he thinks, then he must also exist. ‘Cogito ergo sum’. This is how Descartes formulated it in 1637 in his Discours de la méthode. In 1641, he elaborated on this in Latin in his Meditationes.

Descartes then asks himself whether there are any truths that impose themselves on him with the same force as cogito, ergo sum, and he believes he has found such a truth in the confirmation of the existence of a divine being.

At that point, of course, the train completely derails and Descartes falls back on traditional unchallenged ideas, such as the existence of God. But that doesn't matter, his beginning was beautiful. And groundbreaking. Thinking with your own head. Learning to think independently. That is where intellectual maturity begins. That is where the university, the university ‘as an idea’, begins to distinguish itself from the ‘visible university’ that surrounds us and that nowadays functions under the spell of ‘woke’.

What does Schopenhauer contrast in this quote with ‘thinking for yourself’? Two things.

First, allowing the Bible to function as the ultimate authority.

Second, allowing Aristotle to function as the ultimate authority. 

The Bible

I will start with the Bible. It is hardly conceivable to contemporary Westerners today that the Bible once dominated not only debates about morality and decency, but also science. Scientific debates, whether in the fields of biology, the humanities, astronomy or medical sciences, were often dominated by statements from the Bible. The Bible, as the revealed word of God, could not be wrong. So if you could demonstrate that a scientific position you wanted to take was in accordance with the Bible, that was a very strong argument in favour of your position. If you could demonstrate that a scientific position taken by your opponent was contrary to the Bible, that opponent was ‘knocked out’. 

This principle of biblical authority was bound to conflict with the principle of ‘independent thinking,’ which Schopenhauer identified Descartes as the founder of. The conflict between the church and science in accordance with independent thinking came to a head in 17th-century astronomy. At that time, the Copernican worldview was gaining more and more supporters. That is to say, the worldview in which the sun, not the earth, was at the centre of the universe. It is not the sun that revolves around the earth, but the earth that revolves around the sun. In other words, it is not the earth that is central, but the sun. Hence ‘heliocentric’ (Greek helios = sun) as opposed to ‘geocentric’ (Greek geo = earth).

The man who, after the death of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543), believed he could substantiate heliocentrism with his own observations and thinking was Galileo Galilei (1564–1642). For the dating: bear in mind that Copernicus wrote about a century before Galileo. Copernicus' book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Bodies), was published in 1543, the year of his death. Galileo wrote his book on the heliocentric world view, Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo (Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems), in the years leading up to its publication in 1632. In this work, he compares the geocentric world view (of Ptolemy) with the heliocentric model (of Copernicus), clearly favouring the Copernican model — although this is packaged as a dialogue between three characters to avoid censorship. The book ultimately led to his trial and conviction by the Inquisition in 1633.

The Dialogo brought Galileo into conflict with the Church. After all, in 1616, the Holy Inquisition of the Church had taught: 1. The Copernican worldview was absurd in itself, but also 2. heretical in relation to Holy Scripture (Bury, A History of Freedom of Thought, p.88).

The Bible texts against Galileo

What were the Bible texts that were considered to be contrary to the views of Copernicus and Galileo? They were:

Psalm 104:5

‘He established the earth on its foundations; it will never be moved.’

This was interpreted as: The earth stands still and does not move.

Ecclesiastes 1:5

‘The sun rises and the sun sets, and it hurries to the place where it rose again.‘

Interpretation at the time: The sun moves, not the earth.

Joshua 10:12-13

’Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and you, moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stood still...’

Interpretation at the time: If the sun stood still, it must normally move. So the sun revolves around the earth.

Galileo countered this with his own observations. These observations became increasingly accurate in his time thanks to the discovery of the telescope, and Galileo was thus able to say to the ecclesiastical authorities: ‘Here, look through my telescope and see for yourselves that the Copernican world view is correct and not the geocentric world view.’ But the ecclesiastical authorities, who based their authority on the Bible, did not want to look through that telescope at all, because after all, the Bible said that what Galileo claimed his senses were telling him could not be true.

Galileo's abjuration formula from 1633

This issue played out in a debate that lasted several decades, but it ended with Galileo being forced to recant the Copernican world view before the Inquisition in Rome. In 1633, Galileo (then 70 years old) was ordered to kneel and recite the following text:

‘I, Galileo Galilei, son of the late Vincenzio Galilei of Florence, seventy years old, brought before the court and kneeling before you, most eminent and most reverend lords cardinals, general inquisitors of the universal Christian republic against heretical depravity, with the Holy Gospels before my eyes, which I touch with my own hands, swear that I have always believed and, with God's help, will continue to believe in the future every article that the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of Rome adheres to, teaches and preaches.’

Galileo is thus forced to recite a text before the cardinals and inquisitors. A text that he did not write himself, but was dictated to him. He is expected to recite this text with his hands on the Gospel. What does this text mean? It means that he has always believed in every article that the Church adheres to. This means that if the Church says ‘the Earth is the centre of the universe and the sun revolves around the Earth,’ this is true. Whatever science may teach you, whatever your senses may tell you, whatever your telescope may show you – it is all an illusion, the Church is right. Galileo also promises that he has not always believed this, but that he will continue to believe it. This makes the Church the final arbiter of all scientific truths.

In the rest of the recantation formula, Galileo is forced to state that ‘the false opinion that the sun is the centre and immovable’ must be rejected and is also rejected by him. He is no longer allowed to adhere to, defend or teach this false doctrine. He is also forced to declare that he did adhere to that doctrine, even setting it down in a book, and that he is therefore rightly suspected of ‘blasphemy’ or, as explicitly stated in the recantation formula, ‘heresy’: ‘that is to say, that I have believed and emphasised that the sun is the centre of the world and immovable, and that the earth is not the centre and is movable’. Galileo continues:

‘and I swear that in future I will never say or assert anything, either verbally or in writing, that could give rise to similar suspicion against me, and that I will report any heretic or anyone suspected of heresy to this Holy Office or to the inquisitor and the ordinary judge of the place where I am.’

In other words, Galileo is also obliged to report supporters of the Copernican world view to the Inquisition and to the judge of the place where he is located. The Inquisition can then take appropriate measures against any supporters of Copernicus.

It hardly needs to be said that this did not encourage the spread of Copernicus' teachings throughout the world. (The full text of the statement can be found in Russell in The Scientific Outlook, 2001, 17, 18; and in Hemleben, p. 7).

Galileo's formula of abjuration in relation to Descartes

This, then, is what Schopenhauer was not in favour of. This was also what Descartes was not in favour of. Descartes, incidentally, tried to avoid any conflict with the Catholic Church. He even decided not to publish his book Le Monde during his lifetime. Descartes had largely completed Le Monde around 1633. The work was intended as a natural philosophy book in which he explained the universe according to mechanistic principles. Among other things, he defended the idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun — the heliocentric worldview of Copernicus and Galileo.

But in that same year, 1633, Galileo Galilei was condemned by the Inquisition for defending that same heliocentric model. When Descartes heard about this, he was shocked and cautious. Fearing persecution by the church and possible condemnation of his ideas, he decided not to publish his book.

The manuscript remained unpublished during his lifetime. It was only after his death, in 1664, that Le Monde was finally published, under the title Le Monde ou Traité de la lumière (‘The World or Treatise on Light’).

This is what Schopenhauer means when he says that you have to use your own head (‘den eigenen Kopf gebrauchen’) and that the Bible cannot be a substitute for this, as the Inquisition prescribed. Galileo used his own head. And he paid a heavy price for it. In 1633, he was forced to declare that he would not do so again.

Earlier, in 1600, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome's Campo dei Fiori on the orders of the Church for ‘using his own head’, also in relation to his adherence to the Copernican or heliocentric world view. Descartes also wanted to use his own head, but he did not risk conflict with the Church: he kept his work secret during his lifetime. What this means (and here I am making a small correction to Schopenhauer's quote) is that Descartes had formulated the general principles of independent thinking with his Cogito, but when it came down to it, he did not publish his heliocentric book.

This gives us the following picture. First, Giordano Bruno, who in 1600 was prepared to die at the stake for independent thinking. Second, Galileo, who put that independent thinking into practice, but who renounced this practice when the Inquisition and the Church threatened him with punishment in 1633. Thirdly, Descartes, who, as a precautionary measure to avoid conflict with the Church, shelved a manifestation of that independent thinking, his book Le Monde, after learning of the problems Galileo had encountered as a result of his heliocentrism.

What happened next? In the Western world, it became customary no longer to use the Bible as an argument for or against scientific truths. The role of the Bible as an argument in, for example, an astronomical discussion is now obsolete.

Two perspectives on the clash between reason and the Bible

Let me now try to characterise the relationship between Scripture and science from two perspectives.

The first is: if personal observation and science or reason clash with the Bible, then personal observation and science must give way. After all, it is unthinkable that the Bible, as the word of God, could be wrong. Personal observation is then incorrect. Galileo sees things that cannot be true. The Bible takes precedence over observation and reason. There is a name for this position, i.e. that the Bible is always right. It is called ‘fundamentalism’.

The second position is: perception and science take precedence. If the Bible and science clash, then the Bible must give way. Or, in other words, you must interpret the Bible in such a way that it becomes compatible with science.

It will be clear that the second position has become dominant in the Christian world. There is no cosmology faculty at any university where Galileo's cosmology is measured against the Bible.

This position also has a name. It is called ‘modernism’. Modernism is therefore opposed to fundamentalism.

Schopenhauer is therefore a ‘modernist’. And he points to Descartes as the founder of modernism. But, one might say, Schopenhauer could also be a modernist because in his time, the 19th century, modernism was protected by law and justice. Bruno, Galileo and Descartes could not yet afford modernism.

20th-century human rights and modernism

What about the 20th and 21st centuries? In 1948, modernism received support in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) in texts on freedom of thought, conscience and religion (Art. 18) and freedom of expression (Art. 19). In fact, this Universal Declaration is therefore an anti-fundamentalist declaration. 

This modernism has also been enshrined in the constitutions of European nation states. In other words, 1633, the renunciation of independent thinking, can no longer take place. 

Will this remain the case? That is the question. Why is that the question? Because Europe is facing mass immigration, including from fundamentalist cultures. According to Statistics Netherlands, asylum and immigration in the Netherlands adds a city the size of Leiden every year (in 2023, the migration balance, i.e. immigration minus emigration, was approximately 137,000 people). 

The PVV and FVD have been unable to stop this. The current Schoof Cabinet has been unable to stop this. This has consequences for the culture of Europe. The culture of modernism will come under pressure. Not from the Catholic Church, but from Islamism. It is no longer the Bible that poses a threat to modernism, but the Koran or the Hadith. After all, Islamists grant the Koran the same authority that the cardinals and the Inquisition granted the Bible in 1633. One could also put it this way: fundamentalism is much more prominent within Islam than fundamentalism within Judaism and Christianity (Koopmans, Het vervallen huis van de islam, p. 214).

But let me leave aside for now this issue of what Bassam Tibi calls the ‘Islamic Zuwanderung’ in combination with the ‘failed integration’ and turn my attention to the second frustrating factor for independent thinking, which, in Schopenhauer's opinion, Descartes had put an end to: the influence of Aristotle.

Aristotle as an argument in a discussion

Schopenhauer considered Aristotle to be equivalent to the Bible as a frustrating factor for modernism. At first glance, this sounds unlikely. But it becomes clearer when one knows the context of discussions around 1633. In Galileo's time, Aristotle was regarded as an authority comparable to that of the Bible. If Aristotle taught something, then it was true.

How did Aristotle acquire this authority? To understand this, we must go back to the beginnings of Christianity. When Christianity developed, the Church Fathers were aware that it had been preceded by an enormous culture, a culture that could hardly be rejected in its entirety as having no value whatsoever. There were actually two competing attitudes, from which a third view emerged as a kind of compromise or synthesis. The first was that of a total rejection of the classical heritage. The Church Father Tertullian (c. 155 – c. 240 AD) became a symbol of this attitude. 

Tertullian (c. 155 – c. 240 AD) is credited with the statement ‘Credo quia absurdum’: ‘I believe because it is absurd’. He did not say this literally, but it was later attributed to him. What concerns me now is what is attributed to him. I want to schematically contrast two positions, and the words attributed to Tertullian, ‘I believe because it is absurd,’ are very suitable for this. The ‘credo quia absurdum’ is based on a statement Tertullian made in his book De Carne Christi (‘On the Flesh of Christ’), in which he criticises the unbelief of pagan philosophers. He writes:

‘... the Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd. And He was buried, and rose again; it is certain, because it is impossible.’

(Latin: ’Et mortuus est Dei Filius; prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est. Et sepultus resurrexit; certum est, quia impossibile.’)

What this means is that the Christian faith is not based on human logic or philosophy, but on divine revelation. Precisely because it goes so much against human reason — that God would die and rise again — it is proof of its divine origin. For Tertullian, revelation therefore takes precedence over reason.

It hardly needs to be argued that this is also relevant to a proper understanding of the inquisitors in 1633. They said: it has been revealed to us, in the Bible, how the universe works. If Galileo now teaches, based on observation and reason, that things are different, then revelation, i.e. the Bible, takes precedence. Galileo's approach can also be called ‘rationalistic’, as opposed to Tertullian's ‘fideism’.

The second attitude is more ‘rationalistic’. We find this, of course, in Galileo, Descartes and Schopenhauer. But a more rational approach has also been defended in the Christian tradition. Among others, by the medieval theologian and philosopher Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109). He said: ‘Credo ut intellegam’ (‘I believe in order to understand’). Anselm meant that you must first believe in order to then gain a deeper understanding of what you believe through reason. Faith opens the door to understanding, as it were. Gaining a deeper understanding of what you believe seems desirable to Anselm, while Tertullian does not consider it necessary.

A third figure I would like to mention is Thomas Aquinas (1225-1275), who attempted to defend a synthesis of reason and revelation. Thomas tried to do justice to ancient philosophy. But he also tried to do justice to Christianity, which is based on revealed truths. He did this by distinguishing between truths that could be reasoned with the natural mind and truths for which revelation was necessary.

Thomas Aquinas had a particularly high regard for Aristotle and considered him to be the pagan philosopher par excellence whose thinking was most in line with the Christian faith. In the 13th century, when Aristotle's works were rediscovered in Europe through Arabic and Greek sources, Thomas played a central role in the integration of Aristotelian philosophy into Christian theology. Thomas often referred to Aristotle simply as ‘the Philosopher’. He saw Aristotle as a reliable guide for the rational understanding of reality. That is to say: for the fields of logic, metaphysics, natural philosophy and ethics. Aquinas's magnum opus, the Summa Theologiae, is steeped in Aristotelian terms and ways of thinking. This effectively ‘Christianised’ Aristotle. He became part of the ‘philosophia in ecclesia recepta’, or ‘philosophy accepted by the Church’. Thomistic philosophy was long considered the philosophia in ecclesia recepta, reaching its peak in the 19th century and continuing well into the 20th century. In 1879, Pope Leo XIII published the encyclical Aeterni Patris, in which he elevated Thomism to the official philosophy of the Church. It was only after the Second Vatican Council II (1962–1965) that Thomism lost its exclusive status in the Church.

What does this mean? It means that Aristotelianism was part of the philosophy accepted by the Church for a very long time. And with that, Aristotle's philosophy gained a status that no philosophy deserves. Putting Aristotle on a pedestal had a negative effect on scientific development. Bertrand Russell writes in The History of Western Philosophy (1945): ‘Ever since the beginning of the seventeenth century, almost every serious intellectual advance has had to begin with an attack on some Aristotelian doctrine; in logic, this is still true at the present day’ (p. 160).

Even in Galileo's time, Aristotelianism was a negative factor in the acceptance of the Copernican world view. After all, Aristotle also assumed geocentrism. Or rather, geocentrism was supported not only by biblical statements, but also by the most authoritative philosopher with whom Galileo had to deal.

Preliminary conclusion

Where does all this lead? I would say to the following. Descartes' revolution, the revolution that would lead to modernism, makes it clear that we must be wary of the following.

First of all, a holy book should never be an obstacle to free thinking, to the development of science.

Secondly, no single philosophy, no single philosopher, should ever be an obstacle to the development of free thinking, to the development of science.

Thirdly, with regard to Christianity, the danger of the first point (obstruction by the Bible) but also of the second point (centralisation of a single authority, such as that of Aristotle) seems to have receded. Christianity, as Pim Fortuyn once so beautifully put it, has gone through the washing machine of humanism and enlightenment.

Fourthly, due to migration from pre-modern cultures, that ‘enlightened heritage’ is no longer a given for the coming decades. Once again, this is up for debate. Then it will no longer be the Bible that forms the basis against which free thinking is measured, but the Koran. No longer will ‘the philosopher’ (Aristotle) be presented as an authority, but ‘the prophet’ (Mohammed) or someone who speaks in the name of Mohammed (e.g. Ayatollah Khomeini). In May 2025, the French government published a report on the influence and infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood in the French government and French municipalities: Frères musulmans et islamisme politique en France, May 2025. That influence is considerable. For those who have been studying the subject for some time, such as French researchers Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, Roland Jacquard or Mohamed Sifaoui, this can come as no surprise.

Am I being ‘too negative’?

Now, I can imagine that people will perceive all this as ‘negative’. I don't think it's negative myself, but I am familiar enough with reactions to a story such as the one I have presented here to predict that some will react in this way.

There are two possible reactions to the issues I have outlined above: one reaction that I do not share and one that I do.

First, the reaction that I do not share. What you see a lot these days is people advocating a kind of regeneration of Christianity as a cultural counterforce to Islamism. This was implicit in Pim Fortuyn. Fortuyn was a Catholic. But his Catholicism was not the Catholicism of the inquisitors of 1633. Fortuyn's Catholicism was an ‘enlightened Catholicism’ or a ‘humanistic Catholicism’, a Catholicism that had been through the washing machine of humanism and the Enlightenment. The latter was not the case with Islam, and so what he recommended was a wash for Islam.

Prime Minister Orban of Hungary also recommends such a ‘cultural Christianity’ as the basis for European culture. The advocates of the regeneration of Christianity assume that humanism and the Enlightenment are apparently too weak on their own to counterbalance Islamism. This is often justified with the argument that ‘human beings’ need meaning. Christianity could provide that meaning.

What are we to make of this? To me, this argument seems unrealistic. If Fortuyn is right that humanism and the Enlightenment are the detergent for religious ideologies (both Christianity and Islam), why not anchor ourselves to the detergent itself, or the laundromat itself, instead of to one of the clean ideologies? What meaning does it give to life to adorn it with even more mysteries than it already has by nature?

Incidentally, the kind of reflections I am now offering are Schopenhauerian thoughts. Adopting one of the theistic religions (Judaism, Christianity or Islam) does not change the inherent mystery of life. Our ‘metaphysical hunger’ is not satisfied at all by adopting one of these systems. ‘Inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te’ (‘Our hearts are restless until they find rest in You’), wrote the Church Father, Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD), in his famous Confessions. Man would be restless inside until he found his true rest and fulfilment in God. Perhaps I lack a sense of religious musicality, but my heart has always found great peace in Schopenhauer or Bertrand Russell.

Is there also a name for the tradition of Schopenhauer, Descartes and Galileo? You could perhaps call it the ‘humanist tradition’ or the ‘Enlightenment tradition’. You could also refer, with Jonathan Israel, to the ‘Radical Enlightenment’, to which Spinoza made such an important contribution in our country.

The Kokkinakis case from 1993

In law, this tradition received important recognition in a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in 1993. In Kokkinakis v. Greece, (App. 14307/88), 25 May 1993, para 31: https://ap.lc/RaMi5, the question was whether the Greek government had the right to give the Greek Orthodox Church priority over other faiths, such as the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses. The Court's answer to that question was ‘no’, the Greek state does not have that right. The Court states the following:

‘As enshrined in Article 9 (art. 9), freedom of thought, conscience and religion is one of the foundations of a ‘democratic society’ within the meaning of the Convention. It is, in its religious dimension, one of the most vital elements that go to make up the identity of believers and their conception of life, but it is also a precious asset for atheists, agnostics, sceptics, and the unconcerned. The pluralism indissociable from a democratic society, which has been dearly won over the centuries, depends on it.”

Article 9 of the ECHR protects the same as Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, namely freedom of thought, conscience and religion. That article is the basis for modernism, of which Schopenhauer identifies Descartes as the first representative. But what the Court also makes clear in 1993 is that freedom of thought, conscience and religion also applies to ‘atheists, agnostics, sceptics, and the unconcerned’. Freedom of thought, conscience and religion also protects non-religious beliefs.

The consequences of that ruling are far-reaching. Article 9 protects ‘Islamophilia’. It gives citizens the right to adopt Islam. But Article 9 also protects ‘Islamophobia’: the right to reject Islam, to renounce it, to fall away from it (‘apostasy’).

The timeline of what is discussed here is as follows.

-1600 Giordano Bruno is burned at the stake in Rome.

-1637 Descartes formulates the cogito in his Discourse on Method.

-1641 Descartes elaborates on this in Latin in his Meditationes.

-1633 Galileo comes into conflict with the Church and is forced to renounce his worldview.

-1948 The United Nations enshrines freedom of thought in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

-1950 The Council of Europe enshrines that freedom of thought in the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

-1993 The European Court of Human Rights enforces freedom of thought in the Kokkinakis case.

It is important to dwell a little longer on the wording of the European Court's 1993 ruling. The court states that freedom of thought, conscience and religion has two dimensions. Firstly, a ‘religious dimension’. This means that it is essential for religions. But it also has a ‘secular dimension’ (a term not used by the Court, incidentally), namely that it has a valuable function (‘precious asset’) for ‘atheists, agnostics, sceptics, and the unconcerned’. This also provides protection for the community of atheists, agnostics, sceptics and those who say they have no interest in religious traditions (‘unconcerned’).

Galileo's forced renunciation of his deepest cosmological convictions in 1633 was, of course, completely wrong by the standards of the European Court in 1993. Galileo would – so to speak – have won a case against the Inquisition in 1993 with flying colours.

Now, I have argued that a return of Christian scriptural authority as a threat to freedom of thought is not so great. After all, Christianity has gone through the wash of humanism and the Enlightenment, as Fortuyn so aptly pointed out. The threat comes from the religion that has not yet undergone this cleansing, namely Islam. Given the apparent uncontrollability of immigration and asylum seekers from Islamic countries, there is a real danger here. That danger is only exacerbated by the fact that Western European countries, particularly the Netherlands, have a very weak cultural identity. This weak cultural identity is partly a cause of the ‘failed integration’, to quote Bassam Tibi (supported in this by Hamed Abdel-Samad).

From Aristotle to Marx

But we can also draw attention to Aristotle's equivalent as a frustrating factor in the development of free thinking, the development of freedom of thought, the development of science. Can we also recognise an equivalent in modern culture to the role Aristotle played in philosophia in ecclesia recepta? Or has the Western world become ‘free’ since Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas were shown the door after the Second Vatican Council?

Unfortunately, that freedom has also proved to be an illusion. Since the 1960s, culture, including in Europe, has been influenced by a new kind of Aristotle in the form of Karl Marx. In the early morning of 18 February 1969, twelve students climbed the entrance gate of Tilburg University with ladders and red paint. They painted the name ‘Karl Marx University’ on the façade in protest against the lack of participation and to draw attention to the desired democratisation of the university. This action received national media attention and became a symbol of the student movement. 

The term ‘Karl Marx University’ refers to a high-profile student action in 1969 at the then Catholic University of Tilburg, now known as Tilburg University. This event marks an important moment in the history of Dutch higher education.

On 28 April 1969, the situation escalated when students occupied the college's telephone exchange. This led to the first university occupation in the Netherlands, which lasted nine days. The students demanded co-determination and reforms in higher education. The occupation received national attention and led to discussions at government level about the ‘crisis of authority’ in education.

This is how the 1960s began in the Netherlands, seemingly innocently. 

Nothing wrong with that, right? Wrong, because the 1960s would also lead to a new orthodoxy, a new ‘church’. People refer to it as ‘The Leftist Church’.

The term ‘The Leftist Church’ is a rhetorical expression used mainly in the Netherlands to refer to a close-knit group of left-wing politicians, journalists, artists, academics and other influential figures. What the critics of The Leftist Church want to express with this term is that the leftist ideals that the student revolt had turned into a new orthodoxy at universities were professed in the same dogmatic way as the Catholic Church had done with Catholic ideals in Galileo's time. The Leftist Church was also characterised by the same kind of moral superiority that characterised the Inquisition that brought Galileo to his knees in 1633. Characteristic of the mentality of the Leftist Church is the book Everything Had to Change: The Unfulfilled Desire of a Leftist Generation (1991).

A highlight in the engagement of the Leftist Church can be considered the lecture by Leiden criminologist Professor Dr. Wouter Buikhuisen. Buikhuisen wanted – in very simplified terms – to conduct research into the biological component of criminal behaviour. What is wrong with that? Criminologists want to identify the cause of criminal behaviour, one might say. If Buikhuisen believes he has strong scientific arguments for a biological component, then surely he can investigate this and present his findings to the scientific forum?

But anyone who reasons in this way underestimates the fact that science has always been subject to heavy criticism from ideological convictions. This was no different in 1978 than it was in 1633. Only the nature of the ideological convictions has changed. In 1633, it was the Catholic worldview. In 1978, it was the Marxist worldview.

In what sense did the Marxist worldview oppose Professor Buikhuisen's research? It was in the sense that, according to Marxism, all behaviour, including criminal behaviour, had to be explained as a result of environmental variables. The ‘circumstances’ make the thief, not an innate criminal disposition. So what Buikhuisen wanted to investigate was not allowed to be true. And just as the church dignitaries did not want to look through the telescope to verify whether what Galileo said could be confirmed, the Marxist ideologues did not want to give Buikhuisen the chance to make his point. A group of masked individuals, armed with chains, stormed into the hall where Buikhuisen was giving his speech and threw a smoke bomb, seriously disrupting the meeting.

This physical raid was preceded by a long campaign of what we have come to call ‘demonisation’ since Fortuyn. Buikhuisen was compared to Nazis, to the extreme right. The man was made unable to work.

The attacks by Piet Grijs (pseudonym for Hugo Brandt Corstius) in Vrij Nederland were notorious. At the time, Grijs fulfilled the role of a kind of chief inquisitor of the Leftist Church. He enjoyed enormous authority among the left-wing population. Buikhuisen received little support from his university (Leiden University) or from his colleagues in Leiden.

The controversy escalated into what became known as the ‘Buikhuisen affair’. Buikhuisen received death threats, bomb threats and was called a ‘Nazi criminologist’. His family was harassed, including having faeces thrown through their letterbox. Ultimately, he lost the support of the university, his department was disbanded, and he left, disillusioned, for Spain, where he started an antique business.

It was not until 2010 that what the university considered a form of rehabilitation took place. A conference was organised at the university focusing on his work. But there has been no real rehabilitation. A real rehabilitation would have required an investigation into the events of 1978. A real investigation would also require that those responsible be identified and that an apology be made by the university. But none of that happened.

Buikhuisen died in 2025. Without an apology, without rehabilitation. This is particularly unfortunate, because Leiden University is now not only the university of Cleveringa (the professor who stood up for the Jewish professor E.M. Meijers during the Second World War), but also the university of Buikhuisen. Not a very flattering role, then.

Conclusion

What does all this teach us? I will make a few concluding remarks.

We began with a quote from Schopenhauer in which he praised Descartes' ‘independent thinking’ as the beginning of modern thinking. With his cogito, Descartes laid the foundation for modern thinking. But he did not defend it against the most important authority that tried to restrict modern thinking: the Catholic Church. The real battle for modern thinking was fought by Galileo Galilei. Initially, that battle was lost by modern thinking. In 1633, Galileo was forced to retract his scientific thinking before the Inquisition and the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

But while Galileo may have been a loser in the short term, he was not in the long term. The Enlightenment brought greater freedom for science and rational thinking in the 18th century. In the 19th century, constitutions emerged that enshrined freedom of thought and freedom of expression as inviolable principles. In the 20th century, in 1948, these were considered to be of global significance in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Two years later, in 1950, these principles were enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights, and in 1993 the consequences were drawn from this in the Kokkinakis case. The separation of Church and State, one of the components of the modernisation project, was then clearly articulated.

From the 1960s onwards, it seems as if freedom of thought and freedom of expression, which were cherished in modern thinking, have become completely unchallenged. But it would be an illusion to think so, for two reasons.

The first is that the religious oppression of modern thinking in 1633 came from Christianity, the Catholic Church in particular. But in our time, that religious oppression comes from a fundamentalist form of Islam. Uncontrolled migration from countries with a strong Islamic culture is also leading to an Islamisation of European culture, once again threatening freedom of thought and freedom of expression.

The second challenge comes from a secular side: that of Marxism. Marxism may have been defeated in its economic form in 1991, with the collapse of Soviet communism. But cultural Marxism continues to thrive in the Western world. The Dutch Buikhuisen affair illustrates that Marxism and the associated Leftist Church also pose a serious threat to freedom of thought and freedom of expression. The Bible and the Koran are therefore both dangerous books, but so are Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto.

What we must hope is that, through careful study of history, we can learn what the dangers of religious dogmatism and secular dogmatism are.