Ricardo Moreno Castillo: «To give an opinion without thought or study is to make a pompous display of ignorance»

Ricardo Moreno Castillo is the author of more than twenty books. / Photo: courtesy of the author.

License Creative Commons

Eva Serra

“Voltaire would have been thrilled by the Internet”, says Ricardo Moreno Castillo in his latest book Libertad, Igualdad, Fraternidad (Fórcola, 2025). These three ideals, attributed to Enlightenment circles, later taken up by Robespierre and adopted as the motto of the French Revolution (1789), provides a fitting framework for approaching the thought of several leading Enlightenment figures who, like Voltaire, pursued their hunger for knowledge with the tools available to them—most notably, dictionaries. Yet “dictionaries (and by extension, the Internet) are useful above all to those who are already somewhat educated (…)”, writes Moreno.

Hume, Kant, Condorcet, Chesterfield, Diderot, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Locke, Pope, Voltaire… This delightful essay invites us aboard a kind of train of knowledge, stopping at philosophical, educational, religious, social, ethical and historical stations, guided by these timeless authors and by the sharp, witty critical sense of Moreno himself—who, not infrequently, turns that wit against his own text, embracing the lucidity of contradiction in the face of those eternal, ever-relevant quotations. Ricardo Moreno Castillo is the author of more than twenty books. A graduate in Mathematics and a Doctor of Philosophy specialising in the History of Science, he taught for many years as an associate professor at the Universidad Complutense until his retirement.

Of all the quotations you have collected, which would you choose to describe today’s society? And which would you say has lost the most relevance?

I would say the most current is the one by John Adams (from his autobiography — quoted here  in his commonly cited form): “I must judge for myself, but how can I judge? How can any man judge unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading?” These days everyone has an opinion about everything, forgetting that to have an opinion about anything one must first reflect on it and study it in depth. Freedom of expression protects everyone’s right to make their opinions public, true enough, but it does not guarantee that those opinions will be intelligent or useful to others. If our politicians knew more history and economics, we would hear far fewer foolish remarks in parliament. As for the quotation that seems least relevant today, perhaps Diderot’s: “Take away from a Christian the fear of hell and you take away his faith”. I don’t spend much time in church, but I doubt that today’s priests terrify the faithful with eternal damnation as they did when I was a child.

Your book draws on major Enlightenment thinkers. Did these philosophers regard the ordinary citizen as a being guided by reason? And how has the very idea of citizenship evolved since the Enlightenment—if, indeed, it has evolved at all?

The Enlightenment held that we should allow ourselves to be guided by reason, because we have no better guide—but not that all people are, in fact, reasonable. As for the Enlightenment’s concept of citizenship, it remains relevant, though in certain times and places it has been buried and forgotten (think of fascism or communism), and has had to be rescued. And such rescue is never definitive, because both stupidity and fanaticism are intrinsic to the human condition. This is why the struggle to keep Enlightenment ideals alive will last as long as humanity itself. My book aims—however modestly—to help ensure that these ideals are not lost.

“Freedom of expression protects the right to make one’s opinions public, true—but it does not guarantee that such opinions are intelligent or useful”

Rousseau argued that citizens should place the general interest above their own, and that government should serve the general will. What general interest would you say characterises education in modern societies?

Education for all—like healthcare for all—is not merely a question of justice but of necessity if we wish to live in a prosperous society. A country is built by everyone, and if its citizens enjoy good health, they can work more effectively; and if they are educated, they will work with greater intelligence. It is not enough for my own children to receive a good education and enjoy good health; I want them to live surrounded by educated and healthy people. Purely out of self-interest, if you like, it is in everyone’s best interest that good public healthcare and good public education exist. 

You quote Tzvetan Todorov, who wrote (in my translation) that “a good government does not oppose the increase and spread of knowledge”, and that it should not claim the right to decide where truth and error lie. Is this still relevant today?

I have already answered the first part. A good government should not only refrain from obstructing the spread of knowledge; it should actively promote it. As for the second idea—that it should not decide where truth or error lie—this is quite right. The search for truth belongs to scientists, historians, intellectuals and philosophers, not to politicians. Historical memory initiatives may be well intentioned, but investigating what happened in the Civil War is the task of the departments of contemporary history in every university in Spain (and many abroad), which have been doing this for a very long time—long before our beloved leaders felt moved to enlighten us with their wisdom. And the publications of all these historians are available to anyone who wishes to educate themselves. Those who prefer not to read them are perfectly entitled not to—but when it comes to expressing an opinion, they would do well to keep a prudent silence and listen to those who actually know.

“The search for truth belongs to scientists, historians, intellectuals and philosophers—not to politicians”

And of course, history must be studied in order to learn the good ideas of those who came before us and to learn from their mistakes, so that we might preserve the former and avoid repeating the latter. But not to make the living apologise to each other for the sins of the dead. This obsession with blaming the living for the faults of their ancestors reminds me of Asterix in Corsica, where two Corsican clans are at war because the great-grandfather of one sold a faulty donkey to the great-grandfather of another, and their great-grandchildren cannot forget such a terrible offence. That such a storyline should appear in a humorous book is perfectly fine; that it should be upheld by people with political responsibilities, who are assumed to have some degree of education, is simply worrying.

You quote Ortega: “Progress does not consist in obliterating yesterday but rather in preserving that element of yesterday which had the virtue of creating a better today”. Yet Fontenelle wrote: “Nothing limits progress, nothing limits intelligence so much as excessive admiration for the ancients”. Are these views compatible? How should we weave them together?

Truth stands opposed to falsehood; the ancient stands opposed to the modern; beauty to ugliness; intelligence to stupidity—but it does not follow that the ugly are either cleverer or more foolish than the beautiful. The law of the lever is two millennia older than Dalton’s atomic theory, yet the latter is obsolete and the former is not. Excessive admiration for the ancients confuses the good with the old, which hinders free thought; but the opposite mistake—equating the modern with the good—is an even greater hindrance, for although it frees us from the tyranny of authority, it subjects us to the tyranny of fashion. Ortega’s remark releases us from this false dichotomy: modern scientific progress did not arise out of nothing; it is built upon discoveries made by those who came before us, though some of those discoveries (not all) are now obsolete.

“The law of the lever is two millennia older than Dalton’s atomic theory—yet the latter is obsolete and the former is not” 

There is a beautiful passage from Karl Popper’s 1958 lecture “A Return to the Presocratics”, delivered to the Aristotelian Society, which explains the enduring relevance of the Presocratics—without whom modern science would be unthinkable: “As to the Presocratics, I maintain that there is the closest possible continuity between their theories and the later developments of physics. Whether we call them philosophers, proto-scientists or scientists matters very little, I think. I maintain that Anaximander’s theory cleared the way for the theories of Aristarchus, Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. It is not merely that it ‘influenced’ these later thinkers. ‘Influence’ is a very superficial category. I would rather put it like this: the achievements of Anaximander are valuable in themselves, as a work of art. Moreover, his achievements made possible other achievements, among them those of the great scientists I have mentioned”.

Condorcet wrote: “He who enters society bearing only the opinions his education has handed down to him is not a free man; he is the slave of his teachers”. Where is the educational boundary between ‘teaching what has been thought before’ and indoctrination?

The history of philosophy consists precisely in presenting what has been said by the philosophers who came before us in the arduous task of thinking—this is not indoctrination but instruction. One cannot understand medieval history without understanding the significance of patristics and scholasticism (even if one is a militant atheist), nor modern history without understanding Marxism (even if one is a devout Catholic). Explaining what Greece, Judaism, Catholicism and Islam were—without which our world would be unintelligible—is not indoctrination; it is providing students with the knowledge and intellectual tools they will need to think for themselves. Those who merely repeat the opinions they have received without subjecting them to rigorous scrutiny betray their own humanity; yet those who give opinions without first thinking or studying are merely making a pompous display of ignorance.

“In my view, contrary to what our ministers proclaim, this is the least feminist government since the return of democracy”

“The true enemies of a just cause are not chiefly the wicked who sabotage it, but the fools who support it—and they are, needless to say, legion”. You write this in your chapter on feminism. After citing Montesquieu (Persian Letters), you argue that education is the key, not positive discrimination. Are the masses embracing the setbacks in women’s rights that you describe?

I do indeed believe that women’s rights are in retreat because of the foolishness of many feminists (and when I say ‘feminists’, I mean ‘feminist people’—and I sincerely hope political correctness won’t oblige us to start fabricating new genders for the word, as if ‘feministo’ or ‘feminista’ were somehow needed to cover every conceivable sensibility). In my view, contrary to what our ministers proclaim, this is the least feminist government since the return of democracy. A government that passes a law so poorly drafted that it reduces sentences for rapists, and a preposterous “trans law”, is not a feminist government. And a government that bows before the heirs of ETA is not a feminist government—unless, of course, the murder of some sixty women by that terrorist organisation does not count as feminicide. 

You write that “Being a philosopher is not a career choice, as being a philosophy teacher is, but a way of being human that does not shirk the task of thinking for oneself”. Today, philosophy is being marginalised in school curricula. What consequences will this have for critical thinking?

The consequences of pushing philosophy aside could be severe. As I said earlier, we cannot think except on the basis of what has been thought before us; depriving students of the history of philosophy is to deprive them of the possibility of thinking for themselves.

“Learn of the skilful: he that teaches himself has a fool for his master” — Benjamin Franklin. What would Franklin make of discovery learning and the present-day cult of starting from scratch?

He would think what any sensible person thinks: either children are taught, or they remain ignorant, for no one can discover on their own what took humanity centuries to figure out. Chesterton also rebuked this nonsense. To claim that children must “construct their own knowledge” is as absurd, he said, as claiming that children must secrete the milk that feeds them. Either nourishment comes from outside, or the child is not nourished.

“Either children are taught or they remain ignorant: no one can discover by themselves what took humanity centuries to learn”

Condorcet again, First Memoir on Public Instruction (in my translation): “Freedom of expression would be nothing but an illusion if society controlled the new generations in order to dictate what they must believe”. Do you think we are facing that situation today?

I believe that political correctness does indeed dictate what one must believe. The censorship that claims to detect racist or sexist messages in great works of literature (and sometimes even in certain Walt Disney films) makes Francoist censorship look mild. Someone (I forget who, though bright he was not) once declared that mathematics had to be taught “through a gender lens”. Not even in the darkest moments of the dictatorship did anyone imagine saying that mathematics should be taught “from a national-Catholic perspective”.

“Not even in the darkest days of the dictatorship did anyone suggest teaching ‘mathematics from a national-Catholic perspective’”

You write: “The Enlightenment’s motto ‘dare to know’ is spot on, but it must be complemented by ‘dare to study’”. Given the present climate, will studying end up being an act of courage?

Absolutely. Those of us who, for years, have argued that school exists for learning and study (not for managing emotions, cultivating self-esteem or acquiring ‘skills’), that without memory and knowledge there can be no culture, and that critical thinking unanchored in knowledge is mere quackery—well, we have been branded fascists, reactionaries and relics. I am not saying that it takes great bravery to put up with all that, but you do need a bit of resilience.

Source: educational EVIDENCE

Rights: Creative Commons