Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West

Overview
John Ralston Saul mounts a wide-ranging critique of Western modernity, arguing that an overreliance on instrumental, managerial reason has hollowed out democratic life and ethical imagination. He traces how a narrow conception of reason, celebrated since the Enlightenment, has become a de facto ideology that privileges technical efficiency and specialized expertise over public judgment, moral responsibility, and civic deliberation. The book names and examines the cultural and institutional consequences of that shift.

Central Argument
Saul contends that when reason is equated with calculation and method, it becomes a tool for control rather than a guide to humane living. Institutions, governments, corporations, universities, and the media, adopt this instrumental logic to solve problems in ways that marginalize values that cannot be quantified. The result is a professional-managerial class that makes decisions on behalf of citizens, eroding participatory democracy and the social imagination necessary for collective self-governance.

Mechanisms of Domination
A key theme is how expertise and managerial practices consolidate power. Technical specialists and bureaucrats frame issues as technical problems solvable by the right procedures, thereby narrowing debate and excluding broader ethical considerations. Language changes with this shift: moral questions are recast as questions of efficiency or risk, and dissent is often dismissed as irrational. Saul shows how this transformation reshapes public institutions and everyday life, creating a climate in which imagination and pluralistic conversation are discouraged.

Historical and Cultural Diagnosis
Saul situates the problem historically, connecting contemporary tendencies to strands of Enlightenment thinking that elevated abstraction and systematization. He reads modern Western culture as shaped by a version of reason that prizes reduction and predictability. This lineage, he warns, can produce not only bureaucratic dullness but also new forms of domination when systems value technical order above human diversity and moral choices.

Call for Renewal
The remedy Saul proposes is cultural and civic rather than purely intellectual. He urges a rebalancing of reason with moral imagination, public discourse, and what he calls "human judgment." Reviving robust civic institutions, cultivating pluralism in thought and practice, and encouraging citizens to reclaim responsibility are central to his prescription. Rather than rejecting reason, he advocates broadening its role so that it serves democratic ends rather than replacing them.

Style and Method
The book adopts a polemical, accessible tone, weaving historical anecdotes, contemporary examples, and philosophical reflection. Saul writes as a public intellectual aiming to provoke debate, often prioritizing clear, memorable claims over dense scholarly apparatus. That rhetorical approach makes the argument compelling for a general audience but has invited criticism from specialists who accuse it of overgeneralization.

Reception and Influence
Voltaire's Bastards generated significant public discussion and remains a reference point in debates about technocracy, neoliberal governance, and the crisis of public life. Supporters praise its moral urgency and diagnostic clarity, while critics question its empirical specificity and philosophical rigor. Regardless of stance, many readers find its central warning, that societies must guard against letting narrow technical reason displace collective moral deliberation, resonant and timely.

Conclusion
The book is both a critique and a civic provocation: it challenges complacency about the authority of expertise and asks readers to reimagine the place of judgment, culture, and debate in public life. By insisting that reason be remade in service of democratic values rather than used to suppress them, the argument presses toward renewed forms of participation and ethical responsibility.