Enlightenment Thought
Dr. Charles Walton
History 172 – Modern France
Sapere Aude!
Dare to know!
Immanuel Kant (1784)
Kant
• Enlightenment is man’s release from selfincurred tutelage.
‘One day, thinking like Bossuet
The next, like Voltaire’
Paul Hazard (historian)
Bishop Bossuet
• Bishop Bossuet (1627-1704)
– Orator, theologian, preacher at court of Versailles
under the absolutist monarch, Louis XIV
• Politics drawn from Holy Scripture (late 17th c.
France)
– The grounds of authority: God, Bible, King
– These were thought to order society, social relations,
attitudes to nature, wealth, non-Christian ‘heretical’
cultures, science
Bishop Bossuet
• ‘How I hate these philosophers who, making
their own intelligence the measure of God’s
purposes, would regard Him merely as the
creator of a certain general order which He,
then, left to develop as best it might. As if
God’s aims were vague and confused
generalities.’
Bossuet
• ‘I see… preparations for a great onslaught on
the Church in the name of Cartesian
philosophy. From the womb of that
philosophy, from its principles, to my mind
imperfectly understood, I foresee the birth of
more than one heresy .’
Early modern society:
An enchanted, hierarchical world
• Witches, the devil
• Intercession of saints
• Preparing for death and the
afterlife
• The great chain of being
• Social and political hierarchy
Voltaire (1694-1778)
– Rule of law
– Arts and Sciences
– Commercial prosperity
– Religious Toleration
• Écraser l’infâme!
• Down with fanaticism!
– Civil liberties (free speech)
Historical debates on
the Enlightenment
• Classic view
– Enlightenment centred in France
– Anti-clerical, opposed to religion
– Unleashed democratic forces, leading to French Revolution
• Challenges to it:
– Absolutists appropriated Enlightenment (esp. free-market
economic liberals, the French Physiocrats)
– Religious enlightenments
• Especially Protestant and Jewish enlightenments
• Even those opposed to French philosophes adopted
Enlightenment ways of arguing
– So what does the Enlightenment really mean?
Aspects of the Enlightenment
• Epistemological shift (today’s lecture)
– What constitutes valid knowledge
– New systems of thought
• Climate of opinion (next week)
– Whose opinions matter? The ‘public sphere’
• Campaign to transform state and society (next)
– Morality, Government Reform, Revolution
Phases of Enlightenment
• 17th century – major epistemological shifts
– Descartes (rationalism)
– Bacon, Locke, Newton (empiricism, scientific
experiment)
– Spinoza, Bayle (religious toleration)
• 18th century – developed and spread those
ideas
Origins of the Enlightenment
• Printing Press
• Scientific and geographical discoveries
• Circulation of classical texts
• Religious dissention
Ways of generating knowledge
• Rationalism
– Emphasis on reason
– Still a bit metaphysical
• Empiricism
– Emphasis on experimentation
– On useful knowledge, practical applications
Galileo’s telescope
• De-centered the earth
• De-stabilised humans’ self-conception
• Challenged religious authorities’ monopoly on
knowledge
René Descartes (1596-1650)
• Skepticism, radical doubt
• Individual reason – hierarchies set aside
• Rationalism – truth found through reason
• Concerned with joining mind and body
– Believed they were joined at pineal gland
Spinoza - Bayle
• Freedom of conscience
• Religious toleration (they were from religious minorities)
• Secular foundations for political authority
• Rational foundations for society rather than tradition or
superstition
• God and nature are one. The quest to understand Nature’s
laws is to become close to God.
Locke, Newton, Montesquieu
• Repudiation of metaphysical ‘systems’
• Knowledge through the senses – empiricism
• Locke’s blank-slate
• Newton’s laws of nature – induction, not
deduction
• Montesquieu’s laws of society found in history
• Newtonian thinking was
– open-ended… could change with the introduction
of more facts
– focused on relations and patterns, not inherent
essences or eternal truths
• Implications: authorities could not claim to
master eternal truths.
The problem of ‘Evil’
•
With the ‘devil’ removed from the
cosmic scheme, how does one
account for ‘evil’ in the world?
– Best of all possible worlds
(Leibniz, 17th c.)
– Historical, universal progress
(18th)
– Stoicism and utility: ‘we must
cultivate our gardens’ (Voltaire,
Candide, 1759)
Lisbon Earthquake, 1755
• How could ‘nature’ and ‘human nature’ prove
to be so evil?
– 40-50K killed (by quake and post-quake violence)
– 80-90% of the buildings destroyed
• What are we to learn from it?
– Voltaire: cultivate one’s garden
– Rousseau: cities are bad, providence good
– Letter from R to V: “I hate you!”
The Encyclopédie, 1751-1772
• French, edited by Diderot and d’Alembert, 17 vols.
• Published over 20 years in mid 18th c.
– Most famous philosophers of the age
• Aim: to spread practical knowledge in society
• With amusing ‘digs’ at authorities from time to time
(e.g.: ‘knowledge of God’ and ‘black magic’ are treated
together on the tree of knowledge)
Rousseau: the dissenting voice in the
French Enlightenment
• First Discourse on the Sciences and Arts (1750)
• Second Discourse on
the Origins of Inequality (1755)
– Civilisation and culture are corrupting
– The ‘arts and sciences’, consumerism and urban
living alienate the individual from his/herself
Overarching themes
• Invention of ‘self’ and ‘society’ as concepts
– Individuals are theoretically commensurate moral
equals
– Weakens assumed notions about hierarchy
– Inequalities seek new justifications
• E.g.: use of science to naturalize gender and racial
differences
• Man is a product of nature and potentially free
and equal
– Constraints and inequalities need new justifications…
• Knowledge should be directed at utility and
common good