The Age of Enlightenment:
Steam engines,
Encyclopedias,
Revolutions,
& Invisible Hands
CVSP 203 General Lecture
March 31, 2015
Hani Hassan
(hh26@aub.edu.lb)
“The Enlightenment has been blamed for many things.
It has been held responsible for the French revolution,
for totalitarianism, and for the view that nature is
simply an object to be dominated, manipulated, and
exploited […] It is said that its passion for rights and
liberties unleashed a destructive individualism that
undermines any sense of community. Yet it has also
been argued that its assumption that human nature was
infinitely malleable has provided the intellectual
inspiration for totalitarian states to eradicate all traces
of individuality from their subjects.[…]
Looking over this list of charges, one wonders how one period could have been
responsible for so much and so many different kinds of harm. Puzzled by the multitude
of accusations leveled against it – and astonished at the diversity of its critics – one
might well ask, “What is Enlightenment?”
(What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth Century Answers and Twentieth Century Questions, Introduction, page 1)
Thomas Paine
“In France, the number of titles doubled between
mid-century and the outbreak of the Revolution,
while in Germany it has been estimated that more
than half a million publications of various kinds
appeared during the course of the century.”
(Short Oxford History of Europe: The Eighteenth Century, page 4)
“it is only in the mouths of those firm and equitable
men who compose the public… that we can find the
language of truth.”
(Short Oxford History of Europe: The Eighteenth Century, page 4)
The representatives of the French
people, organized as a National
Assembly, believing that the ignorance,
neglect, or contempt of the rights of
man are the sole cause of public
calamities and of the corruption of
governments, have determined to set
forth in a solemn declaration the
natural, unalienable, and sacred rights
of man, in order that this declaration,
being constantly before all the
members of the Social body, shall
remind them continually of their rights
and duties…
I. Men are born and remain free and equal
in rights. Social distinctions may be
founded only upon the general good.
IV. Liberty consists in the freedom to do
everything which injures no one else; hence
the exercise of the natural rights of each
man has no limits except those which
assure to the other members of the society
the enjoyment of the same rights. These
limits can only be determined by law.
“Woman is born free and remains equal
to man in rights. Social distinctions
may only be based on common utility.”
The French Revolution
“will only take effect when all women
become fully aware of their deplorable
condition, and of the rights they have
lost in society.”
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
1689 –1762
“Our right is the same with theirs to all public employments;
we are endow'd, by nature, with geniuses at least as
capable of filling them as theirs can be; and our hearts are
as susceptible of virtue as our heads are of the sciences. We
neither want spirit, strength, nor courage, to defend a
country, nor prudence to rule it.”
Woman not Inferior to Man, Conclusion
Diderot
D’Alembert
• Imagination
• Poetry, Drama…
• The various arts
• Truth veiled
• Reason and philosophy
attempting to unveil
Truth
•Theology
• Geometry, Astronomy and
physics
• The various sciences…
“The work whose first volume we are presenting today has
two aims. As an Encyclopedia, it is to set forth as well as
possible the order and connection of the parts of human
knowledge. As a Reasoned Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts,
and Trades, it is to contain the general principles that form
the basis of each science and each art, liberal or
mechanical, and the most essential facts that make up the
body and substance of each.”
(D’Alembert introducing the Encyclopedie)
“In truth, the aim of an encyclopedia is to collect all the
knowledge scattered over the face of the earth, to present its
general outlines and structure to the men with whom we live,
and to transmit this to those who will come after us, so that the
work of past centuries may be useful to the following centuries,
that our children, by becoming more educated, may at the same
time become more virtuous and happier, and that we may not
die without having deserved well of the human race.”
(From Diderot’s entry on the Encyclopedie)
“…the knowledge scattered over the face of
the earth…”
“…that our children, by becoming more
educated, may at the same time become
more virtuous and happier…”
“What an excellent work is that with
which our common friend Mr. Adam
Smith has enriched the public! An
extensive science in a single book,
and the most profound ideas
expressed in the most perspicuous
language".
(The Life of Adam Smith, John Rae, first published 1895; The
Floating Press, 2009)
“The growth and decay of nations have frequently afforded
topics of admiration and complaint to the moralist and
declaimer: they have sometimes exercised the
speculations of the politician; but they have seldom been
considered in all their causes and combinations by the
philosopher. The French economical writers undoubtedly
have their merits. Within this century they have opened
the ways to a rational theory, on the subjects of
agriculture, manufactures, and commerce. But no one
work has appeared amongst them, nor perhaps could
there be collected from the whole together, anything to be
compared to the present performance, for sagacity and
penetration of mind, extensive use, accurate distinction,
just and natural connection, independence of parts…
It is a complete analysis of society, beginning with the first
rudiments of the simplest manual labor, and rising by an
easy natural gradation to the highest attainments of mental
powers. In which course not only arts and commerce, but
finance, justice, public police, the economy of armies, and
the system of education, are considered and argued upon,
often profoundly, always plausibly and clearly; many of the
speculations are new, and time will be required before a
certain judgment can be passed on their truth and solidity.”
(Edmund Burke’s review of Adam Smith, An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,
in Annual Register 19 (1776), 241).
Source: the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder:
http://artsandsciences.colorado.edu/ctp/2014/08/burke-outsmiths-smith/)
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes
of the Wealth of Nations
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the
brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but
from their regard to their own interest. We address
ourselves, not to their humanity but to their selflove, and never talk to them of our own necessities
but of their advantages.”
(Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter II, section 2)
In other words:
Self- interest  propensity to barter and trade 
development of division of labor  wealth of
nations
∴ Self – interest  wealth of nations
“Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is
left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and
to bring both his industry and capital into competition with
those of any other man, or order of men. The sovereign is
completely discharged from […] the duty of superintending the
industry of private people, and of directing it towards the
employment most suitable to the interest of the society.”
(Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Chapter IX, section 51)
“According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has
only three duties to attend to (...): first, the duty of protecting
the society from the violence and invasion of other
independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far
as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or
oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of
establishing an exact administration of justice; and, thirdly, the
duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and
certain public institutions…”
(Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Chapter IX, section 51)
“The education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a
civilized and commercial society, the attention of the public
more than that of people of some rank and fortune. (…) The
employments too in which people of some rank or fortune
spend the greater part of their lives, are not, like those of the
common people, simple and uniform. They are almost all of
them extremely complicated, and such as exercise the head
more than the hands…”
“It is otherwise with the common people. They have little time
to spare for education. Their parents can scarce afford to
maintain them even in infancy. As soon as they are able to
work, they must apply to some trade by which they can earn
their subsistence. That trade too is generally so simple and
uniform as to give little exercise to the understanding; while,
at the same time, their labour is both so constant and so
severe, that it leaves them little leisure and less inclination to
apply to, or even to think of anything else.”
(Wealth of Nations, Book V, Part III, Article II)
“While the Enlightenment was a European
event, the debate on the question “What is
Enlightenment?” was uniquely German.”
(What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth Century Answers
and Twentieth Century Questions, Preface ix)
“This question, which is
almost as important as what
is truth, should indeed be
answered before one begins
enlightening! And still I have
never found it answered!”
(J. F. Zollner, cited in Schmidt’s What is Enlightenment,
Introduction page 2)
An Answer to the Question:
What is Enlightenment?
December 1784, Immanuel Kant
“Enlightenment is man's emergence
from his self-imposed immaturity.”
“Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding
without guidance from another. This immaturity is self
imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding,
but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. “Sapere Aude!” Have courage to
use your own understanding!" - that is the motto of
enlightenment.”
“that the public should enlighten itself is more likely; indeed,
if it is only allowed freedom, enlightenment is almost
inevitable. For even among the entrenched guardians of the
great masses a few will always think for themselves, a few
who, after having themselves thrown off the yoke of
immaturity, will spread the spirit of a rational appreciation
for both their own worth and for each person's calling to
think for himself…”
“…a public can only attain enlightenment slowly.”
“A greater degree of civil freedom seems advantageous
to a people's spiritual freedom; yet the former
established impassable boundaries for the latter;
conversely, a lesser degree of civil freedom provides
enough room for all fully to expand their abilities.”