Introducing the Enlightenment E-Book

Lloyd Spencer

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Graphic Guides
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 132

Beschreibung

"Introducing the Enlightenment" is the essential guide to the giants of the Enlightenment - Voltaire, Diderot, Adam Smith, Samuel Johnson, Immanuel Kant, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. The Enlightenment of the 18th century was a crucial time in human history - a vast moral, scientific and political movement, the work of intellectuals across Europe and the New World, who began to free themselves from despotism, bigotry and superstition and tried to change the world. "Introducing the Enlightenment" is a clear and accessible introduction to the leading thinkers of the age, the men and women who believed that rational endeavour could reveal the secrets of the universe.

Leseprobe

Published by Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre, 39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP Email: [email protected]

ISBN: 978-178578-006-6

Text copyright © 2012 Icon Books Ltd

Illustrations copyright © 2012 Icon Books Ltd

The author and illustrator has asserted their moral rights

Originating editor: Richard Appignanesi

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Let There Be Light...

The Radiance of the Absolute Monarchs

Paris, the Capital of the Enlightenment

Beginnings of the Light

England’s “Glorious Revolution”

An Age of Revolutions

Coffee-houses, Social Clubs and Journalism

Locke’s “Tabula Rasa”

The Language of the Self

Understanding the Limits of Our Understanding

Psychology and the Novel

Tristram Shandy

Locke’s Social Influence

Fictions in the Service of Truth

The Adventures of ...

Philosophers’ Novels

Candide

Novels of the Enlightenment

The Idea of the Noble Savage

The Persian Letters

Voltaire Flees to England

Letters on England

Voltaire on Religion in England

Freedom of Conscience and the Commercial Spirit

On Parliament

The Patron Saints of the Enlightenment

The Father of Experimental Philosophy

John Locke’s Politics

Isaac Newton

The Philosophes

Enlightened Woman

Enlightened Mistresses

Readers and Censors

Industry and Science

The Encyclopédie

The Tree of Knowledge

Who Are the “Great Men” of History?

The Importance of Crafts or Trades

Metaphysics and Machinery

The Pinnacle of Success

The Philosophes Under Attack

The Crisis of 1758

Malesherbes – or “Monsieur Guillaume”

For and Against the King

The Adventures of Monsieur Guillaume

Denis Diderot

The “Secret History” of His Soul

Diderot and Friends

What is an Encyclopédie?

Art of the Enlightenment

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78)

Rousseau’s Challenge

Discourse on the Origins of Inequality

Voltaire vs. Rousseau

Nature and Natural History

Nature as a System: Linnaeus

Nature as History: Buffon

The Scandal of Materialism

La Mettrie and Helvétius

Materialism and the Improvement of Human Beings

Holbach

The Factory of Freethinkers

D’Alembert’s Dream

The Dream

The French Parlements

Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws

Natural Law

An Unkempt Masterpiece

Individual Liberty and The Rule of Law

Enlightening the Despots

Frederick II of Prussia

Catherine the Great of Russia

Instructions to the Empress

The Priest and the Philosopher

Philosophers Will Never Form a Religious Sect

The Catholic Church in France

The Age of Enlightenment as an Age of Faith

The Social Necessity of Religion

Putting the Fear of Hell ...

The Church, the State and Civil Rights

Freemasonry

The Great Watchmaker

The Scepticism of David Hume

A Treatise of Hum(e)an Nature

Music of the Enlightenment

Savage Rousseau

Voyage to the Interior

Rousseau’s Confessions

The First Romantic

Adam Smith (1723–90)

A Theory of Moral Sentiments

Wealth of Nations, 1776

The Invisible Hand

Smith and Rousseau

Samuel Johnson (1709–84)

Smith Joins Dr Johnson’s Literary Club

Benjamin Franklin (1706–90)

The American Revolution

Declaration of the Rights of Man

The Poor and the Slaves

Condemnation of Slavery

The Defence of Slavery

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)

What is Enlightenment?

The Counter-Enlightenment

Georg Hamann (1730–88)

Language, the Organon* of Reason

Sturm und Drang

Voltaire at Ferney

A One-Man Amnesty International

The Canaille

Crisis in the Old Régime

The French Revolution

The End of the Enlightenment

The Apotheosis of Jean-Jacques

The Ideal Republic

The Enlightenment Project – Finished or Unfinished?

Further Reading

Index

Let There Be Light...

The Enlightenment was an intellectual current that galvanized Europe during the course of the 18th century. Centred in Paris, it spread itself across the whole of Europe to the American colonies. Networks of writers and thinkers gave the 18th century a remarkable intellectual coherence.

The intellectuals of the Enlightenment felt themselves to be part of a great movement representing the highest aspirations and possibilities of mankind. They were reformers who believed their cause was best served by the new passion for argument, criticism and debate.

The Radiance of the Absolute Monarchs

In France, the reigns of the Absolutist monarchs, Louis XIII (1601–43), Louis XIV – the “Sun King” – (1638–1715), Louis XV (1710–74) and Louis XVI (1754–93) made Paris the cultural capital of the world and, at the same time, created both an audience and a target for the reforming zeal of the French Enlightenment.

WE RULE BY DIVINE RIGHT!

The Enlightenment spoke French, literally its lingua franca. Anything published in French was immediately accessible to educated society all over Europe. Important works not originally written in French were soon translated into the universal language. Across the world “men of letters” declared themselves to be the disciples of French writers.

Paris, the Capital of the Enlightenment

This was as true for David Hume and Adam Smith from Scotland as it was for Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson from the American colonies, or Cesare Beccaria from Milan. They knew they had “arrived” when they were accepted in the salons of Paris.

In all of continental Europe, court society and the wealthy bourgeoisie looked to France as the model of taste.

FRANCE SETS THE TONE IN LITERATURE, ART AND ARCHITECTURE. AND ALSO IN MANNERS, COOKING AND DRESS. FRENCH FASHION IS THE EPITOME OF CIVILIZATION!

A Sussex landowner wrote to his son. “A man who understands French may travel all the World over without hesitation of making himself understood, and may make himself perfectly agreeable to all Good Company, which is not the case of any other Language whatever.”

Beginnings of the Light

“There is a mighty light which spreads itself over the world, especially in those two free nations of England and Holland, on whom the affairs of all Europe now turn.” Lord Shaftesbury’s letter to Le Clerc, 6 March 1706

For much of the 17th century, Holland was the most liberal country in Europe. Amsterdam provided a refuge for freethinkers and religious dissidents of all kinds. In 1667, the English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) composed an Essay on Toleration. He had been closely associated with Protestant plotters against the rule of the Catholic King James II (1633–1701).

IN 1683, I WAS FORCED TO FLEE TO ROTTERDAM.

There Locke concentrated on his major works, his Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises of Government. Both books were to remain central to the debates that raged throughout the Age of Enlightenment.

England’s “Glorious Revolution”

Continued resistance to James II’s pro-Catholic activities caused the English parliament to invite the Dutch Protestant, William III of Orange (1650–1702) and his English wife Mary II (1662–94), to take over the English throne. They sailed from Holland and did so in the bloodless – hence “Glorious” – Revolution of 1688.

THE AGE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT CAN BE SAID TO HAVE BEGUN WITH ENGLAND’S GLORIOUS REVOLUTION OF 1688.

This definitively established the sovereignty of the English parliament and gave England a “Bill of Rights”. Other reforms soon made England the most free and liberal country in Europe. The Toleration Act (1689) allowed most Protestant Dissenters, including such sects as the Quakers, to worship freely, but not to hold public office. The Church of England lost its monopoly of religious worship and education, and the last vestiges of its control over the press in 1695.

An Age of Revolutions

The two great cosmopolitan capitals, Paris and London, both grew dramatically during the 18th century. But England’s commercial muscle meant that London progressed much more. During the first half of the century, England experienced an agricultural revolution. In the latter part of the century, the industrial revolution gained pace.

IN 1776, THE AGE DREW TO A CONCLUSION WITH A REVOLUTION AGAINST ENGLAND BY ITS AMERICAN COLONISTS.

IN 1789, THE UPHEAVAL OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION FINALLY CHANGED EVERYTHING.

These revolutions attempted to put the principles of the Enlightenment into practice.

Coffee-houses, Social Clubs and Journalism

This was also an age of public sociability and a journalism of ideas. Coffee-houses were the focal point of intellectual life in London. By 1740, there were more than 400 in the area of Westminster alone. The new Bank of England and the East India trading company used coffee-houses. Lloyd’s coffee-house in 1691 became Lloyd’s of London, the centre of marine insurance.

COFFEE-HOUSES WERE VENUES TO TRADE IDEAS AND COMMODITIES. NEWSPAPERS AND JOURNALS WERE AVAILABLE, BOOKS AND CONCERTS WERE ADVERTISED. AND THERE WAS A RAGE TO JOIN CLUBS AND SOCIETIES FOR EVERY SORT OF INTEREST - SCIENTIFIC, ARTISTIC AND POLITICAL. I THINK IT NECESSARY TO MAKE WHAT I HAVE TO SAY AS EASY TO UNDERSTAND AS I CAN, AND INTELLIGIBLE TO ALL SORTS OF READERS.

Locke’s “Tabula Rasa”

Throughout the 18th century, the essential book for philosopher and non-philosopher alike was John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). For almost all of the thinkers of the Enlightenment, one philosophical tenet held peculiar authority. This was Locke’s tabula rasa dogma that there are no “innate” ideas and that all knowledge is derived from experience.

Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience.

Locke’s empirical view was aimed specifically against the Rationalism of René Descartes (1596–1650).

There are ideas (for instance those of God, Mind, Body, or the Triangle) whose truth may be recognized by the light of reason alone and could thus be called “innate”.

Locke’s empiricism distinguished two different kinds of experience: external sensation and internal reflection.

In France, Locke’s philosophy was popularized by Etienne Condillac (1715–80), whose Essai sur l’origine des connaissances (1746) stressed the role of sensory impressions or sensations.

This “sensationalism” is deemed consistent with the materialist and determinist view of human nature developed by other philosophes such as La Mettrie and d’Holbach.

Locke himself had stressed the role of reflection and recognized the role of mental faculties. In addition, he believed in our innate tendency to seek pleasure and avoid pain. These aspects were downplayed by Condillac.

The Language of the Self

Pierre Coste, who in 1700 translated Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, inserted a note to explain why he translated Locke’s term “consciousness” by the French conscience. First he cites Cicero’s conscientia (“moral awareness”, “knowledge of oneself”) but admits that he is “diverting” the French word conscience “from its ordinary sense, in order to give it one which has never been given it in [the French] Language”.

The English word is consciousness ... In French we do not have, in my opinion, any words but sentiment & conviction which answer, in any significant way, to this idea.

Understanding the Limits of Our Understanding

For hundreds of years, the whole territory of biography had been the special preserve of priests and confessors. The church had a richly developed language of moral principles. Locke’s treatment of human understanding led to the development of a new language of inferiority which we might term “psychological”, a word not much used in the 18th century. Locke launched a devastating critique of the schoolman’s “curious and unexplainable Web of perplexed Words” and set in motion the mapping out of a new continent of the interior.

Our understanding is limited. Let us accept its limitations. But within the limits imposed, let us make the most of our understanding, by studying it and getting to know how it operates ... We should observe how our ideas are formed and how they combine, one with another, and how the memory retains them. Of all this activity, we have hitherto been in total ignorance.

Psychology and the Novel

Psychology, as the 18th century understood it, was the one mapped out by Locke. Locke’s Essay is thus at the fountainhead of the sort of literature which deals in the reactions, coherent or incoherent, of the “Self” to the impressions which affect and shape it.

I OWE NOTHING TO NATURE; I OWE EVERYTHING TO A LONG AND CAREFUL STUDY OF CERTAIN GREAT BOOKS: THE OLD AND THE NEW TESTAMENTS, AND LOCKE WHOM I BEGAN TO READ IN MY YOUTH AND HAVE GONE ON READING EVER SINCE.

By the time Laurence Sterne (1713–68) was writing The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1759–67), Locke’s Essay had infiltrated literary consciousness in a way quite unlike that of any other “philosophical” book. Sterne’s novel even offers a thumbnail sketch of Locke’s great Essay.

Tristram Shandy

Pray, Sir, in all the reading which you have ever read, did you ever read such a book as Locke’s Essay upon the Human Understanding? Don’t answer me rashly – because many, I know, quote the book, who have not read it – and many have read it who understand it not.

If either of these is your case ... I will tell you in three words what the book is. It is a history – a history! of whom? what? where? when?

... It is a history-book ... of what passes in a man’s own mind; and if you will say so much of the book, and no more, believe me, you will cut no contemptible figure in a metaphysical circle.

Locke’s Social Influence

Locke’s influence went beyond the schools and universities, the learned societies and academies. The “ideas” of Locke had become one of the indispensable “properties” of the fashionable intelligentsia.

I HEARD OF A YOUNG WOMAN WHO WAS SITTING FOR HER PORTRAIT AND WANTED TO BE SEEN HOLDING THE COLLECTED WORKS OF JOHN LOCKE. FRENCH DANDIES, NOT CONTENT WITH CREATING AN IMPRESSION BY THE ELEGANCE AND REFINEMENT OF THEIR ATTIRE, WERE ANXIOUS TO ADORN THEIR MINDS AS WELL - WITH LOCKE.

Fictions in the Service of Truth

In the literature of the 18th century, there is continual interplay between philosophy and fiction. These novelists were the inheritors of a tradition stretching back to the Roman Empire. But in the Age of Enlightenment, fiction faced new and urgent tasks.

The novel was uniquely suited to an age when an individual might make his or her own way in the world. An increasingly informed and curious readership awaited tales which were experimental and exemplary. Received ideas are put to the test of experience; literary conventions are measured against the imperatives of a disorderly reality.

Characteristically, the Enlightenment novel focuses on a single individual and monitors the impact of an unpredictable world on that person’s experience.

IT PROVES AGAIN AND AGAIN LOCKE’S POSTULATE THAT WE ARE MADE BY WHAT HAPPENS TO US.

There is another sort of knowledge beyond the power of learning to bestow, and this is to be had by conversation ... the true practical system can only be learnt from the world.

The Adventures of ...

Our 18th century heroes and heroines travel about the world in their picaresque journeys through life – expecting to improve themselves as they improve their lot in life. At the very least, they attempt to maintain their sense of self-worth in the face of adversity, corruption and seduction.

In many of these novels, we come upon the main character engaged in the midst of some moral dilemma or problem. Often we learn of each move they make, each impulse they suffer, through the spontaneous letters they write.

Pamela (Samuel Richardson), La Nouvelle Héloïse (Jean-Jacques Rousseau), Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) and Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Choderlos de Laclos).

Philosophers’ Novels

The novelists of the Age of Enlightenment did not simply borrow philosophical ideas, they dramatized and brought them to life. And some of the great novels of the age were written by its most important philosophers. The biggest bestseller of the 18th century was La Nouvelle Héloïse by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78). Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes and Voltaire’s Candide also enjoyed European success, with enormous sales. Diderot’s masterpiece was his Jacques le Fataliste.

BUT VOLTAIRE AND I BOTH EXCELLED AT ANOTHER FORM OF SHORT FICTION WHICH IS EVEN CLOSER TO PHILOSOPHY IN THE STRICTEST SENSE. DIDEROT AND I PRODUCED EXAMPLES OF THE CONTE PHILOSOPHIQUE, OR PHILOSOPHICAL TALE, IN WHICH CHARACTER AND PLOT ARE SUBORDINATED TO THE NEED TO EXPLORE A PARTICULAR PROBLEM.

Like Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, but on a smaller scale, these tales are “thought experiments”.

Voltaire’s contes include his novella, Candide,