Abstract
“1750”, the French enlightenment, was a retrospective casualty of the catastrophes set in chain by 1914. German Kulturpessimismus, heightened by the war and enflamed by the abuse of liberal ideals at the Treaty table at Versailles, has since been disseminated through, amongst other things, the intellectual normalisation of Heidegger’s metapolitical, radically antimodern “history of Being”, and more recently Carl Schmitt’s work. The paper recalls that the French enlightenment, a divided period of intellectual ferment, was characterised as much by scepticism as rationalism, Deism as atheism, anticolonialism as Eurocentrism, the recovery of Roman (as against Greek) antiquity, and the philosophical use of literature to break with old modes of intellectual production, and create new public spheres.
Un jour viendra où les libelles publiés contre les hommes les plus illustres de ce siècle seront tirés de la poussière par des méchants animés du même esprit qui les a dictés ..” (Denis Diderot, 1782)
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
Compare Montesquieu (2002: 733–737). Gibbon comments of his educational ideal: ‘Cicero in Latin and Xenophon in the Greek are the two ancient authors whom I would first propose in a liberal scholar, not only for the merit of their style and sentiments, but for the admirable lessons which may be applied almost to every situation of public and private life’, at Gay (1995: 105). See Price (1964: 97).
- 4.
‘The fame of Cicero flourishes at present, but that of Aristotle is utterly destroyed,’ David Hume observed of his times (at Gay 1995: 105).
- 5.
Voltaire, “Preface de Voltaire” to Rome Sauvée at www.mediterranees.net/histoire_romaine/catilina/voltaire/preface.html, last accessed April 25, 2015.
- 6.
See Parker (1937). Parker examines the syllabuses taught at the Jesuit colleges that unwittingly raised the enlighteners and the revolutionary generations. He examines the speeches of the leading protagonists in the years surrounding 1789, looking for their classical and modern citations. With (by Parker’s count) 83 citations in the National Assembly, Legislative Assembly, National Convention, and revolutionary newspapers, Cicero was cited by the revolutionaries over twice as often as any other ancient or modern author (Plutarch and Horace, with 36 citations, come next, whilst Voltaire himself was cited only 7 times).
- 7.
Voltaire, “Preface de Voltaire” to Rome Sauvée at www.mediterranees.net/histoire_romaine/catilina/voltaire/preface.html, last accessed July 1, 2015.
- 8.
Voltaire, “Cicero”, in Voltaire (1901 ).
- 9.
See Diderot, “Eclectisme”, in Diderot & D’Alembert (1751/55).
- 10.
See Sharpe (2015: 348): ‘When they listed Tully’s profile of virtues, he invariably comes out as a nearly term-for-term exemplification of the lumière’s ideal: a fine general (allegedly), the complete master of Greek philosophy, an unsurpassed populariser, orator and stylist, a remarkable poet (so says Voltaire), an honest friend, a devoted husband and father, a virtuous governor and an indomitable servant of the republic and the people of Rome …’
- 11.
Voltaire, “Cicero”, in Philosophical Dictionary.
- 12.
Michel (2013).
- 13.
Montesquieu, although he admired the modern sciences, does not proceed in a simply systematic manner. Voltaire’s description of L’Esprit des Lois as ‘a labyrinth without a clue’ responds to the lack of any surface plan in the work: Isaiah Berlin commented that ‘one of [Montesquieu’s] greatest merits lies in the very fact that, although he claims to be founding a new science in the spirit of Descartes, his practice is better than his professions . . .’ at Berlin (2000a: 137). See also Neumann (1957: 96–148).
- 14.
‘It is not Fortune who governs the world, as we see from the history of the Romans. . . . There are general causes, moral or physical, which operate in every monarchy, raise it, maintain it, or overthrow it. All that occurs is subject to these causes …’, at Will and Ariel Durant (Durant and Durant 1965: 345).
- 15.
- 16.
For Montesquieu, Stoicism was associated with the virtues of the Roman republic, before its fall and the rise of Caesar: a philosophy promoting civic heroism over the desire for private pleasures, up to and including countenancing suicide, in the case of Cato, as an alternative to servility. Stoicism’s period of greatest influence amongst the Roman elites corresponded two centuries later to the Principate under the Antonines: a period of Roman history Montesquieu, before Gibbon, celebrated as amongst the happiest in Western history. See Andrew (2016: 374-376).
- 17.
Diderot, “Encyclopedia” in Diderot and D’Alembert (Diderot 1751/55).
- 18.
See Goodman (1994).
- 19.
‘We have chosen a division which has appeared to us most nearly satisfactory for the encyclopedic arrangement of our knowledge and, at the same time, for its genealogical arrangement. We owe this division to a celebrated author [Bacon] of whom we will speak later in this preface.’ D’Alembert (D’Alembert 1995).
- 20.
D’Alembert (D’Alembert 1995).
- 21.
Du Marsais “Philosophe” in Diderot and D’Alembert (Diderot 1751/55). The authorship of this article has been disputed, and has been attributed to Diderot. Certainly, it proceeded with his editorial authority. See “Presentation du texte par Martine Groult: Cesar Chesneau Du Marsais ‘Le Philosophe: Nouvelles libertes de penser’, at encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/node/153. Voltaire greatly admired the piece, as he wrote to d’Alembert in 1764: ‘L’ouvrage, qui est en partie de Du marsais, et qu’on attribue a Saint-Evremond, se debite dans Paris, et je suis etonne quil ne soit point parvenu jusqu’à vous. Il est écrit a la verité trop simplement; mais il est plein de raison.’ In 1773, Voltaire appended an abridged version of this “Philosophe” to his tragedy, the Lois de Minos.
- 22.
Compare: ‘This society was brilliant because women were its life. They were the deities it worshipped, and they set its tone …’ And: ‘It was a brilliant age because the women in it were brilliant ... It was because of them that French writers warmed thought with feeling and graced philosophy with wit. How could Voltaire have become Voltaire without them? … Because of women French prose became brighter than poetry, and the French language took on a suave charm, an elegance of phrase, a courtesy of speech, that made it delectable and supreme.’ Will and Ariel Durant (Durant and Durant 1965: 298–299; 302).
- 23.
See Rasmussen (n.d.).
- 24.
Du Marsais (1751/Du Marsais 1755).
- 25.
Perhaps most paradigmatic is this from De Natura Deorum: ‘Is there anything rasher and more unworthy of the dignity and strength of character of a wise man than the holding of a false opinion, or the unhesitating defence of what has not been grasped and realised with proper thoroughness? … for there is no question [as those concerning he gods] on which there is such marked disagreement, not only amongst the unlearned, but the learned as well, and the fact of their opinions being so various and so mutually opposed makes it of course possible, upon the one hand, that not one of them is true, and certainly impossible, upon the other, that more than one should be true.’ Cicero, De Natura Deorum I 1–2.
- 26.
Du Marsais (1751/Du Marsais 1755).
- 27.
Du Marsais (1751/Du Marsais 1755).
- 28.
Du Marsais (1751/Du Marsais 1755).
- 29.
‘By what fatality, disgraceful perhaps to the nations of the West, has it happened that we are obliged to travel to the extremity of the East, in order to find a sage of simple manners and character, without arrogance and without imposture, who taught men how to live happy six hundred years before our era, at a period when the whole of the North was ignorant of the use of letters, and when the Greeks had scarcely begun to distinguish themselves by wisdom? That sage is Confucius, who deemed too highly of his character as a legislator for mankind, to stoop to deceive them. What finer rule of conduct has ever been given since his time, throughout the earth?’, Voltaire, “Philosopher”, in Voltaire (1901).
- 30.
Voltaire, “Glory-Glorious” in Voltaire (1901).
- 31.
Voltaire, “Glory-Glorious” in Voltaire (1901).
- 32.
To wit: ‘But the merits of the Essai were numberless. Its range of knowledge was immense, and testified to sedulous research. Its bright style, weighted with philosophy and lightened with humor, raised it far above most works of history between Tacitus and Gibbon. Its general spirit alleviated its bias; the book is still warm with love of liberty, toleration, justice, and reason. Here again, after so many lifeless, credulous chronicles, historiography became an art … And what are we doing here but walking in the path of Voltaire?’, Durant & Durant (1965: 488–489 [italics mine]).
- 33.
See [Anonymous] Manes Verulamiani: Sacred to the memory of the Right Honourable Lord Francis Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans. (London: Press of John Haviland, 1626).
- 34.
‘Shakspeare boasted a strong fruitful genius. He was natural and sublime, but had not so much as a single spark of good taste, or knew one rule of the drama’, Voltaire (1909–14: “Letter XVIII—On Tragedy”).
- 35.
See Marcuse (1968: 8): ‘… if we ask the spokesmen of the new Weltanschauung what they are fighting in their attacks on liberalism, we hear in reply ‘the ideas of 1789’, of wishy-washy humanism and pacificism, ... intellectualism, egotistical individualism, sacrifice of nation and state to conflicts of interest, … abstract, conformist egalitarianism, the party system, the hypertrophy of the economy, and destructive technicism and materialism. These are the most concrete ideas, for the concept ‘liberal’ often serves only the purposes of defamation, and political opponents are ‘liberal’, no matter where they stand …’
- 36.
Cf. Gay (1995: 94–121).
- 37.
Jean-François Lyotard also, famously, engages with the philosophies of the “modem” age in his 1979 success de scandale, The Postmodern Condition. But Lyotard does not read Voltaire, Diderot, D’Alembert, D’Holbach, Condorcet, Condillac, the Encyclopedia …
- 38.
‘All rational liberal philosophic positions have lost their significance and power. One may deplore this, but I for one cannot bring myself to clinging to philosophic positions which have been shown to be inadequate. I am afraid that we shall have to make a very great effort in order to find a solid basis for rational liberalism. Only a great thinker could help us in our intellectual plight. But here is the great trouble: the only great thinker in our time is Heidegger.’ Strauss (1989: 29). On Strauss and Heidegger, see Altman (2010: 143–194).
- 39.
‘Il avait le diable au corps’ is Saint-Beuve’ assessment; Joseph De Maistre called Voltaire the man ‘into whose hands hell had poured all its powers.’ Cited at Durant (1962: 187).
- 40.
See Voltaire (1766: 7–9); or, definitively, D’Alembert’s assessment in the “Preliminary Discourse” to the Encyclopedia: ‘… for such is the fortune of that great man today, that after having had innumerable disciples, he is reduced to a handful of apologists … Descartes dared at least to show intelligent minds how to throw off the yoke of scholasticism, of opinion, of authority—in a word, of prejudices and barbarism … If he concluded by believing he could explain everything, he at least began by doubting everything, and the arms which we use to combat him belong to him no less because we turn them against him. Moreover, when absurd opinions are of long duration, one is sometimes forced to replace them by other errors, if one cannot do better, in order to disabuse the human race …’ D’Alembert (D’Alembert 1995).
- 41.
See Nietzsche (2003: sec. 204–206).
- 42.
- 43.
‘As they drew near the town they saw a negro stretched on the ground with only one half of his habit, which was a kind of linen frock; for the poor man had lost his left leg and his right hand. “Good God,” said Candide in Dutch, “what dost thou here, friend, in this deplorable condition?” “I am waiting for my master, Mynheer Vanderdendur, the famous trader,” answered the negro. “Was it Mynheer Vanderdendur that used you in this cruel manner?” “Yes, sir,” said the negro; “it is the custom here. They give a linen garment twice a year, and that is all our covering. When we labor in the sugar works, and the mill happens to snatch hold of a finger, they instantly chop off our hand; and when we attempt to run away, they cut off a leg. Both these cases have happened to me, and it is at this expense that you eat sugar in Europe… The Dutch fetiches who converted me tell me every Sunday that the blacks and whites are all children of one father, whom they call Adam. As for me, I do not understand anything of genealogies; but if what these preachers say is true, we are all second cousins; and you must allow that it is impossible to be worse treated by our relations than we are.” “O Pangloss!” cried out Candide, “such horrid doings never entered thy imagination. Here is an end of the matter; I find myself, after all, obliged to renounce thy Optimism.” “Optimism,” said Cacambo, “what is that?” “Alas!” replied Candide, “it is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.”’ Voltaire (1759: 75–76).
- 44.
Condillac Traité des Systèmes (Condillac 1798 [1748]).
- 45.
Voltaire, “Toleration”, in Philosophical Dictionary. As we have said, since post-structuralism (before the turn towards Badiou et al’s more “militant” decisionisms) and since most post-colonial thought is animated by a desire to avow and challenge the violences the West has visited on other cultures, we could have been reclaiming the cosmopolitanism of many of the lumières, rather than what has, inversely, taken place. See above; also Muthu (2003).
- 46.
‘The game included devices of form or tricks of expression that helped to form the subtlety of French prose: double meanings, dialogues, allegories, stories, irony, transparent exaggeration, and, all in all, such delicate wit as no other literature has ever matched. The Abbé Galiani defined eloquence as the art of saying something without being sent to the Bastille.’ Durant and Durant (1965: 497–498).
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Sharpe, M. (2017). 1750, Casualty of 1914: Lest We Forget (The PreKantian Enlightenment). In: Sharpe, M., Jeffs, R., Reynolds, J. (eds) 100 years of European Philosophy Since the Great War. Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture, vol 25. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50361-5_14
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