imclaugh's review against another edition
4.0
A brilliant exploration of the key themes, ideas, and preoccupations of the Enlightenment. Unlike some other historians, Robertson maintains that the Enlightenment did exist as a discernible intellectual movement with a distinct set of concerns and methodologies. At the same time, he attempts to distinguish between the historian's Enlightenment and the philosopher's Enlightenment, while acknowledging the truth in both characterizations.
One thing I especially appreciate, both about the book and this series in general, is that "very short introduction" does not mean "for dummies." In each chapter, Robertson dives right in to some pretty heady specifics on, say, Biblical scholarship, natural philosophy, and ethics. However, these specifics are rarely overwhelming, instead providing a refreshingly immediate window into the discourses the better known works / authors of the period were responding to.
I also enjoyed the casual de-centering of the French philosophes. Instead of reading about a French Enlightenment and its shadows, Robertson narrates a truly pan-European phenomenon, in which Neapolitan, Dutch, German, Scottish and (less so) English texts interact with one another.
I found the chapter on public opinion particularly strong.
One thing I especially appreciate, both about the book and this series in general, is that "very short introduction" does not mean "for dummies." In each chapter, Robertson dives right in to some pretty heady specifics on, say, Biblical scholarship, natural philosophy, and ethics. However, these specifics are rarely overwhelming, instead providing a refreshingly immediate window into the discourses the better known works / authors of the period were responding to.
I also enjoyed the casual de-centering of the French philosophes. Instead of reading about a French Enlightenment and its shadows, Robertson narrates a truly pan-European phenomenon, in which Neapolitan, Dutch, German, Scottish and (less so) English texts interact with one another.
I found the chapter on public opinion particularly strong.
drkshadow03's review against another edition
4.0
The exact meaning, nature, and scope of the Enlightenment remains a topic of disagreement among historians studying the period and philosophers. Although acknowledging the ongoing debates about defining the Enlightenment, John Robertson believes the Enlightenment can best be described as an 18th century philosophical movement committed to improving our methods of understanding and the human condition that came to characterize “modernity itself (2).”
The origin of the English word Enlightenment stems from the French terms lumiéres and the German Aufklärung, which explicitly associated the term with philosophy. Jean D’Alembert in his “Preliminary Discourse” to his Encyclopédie championed the epistemology of Francis Bacon, John Locke, and Isaac Newton that placed the senses as the primary source of knowledge and understanding about the world. While the German term is most famously associated with the philosopher Immanuel Kant who offered his own definition of the Enlightenment as “the freedom to make public use of one’s reason with the goal of liberating mankind from its self-imposed immaturity (7).” As this example reveals it is problematic to speak of the Enlightenment as containing one single mode of thought or set of ideas. Kant’s philosophy is contesting the idea supported by D’Alembert that the senses are the sole source of our understanding, restoring an important role for reason in the picture.
The study of the Enlightenment has changed much from its initial limited association with philosophy and the 18th century critics who accused it of irreligion, subverting society, and unrealistic expectations about liberty that led to the extravagances of the French Revolution. As the study of history became professionalized in the university, historians of the Enlightenment increasing expanded the geographic investigation beyond France and certain cities of Germany to Enlightenment activity in other parts of Europes such as Spain, Italy, Scandinavia, Scotland, England, etc. Further academic research has expanded the topic beyond philosophy to other intellectual spheres such as literature, religion, and science. There has also been an interest on the social history of the lower classes during the period, the salons and coffeehouses where the ideas circulated and were discussed, and the role of women during the Enlightenment.
With his philosophical focus, Robertson sets out to explore the distinctive characteristics of Enlightenment thought. While popular imagination paints the Enlightenment as anti-religion and against superstition, later scholarship has drawn a more nuanced picture.
Only the radical Enlightenment might be described this way. The Enlightenment transformed the role of religion to “an optional rather than a necessary dimension of social life (15).”
In this period, Christians distinguished between revealed religion and natural religion. Over time, Christianity had developed a concept of natural law, believing that while some people might not acknowledge the specific revealed teachings of the Bible, all people had an obligation to follow certain laws of nature established by God. As they encountered new cultures across the globe, Christians also began to view religion itself as universal. This new understanding that religion was natural among humans allowed Catholic Jesuits and Protestants to form new strategies for converting non-Christian natives across the globe. Among scholars, these encounters with different peoples and the belief in natural religion motivated the field of comparative religions as a growing area of academic study. Even the scientific discoveries of the 17th century didn’t so much as undermine faith, but supported the Christian belief in God and his role as the designer of nature.
At the same time, the Bible became increasingly interpreted through an historical understanding rather than primarily a theological one. There was a growing sense that the texts had been corrupted over time and were products of historical contingency rather than reflecting pure divine revelation. Scholars of the late 17th century increasingly developed a skepticism toward the text of the Bible itself driven by scholars such as Richard Simon and Jean Le Clerc. Simon questioned the reliability of the biblical text by pointing out the problem of textual corruption over time with no way to verify any book’s or verse’s authenticity without possessing a biblical original. Although his book eventually ended up on the Catholic Index of Forbidden Books, Simon had hoped to create a new critical edition of the Bible to replace Jerome’s Vulgate. Meanwhile Le Clerc focused on the changing meaning of Hebrew over time, which suggested different portions and books were written at different periods, which drew the ire of stricter Calvinists. Other Enlightenment thinkers such as the Jewish Moses Mendelssohn challenged Le Clerc’s idea that the meaning of the Hebrew changed over time, suggesting there wasn’t one single position held among Enlightenment thinkers.
Another line of thought represented by John Toland in his famous book, Christianity not Mysterious, claimed that priests had mystified the meaning of the Bible and Christian worship with theology to buttress their own interests, insisting that scripture could be interpreted by anyone. This wasn’t so much anti-religious but rather anti-clerical, and wanted to return the Bible back to the laypeople and place religion on more rational grounds. Pierre Bayle in his “Diverse Thoughts on the Comet” criticized those who viewed comets as omens of future devastation, claiming this was a form of superstitious idolatry inconsistent with the worship of God. Both of these may seem skeptical; nevertheless, they also fit into a larger Protestant tradition of removing extraneous superstition from legitimate expressions of personal faith.
Despite these examples more critical strands did exist among groups of irreligious freethinkers. They established underground networks of literature where they circulated forbidden publications such as the Treatise of the Three Impostors among themselves. If there were some circles advocating a more radical irreligion during the Enlightenment, it is equally true that there was a growing fascination in learning about other religions among the general public as attested by the seven volume Religious Ceremonies of the World (1723-37) published by Jean Frederic Bernard, which became bestseller.
Another problem that occupied scholars that led to the historical turn was matching up biblical chronology internally and with the historical chronology of other ancient civilizations such as Mesopotamia that had recently become areas of academic study. Comte de Buffon studies on natural history postulated a time span between 75,000 to 3,000,000 years, leaving him to reconcile the implications of this long history to Biblical chronology by separating natural history from sacred history, arguing that sacred history recorded human civilization rather than all time, but the consequence of this was that “the unity of sacred history as an account of the beginning of the world and its first people had been sundered (32).” These difficulties with chronology, however, didn’t weaken faith for many, but often supported new interpretations of various parts of the Bible by giving it a new historical context.
Another line of thought represented by John Toland in his famous book, Christianity not Mysterious, claimed that priests had falsely convinced the population of Christianity and the Bible’s mystery with theology to buttress their own interests, insisting that scripture could be interpreted by anyone. This wasn’t so much anti-religious but rather anti-clerical, and wanted to return the Bible back to the laypeople and place religion on more rational grounds. Pierre Bayle in his “Diverse Thoughts on the Comet” criticized those who viewed comets as omens of future devastation, claiming this was a form of superstitious idolatry inconsistent with the worship of God. Despite these examples of skepticism, more critical strands of religion did exist among groups of irreligious freethinkers who circulated forbidden publications such as the Treatise of the Three Impostors among themselves as a kind of underground literature. If there were some circles advocating radical irreligion during the Enlightenment, it is equally true that there was a growing fascination in learning about other religions among the general public as attested by the seven volume Religious Ceremonies of the World (1723-37) published by Jean Frederic Bernard, which became bestseller
The Enlightenment also witnessed new arguments for religious toleration. The context of debates about religious toleration was the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 by the French King Louis XVI and was at first driven largely by Huguenot refugees. As part of his philosophy, John Locke argued people had an obligation originating in the law of nature to protect themselves and interests by establishing civil power by their consent and the law of nature also required men to worship God as they saw fit and associate in religious worship by their consent. The civil authority had no place to dictate religious beliefs, which should remain a personal matter of conscience and the responsibility of each individual to attend to their own salvation as they saw fit. At its heart this appeal was fundamentally Protestant. Locke’s toleration applied to Protestants, but not Catholics who served two masters in the form of the Pope and atheists who would feel no obligation to follow the basic rules of natural law created by God. Whereas Pierre Bayle argued the provocative thesis that atheists could be as moral and productive members of society as the religious since most people were driven by their passions anyway, and questioned “the necessity of religion to human society.” Society had no place in religion and religion had no place dictating the larger society, therefore toleration should be the norm. Many other thinkers of the period made their own case for religious toleration.
Another major area of Enlightenment thought was exploring how to better the human condition. They raised new questions about the origins of society, the basis of how people managed to cooperate and live together, and the nature of our morals, with the hope to guide people to lead better lives and live in a more just society. As with religion, one single moral theory or position didn’t characterize Enlightenment thought. Some believed morals stemmed from reason and others our sentiments. Lord Shaftesbury argued for morals as being a code of manners attainable only by a gentleman with sufficient leisure time to cultivate these habits of behavior. Kant famously expressed his views on morals as the Categorical Imperative (acting in accordance with a maxim that can at the same time make itself a universal law). For him we formulate our moral principles by reason. Whereas Hume argued that we act morally because we want to appear good and admirable in the eyes of other people, while justice in society is an artificial convention of humanity that has been accepted by common agreement over time and not something that exists as part of nature. Meanwhile Adam Smith, taking Hume’s lead, considered something moral if an impartial person could sympathize with another person’s feelings while enacting or experiencing an action.
The Enlightenment not only began to apply history to the Bible, but the period expressed a renewed interest in history more generally, fashioning a new way of writing about history that focused on understanding political events in relation to the social structure of society and its manners. Historians developed a new understanding of history as linked to progress. At the same time, Natural historians began to recognize similarities between humans and chimpanzees and invent pseudoscientific theories about different types of men that undergirded concepts of racism and slavery. Of particular interesest to Enlightenment historians was exploring why some societies seemed to be more advanced than others. They developed a stadial theory of social development in which societies progress through stages. This allowed them to identify a sense of prog. Philosophers and historians became fascinated with the infinite variety of cultures and plethora of ways humans lived in other societies. Nevertheless, historians of this period struggled to create historical narratives that balanced and fit in all these new interests in manners, geography, and the role of women into the traditional historical framework of narratives about government and chronology of kings.
Alongside this was a renewed interest in the origin of languages, the origins of civilization and society itself, and the condition of women. In contrast to these tendencies of linking civilization with progress, one of the most important thinkers of the Enlightenment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau envisaged modern human society as a degrading force on humanity that restricted our liberty and freedom that we had when we were free individuals living alone in nature. Civilization wasn’t an advantage, but produced inequality, inevitable suffering, and moral hypocrisy. Building off Rousseau, many thinkers such as Diderot and Abbé Raynal adopted anti-imperialism and wrote narratives criticizing the hypocrisy, exploitation, and immorality of Europeans towards native peoples.
Another new area of study was Political economy. Economics took on a new role as a science of commerce in society. In particular, Adam Smith’s Wealth of the Nations thrust economics as a central concern of Enlightenment Thought.
“Here, I suggest, was the core of the Enlightenment’s contribution to Western thought: political economy as the prospect of human betterment, in this world rather than the next, in the present over the past. . . . Enlightenment philosophers, historians, and economists were all too aware of the enduring obstacles of commerce, not least from ill-informed, short-sighted governments. Still, they were optimistic, observing that the activities of modern commercial economy were so diverse, and required the decisions of so many individuals across the world, that they were now beyond the ability of any government to control (80).”
In other words, this new economic perspective saw individuals and their interests as the main drive of the economy rather than government policy and attempts to control it. In the world of politics, this was related to the idea that governments serve their people and should listen to their opinions.
“The conviction that political influence must now be exerted through public opinion distinguished the Enlightenment approach to politics, constituting its novel strength and, in the end, fatal weakness (81).”
As Robertson points out many Enlightenment thinkers weren’t just interest in writing abstract arguments about society and religion, but wanted to enact their ideas directly, joining the courts or corresponding with the “Enlightened Despots” such as Frederick II of Prussia, Catherine II of Russia, and Joseph II of Austria, even if some of them treated the philosophes as amusements rather than trusted advisors. Robertson notes “that what distinguished the Enlightenment was the agency of philosophers and men of letters in relation to their ‘public’. What they sought was a new role for themselves as formers of ‘public opinion’, understood as an instrument by which they could guide but also effectively limit what governments could hope to achieve (83).” A new politics of public opinion emerged in which philosophers viewed it as their role to shape and guide.
More recent historical studies has shifted from political history to explore social and cultural history. The Enlightenment was just a matter of new ideas, but was also the product of new social institutions where those ideas could be shared and discussed. were shared and growing publishing industry and book culture. One of the new places where new ideas and political discussions circulated was the coffee house, which began to appear and spread across Europe in the mid-17th century. Another area for intellectual discussion was the more elite salons, often sponsored by upper-class women, who invited famous men of letters to discuss and debate various topics. At the same time, the authorities of many European nations founded academies and societies such as the Berlin Academy and the Select Society of Edinburgh which sponsored essays that stimulated philosophical discourse and gave prestige to men of letters or revamped their universities from the older medieval models.
Perhaps the leading source of spreading Enlightenment ideas was the expansion of the amount of books being published. In particular periodicals, novels, histories, and scandal literature increased in proportion to religious and biblical literature. There was a greater variety of works published, and although copyright laws first started appearing to protect authors and publishers, unauthorized reprinting by publishers in other countries outside of the jurisdiction was rampant, which allowed for wider circulation. Many of these controversial books benefited from the censors of various states being too overwhelmed and understaffed to keep up with all the books published and waiting to be approved. The growing demand and success of book publishing as an industry then allowed for works with potentially controversial content to be published with reduced censorship.
A new type of publication appeared in the late 17th century that further enhanced the status of the author and helped spread Enlightenment ideas: literary journals. The most famous examples were Pierre Bayle’s Nouvelles de la république des letters and Jean Le Clerc’s Bibliothèque universelle. Soon literary review journals appeared in many different European countries. Journals such as the Spectator provided reading material and content for discussion in the coffeehouses. All of this also suggests a large increase in literacy. More readers, books, and the rise of journals dedicated to ideas and literary culture enhanced the role and prestige of authorship in general. Being an author now could potentially provide monetary independence and other career opportunities much rarer in previous eras.
The last chapter dedicates itself to dealing with critics of Enlightenment. Most of the criticism has come from Marxist and postmodern philosophers such as Theodor Adorno, Richard Rorty, and Michel Foucault. More recent scholarship in history has reaffirmed the modernity of the Enlightenment and that the issues they raised still matter to us today. The book attempts to split the difference.
“There is therefore more to the philosophers’ debate over Enlightenment that the historians’ one-sided affirmation of its ‘modernity’ has allowed. . . . But there is certainly scope for a greater degree of mutual respect. More philosophers might recognize that there was more to the Enlightenment than Kant; historians that the concept of ‘modernity’ cannot be exclusively identified with liberal values and human well-being, but has long been treated by philosophers as ambiguous and contested (128).”
Ultimately the author reminds us that the challenges of today would have been unimaginable and are different than the issues the Enlightenment thinkers addressed. It is less important to ask if the Enlightenment still matters for our own issues and better to accept that it offers us a deeper understanding of the period in question and the way they thought about and experienced the world.
The origin of the English word Enlightenment stems from the French terms lumiéres and the German Aufklärung, which explicitly associated the term with philosophy. Jean D’Alembert in his “Preliminary Discourse” to his Encyclopédie championed the epistemology of Francis Bacon, John Locke, and Isaac Newton that placed the senses as the primary source of knowledge and understanding about the world. While the German term is most famously associated with the philosopher Immanuel Kant who offered his own definition of the Enlightenment as “the freedom to make public use of one’s reason with the goal of liberating mankind from its self-imposed immaturity (7).” As this example reveals it is problematic to speak of the Enlightenment as containing one single mode of thought or set of ideas. Kant’s philosophy is contesting the idea supported by D’Alembert that the senses are the sole source of our understanding, restoring an important role for reason in the picture.
The study of the Enlightenment has changed much from its initial limited association with philosophy and the 18th century critics who accused it of irreligion, subverting society, and unrealistic expectations about liberty that led to the extravagances of the French Revolution. As the study of history became professionalized in the university, historians of the Enlightenment increasing expanded the geographic investigation beyond France and certain cities of Germany to Enlightenment activity in other parts of Europes such as Spain, Italy, Scandinavia, Scotland, England, etc. Further academic research has expanded the topic beyond philosophy to other intellectual spheres such as literature, religion, and science. There has also been an interest on the social history of the lower classes during the period, the salons and coffeehouses where the ideas circulated and were discussed, and the role of women during the Enlightenment.
With his philosophical focus, Robertson sets out to explore the distinctive characteristics of Enlightenment thought. While popular imagination paints the Enlightenment as anti-religion and against superstition, later scholarship has drawn a more nuanced picture.
Only the radical Enlightenment might be described this way. The Enlightenment transformed the role of religion to “an optional rather than a necessary dimension of social life (15).”
In this period, Christians distinguished between revealed religion and natural religion. Over time, Christianity had developed a concept of natural law, believing that while some people might not acknowledge the specific revealed teachings of the Bible, all people had an obligation to follow certain laws of nature established by God. As they encountered new cultures across the globe, Christians also began to view religion itself as universal. This new understanding that religion was natural among humans allowed Catholic Jesuits and Protestants to form new strategies for converting non-Christian natives across the globe. Among scholars, these encounters with different peoples and the belief in natural religion motivated the field of comparative religions as a growing area of academic study. Even the scientific discoveries of the 17th century didn’t so much as undermine faith, but supported the Christian belief in God and his role as the designer of nature.
At the same time, the Bible became increasingly interpreted through an historical understanding rather than primarily a theological one. There was a growing sense that the texts had been corrupted over time and were products of historical contingency rather than reflecting pure divine revelation. Scholars of the late 17th century increasingly developed a skepticism toward the text of the Bible itself driven by scholars such as Richard Simon and Jean Le Clerc. Simon questioned the reliability of the biblical text by pointing out the problem of textual corruption over time with no way to verify any book’s or verse’s authenticity without possessing a biblical original. Although his book eventually ended up on the Catholic Index of Forbidden Books, Simon had hoped to create a new critical edition of the Bible to replace Jerome’s Vulgate. Meanwhile Le Clerc focused on the changing meaning of Hebrew over time, which suggested different portions and books were written at different periods, which drew the ire of stricter Calvinists. Other Enlightenment thinkers such as the Jewish Moses Mendelssohn challenged Le Clerc’s idea that the meaning of the Hebrew changed over time, suggesting there wasn’t one single position held among Enlightenment thinkers.
Another line of thought represented by John Toland in his famous book, Christianity not Mysterious, claimed that priests had mystified the meaning of the Bible and Christian worship with theology to buttress their own interests, insisting that scripture could be interpreted by anyone. This wasn’t so much anti-religious but rather anti-clerical, and wanted to return the Bible back to the laypeople and place religion on more rational grounds. Pierre Bayle in his “Diverse Thoughts on the Comet” criticized those who viewed comets as omens of future devastation, claiming this was a form of superstitious idolatry inconsistent with the worship of God. Both of these may seem skeptical; nevertheless, they also fit into a larger Protestant tradition of removing extraneous superstition from legitimate expressions of personal faith.
Despite these examples more critical strands did exist among groups of irreligious freethinkers. They established underground networks of literature where they circulated forbidden publications such as the Treatise of the Three Impostors among themselves. If there were some circles advocating a more radical irreligion during the Enlightenment, it is equally true that there was a growing fascination in learning about other religions among the general public as attested by the seven volume Religious Ceremonies of the World (1723-37) published by Jean Frederic Bernard, which became bestseller.
Another problem that occupied scholars that led to the historical turn was matching up biblical chronology internally and with the historical chronology of other ancient civilizations such as Mesopotamia that had recently become areas of academic study. Comte de Buffon studies on natural history postulated a time span between 75,000 to 3,000,000 years, leaving him to reconcile the implications of this long history to Biblical chronology by separating natural history from sacred history, arguing that sacred history recorded human civilization rather than all time, but the consequence of this was that “the unity of sacred history as an account of the beginning of the world and its first people had been sundered (32).” These difficulties with chronology, however, didn’t weaken faith for many, but often supported new interpretations of various parts of the Bible by giving it a new historical context.
Another line of thought represented by John Toland in his famous book, Christianity not Mysterious, claimed that priests had falsely convinced the population of Christianity and the Bible’s mystery with theology to buttress their own interests, insisting that scripture could be interpreted by anyone. This wasn’t so much anti-religious but rather anti-clerical, and wanted to return the Bible back to the laypeople and place religion on more rational grounds. Pierre Bayle in his “Diverse Thoughts on the Comet” criticized those who viewed comets as omens of future devastation, claiming this was a form of superstitious idolatry inconsistent with the worship of God. Despite these examples of skepticism, more critical strands of religion did exist among groups of irreligious freethinkers who circulated forbidden publications such as the Treatise of the Three Impostors among themselves as a kind of underground literature. If there were some circles advocating radical irreligion during the Enlightenment, it is equally true that there was a growing fascination in learning about other religions among the general public as attested by the seven volume Religious Ceremonies of the World (1723-37) published by Jean Frederic Bernard, which became bestseller
The Enlightenment also witnessed new arguments for religious toleration. The context of debates about religious toleration was the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 by the French King Louis XVI and was at first driven largely by Huguenot refugees. As part of his philosophy, John Locke argued people had an obligation originating in the law of nature to protect themselves and interests by establishing civil power by their consent and the law of nature also required men to worship God as they saw fit and associate in religious worship by their consent. The civil authority had no place to dictate religious beliefs, which should remain a personal matter of conscience and the responsibility of each individual to attend to their own salvation as they saw fit. At its heart this appeal was fundamentally Protestant. Locke’s toleration applied to Protestants, but not Catholics who served two masters in the form of the Pope and atheists who would feel no obligation to follow the basic rules of natural law created by God. Whereas Pierre Bayle argued the provocative thesis that atheists could be as moral and productive members of society as the religious since most people were driven by their passions anyway, and questioned “the necessity of religion to human society.” Society had no place in religion and religion had no place dictating the larger society, therefore toleration should be the norm. Many other thinkers of the period made their own case for religious toleration.
Another major area of Enlightenment thought was exploring how to better the human condition. They raised new questions about the origins of society, the basis of how people managed to cooperate and live together, and the nature of our morals, with the hope to guide people to lead better lives and live in a more just society. As with religion, one single moral theory or position didn’t characterize Enlightenment thought. Some believed morals stemmed from reason and others our sentiments. Lord Shaftesbury argued for morals as being a code of manners attainable only by a gentleman with sufficient leisure time to cultivate these habits of behavior. Kant famously expressed his views on morals as the Categorical Imperative (acting in accordance with a maxim that can at the same time make itself a universal law). For him we formulate our moral principles by reason. Whereas Hume argued that we act morally because we want to appear good and admirable in the eyes of other people, while justice in society is an artificial convention of humanity that has been accepted by common agreement over time and not something that exists as part of nature. Meanwhile Adam Smith, taking Hume’s lead, considered something moral if an impartial person could sympathize with another person’s feelings while enacting or experiencing an action.
The Enlightenment not only began to apply history to the Bible, but the period expressed a renewed interest in history more generally, fashioning a new way of writing about history that focused on understanding political events in relation to the social structure of society and its manners. Historians developed a new understanding of history as linked to progress. At the same time, Natural historians began to recognize similarities between humans and chimpanzees and invent pseudoscientific theories about different types of men that undergirded concepts of racism and slavery. Of particular interesest to Enlightenment historians was exploring why some societies seemed to be more advanced than others. They developed a stadial theory of social development in which societies progress through stages. This allowed them to identify a sense of prog. Philosophers and historians became fascinated with the infinite variety of cultures and plethora of ways humans lived in other societies. Nevertheless, historians of this period struggled to create historical narratives that balanced and fit in all these new interests in manners, geography, and the role of women into the traditional historical framework of narratives about government and chronology of kings.
Alongside this was a renewed interest in the origin of languages, the origins of civilization and society itself, and the condition of women. In contrast to these tendencies of linking civilization with progress, one of the most important thinkers of the Enlightenment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau envisaged modern human society as a degrading force on humanity that restricted our liberty and freedom that we had when we were free individuals living alone in nature. Civilization wasn’t an advantage, but produced inequality, inevitable suffering, and moral hypocrisy. Building off Rousseau, many thinkers such as Diderot and Abbé Raynal adopted anti-imperialism and wrote narratives criticizing the hypocrisy, exploitation, and immorality of Europeans towards native peoples.
Another new area of study was Political economy. Economics took on a new role as a science of commerce in society. In particular, Adam Smith’s Wealth of the Nations thrust economics as a central concern of Enlightenment Thought.
“Here, I suggest, was the core of the Enlightenment’s contribution to Western thought: political economy as the prospect of human betterment, in this world rather than the next, in the present over the past. . . . Enlightenment philosophers, historians, and economists were all too aware of the enduring obstacles of commerce, not least from ill-informed, short-sighted governments. Still, they were optimistic, observing that the activities of modern commercial economy were so diverse, and required the decisions of so many individuals across the world, that they were now beyond the ability of any government to control (80).”
In other words, this new economic perspective saw individuals and their interests as the main drive of the economy rather than government policy and attempts to control it. In the world of politics, this was related to the idea that governments serve their people and should listen to their opinions.
“The conviction that political influence must now be exerted through public opinion distinguished the Enlightenment approach to politics, constituting its novel strength and, in the end, fatal weakness (81).”
As Robertson points out many Enlightenment thinkers weren’t just interest in writing abstract arguments about society and religion, but wanted to enact their ideas directly, joining the courts or corresponding with the “Enlightened Despots” such as Frederick II of Prussia, Catherine II of Russia, and Joseph II of Austria, even if some of them treated the philosophes as amusements rather than trusted advisors. Robertson notes “that what distinguished the Enlightenment was the agency of philosophers and men of letters in relation to their ‘public’. What they sought was a new role for themselves as formers of ‘public opinion’, understood as an instrument by which they could guide but also effectively limit what governments could hope to achieve (83).” A new politics of public opinion emerged in which philosophers viewed it as their role to shape and guide.
More recent historical studies has shifted from political history to explore social and cultural history. The Enlightenment was just a matter of new ideas, but was also the product of new social institutions where those ideas could be shared and discussed. were shared and growing publishing industry and book culture. One of the new places where new ideas and political discussions circulated was the coffee house, which began to appear and spread across Europe in the mid-17th century. Another area for intellectual discussion was the more elite salons, often sponsored by upper-class women, who invited famous men of letters to discuss and debate various topics. At the same time, the authorities of many European nations founded academies and societies such as the Berlin Academy and the Select Society of Edinburgh which sponsored essays that stimulated philosophical discourse and gave prestige to men of letters or revamped their universities from the older medieval models.
Perhaps the leading source of spreading Enlightenment ideas was the expansion of the amount of books being published. In particular periodicals, novels, histories, and scandal literature increased in proportion to religious and biblical literature. There was a greater variety of works published, and although copyright laws first started appearing to protect authors and publishers, unauthorized reprinting by publishers in other countries outside of the jurisdiction was rampant, which allowed for wider circulation. Many of these controversial books benefited from the censors of various states being too overwhelmed and understaffed to keep up with all the books published and waiting to be approved. The growing demand and success of book publishing as an industry then allowed for works with potentially controversial content to be published with reduced censorship.
A new type of publication appeared in the late 17th century that further enhanced the status of the author and helped spread Enlightenment ideas: literary journals. The most famous examples were Pierre Bayle’s Nouvelles de la république des letters and Jean Le Clerc’s Bibliothèque universelle. Soon literary review journals appeared in many different European countries. Journals such as the Spectator provided reading material and content for discussion in the coffeehouses. All of this also suggests a large increase in literacy. More readers, books, and the rise of journals dedicated to ideas and literary culture enhanced the role and prestige of authorship in general. Being an author now could potentially provide monetary independence and other career opportunities much rarer in previous eras.
The last chapter dedicates itself to dealing with critics of Enlightenment. Most of the criticism has come from Marxist and postmodern philosophers such as Theodor Adorno, Richard Rorty, and Michel Foucault. More recent scholarship in history has reaffirmed the modernity of the Enlightenment and that the issues they raised still matter to us today. The book attempts to split the difference.
“There is therefore more to the philosophers’ debate over Enlightenment that the historians’ one-sided affirmation of its ‘modernity’ has allowed. . . . But there is certainly scope for a greater degree of mutual respect. More philosophers might recognize that there was more to the Enlightenment than Kant; historians that the concept of ‘modernity’ cannot be exclusively identified with liberal values and human well-being, but has long been treated by philosophers as ambiguous and contested (128).”
Ultimately the author reminds us that the challenges of today would have been unimaginable and are different than the issues the Enlightenment thinkers addressed. It is less important to ask if the Enlightenment still matters for our own issues and better to accept that it offers us a deeper understanding of the period in question and the way they thought about and experienced the world.
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