10.3: Enlightenment Philosophes

Enlightenment thinkers are offered referred to as philosophe, meaning simply "philosopher" in French. The most prominent philosophers were French, English, Scottish, and Prussian.

John Locke: 1637 – 1704

Locke was a great political theorist during the English Civil Wars and Glorious Revolution eras, arguing that sovereignty was granted by the people to a government but could be revoked if that government violated the laws and traditions of the country. He was also a major advocate for religious tolerance. Indeed, he was even bold enough to note that people tended to be whatever religion was prevalent in their family and social context, so it was ridiculous for anyone to claim exclusive access to religious truth.

Locke was also the founding figure of Enlightenment educational thought, arguing that all humans are born “blank slates” – Tabula Rasa in Latin. Hence access to the human faculty of reason had entirely to do with the proper education. Cruelty, selfishness, and destructive behavior were because of a lack of education and a poor environment, while the right education would lead anybody and everybody to become rational, reasonable individuals. This idea was hugely inspiring to other Enlightenment thinkers, because it implied that society could be perfected if education was somehow improved and rationalized.

Voltaire: 1694 – 1778

The greatest novelist, poet, and philosopher of France during the height of the Enlightenment period, François-Marie Arouet, also known as Voltaire, became famous across Europe for his wit, intelligence, and moral battles against what he perceived as injustice and superstition.

In addition to writing hilarious novellas lambasting everything from Prussia's obsession with militarism to the fanaticism of the Spanish Inquisition, Voltaire publicly intervened against injustice. He wrote essays and articles decrying the unjust punishment of innocents and personally convinced the French king Louis XV to commute the sentences of certain individuals unjustly convicted of crimes. He was also an amateur scientist and philosopher, and wrote many important articles in the "official" handbook of the Enlightenment, the Encyclopedia (described below).

Figure 10.3.1: Voltaire

It is important to note the ambiguities of Voltaire's philosophy. He was a deep skeptic about human nature, despite believing in the existence and desirability of reason. He acknowledged the power of the ignorant and outmoded traditions to govern human behavior, and expressed considerable skepticism that society could ever be significantly improved. For example, despite his personal disdain for Christian (especially Catholic) institutions, he noted that “if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him,” because without a religious structure shoring up morality, the ignorant masses would descend into violence and barbarism.

Emilie de Châtelet: 1706 - 1749

Châtelet published works on subjects as diverse as physics, mathematics, the Christian Bible, and the very nature of happiness. Perhaps her best-known work was an annotated translation of Newton’s Mathematical Principles, which explained the Newtonian concepts to her (French) readers. Despite the gendered biases of most of her scientific contemporaries, she was accepted as an equal member of the “republic of science.” In Châtelet, the link between the legacy of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment is clearest. While her companion Voltaire was keenly interested in science and engaged in modest efforts at his own experiments, Châtelet was a full-fledged physicist and mathematician.

The Encyclopedia of Diderot and D’Alembert (1751)

The Encyclopedia was a full-scale attempt to catalog, categorize, and explain all of human knowledge. While its co-inventors, Jean le Rond D’Alembert and Denis Diderot, wrote many of the articles, the majority were written by other philosophes, including Voltaire. The first volume was published in 1751. In the end, the Encyclopedia consisted of 28 volumes containing 60,000 articles with 2,885 illustrations. While its volumes were far too expensive for most of the reading public to access directly, pirated chapters ensured that its ideas reached a much broader audience.

Figure 10.3.2: One of the illustrations from the Encyclopedia: diagrams of (at the time, state of the art) agricultural equipment.

The Encyclopedia was explicitly organized to refute traditional knowledge provided by the church and (to a lesser extent) the state. It attempted to be a technical resource for would-be scientists and inventors, describing aspects of science as well as providing detailed technical diagrams of everything from windmills to mines. In short, the Encyclopedia was intended to be a kind of guide to the entire realm of human thought and technique - a cutting-edge description of all of the knowledge a typical philosophe might think necessary to improve the world.

David Hume: 1711 – 1776

Hume was the major philosopher associated with the Scottish Enlightenment, centered in Edinburgh. He was one of the most powerful critics of all forms of organized religion. To him, any religion based on "miracles" was automatically invalid, since miracles do not happen in an orderly universe knowable through science. In fact, Hume went so far as to suggest that belief in a God who resembled a kind of omnipotent version of a human being, with a personality, intentions, and emotions, was simply an expression of primitive ignorance and fear early in human history, as people sought an explanation for a bewildering universe.

Hume also expressed enormous contempt for the common people. Most surprisingly, he did not champion the rights, let alone anything like the right to political expression, of regular people. To a philosopher like Hume, the average commoner (whether a peasant or a member of the poor urban classes) was so mired in ignorance, superstition, and credulity that he or she should be held in check and ruled by his or her betters.

Adam Smith: 1723 - 1790

Smith was another Scotsman who worked in Edinburgh. He is generally credited with being the first real economist: a social scientist devoted to analyzing how markets function. In his most famous work, The Wealth of Nations, Smith argued that a free market, (one that operated without the undue interference of the state), would naturally result in never-ending economic growth and nearly universal prosperity. He argued that if states dropped the monopolies and protectionist taxes and tariffs that limited trade, the market itself would increase wealth as if the general prosperity of the nation was lifted by an "invisible hand."

Smith applied precisely the same kind of Enlightenment ideas and ideals to market exchange as did the other philosophes to morality, science, and so on. He also insisted that something in human affairs - economics - operated according to rational and knowable laws that could be discovered and explained. His ideas, along with those of David Ricardo, an English economist a generation younger than Smith, are normally considered the founding concepts of “classical” economics.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778)

Rousseau was the great contrarian philosophe of the Enlightenment. He rose to prominence by winning an essay contest in 1749, penning a scathing critique of his contemporary French society and claiming that its so-called “civilization” was a corrupt facade that undermined humankind’s natural moral character. He went on to write both novels and essays that attracted enormous attention both in France and abroad, claiming among other things that children should learn from nature by experiencing the world, allowing their natural goodness and character to develop. He also championed the idea that political sovereignty arose from the “general will” of the people in a society, and that citizens in a just society had to be fanatically devoted to both that general will and to their own moral standards. Rousseau’s concept of a moralistic, fanatical government justified by a “general will” of the people would go on to become the ideological bases of the French Revolution that began a decade after his death.