A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 2: Modern Philosophy

by Herbert Ernest Cushman

The Two Periods of the French Enlightenment. The eighteenth century divides itself in France much the same as it does in England. There are two periods: the first extending to the middle of the century, when the Enlightenment of the individual is thought to lie in intellectual cultivation; the second, when his salvation becomes social and practical. The first period is dominated by Voltaire, and advanced by Montesquieu and the Encyclopædists; the second is dominated by Rousseau, and results in the Revolution.

The two periods have a common fundamental motive, although the means used are radically different. Both represent a gradual progression toward the elevation of the individual in his reaction against the institutions of the seventeenth century. But the first was an intellectual Enlightenment and all that this means, while the second was emotional and social. The first was aristocratic, while the second was democratic. Yet the whole movement was a gradual filtering of the doctrine of individualism from the upper to the lower classes. It naturally took the form, first, of intellectual culture, and then of an appeal to spontaneity. The intellectual theories of the first period were bound to find practical expression in the second. In the first period the champions of the ancient monarchy were forced to defend it on their opponents’ own ground—that of rationality. In the second period, the monarchists had to change their battleground and make some practical reforms. In the first, the attack was made principally on the church, in the second on society. While the attack on the state began early, it attained significance not until the middle of the century.

The Intellectual Enlightenment (1729–1762). Voltaire, Montesquieu, and the Encyclopædists. The first representatives of the French Enlightenment were Voltaire and Montesquieu. Voltaire went to England in 1726, and Montesquieu in 1728, and they both returned to France in 1729. Voltaire published his Letters on the English in 1734 and his Elements of the Philosophy of Newton in 1738.[47] Montesquieu had published a fierceinvective against the political institutions of France in 1721, a discussion of the decadence of the Romans in 1734, and his famous Spirit of the Laws in 1748, selling twenty-two editions in eighteen months. Voltaire introduced and espoused the religious theory of Locke in deistic form, and Montesquieu expounded Locke’s theory of government. Their writings were widely read by the upper classes, and this theoretical revolutionary movement against all existing institutions got momentum about 1735.

The aim of this movement was entirely aristocratic. The solution of the existing predicament in France lay for them in the greater care of the masses by an enlightened tyranny. The dualism of the classes was always assumed. The few are to be cultured; for them reason is to take the place of dogma. The masses are not amenable to reason, have no capacity for education, and for them religion suffices. To free the individual from terror of the supernatural, to release his morality from Jesuitical dominance, to give him intellectual independence of state and church—this was the working idea of the intellectual Enlightenment. Thought should be free, and the conscience of the individual should be untrammeled, because the reason is a sufficient guide. Being thus rationalistic, the movement was aristocratic. A new aristocracy should be substituted for the old—an aristocracy of the cultured instead of the corrupt and ignorant, who were then the dominant French classes in church and state. The illuminati should participate in the existing political privileges.

Voltaire (1694–1778).[48] Voltaire was a deist when he went to England, and he was therefore very muchimpressed by the prevalent English deism. Among the English deists, Bolingbroke had the greatest influence over him, and he was the “direct progenitor of Voltaire’s religious opinions.” Bolingbroke’s light and supercilious infidelity of the man of the world was suited to Voltaire. A universal genius, Voltaire wrote on every subject; but “not one of his books but bears marks of his sojourn in England.” He read with familiarity all the English philosophers,—Hobbes, Berkeley, Cudworth, Locke; but always returning to Locke. “Harassed, wearied, ashamed of having sought so many truths and found so many chimeras, I returned like a prodigal son to his father and threw myself into the arms of that modest man who never pretends to know what he does not know; who in truth has no enormous possessions, but whose substance is well assured.”

In his Philosophical Letters Voltaire makes invidious comparisons between Locke’s Empiricism and Descartes’ Rationalism, between English Deism and French Catholicism, and between the English government and the French government. Toward Christianity, as he saw it in his own country, his hatred amounted to fanaticism. His strictures were so scathing that Christians have looked upon him as an atheist. He was, however, a deist, who believed that, while we can know God’s existence, we cannot know his nature. He was fond of bringing all dogma under criticism, and “while he denied nothing, he cast suspicion upon everything.” He called himself the “ignorant philosopher.” To him atheism was preferable to dogma and superstition. His passion for invective against the French clergy was so great that his constructive statements about God and immortality were cold and impersonal.

The Encyclopædists.[49] In modern times the French have been unequaled in their encyclopædias and dictionaries. The famous Encyclopédie or Dictionnaire Raisonné was what its name implies. It was published in seventeen volumes during the years from 1751 to 1766, and had an addition of eleven volumes of plates (1766–1772). Thirty thousand copies were printed in the first instance, and in 1774 it was translated into four foreign languages. The moving spirit and editor-in-chief was Diderot (1713–1784) and his chief assistant d’Alembert. They were assisted by many notable French writers like Voltaire, Rousseau, Grimm, von Holbach, etc., who wrote separate articles. There was a host of unsolicited contributors. Two years before the Encyclopædia, Buffon had begun to publish his Natural History in forty-three volumes, the last volume appearing in 1789. The Encyclopædia had two predecessors,—Bacon’s chapter on Experimental History and Chambers’s Encyclopædia. The articles in the Encyclopædia were presumably scientific explanations alphabetically arranged, such as would appear in any work of the sort. Frequently they were disguised attacks upon existing French institutions. Often a detailed description, as on the subject “Taxes” or “God,” would reveal existing French conditions. As Comte says, “The Encyclopædia furnished a rallying ground for the most divergent efforts without any sacrifice of essential independence, and made a mass of incoherent speculation appear like a coherent system.” The two successive periods of the movement of the Enlightenment unite in the Encyclopædia against the common enemy of authority.

There are two things to be noticed in connection with the Encyclopædia: the men who wrote it went much further toward individualism and skepticism than did Voltaire; and the Encyclopædia reached a wider circle and different classes than did the works of Voltaire. Instead of the deism of Voltaire we find contributions from skeptics, atheists, and materialists,—men who are becoming more negative in their opinions as the century advances. The thorough-going agnosticism of the Encyclopædist group reached a point where it ceased to be a philosophy. Diderot had said that the first step in philosophy is unbelief, and his associates went so far as to think that unbelief is all of philosophy. Their extreme sensationalism, naturalism, and materialism sometimes appeared in disguised form in the Encyclopædia, but more often in independent writings. The Encyclopædia became the source of information for everybody. It spread information among all classes and undermined their reverence for French institutions. The result was that what had been sacred to the court and the laborer because it was traditional, now became the object of scorn to all.

The most profound of the sensationalists of this time was Condillac (1715–1780),[50] who does not, however, appear to be connected with the Encyclopædia. He published his Treatise on Sensations in 1754, which reduced Locke’s psychological analysis to a pure sensationalism. The well-known figurative statue endowed only with the sense of smell was conceived by him. He introduced Locke’s psychology into France, whence it was carried into Germany.

The Social Enlightenment (1762–1789). The second period of the French Enlightenment begins with the publication of Rousseau’s Contrat Social in 1762 and culminates in the Revolution. The influence of Rousseau dominates the second period as that of Voltaire dominated the first. Voltaire had never aimed at a social revolution. His objective point was to reinstate the understanding, to emancipate the individual by self-culture and by freedom of thought. He was not historian enough to see that he could not revolutionize intellectual France without pulling down the social structure. He did not realize that in striking at the tyranny of the church he was dealing a fatal blow at the structure of French society. The literary fencing between Voltaire and the adroit churchmen might have been amusing, had the issue not been so serious. But although superficial and vain, Voltaire was downright in earnest. At one time it seemed as if the intellectual Enlightenment would work itself out in the church. But the causes of the revolt were too deeply social, the malady against which Voltaire was aiming was too vital; and besides, at that moment attention was being directed to the character of the State itself.