BOOKS The age of optimism
J. H. PLUMB
For generations now the philosophers of the Enlightenment have suffered in public esteem because of the disrepute into which they fell during the nineteenth century, They were dismissed as superficial thinkers who could never resist a witticism; mockers who scoffed at the sacredness of belief; blind optimists who ignored the sinfulness and bestiality of man; lackeys of authority who pandered to the foibles of despots; armchair revolutionaries and sofa cynics.
At the head of the family was Voltaire, grinning toothlessly and maliciously at the follies of men, yet ignoring their grandeur. Rousseau presented difficulties, for his very obscurity seemed to hint at profundity. But his total lack of judgment, the parade of his own indecencies, the crass, unendurable sentimentality of his novels, particularly Emile, put the bulk of his work beyond consideration. Le Contra! Social, within the context of the history of political thought, could be treated as both profound and important: in the same sense that Hume's Treatise on Human Nature could be absorbed into the history of philosophy or Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations treated as the foundation of economic theory. But the full context of their thought; its growth, its complexity, its social impact, its intimate relationship with the whole family of the philosophers, was quite another matter.
Recently, however, interest has revived in eighteenth century thought and thinkers— one has only to turn to the two magisterial bibliographical essays in Peter Gay's two- volume The Enlightenment: An Interpreta- tion to realise the wealth of material upon which he has drawn. And yet this material is largely technical, professional and limited, dealing with some specified aspect of the work of Diderot or Voltaire or Rous- seau. Very few scholars have attempted to survey the whole of the Enlightenment. What has, alas, been absent in this plethora of books and articles on the philosopher is a sense of relevance to modern times and modern thought. We have needed a synthe- sis that rose beyond particular studies, one that would confirm that the philosopher
were the first to proclaim the potentialities and aspirations of modern man and to offer some of the sharpest criticisms ever made of tyranny, obscurantism and infamy. Outrageous claims? I do not think so. Better still, neither does Peter Gay. His book will be a turning point, not in the studies of the Enlightenment (which are too complex for that) but in what is more valuable still: in the appreciation of what the thinkers of the eighteenth century had to offer, not only to their own dark and troubled world, but also to ours. If this should be so, he will have made a contribu- tion to far more than historical study. He may be instrumental in helping a new re- covery of nerve amongst modern humanists. It is overdue.
In his second volume, subtitled The Science of Freedom (Weidenfeld and Nicol- son 120s), Peter Gay describes the reactions of the family of philosopher to aesthetics, to science, to law, to polities and to education. He draws on a wide range of works, moving with practised skill from Ferguson, Smith or Dugald Stewart to Beccaria, Winckel- mann or Kant. Few men in our generation have read so widely or so deeply in the huge output of the philosophic family as has Professor Gay. No book of prime importance slips through his net. He dis- cusses them all. But he never assumes that his readers will be so familiar with any work that he need not describe its theme and intention. In less skilled hands this could easily have led to an endless précis of books, but Gay's summaries of content are always pertinent to the underlying themes of the Enlightenment.
In essentials, the philosophes wished to explain life in purely human terms. Even though they did not abolish God, they pushed him back into a first cause or a principle of benevolence implicit in the universe as they saw it. They judged law, institutions, political philosophy and educa- tion by the touchstone of human happiness. The quality of life, however, was not the standard by which most eighteenth century governments evaluated institutions. They
eareplet1 sheery, torture, child labour, rigor- ous censorship, brutal laws and brutal pun- ishments. One needs to be reminded over and over again of what a prison to spirit, mind and body was much of eighteenth century life.
The philosophes, from Voltaire to Samuel Johnson, shared a sharp realisation of the infamous ways of men entrusted with power. Furthermore, they knew that many of these horrors arose out of a blind acceptance of the authority of the past. And so they battled and fought with every literary weapon in their efficient armoury, from works of learning to light-hearted poetry. The Encyclopaedia and Emile had the same intention: to criticise society in the hope of a reformation which would enhance human life, make it freer, happier and more secure.
And they believed, the majority of them, that this could be achieved by the applica- tion of intelligence to human problems— by developing a science of living. Aware of man's tendency to persecute, subject and exploit, they were nevertheless confident that life could only improve if the areas in which intelligence could have full play could be extended. These areas were primarily re- ligion, politics, law. The Enlightenment was, as Professor Gay demonstrates so aptly, a time of renewed confidence in man's ability to understand his world and, perhaps. improve it by pushing back the boundaries of ignorance.
This book has a richness of intention as well as of texture. It re-establishes the grandeur. the nobility and the dedication of the philosophev. No one, in the future. will be able to dismiss them as superficial. As a panorama of eighteenth century in- tellectual life. Gay's book is outstanding. However, like all books which cover so wide a field, it has some shortcomings.
England's intellectual life is treated as if its developments were similar to those of Europe; whereas momentous changes were taking place in England that were ominous for the further development of the Enlight- enment itself. From the 1730s one can dis- cern in England a growth of and a respect. almost a hunger. for tradition; a movement away from Locke to Burke, an idealisation (at least among the upper classes and the literary establishment) of what has been rather than an argument for what might be.
The authoritative voict of the second half of the eighteenth century— the ones to which men of power listened wit . reverence—were Burke, Blackstone and Jcbnson: each, it is true, not untouched by the liberal instincts of the Enlightenment, but their attitude to political, social and religious problems was widely different from that of Voltaire and Diderot. Again. Hume is a far more equi- vocal figure than Gay would allow. His attitude to politics, to society, to history is often nearer to Johnson or Burke than Vol- taire or the Encyclopaedists. Some distortion is caused by Professor Gay's thematic method, which necessarily obscures chron- ological development. Certainly it has clouded developments in England where the attitude of the philosophes was being adopted by a different social class: the tech- nocrats, industrialists and dissenters. This was to happen more generally throughout Europe after 1780.
And I. for one, would have welcomed a close analysis of the relationship between social movements and the ideas of the 'philosophic family. Treating the period of roughly 1690-1780 as a unity must lead to some distortion. The absence of considera- tion of those social groups for whom the works of the philosophes bore the hallmark of freshly discovered truth is, to me, unfor- tunate in a work of such quality.
These criticisms are not made, however, to belittle one of the most impressive feats of scholarship of the 'sixties. For the work, as a whole, I have great admiration. It will be a long time before it is surpassed.
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