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\,t- e- e The rMoment of Cr tici m The critical culture of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Diderot Patrick James Bishop April 1995 Politics Department University of Adelaide t\ tti'--\ Äv1 o.,.d.,-.;1 '.1., Contents Abstract I Statement ü Acknowledgements üi Introduction 1. Chapter 1 Liberalism and criticism 6 Chapter 2 Critics of Scholasticism 23 Chapter 3 Enlightenment and paradox 47 Chapter 4 Critiques of the Enlightenment 64 Chapter 5 Montesquieu 85 Life 85 The Persian Letters 86 Legacies 101 Chapter 6 Voltaire 105 Life 105 Cøndide 113 The Philosophical Dictionary 120 Critical cultivations 127 Chapter 7 Diderot 130 Life 130 Rameau'sNephrw. 137 Jacques the FøtøIist. 1.44 'A book reading itself' 153 Chapter 8 Comte, an end to a critical culture? 157 Life 158 'System without spirit' 159 Authority, not speculation 1,72 Chapter 9 The idea of criticism L77 Conclusion 194 Bibliography 202 Abstract Western liberal culture does not readily lend itself to a liberal defence. The problematizing of modernity has developed through various critical stances taken against the Enlightenment. Religious/ counter- Enlightenment or communitarian arguments centre around a contention between reason and faith. The work of pre-Enlightenment figures, while developing a tendency towards the secular, perhaps because of the context of the dominant orthodoxy, cannot be seen as a direct political confrontation of the theistic world view. Nonetheless, philosophical concepts and methodologies that are influential in the Enlightenment have their origins in this context. It is in the Enlightenment that the value of reason is asserted. While a number of images of the Enlightenment have emerged, it is argued that the best generic understanding of Enlightenment thought is to be found in seeing enlightenment as an attitude to thought, developed through critical reason. This argument is developed further in an analysis of Montesquieu's Persiøn letters, Voltaire's Candíde and his Philosophical Dictionary, and Diderot's Rømeøu'sNephal andløcques theFøtnlist. These works could not be described as systematic philosoPhy, they are important for understanding the spirit of an age dominated by the enterprise of the Encyclopediø. These Enlightenment thinkers are shown to have practised a critical and self-critical method in texts that are often humorous,light, and playful. Their work is driven by a commitment to reason and a passion for justice and respect for humanity, as well as an awareness of the paradox of the use of human reason. From this anaiysis the idea of criticism and the methodology of the Enlightenment are investigated to show how an Enlightenment attitude remains relevant to the discussion of modern dilemmas. Their methodology is juxtaposed to the work of the nineteenth-century French thinker, Auguste Comte, in particular his General oiew of positiztism, though this is often seen as the continuation of the Enlightenment tradition, Comte's concern to establish a new orthodoxy as the basis for a rational social science overturns the Enlightenment attitude to thought and represents a disjunction with the Enlightenment's critical spirit. LIT Acknowledgement This thesis was completed in the Politics Department at the University of Adelaide with the financial support of an Australian Postgraduate Research Award. The thesis was supervised by Paul Nursey-Bray. I benefitted from comments made by Lenore Coltheart, Paul Corcoran, Wayne Cristaudo and Frank Moriarty in Adelaide, Barry Hindess at the Australian National University and Cecil Courtney of Christ's College, Cambridge. The postgraduate seminar program in the Department provided a welcome opportunity for discussions with other members of staff and fellow postgraduates. I would like to thank all who contributed to a good working environment. Inlroduction I Introduction The term "enlightenment" performs two functions in this thesis. As "the Enlightenment" it is the term usually applied to European thought of the eighteenth-century. In the context of this discussion this broad term has particular relevance to the work and lives of three philosophes, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Denis Diderot. An important exception to the French character is a brief discussion of the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. As 'enlightenment' it is a term applied to a manner of thinking that develops from an historical period in which human reason is established as the organising principle of a secular society. The context best able to accommodate the necessarily fallible exercise of human reason is a critical culture. 'Critical' in the sense of 'making judgements'; 'culture' in the sense of being 'a particular form or type of intellectual development.' These definitions are elaborated in the central argument of the thesis. Despite the apparent political success of liberal institutions that generally conform to the ideas of Enlightenment thinkers, liberalism cannot defend itsetf as an inheritor of ideological supremacy. In chapter one I argue an ideological construction of liberalism is in fact against the central features of liberal thought: any claim for a victory runs counter to its central tenets. The aspirations of Enlightenment thinkers for a public culture of criticism might offer a source of a potentiai defence. Chapter two traces antecedents of Enlightenment thought in the work of Descartes, Leibní2, and Pascal. The first two are influential in their methodological influence on Enlightenment thought but their metaphysics are targely rejected. Rejection of their appeal to God's authority, characteristic in Enlightenment thought, is also a rejection of the certainty with which Descartes and Leibniz could assert a theistic world view. Pascal's conception of the limits of human reason contains the same paradox that Enlightenment thinkers must contend with in their human- centred exploration of reason, that in championing reason they must also recognise the limits placed on reason by human fallibility, albeit from a Introduction 2 theistic perspective. The power of the scholastic orthodoxy is also a theme of this chapter, as all three thinkers were subject to accusations of heresy despite their declarations of faith. Chapter three is an account of the paradoxes of the Enlightenment, as developed in the self-awareness of a thinker like Kant and a discussion of that awareness by Michel Foucault; through the incorporation of Rousseau's thought and through the views of defenders of the Enlightenment, such as Ernst Cassirer and Peter Gay. While Kant's phitosophy is more systematic than that of the philosophes discussed in this thesis, his essay "What is enlightenment?" is discussed because it represents a contemporary distillation of the spirit of the Enlightenment. In this chapter the idea of enlightenment as an attitude to thought, a critical perspective, is identified as opposed to the Enlightenment as a set of characteristic ideas. Chapter four presents some critiques of the Enlightenment, particularly the work of Alasdair Maclntyre and his contention that the Enlightenment was a project that failed. Maclntyre juxtaposes Enlightenment reason and reason embedded in particular ethical or moral contexts. Maclntyre errs in not allowing for an understanding of the Enlightenment as having produced its own legitimate (to the extent that any such constructions can claim legitimacy) ethical and moral context. It is a theme of the thesis that a commitment to enlightenment, as an attitude to reason, is constitutive of a critical culture, a culture that encomPasses Maclntyre's work. The following three chapters involve an analysis of three of the most popular works of the Enlightenment: Montesquieu's P¿rsiøn Letters, Voltaire's Cøndide and his Philosophicøl Dictionnry. The other two books considered are the more enigmatic and private works of Diderot, Rameøu's Nephew and lacques the Føtølisú. Perhaps because these works could not be described as systematic philosoPhy, they expand our understanding of the spirit of an age dominated by the enterprise of the Encyclopedia, or by the subsequent Revolution. While each writer holds multiple positions and develops a different style, their work reveals the nature of a culture they both inhabited and created. The purpose of these central chapters is to draw upon the words and lives of the philosophes themselves to break down a view of Enlightenment thought as a monolith of rationalism or as an overarching, hubristic, doomed project. Through an analysis of texts of Introduction 3 characteristic lightness and playfulness, Enlightenment thinkers are shown to have practised a critical and self-critical method driven by a commitment to reason, but also by a passion for justice and a respect for humanity which involved an awareness of the paradox inherent in the exercise of human reason. Despite the conferral of orthodoxy on their texts by their inclusion in the canon of Western political thought, these authors were eccentrics in terms of their own society. Chapter eight is a discussion of a nineteenth-century French thinker, Auguste Comte, in particular his General aiew of positivism, often seen as the continuation of the Enlightenment tradition. Comte is identified here as a key figure in a disjunction within this tradition, though his influence is often underestimated. His position at the foundation of the self- awareness of social science as a discipline is significant. His legacy is not often reflected upon but, with the collapse of a Marxist alternative, the emerging society appears Comtean. The view

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