INTRODUCTION

In our post-modern age, the emergence of Enlightenment culture can no longer be taken for granted as an inevitable aspect of some process of "modernization", or as an indubitable sign of "progress". Recent critique of the Enlightenment, coming from various quarters, calls for the problematization of the origins of Enlightenment cul• ture.1 If, indeed, the Enlightenment is no longer seen as an unmixed blessing, the questions concerning its historical causes and the social forces underlying it become all the more pressing. How are we to account for the new type of Enlightenment rationalism which re• jected, suppressed, marginalized or transformed important irrational manifestations of human experience and behaviour? What were the motives leading the European elite to adopt an "enlightened" out• look on human and social issues, or a new scientific attitude towards nature? And finally, how should one explain the emergence of a secular world view which—if not altogether sceptical towards traditional religion—disdained supernatural intervention in human affairs? These questions, relating to the origins of the Enlightenment, also raise the broader problem of secularization and rationalization in the modern period in general. What were the causes underlying the broad process of the "disenchantment of the world" ("die Entzauberung der Welt"), to use Max Weber's famous term?2 Today, in a period witnessing the effervescence of various movements and sects which seek to "re-enchant" the world, an analysis of the motives lying behind its "dis-enchantment", as well as of the price paid in this process, assumes special urgency.

1 For an early radical view see Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung (1944), translated into English by John Cumming, Dialectic of Enlighten• ment (New York: Continuum, 1982), see especially chapter 1. I am grateful to my colleague, Dr. Rivka Feldhai, for directing my attention to this important critique. More famous and influential, perhaps, is Michel Foucault, Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique (rev. ed., Paris: Gallimard, 1972). In English translation, Madness and Civili• zation: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (New York: Vintage Books, 1965). 2 On the concept of "Die Entzauberung der Welt" or "The disenchantment of the world" see Max Weber's famous essay "Wissenschaft als Beruf", in English trans• lation "Science as a Vocation", in H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociobgy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946; paperback edi• tion, 1958), pp. 129-156, especially pp. 138-139. 2 INTRODUCTION

Historical scholarship in the last generation has focused quite a bit on questions regarding the social and intellectual origins of the En• lightenment.3 Significant research has also been done on the secular• ization of European consciousness in the early modern period, and on the gradual disenchantment of the world in that period, particu• larly as it is manifested in the decline of magical beliefs and prac• tices, at least within the elite.4 Nevertheless, not enough attention has been paid to one of the major manifestations of these tenden• cies—the critique of "enthusiasm" in the early modern period. That critique, and the various reactions to the phenomenon of enthusi• asm, may provide some important clues to the motives underlying the turn of the European elite towards an "enlightened", "disen• chanted" culture. The critique of enthusiasm is indeed one of the recurring themes in seventeenth century discourse. Whether in religious, scientific, lit• erary or political texts, in England, or on the Continent, the debate with the so-called enthusiasts occupies-an important place. The re• jection of enthusiasm is well known to anyone studying the intellec• tual and religious history of the period. The term itself became a standard label by which to designate individuals or groups who al• legedly claimed to have direct divine inspiration, whether millenarians, radical sectarians or various prophesiers, as well as alchemists, "empirics" and some contemplative philosophers. In the Catholic camp, the confrontation with enthusiasm was less prevalent, it seems to me, since mystical experience, miracles, and spiritualist tendencies were more easily incorporated within mainstream orthodoxy.5 In the

3 The classic book on the intellectual origins of the Enlightenment is Paul Haz• ard, La crise de la conscience européenne (Paris, 1935), translated into English by L. Lewis May under the title The European Mind (London: Hollis and Carter, 1953; Penguin ed. 1964, and subsequent editions). Among numerous studies in the last generation see: Ira O. Wade, The Intellectual Origins of the French Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971); Lionel Rothkrug, Opposition to Louis XIV: The Political and Social Origins of the French Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965); and concerning England and the Netherlands—M.C. Jacob, The Radical Enlighten• ment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (London: Allen and Unwin, 1981). Finally, see the collection of articles edited by Alan C. Kors and Paul J. Korshin, Anticipa• tions of the Enlightenment in England, France, and Germany (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987). 4 See especially: Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Scribner's, 1971; Penguin University Books, 1973, and subsequent paperback editions); Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London: Temple Smith, 1978); Jean Delumeau, L· Catholicisme entre Lather et Voltaire ("Nouvelle Clio", Paris: P.U.F., 1971). 5 One notable exception is the famous case of the Jansenist miracles, convulsions