The French Enlightenment II: deism, morality and politicsPeter JimackOne of the most striking features of the French Enlightenment was its hostility toChristianity, especially as represented by the Catholic Church, a hostility which went farbeyond the mere loss of faith produced by the scientific and philosophical developmentsdiscussed in the previous chapter. To some extent it was on social and humanitariangrounds. First and foremost, the principle of religious intolerance and the practice ofimprisoning or even burning dissidents were abhorrent to most Enlightenment thinkers.Many, too, condemned the Church for its vast wealth and the financial privileges itenjoyed, at the same time as it damaged the country’s economy by removing so manymen from the workforce, and even (at a time when population was perceived as ameasure of prosperity) by preventing them from having children. There were even thoselike d’Holbach (1723–89), who, in works such as
La Contagion sacrée (1768),anticipated the Marxist view of religion in seeing the Church as having always been inleague with oppressive rulers to help keep the people in a state of submission. Some ofthese criticisms were no doubt unfair, and related more to excesses and abuses than to theessence of Christianity. But excesses and abuses aside, it may be argued that the Churchstood for everything the Enlightenment was struggling to liberate itself from. The Churchrepresented authority and restriction; it expounded a doctrine that could not bequestioned, it told men what to believe and imposed on them a fixed view of the worldand of their role in it. Whereas Enlightenment thinkers enthusiastically sought knowledgeand gloried in the achievements and capacities of man, Christian morality was based onthe original sin of tasting the fruit of the tree of knowledge, condemned the sin of prideand appeared to deplore most of man’s natural inclinations.It must not be forgotten, however, that rejection of Christianity did not necessarilymean rejection of God.While it is true that some of the more daring eighteenth-centurythinkers saw atheist-materialism as the inevitable consequence of the new scientificthinking, the two great predecessors of the Enlightenment, Newton and Locke, had beenable to reconcile their scientific and philosophical convictions with belief in God, and itwas this kind of deism which seemed to most Enlightenment intellectuals to offer anacceptable compromise between the narrow authoritarianism of the Christian Church andthe extreme of atheist materialism.There were of course various deistic positions, ranging from the belief in a remote Godwho created the universe but is totally unconcerned with man, to a providential andpersonal God, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s, very closely modelled on the God ofChristianity. Rousseau (1712–78) indeed claimed he was a Christian. He accepted thesensationalist view of man, but was very conscious of the dangers of atheism andmaterialism, and saw himself as defending Christianity against the materialists; in theevent, he managed to achieve the unique distinction of incurring the hostility of bothChurch and
philosophes. The particular characteristic of his religion—expounded in the‘Profession de foi du vicaire savoyard’, part of his work on education,
Emile,—was theemphasis he placed on ‘conscience’, a divinely inspired interior voice in every individualwhich obviated the need for a church and its priests. In fact, Rousseau’s religion becameimmensely popular: his trust in conscience, his scepticism about miracles, his admirationfor Christ combined with hesitation about his divinity, such views made it particularlyattractive to Christians who had become converts to the anthropocentric rationalism ofthe Enlightenment.But the best representative of what one might call standard eighteenth-century deism isVoltaire (1694–1778), who was in many respects the dominant personality of the FrenchEnlightenment, even if he was not a particularly original thinker. Voltaire, as we saw inthe last chapter, kept abreast of developments in science, and was largely responsible forthe popularizing in France of the thought of Newton and of Locke. But he took fromthem selectively, and in particular, if he welcomed Newton’s defence of the existence ofGod, at the same time he played down his tendency towards a certain mysticism. For thiswas Voltaire’s own position: despite a number of fluctuations in his thought, hemaintained a firmly deistic stance, deeply opposed to atheism and materialism, while atthe same time hostile to Christianity and largely impatient with metaphysics and anyform of mysticism—so much so that critics have occasionally seen him (wrongly in myview) as a crypto-atheist.Shortly after he returned from exile in England, in 1734, Voltaire began to set down inone of his few theoretical works, the
Traité de métaphysique, his views on a range ofphilosophical topics, starting with the demonstration of the existence of God. The first ofhis two proofs was the watchmaker argument, which had been used by Newton: if awatch implies the existence of a watchmaker, the manifest order of the universe surelyimplies an intelligent creator; and if we accept that the hands of the watch have beenconstructed to show the time, it is reasonable to accept that the eyes, for example, havebeen designed by the intelligent creator for seeing. Voltaire’s second proof was the firstcause argument: I exist, therefore something exists, therefore something has alwaysexisted; for either what exists is necessary and eternal, in which case it is God, or itsbeing has been communicated to it by something else, to which the same argumentapplies. Since the material world is manifestly neither eternal nor unchanging, it is notnecessary by itself but contingent, and must owe its existence to a being which
isnecessary, i.e. God. Similarly, movement, thought and feeling must all have beencommunicated to matter by God.Despite the apparent rigour of this argument, Voltaire was clearly much more attractedby his first proof, based on the marvellous order of the universe and the plausibility offinal causes. He was not alone. It might be seen as paradoxical that the great strides thatwere being made in the natural sciences during the eighteenth century, while theycontributed on the one hand to the undermining of theological explanations of theuniverse, at the same time generated an often mystical awe before the wonders of nature.Even more perhaps than the Newtonian order of the universe, it was the other end of thescale—the study of maggots, worms, insects—that seemed to reveal the admirablewisdom and ingenuity of God. The distinguished physicist and entomologist Réaumur(1683–1757), for example, especially in his
Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire desinsectes (1734–42), saw the organization and behaviour of insects as nothing short ofmiraculous, leading inescapably to admiration for their creator. Even Diderot was at firstgreatly attracted by this kind of argument, suggesting in the
Pensées philosophiques([10.3]) that the mere wing of a butterfly, let alone the whole universe, surely offerscompelling evidence of an intelligent creator—though, as we saw in the last chapter, hesoon abandoned it in favour of the creation by chance theory.Voltaire was particularly attached to the final cause argument as compelling evidenceof the existence of a beneficent God (though it may be that it was a prior conviction thatGod was beneficent that made final causes seem so plausible). He recognized that theargument was not logically conclusive, it is true, but he saw it as providing a highindication of probability, constituting an appeal to common sense which it was onlyreasonable to accept—an approach to philosophy which he particularly favoured. To theobjection that there is no proof, for instance, that stomachs are made for digesting, heretorted in the
Traité de métaphysique that there is certainly no proof that they are not,and that common sense would surely suggest that they are.In short, in the
Traité and other works of the same period, Voltaire pictured a universecreated by a God who was, if not concerned solely for the welfare of the human race, atleast benevolently disposed towards it along with the rest of his creation. As a corollary,too, this deist God had endowed all men with both an awareness of moral good and adisposition to act in accordance with it. Concern for morality had in fact been a centralfeature of Voltaire’s deism from the first, and belief in a universal innate moral sense,consisting of an injunction to obey an absolute ‘natural law’, was an article of faith towhich he clung determinedly. In the face of a considerable body of apparent evidence tothe contrary, he wriggled uncomfortably and unconvincingly: anthropological evidenceof cannibalism, for instance, was explained away, and if in some tribes people ate theirparents, it was no doubt to save them from being eaten by their enemies, or just a way(admittedly misguided) of honouring them. As for all the criminals in history, they wereall secretly unhappy.But then, however, Voltaire’s faith in a benevolent God concerned with man and in theefficacity of a universal moral sense began to crumble, a development which wasrevealed particularly in a group of so-called ‘philosophic tales’ written from 1747onwards. In
Micromégas ([10.16]), for example, a gigantic traveller from the star Sirius isused as a vehicle for mocking the pretensions of the tiny inhabitants of this tiny planet,who wildly exaggerate their own importance in the universe. More frequently, however,this detachment was replaced by an expression of what sounds like Voltaire’sdisappointment at the fact that God was less concerned with man, and man less inclinedto be good, than he had previously believed.The Lisbon earthquake disaster in 1755, in which tens of thousands of people werekilled, finally dealt a crucial blow to Voltaire’s belief in the perfect order of the universe,or at least confirmed his suspicions that the order that existed was neither relative norrelevant to man; and the outbreak of the Seven Years War the following year underminedstill further his faith in a God-given universal moral sense. His most famous work,
Candide (1759) ([10.16]), is the embodiment of this revised philosophical position.Conceived ostensibly as an attack on Leibnizian Optimism (though directed in practicerather at the popularized version of it in Pope’s
Essay on Man (1733–4)), it proceeds byridicule rather than refutation, continually mocking the doctrine of ‘the best of allpossible worlds’ as it is taught by Candide’s tutor Pangloss, who is a disciple of Leibniz,and not only stupid, but too obstinate to admit that he is wrong about the best of allpossible worlds, even when the grotesque disasters that befall him make him realize he is.Beneath the savage humour, however, Voltaire is making the serious point, consistentwith the ideological approach of the Enlightenment, that experience should takeprecedence over metaphysics, and that experience of this world soon demonstrates that itis not the best of all possible worlds. We witness earthquake, war, rape, murder, and allkinds of brutality, ample evidence of an uncaring God and of the apparent absence, inmany men at least, of any moral sense.Of course, the fact that everyone is not happy in the real world and that Candide andhis friends suffer dreadful misfortunes in no way impinges on Leibniz’s principle ofOptimism, or even, as Voltaire knew full well, on the notion that the universe as a wholeis harmonious and ordered. But again adopting a standpoint characteristic of theEnlightenment, he is protesting that he is concerned with man rather than the universe;the benevolent God who is concerned with the universe rather than man is as irrelevant toman as man is to him. The point is made succinctly in the final chapter of
Candide whenthe travellers go to consult a Turkish sage: in answer to their question about the existenceof evil in the world, he asks them whether, when the King sends a ship on a voyage, he isworried about the mice in the hold.But this affirmation of man’s insignificance in the eyes of God was by no meansVoltaire’s last word on the subject. It was difficult to use such a remote God as thefoundation for a moral code which would fill the gap created by the rejection ofChristianity, and Voltaire was becoming increasingly worried by the spread of atheismand materialism among the
philosophes, and the dangerous moral consequences thatwould ensue if the loss of religion became more widespread. It seems likely that it wasprincipally this preoccupation with morality that prompted him after
Candide to returnpragmatically to the God intimately concerned with man he had depicted in his earlierworks, and even to the doctrine of final causes, which he had particularly ridiculed in
Candide, and which amounted to saying that the world was arranged by God specificallyfor the convenience of man. In works such as
Des Singularités de la Nature (1768)([10.16]), totally resisting the current of evolutionary ideas that were beginning to bevoiced and staying closer to Linnaeus than to Buffon, he expressed his conviction thatthere had been a once-and-for-all creation in which all things had been given theirallotted place and purpose: just as the organs of the body had obvious functions, so toothe mountains and the rivers (providing drinking water) were also evidence of divineprovidence. In return for this benevolence, God required obedience to the uncomplicatedmoral law of ‘Worship me and be good’, and rewarded and punished accordingly.Voltaire seemed to be convinced that without belief in this kind of punitive God, themoral order of society was gravely threatened. In short, ‘If God did not exist, he wouldhave to be invented’ ([10.16], 10:403). Voltaire’s fear of the disastrous moralconsequences of atheism was summed up with a wit that should not be mistaken forlevity: ‘I want my lawyer, my tailor, my servants, even my wife to believe in God, and Isuspect I shall thus be less robbed and less cuckolded’ (
L’ABC, [10.16], 27:399–400).Voltaire’s assumption that atheists were more likely to be wicked than believers maynot have had any empirical basis, but it was a deeply-held and widely-shared prejudice—despite Bayle’s demonstration as long ago as 1682 that it was without foundation. Andthe theoretical moral implications of atheist-materialism did indeed seem to be disturbing.More than anyone else, it was Diderot who, explicitly and repeatedly, spelled out theseimplications. As we saw in the last chapter, despite his reservations about Helvetius’sview of man, he did not demur from his conclusion that moral freedom is an illusion. Andif this is the case, man cannot be held responsible for his actions: ‘if there is no freedom,there are no actions which deserve praise or blame. There is neither vice nor virtue,nothing which calls for reward or punishment’ (letter to Landois, [10.3], 19:436). Thewicked man cannot be blamed for his wickedness, which is a determined characteristiclike any other, the result of physical organization and environmental conditioning. Thepoint is made with forceful clarity in an unsigned addition to the
Encyclopédie article‘Vice’, most probably by Diderot: ‘Can a man help being pusillanimous, voluptuous, orjust irascible, any more than squint-eyed, hunch-backed or lame?’.It was the awareness of this apparent moral abyss which had initially deterred Diderotfrom wholeheartedly accepting the atheist materialism to which he was intellectuallyattracted, and which later led him to refrain from publishing his more daring works (suchas the
Rêve de d’Alembert). He illustrated the problem graphically in an incident in theallegorical
Promenade du sceptique ([10.3]), written in 1747; Athéos, an atheistphilosopher, and a man of virtue, convinces the symbolically blindfolded Christian of theerror of his beliefs, and as a result the Christian throws off all moral restraint along withhis blindfold, burns down Athéos’s house and steals his wife. The anxiety manifested inthis little story is not dissimilar from Voltaire’s, and was probably shared by most of the
philosophes. But the very expression of the anxiety paradoxically revealed their ownattitude to virtue: it went without saying that they shared the same moral standpoint, thatphilosophers were virtuous, and that their atheism and materialism had not made themsocially destructive. The problem was, then, other people: what would happen if thosewho were not philosophers should become converted to atheism?In fact, the Enlightenment view of man was an ambiguous one. Although Rousseaumight be described as a kind of Enlightenment maverick, his philosophy was in thisrespect a distilled and emphatic version of that of most of his contemporaries: when hesaid that man was naturally good, he was referring to the essence of man, or to aprimitive, pre-social man, long since vanished; as for actual existing men, that was a verydifferent matter, as he felt he had all too good reason to know, and much of his work isdevoted to analysing the unhappiness and corruption of the members of a modern society.Whatever other thinkers thought about the essence of man, they mostly seemed to agreethat men in practice were inclined to be bad, in the sense of anti-social, or at least that asufficient proportion of them were to constitute a moral and social problem. On the otherhand, if Enlightenment thinkers attached so much importance to the liberation of manfrom the oppression of Christianity and the doctrine of Original Sin, it was because oneof their fundamental principles was the right of man to happiness—Diderot indeed wentso far as to say: ‘There is only one duty, and that is to be happy’ ([10.4], 320). Which wasimplicitly to approve of the self-interested behaviour identified by the materialist analysisof man. What had to be demonstrated was that self-interest was not necessarily antisocial.One approach was simply to claim that man was so constituted that he was
naturallyvirtuous, in the sense of benevolently disposed towards his fellow men (or ‘bienfaisant’,as Diderot preferred to call it). In other words that self-interest led men, more or lessautomatically, to behave virtuously. This was in fact the thesis put forward in
L’Hommemachine (1748) by Julien Offroy de la Mettrie (1709–51): if he saw man as a machine, itwas a very sophisticated machine, with a built-in moral sense and capacity for remorse,so that wrong-doers suffer as automatically as they do wrong. Remorse and conscienceare, like thought, attributes of matter, and we distinguish good from evil as mechanicallyas we distinguish blue from yellow. La Mettrie’s well-intentioned attempt to resolve theproblem was decidedly simplistic—one might have answered him that there seemed to bea great many faulty machines on the market—but rejection of the doctrine of Original Sinand its repressive consequences led most materialists to express views which were notfundamentally very different. Diderot continued throughout his life to reiterate the viewhe had expressed so baldly at the very beginning of his career, that ‘without virtue thereis no happiness’, even though at the same time he accepted, realistically if regretfully,that he was speaking only for a portion of the human race. Arguing that the terms‘virtuous’ and ‘wicked’, which imply moral responsibility, should be discarded, heclassified people into two categories, the ‘fortunate by birth’ (‘heureusement nés’) andthe ‘unfortu-nate by birth’ (‘malheureusement nés’). Whether one was constitutionallydisposed to behave helpfully or harmfully to society was all a matter of chance.But this was clearly an unsatisfactory position, and Diderot continued to cling to theconviction that the ‘heureusement nés’ were the norm, even though they might not be inthe majority, and that the ‘malheureusement nés’ were in some way deficient—whichwas not very different from Rousseau’s belief that man was ‘naturally good’. In practice,along with most of the other
philosophes, although he demonstrated that people’s moralstandards were acquired from experience rather than absolute, Diderot clearly believed inthe existence of certain fundamental absolute moral criteria—very much like theuniversal morality which deists like Voltaire saw as coming from God. In reply toHelvetius, one of the few who steadfastly maintained that absolute justice and injusticedo not exist, he asserted that the author of
De l’esprit would have realized his mistake ifhe had paid more attention to the nature of man, and reflected that ‘anywhere in theworld, he who gives something to drink to the man who is thirsty, and something to eat tothe man who is hungry, that man is good’ ([10.3], 2:270). Such absolute moral criteriawere determined by ‘the laws of nature’; for, as Diderot wrote in his
Entretien d’un père,‘nature has made good laws since the beginning of time’ ([10.3], 5:297). He and the other
philosophes were very much given to attributing a will and intentions to nature in thisway. To some extent, no doubt, it was no more than a linguistic convention, a convenientway of talking about the evolution of the material world; but it frequently verged on aquasi-mystical divinization of nature, which atheists like Diderot sometimes seemed toseize on as a replacement for the God they had dispensed with.However, the belief in some kind of absolute and universal code of morality still leftunexplained the existence of so many who appeared to remain insensitive to it, the‘malheureusement nés’. Diderot tended to see the attractiveness of virtue as a kind ofaesthetic truth, accessible only to those who had appropriate taste. In a letter to Voltaire,he explained that atheists ‘could not, if they had good taste, put up with a bad book, norlisten patiently to a bad concert, nor tolerate on their wall a bad picture, nor commit a badaction’ ([10.5], 1:78). So that those who were capable of bad actions were lacking in‘normal’ aesthetic sensitivity. Just such a one was Rameau, the materialist protagonist inDiderot’s brilliant dialogue
Le Neveu de Rameau, and his interlocutor, the virtuousphilosopher T, asks him how it is that despite his great sensitivity to ‘the beauties of theart of music’, he should be ‘so blind to the beauties of morality, so insensitive to thecharms of virtue’ ([10.3], 5:468). (Rameau replies, of course, that it is all the result ofenvironmental conditioning, heredity and physical constitution.)D’Holbach too saw it as a question of moral blindness. For him, the virtuous man hasthe inestimable reward of self-esteem, as he surveys his actions with the same pleasurethat others would feel ‘if they were not blinded’ ([10.8], 1:321). But such explanationsseem if anything to make the problem even more irreducible, for how can the morallyblind be made to see? Fortunately, Diderot and d’Holbach both believed that virtuousbehaviour brought with it advantages that could be perceived even by those who wherenot naturally inclined to love it—and it must be emphasized that it was behaviour ratherthan motivation that they were concerned with. In his letter to Landois, the very one inwhich he described so vividly the moral implications of materialism, Diderot claimed thatwicked actions never go unpunished, because they lead inevitably to ‘the contempt ofone’s fellow-men’, and that is ‘the greatest of all evils’ ([10.3], 19:435). The importanceof the respect of other people was a point he came back to repeatedly, and he clearlybelieved that their disapproval was a deterrent to which all men were susceptible.D’Holbach’s view was much the same. Because his actions are seen as despicable by hisfellow-men, or would be if they were known to them, the wicked man is always in hisheart ashamed and unhappy, however great the material advantages of his wickedness([10.8], 1:235–6). Conversely, the man who habitually behaves virtuously is motivatedby the desire for the esteem of others, and for the consequent pleasure of self-esteem; butthe force of habit becomes so strong that self-esteem alone will suffice to deter him fromwicked actions, even if he could be sure of their remaining hidden, just as the person whohas acquired the habit of cleanliness hates getting dirty (the choice of analogy speaks foritself ([10.8], 1:313–14).So that the wicked man is indeed blind, not just to the beauty of virtue, but to his owntrue interest; which is why we should pity him rather than blame him: ‘You pity a blindman; and what is a wicked man if not someone who has short sight and cannot seebeyond the present moment?’ (
Encyclopédie article ‘Vice’). But if he remains resolutelyblind despite the experience which should have opened his eyes, what is to be done? Theanswer is obviously that he must be modified. Now this pragmatic solution had a soundphilosophical basis. If, as the materialists argued, man’s behaviour is no more than theproduct of his physical organization and environmental conditioning, then it is clearlypossible to modify it by modifying the conditioning. In the discussion of the subject inhis humorous novel
Jacques le fataliste, Diderot explains that Jacques ‘became angrywith the unjust man; and when you objected to him that he was behaving like the dogwho bites the stone that has hit him, he would reply: ‘“Not so, the stone bitten by the dogwill not change its ways; the unjust man will be modified by the stick”’ ([10.3], 6:181).No doubt the stick was the most obvious way of modifying men’s behaviour. Althoughthe
philosophes all criticized the repressive nature of the society they lived in, theynevertheless recognized that even a just society would need punishments for the antisocialcitizen. But it was consistent with their humanitarian attitude that they should putfar more emphasis on methods other than the stick of modifying men’s behaviour. It wasthe human environment that was crucial. Rameau’s nephew, in Diderot’s work, suggeststhat one of the reasons why he is good at music but bad at morality may be that he has‘always lived among good musicians and wicked people’ ([10.3], 5:468). The materialistsall emphasized that habit was supremely important in human development. ‘Nature’, saidHelvétius (1715–71), ‘is nothing other than our first habit’, and he reminded his readersthat if they are horrified by the Romans’ enjoyment of gladiatorial combats, it is only as aresult of their different upbringing, and that if they had been born in Rome, ‘habit’ wouldno doubt have made them find the same spectacle agreeable ([10.7], 191). It was thenupbringing and education that, by inculcating habits, provided the principal means ofmodifying human behaviour.But it did not need Helvétius’ materialism to convince people of the importance ofeducation and of the need to reform current practice. From the middle of the centuryonwards, in fact, discussion of the subject was very much in vogue, and it was a fewyears after
De l’esprit, in 1762, that there appeared one of the most important works inthe history of educational thought, Rousseau’s
Emile ou de l’éducation. In many ways,
Emile reflected the prevailing currents of Enlightenment thought. Rousseau’s enthusiasmfor the goodness of nature was in general shared by most of the
philosophes, despite theirmany ambiguities on the subject, and although the work was theoretically based on thenatural goodness of man, he used this proposition as a way of demonstrating thateducation should consist above all in protecting the child from the corrupting influencesof society—corresponding in practice to the programme suggested by Helvetius andd’Holbach. Rousseau accepted fully a sensationalism very close to Condillac’s (thoughhe explicitly refuted the extreme position adopted by Helvetius), and the education of theyoung child reflected this, with much emphasis being laid on the development of each ofthe five senses, and especially on the relationship between sight and touch, in a mannervery reminiscent of the
Traité des sensations (see above, Chapter 9, pp. 239–40). In oneimportant respect, however,
Emile diverged from the thought of the other
philosophes:much as he admired the virtuous citizens of ancient Greece and Rome, Rousseau declaredat the outset that such an ideal was impossible to recreate in a corrupt modern society,and the aim of the work was the formation of an independent, self-sufficient individualrather than a citizen who functioned primarily as a constituent part of a social whole.But the reform of education, precisely because it accepted the structures of society as itthen existed, was necessarily limited. The idea that man in contemporary society was
necessarily corrupt was frequently expressed by the
philosophes: Rousseau haddemonstrated it in his
Discourse on inequality in 1755, and when thinkers such asDiderot and d’Holbach attacked social and political injustice, they tended to adopt thesame position, though in their case it was probably more of a polemical device than adeeply held conviction. But even if they held less extreme views than Rousseau on thesubject, they shared his view about the urgent need for political reform, without whicheducational reform might seem to be little more than a palliative; Helvetius for exampleasserted that the two were so closely linked that it might well be impossible to makemajor changes in education without making corresponding changes ‘in the very structureof states’ ([10.7], 492).Political thought is fundamentally different from what one is tempted to call ‘purephilosophy’ in that it is rarely if ever concerned principally with the objective quest fortruth (even when it purports to be), and is always dominated by a response to actualcontemporary conditions. In the case of the
philosophes, this response was, it is true,determined by certain humanitarian convictions, the right to happiness, usually seen asinseparable from freedom (variously defined, as we shall see), equality before the law,and so on, all arguably following logically from their moral anthropocentrism. At thesame time, however, their political thought was first and foremost shaped by the abusesof the
ancien régime, the manifest injustice of the extremes of wealth and poverty, theexistence of privilege, inequality before the law, religious intolerance…, and in somecases, the consciousness of the urgent need for practical reform took precedence overtheoretical considerations about the nature of government and the structure of society.It was above all Voltaire who came into this last category. He made virtually noattempt to systematize his political thought, which consisted largely of a series ofpragmatic reactions to specific social problems. He shared the other
philosophes’humanitarian convictions about human rights, and hated injustice, oppression andintolerance; but his principles were always tempered by a sense of realism, evenexpediency. Early in his career, largely due to his exile in England following a quarrelwith a powerful nobleman, he conceived great enthusiasm for the English system ofconstitutional monarchy (somewhat idealized). But when it came to the actual situation inFrance, he firmly supported an absolute monarchy, even though he recognized the risk ofabsolutism degenerating into despotism. For the only intermediate powers between Kingand people were the clergy, the aristocracy, and the Parlements (regional high courts withconsiderable powers, including the right to block legislation), all of which Voltaire sawas defending sectional interests and the abuse of privilege. His ideal was a strongenlightened monarch, but given the actual problems of government, the strength wasperhaps more important than the enlightenment. In the conflict between the throne andthe Parlements which dominated the latter years of the
ancien régime, Voltaire wasemphatically on the side of the throne, which he continued to see as offering the bestchance both of initiating reform and of averting revolution.It is true that Voltaire’s very real sympathy for the sufferings of an oppressed peoplewas always accompanied by the fear of popular disorder, and ultimately revolution,which underlay his desire for strong government as much as did his desire for reform—paralleling his belief in the need for a policeman god to discourage his tailor fromrobbing him. But behind his anxiety about disorder—shared by practically all the
philosophes—his works reveal a fundamental desire to preserve existing socialinstitutions, suitably reformed. He advocated religious toleration, freedom of the press,and the reform of criminal law, but the main burden of his political thought was thedefence of the freedom and rights of the middle classes, inseparable from the protectionof their property. Certainly he believed in kindness to the poor, but if he advocatedequality before the law, he was not keen on too much social equality. Society could notexist, he argued in his
Dictionnaire philosophique (article ‘Egalité’), without ‘a vastnumber of useful men who have no possessions at all’ ([10.16], 18:476), for who wouldtill our fields and make our shoes if there were no poor? Fortunately most of the poor aretoo busy working to notice their plight, though when they do, this just leads to warswhich they inevitably lose, ending up in a worse state than before. Nevertheless, onemust bear in mind the essentially pragmatic nature of Voltaire’s thought and the practicallimitations of contemporary society, and it could well be argued that his vigorous protestsagainst oppression, his realism and his concentration on practical issues did more forsuffering humanity, even in the long term, than the Utopian schemes of some of hiscontemporaries.The most important work on political science in the eighteenth century was surely
DeL’esprit des lois, published in 1748, by Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu(1689–1755). Although Montesquieu’s thought was no doubt triggered by theconsciousness of contemporary problems, which he saw as largely the legacy of thearbitrary government of Louis XIV, he went further than anyone else in the centurytowards establishing a theoretical basis for the subject. Although he dismissed as absurdthe notion that the world could have been produced by ‘a blind fatality’, seeing it as selfevidentthat intelligent beings must have been created by an intelligent God, his approachwas in other respects very similar to that of the scientific materialists who sought todiscover the underlying laws governing the behaviour of matter—indeed he also rejectsas absurd the possibility of God operating on the world other than through theseinvariable laws. While recognizing that ‘the intelligent world’ was much less wellgoverned than the physical world, Montesquieu believed nevertheless that it too had itsunderlying laws (Diderot’s ‘laws of nature’), preceding all laws made by men: with ratherdubious logic, he argued that just as the radii of a circle were all equal before anyone hadever drawn a circle, so the notions of just and unjust (and by implication the obligation tobehave justly) existed independently of any man-made laws.Rejecting Hobbes’s view of a wolf-man in a state of war, Montesquieu argued thatprimitive man would have been characterized by the consciousness of his weaknessrather than by feelings of aggression, and he imagined the origin of society as lying in anatural sociability. But once societies had been formed, positive laws were needed toembody and supplement the fundamental laws, and these positive laws had to vary withthe enormous variety of local circumstances. They must be appropriate to differences inclimate and soil, in the situation and size of societies, in the way of life of peoples, theirreligion, their temperament, traditions, and so forth. It was the relationships between lawsand all these different factors that Montesquieu proposed to study in the
Esprit des Lois.There were, he observed, three forms of government, the republican, subdivided intodemocratic and aristocratic, the monarchic and the despotic, each with their distinctcharacteristics and guiding principles. He gave despotism, which he saw as based on fear,very short shrift, whereas, sharing as he did in the general Enlightenment enthusiasm forancient Greece and Rome, he found much to admire in the republic, particularly in itsdemocratic form. The guiding principle of the republic was virtue, which Montesquieudefined as love of the law, involving a preference for the public interest over privateinterest.But his admiration for the democratic republic was very theoretical, and he saw it asextraordinarily difficult to realize, even in the very small states to which alone it wassuited. In practice, his clear preference was for monarchy, which has no need for virtue inthe above sense, being based instead solely on ‘honour’, in other words on the pursuit ofpersonal ambition and the desire for distinction, both natural traits. Love of the ‘patrie’and self-sacrifice are simply replaced by laws, so that ‘each person works for thecommon good, believing he works for his individual interests’ (III, 7, [10.11], 27). Whenhe visited England in 1729–30, Montesquieu had discovered what he saw as the idealconstitutional monarchy, based on the separation of legislative, executive and judicialpowers, and this separation of powers was to become the guiding principle of his ownproposed scheme of government. His criterion was political liberty (in contrast to theequality which characterized democracies): but since ‘any man who has power is led toabuse it’ (XI, 4, [10.11], 155), the only way political liberty can be safeguarded is by asystem of checks and balances, based on the separation of powers.Montesquieu’s political thought has been described as a mixture of Cartesianism andempiricism. Certainly it contained a number of a priori elements, and proposed amechanistic model of society, in which he seemed to have made the mistake of applyingto human behaviour the invariability of cause-effect relationships characteristic of thematerial world, though in this he could be said to be closer to Condillac and Helvetiusthan to Descartes. Montesquieu’s great importance and originality, however did not lie inthe model of government he proposed, but rather in his empirical, analytical approach tothe subject. No doubt he was given to unwise generalizations and over-simplificationsabout the effect of climate and soil, etc., but in recognizing the relativity of truths abouthuman nature, and in trying to discover the various laws determining the formation,structure and functioning of different kinds of society by observing and analysing actualsocieties (despite the inadequacies of his historical and anthropological knowledge), hewas putting politics on a modern scientific footing and virtually creating sociology.It is true that, politically speaking, Montesquieu defended the privileges of thearistocracy and his system of checks and balances seemed to produce an equilibriumwhich was essentially static, militating against any kind of change. But as far as Francewas concerned, this model represented for him a vast improvement over the degenerategovernment of Louis XV, and he certainly shared the humanitarian hostility of the
philosophes to injustice and oppression. He fiercely attacked despotism and even moreslavery, especially of the blacks: how can we believe that ‘god, who is a very wise being,should have put a soul, above all a good soul, in a body that was entirely black’?, heasked ironically (XV, 5, [10.11], 250). And he did believe in the possibility of progressand reform, in the ability of a good government to modify its citizens. When he describedthe effects on men of different climates, for example, his attitude was far from passive: ifthe effects were bad (when, for instance, an extreme climate led men to be lazy or womenimmodest!), it was up to the legislator to correct them. ‘Bad legislators’, he wrote, ‘arethose who have favoured the vices of the climate and good ones are those who haveopposed them’ (XIV, 5, [10.11], 236).The influence of
De l’Esprit des Lois on Montesquieu’s contemporaries seems to havebeen immediate, widespread and very selective. While the
philosophes welcomed hisscientific approach to politics, they tended to reject precisely the innovative politicalsociology, based on relativism and the introduction of variables. Human nature forCondillac, Helvetius and even for the more subtle Diderot, had fixed characteristics(always and everywhere the same needs and desires) and was thus modifiable in anentirely predictable way: a given cause would always produce a given effect. So politicsbecame a simple extrapolation from scientific psychology: all the legislator had to do wasconstruct society in accordance with human nature. Now if Virtue’, in the form of apreference for the general good over personal good, is indeed natural, as Diderot, forexample, sometimes claimed, this will present no problem. The real difficulty for theorganization of society is the existence of the morally blind or defective citizens, and thesolution, as with personal morality, is provided by the modifiability of man inherent insensationalist psychology.Civic virtue can of course be stimulated by the same means used to encourage virtuousbehaviour at the personal level, and especially by the formation of good habits byeducation. The point was made repeatedly by Helvétius, as well as by d’Holbach, forwhom education was the principal way of ‘giving to the soul habits which areadvantageous for the individual and for society’ ([10.8], 1:287). And Morelly, in hisutopian
Code de la Nature, saw moral transformation by education as a prerequisite forthe creation of the ideal society.But even without moral transformation, there are qualities in men condemned byconventional (Christian) morality, which, properly used, can be socially constructive.Instead of trying to suppress human passions such as ambition and the desire for wealth,said d’Holbach, society (as in Montesquieu’s ideal monarchy) should make the most ofthem and turn them to its advantage ([10.8], 1:147); and in the
Supplément au Voyage deBougainville, Diderot showed that the sexual drive, far from being anti-social, made aninvaluable contribution to society if, as was then generally believed, prosperity wasdependent on population size. In any case, people will behave virtuously if they can seethat it is in their own interests. So society, by using the carrot rather than the stick, shouldmake it worth people’s while to behave virtuously. The trick, as Diderot pointed out inone of his dialogues, is to construct society in such a way that ‘the good of individuals isso closely linked to the general good, that it is almost impossible for a citizen to harmsociety without harming himself ([10.3], 2:517). D’Holbach too stressed that in the wellgovernedsociety, each citizen would be convinced that the ‘well-being of the parts couldresult only from the well-being of the body as a whole’ ([10.8], 1:319). And Helvétiusalso had made much the same point. A recurrent theme in
De l’esprit had been that ‘thevirtues and vices of a people are always a necessary effect of its legislation’ ([10.7], 325):Helvetius quoted many examples to demonstrate that the extraordinary incidences ofcivic virtue in the history of Ancient Rome and Sparta were the result of ‘the skill withwhich the legislators of these nations had linked individual interest to the publicinterest’ ([10.7], 324). Indeed, it was precisely the absence of such a link in the modernstate (in other words France) which caused the alienation of modern man vividlydescribed by d’Holbach, a man who had no feeling of involvement in the society inwhich he lived, and who, in the words of both Diderot and Rousseau, was ‘neither mannor citizen’.As for the actual political structure of society, the confidently rationalist approach ofthe
philosophes, tending to make them see truth as absolute and indivisible, led them toreject Montesquieu’s checks and balances and to see an absolute indivisible monarchy asthe only logical ideal; intermediate bodies, they argued, would represent sectionalinterests, which might well differ considerably from the interest of the community as awhole. The intellectual objectivity of this theoretical analysis might, however, be seen ashighly suspect, given that it coincided conveniently with the view that the
philosophesshared with Voltaire that the principal source of injustice and oppression in France wasthe abuse of power and privilege on the part of the Church, the aristocracy and theParlements. Diderot, in the
Encyclopédie, and d’Holbach both maintained thatsovereignty belonged to the people as a whole, and was entrusted by them to a ruler by akind of contract, explicit or tacit; sovereignty acquired without the consent of the peoplewas merely a usurpation, which would last only as long as the superiority of strengthwhich initiated it. Furthermore, the two
philosophes argued, the consent could never beunconditional: the object of government could only be the well-being and happiness ofthe governed, and the use by a sovereign of the powers entrusted to him to make a peopleunhappy was, in Diderot’s words, ‘a manifest usurpation’ (
Encyclopédie, article‘Souverains’), or, as d’Holbach put it, ’nothing but banditry‘ ([10.8], 1:336).But history convinced the
philosophes that this, alas, was all too likely to happen, andthat, to quote d’Holbach again, this time echoing Montesquieu, ‘man is always tempted toabuse power’ ([10.8], 1:145). Having rejected Montesquieu’s solution of the separation ofpowers, they opted instead for assemblies representing the people to advise the monarch,since, as the
Encyclopédie article ‘Représentants’ (by Diderot or possibly d’Holbach—scholarly opinion is divided) explained, this is the only way the good sovereign can bemade aware of the needs of all his subjects. And to avoid the representatives themselveslosing sight of their responsibilities, they would have to be regularly elected. But only bythose subjects who own property: ‘it is property which makes the citizen: every man whoowns something in the State is interested in the good of the State’. Diderot, d’Holbach,Helvetius were all agreed that those who did not own property in a state could notpossibly have a serious interest in its prosperity, and should not therefore have any say inits government, just as, conversely, one of the first responsibilities of a ruler or rulingbody must be the safeguarding of private property. The general interest of a society layfor d’Holbach in the three advantages which just laws should guarantee for the majorityof its citizens, liberty, property and security—and even the latter was defined as the rightto protection by the laws of a law-abiding citizen’s person and property.Private property was also at the very centre of the system proposed by the physiocrats,a school of thinkers who had come together as a group by about 1760, and who saweconomics as the key to politics. Like the
philosophes, they believed that the organizationof society was governed by the same kind of fixed ‘natural’ laws as the material world,but for them these laws related essentially to trade. The founder of the school, FrançoisQuesnay (1694–1774), himself a doctor, saw the circulation of wealth in societyperforming the same function as the circulation of blood in the body. Their systeminvolved the simplest form of government, an absolute monarchy, and a minimum oflaws: starting from the premise that agriculture, and thus ownership of land, constitutedthe original source of all wealth, their implicit optimism concerning human nature ledthem to believe that the complete freedom of trade would result in the self-regulatingbalance of supply and demand as men realized their interdependence, creating prosperityand happiness for all.Rather than Quesnay, however, it was Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727–81), adistinguished civil-servant and subsequently statesman, who gave these ideas their mostlucid expression, and whose version of them was the most perceptive. In a remarkableanticipation of both Adam Smith and Marx, as well as twentieth-century theories ofentrepreneurial capitalism, his
Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution ofWealth (written 1766–7) developed an economic system firmly based on an historicalsociological analysis which showed that societies operated according to predictable lawsof cause and effect. The economic cycle begins with the surplus produced by the‘Husband-man’ ‘over and above his personal needs’ ([10.15], 122), and the continuedcultivation of land, the industry and the commerce necessary for the health of a society alldepend on the circulation of money, which occurs in various ways. And it was anessential feature of Turgot’s system that the different uses of capital will tend ‘naturally’to achieve the ideal equilibrium necessary for the maximum benefit to society, thoughthis will only occur where trade is untrammeled by restrictive laws, especially in the formof taxes.Turgot’s belief that man is so constituted that society tends naturally to perfect itselfwas not confined to the sphere of economics. In his
Discourse On Universal History, heshowed how, driven to action and thus to progress by the passions, in other words theurge to satisfy needs, and passing through violent fluctuations in its fortunes, ‘the humanrace as a whole has advanced ceasely towards its perfection’ ([10.15], 72). It is true thathe had rather more confidence than most of his contemporaries in a natural evolution ofsociety towards something like perfection, though the
philosophes in general wereoptimistic about the future of mankind. But the most systematic exponent of theperfectibility of human society was Antoine-Nicolas de Condorcet (1743–94), whose
Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain, was written, ironically,while he was in hiding after his proscription by the Revolutionary governmentconsequent on his own involvement in politics. The
Esquisse divided the history of maninto successive ages, revealing a story of continual progress achieved over the centuriesdespite an unending battle with the forces of reaction, represented mainly by the Church.But now, as scientific knowledge of man and the universe continued to increase, and asmen became progressively more enlightened, Condorcet believed, with what now lookslike touching simplicity, that the end of the battle was at last in sight. It would beachieved by a mixture of natural development and positive legislation. He accepted tosome extent Turgot’s vision of a self-regulating economic system based on free trade, buthe also believed in the necessity of governmental intervention to protect the weak and thepoor. In fact, the removal of social and even natural inequalities was central to his idea ofprogress: he attacked slavery, argued for the equality of women (very much an exceptionduring the Revolutionary period), and above all advocated universal education, on whichhis ideas (free elementary education for both sexes, teaching children to think forthemselves, the independence of teachers, etc.) were admirably enlightened even by latetwentieth-century standards.Whereas Condorcet thought optimistically that society was already well on the road toperfection, however, there were in the second half of the eighteenth century a number ofegalitarian political thinkers whose utopias involved a far greater transformation ofsociety (though not, usually, a violent one) than was to be brought about merely by theFrench Revolution. The earliest and most interesting of these was Morelly (about whomvirtually nothing is known), who envisaged in his
Code de la Nature (1755) a gradualreturn, facilitated principally by a reform of moral education, to the ideal natural state inwhich men had been motivated solely by the benevolence produced in them by anawareness of mutual need. In modern society, ‘natural probity’ has become debased bythe growth of avarice, man’s one fundamental vice from which all others derived; and itwas avarice that led to the existence of private property, which was, as Morellyemphasized throughout, the root of all social evil. In the ideal society, all land and allproducts of the land would remain common, all other goods would be distributed by lawsaccording to need.These principles were embodied in the ‘Modèle de législation conforme aux intentionsde la Nature’ which concluded the
Code de la Nature. Nothing would be sold orexchanged, but all produce would be taken to the Market Place, where people wouldsimply take whatever they needed. All citizens would engage in agriculture from twentyto twenty-five; and all would marry as soon as they reached puberty, with celibacypermitted only after forty. There would be a minimum of penal laws, but lifeimprisonment would be the punishment for serious crimes such as murder, or any attemptto introduce ‘la détestable propriété’ ([10.12], 323).The eccentric Benedictine, Dom Léger-Marie Deschamps (1716–74), whose ideasimpressed both Diderot and Rousseau, also focussed on property as the source of allmoral evils. In
Le Vrai Système, written about 1770, he contrasted society as it is, whichhe described as the state of laws, based on property, with the utopian state of ‘moeurs’,the state of morality. In the absence of private property, all land, all women would belongto all (all men, too, though he makes less of this); even mothers and children would becommon, with those women who were able to suckling any babies, or indeed any oldmen, ‘who would grow strong and be rejuvenated from their milk’ ([10.2], 171). In thestate of ‘moeurs’, all would be equal and completely united, with the good of society astheir only aim. Every factor in society causing differences between individuals would besuppressed: children would not be taught to read or write, all books would be burned, allworks of art destroyed. Without desires or passions, through days that were always thesame, people would live in total tranquillity, with no personal attachments, indifferent todeath, never laughing or crying. The individual would become totally subsumed in thegeneral, existing in a mystical state of harmonious oneness.Now it was a characteristic of virtually all the political thinkers we have beendiscussing that they glossed over the conflict between the individual’s natural desire forliberty and the political need for the individual to be subordinated to the state, byassuming that it was in some way natural for a naturally sociable man to prefer thegeneral interest to his own, or at least that an enlightened reason would lead him torealize that his own interest was dependent on that of the state. Rousseau, whose politicalthought is discussed in detail elsewhere in this volume, was the exception in seeingnatural man and social man or the citizen as diametrically opposed. In his
SecondDiscourse (1755) Rousseau had argued that the origin of inequality among men, and thusof their corruption and unhappiness, had been the introduction of private property, whichled to rivalry and the replacement of natural self-love
(amour de soi) by self-preference
(amour-propre). But he always recognized that the state of primitive innocence wasirrecoverable, and postulated two alternative solutions to the woes of alienated modernman: one, the aim of
Emile, was to attempt to create by education a modern version ofnatural man, adapted to live in society as it is; the other was a total reorganization ofsociety, to create a democratic republic inspired principally by the city states of theancient world, which he described in his
Social Contract (1762). Self-oriented naturalman would have no place in such a society; the ideal citizen, said Rousseau, must lose allsense of self and be concerned only with the common weal. There was nothing naturalabout this abnegation, which must be inculcated by the laws and civic education. Politicalfreedom consisted for Rousseau in willing the general good, so that some people willhave to be forced to be free by the laws which embody the general will. Nothing contraryto the general will must be permitted, so there can be no freedom of thought in the usualsense of the term. There will be a state religion and no other, decreeing the sanctity of thelaws and outlawing intolerance (!): anyone unwilling to accept its doctrine will bebanished, and anyone who, having accepted it, behaves as if he had not, will be executed.It seems highly probable that this highly theoretical construct represented nothing morefor Rousseau than a systematic logical application of a number of speculative principles,and the dichotomy in his thought between a theoretical ideal and the possibilities of thereal world was reflected in one way or another in the political ideas of most of the
philosophes. In considering the ideal society, they could not escape from the realizationthat the existence of private property, the defence of which was for them a cardinalprinciple of political freedom, was incompatible with real (and not just political) equality.From time to time, Diderot indulged in utopian egalitarian flights of fancy, clearlyinfluenced by Morelly and Deschamps, as for instance in the idealized Tahitian society ofthe
Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville. In reality, though, he recognized that thiskind of thinking was pie in the sky, and just like Voltaire, d’Holbach, Helvetius andindeed Rousseau, he continued to see the protection of private property as a
sine qua nonof the just and healthy society. Not only must property be a prerequisite for citizenship,but it was indispensable for the material prosperity, based on commerce and industry,which the Enlightenment thinkers were so enthusiastic about. The ideal of most of the
philosophes was a materially prosperous property-owning democracy with a minimum ofinequalities, and though they talked much about the sovereignty of the ‘peuple’, it wasclear that in the majority of cases what they meant by ‘peuple’ was the bourgeoisie ratherthan anything like the Marxist proletariat.Be that as it may, the
philosophes were none the less vigorously opposed to injusticeand oppression, and more specifically to the political regime they lived in. TheEnlightenment was fundamentally a movement of intellectual challenge to authority onevery level, and nothing any longer was sacred, especially not religion. But the farreachingpractical implications of the challenge to political authority made it a ratherdifferent matter from, say, rejecting the Church’s doctrine on free-will or virtue, and atleast to begin with, the
philosophes were opposed to violent revolution. They wantedchange, but peaceful, structured change. However, as hope for constitutional change inFrance seemed to recede and the enlightenment of Frederick the Great and Catherine ofRussia looked more and more like a façade, the theme of the legitimacy of revolt againstthe abuse of power appeared ever more frequently in the works of Diderot andd’Holbach. The notion of the sovereignty of the people, and the associated one of acontract between people and ruler led directly to the conclusion that when the contractwas broken by the ruler, the people were entitled to overthrow him. As d’Holbach wrotein 1767: ‘Since the Government draws its power only from the society, and is establishedonly for the latter’s good, it is obvious that the society can revoke this power when itsinterest dictates, and change the form of its government’ ([10.8] 1:141). Yet thisjustification of revolution was always a reluctant one, on Diderot’s part at least, and theoverriding concern for the rule of law which he and others had expressed in the
Encyclopédie never left him. In his
Supplément an Voyage de Bougainville, havingdemonstrated that the laws governing the structure of society in a country like Francewere nonsensical, he nevertheless concluded by urging conformity to them, since ‘theworst form of society’ is the one in which ‘the laws, good or bad, are notobserved’ ([10.3], 2:240).Most of the major thinkers of the French Enlightenment had died by the outbreak ofthe Revolution, but it is tempting to wonder what they would have written about it if theyhad survived. Condorcet, despite ending up its victim, still wrote a work expressing hisfaith in progress and the perfectibility of man, but one suspects that the humanitarianadvocates of freedom and tolerance would for the most part have been somewhatdisappointed, at least by the savage later stages of the Revolution. Whether or not theirconfidence in the progress of science and knowledge would have survived twentiethcenturystrides in the destruction of the environment and creation of weapons of massdestruction must remain open to conjecture.
BIBLIOGRAPHYEighteenth-century Works10.1 Condorcet, Antoine-Nicolas de
Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès del’esprit humain, Garnier-Flammarion, Paris, Flammarion, 1988.10.2 Deschamps, Dom Leger-Marie
Le Vrai Système, ed. J.Thomas and F.Venturi,Geneva, Droz, 1963.10.3 Diderot, Denis
Oeuvres complètes, ed. J.Assézat and M.Tourneux, Paris, 1875–77.10.4——
Oeuvres politiques, ed. P.Vernière, Classiques Garnier, Paris, Garnier, 1963.10.5——
Correspondance, ed. G.Roth and J.Varloot, Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1955–70.10.6
Encyclopédie, ed. Diderot and d’Alembert, Paris, 1951–80.10.7 Helvétius, Claude-Adrien
De l’esprit, Marabout-Universite, Verviers, Gerard, 1973.10.8 d’Holbach, Paul Thiry, Baron
Le Système de la Nature, London, 1770, SlatkineReprints, Geneva, 1973.10.9 La Mettrie, Julien Offroy de
Textes choisis, Les Classiques du peuple, Paris,Editions sociales, 1954.10.10 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondât, Baron de
Oeuvres complètes, Paris, EditionsNagel, 1950.10.11——
The Spirit of the Laws, trans. and ed. A.M.Cohler, B.C.Miller and H.S.Stone,Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989.10.12 Morelly,
Code de la Nature, ed. G.Chinard, Paris, R.Clavreuil, 1950.10.13 Raynal, Guillaume
Histoire philosophique et politique des deux Indes, Geneva,1780.10.14 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
Oeuvres complètes, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris,Gallimard, 1959–69.10.15 Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques
On Progress, Sociology and Economics, trans. anded. R.L.Meek, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1973.10.16 Voltaire,
Oeuvres complètes, ed. L.Moland, Paris, Garnier, 1877–85.10.17——
Traité de metaphysique, ed. H.T.Patterson, Manchester, Manchester UniversityPress, 1937.
General Studies10.18 Cassirer, E.
The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, trans. F.C.A. Koellen andJ.P.Pettegrove, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1951.10.19 Cobban, A.
In Search of Humanity, London, Cape, 1960.10.20 Crocker, L.G.
An Age of Crisis, Baltimore, John Hopkins Press, 1959.10.21——
Nature and Culture, ethical thought in 18th century France, Baltimore, JohnHopkins Press, 1963.10.22 Gay, P.
The Enlightenment: an interpretation, 2 vols, London, Weidenfeld andNicolson, 1966–9.10.23 Goyard-Fabre, S.
La philosophie des lumières en France, Paris, Klincksieck, 1972.10.24 Leroy, M.
Histoire des idées sociales en France, vol. 1, Paris, Gallimard, 1946.10.25 Martin, K.
French Liberal Thought in the 18th Century, ed. J.P.Mayer, London,Turnstile Press, 1962 (first pub. 1929).10.26 Talmon, J.L.
The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, New York, Norton, 1970.
Critical Studies on Individual Authors10.27 Benot, Y.
Diderot, de l’athéisme à l’anticolonialisme, Paris, Maspero, 1970.10.28 Burgelin, P.
La philosophie de l’existence de Rousseau, Paris, PressesUniversitaires, 1952.10.29 Carcassonne, E.
Montesquieu et le problème de la Constitution française au XVIIIesiècle , Paris, Presses Universitaires, 1927.10.30 Crocker, L.G.
Diderot’s chaotic order: approach to synthesis, Princeton, NJ,Princeton University Press, 1974.10.31——
Diderot the embattled philosopher, London, N.Spearman, 1955.10.32
Diderot, les dernières années, ed. France and Strugnell, Edinburgh, EdinburghUniversity Press, 1985.10.33 France, P.
Diderot, Past Masters, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1983.10.34 Gay, P.
Voltaire’s Politics: the Poet as Realist, Princeton, NJ, Princeton UniversityPress, 1959.10.35 Hermand, P.
Les idées morales de Diderot, Paris, Presses Universitaires, 1923.10.36 Lefèbvre, H.
Diderot, Paris, Editeurs réunis, 1949.10.37 Mason, H.T.
Voltaire, London, Hutchinson, 1975.10.38 Mason, S.
Montesquieu’s idea of justice, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1975.10.39 Pomeau, R.
La religion de Voltaire, Paris, Nizet, 1956.10.40 Proust, J.
Diderot et l’Encyclopedie, Paris, A.Colin, 1962.10.41 Strugnell, A.
Diderot’s Politics, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1973.There are also numerous relevant articles in the following specialist journals:10.42
Diderot Studies, Syracuse, then Geneva, Droz, 1949–.10.43
Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, Geneva, then Oxford, 1955–.