Enlightenment Ideas Challenge the Old Regime
Thinkers like Voltaire and Rousseau Left a Long Legacy of Criticism
- Jun 29, 2009
- Michael Streich
- Voltaire: Crush the Infamous Thing! - Mike Streich
Writing in 1996, Russian history professor David MacKenzie ended his section on Jean-Jacques Rousseau by stating, “It should be evident why nineteenth century radicals and conspirators like Babeuf, Buonarroti, and Mazzini venerated Rousseau so greatly as their spiritual father.”
Rousseau and Voltaire, two of the greatest Enlightenment thinkers, may well have been the ideological architects of the French Revolution, influencing men like Robespierre and Mirabeau. Yet they were part of a larger movement that, taken as a whole, challenged the Old Regime throughout Europe.
Literary Revolt against the Status Quo
Enlightenment thinkers believed in the perfectibility of man, that the same rationalism used to explain the Cosmos in mathematical terms could be applied to the social condition. This meant challenging the fundamental underpinnings of the Old Regime: press censorship, capital punishment, religious intolerance, and the lack of an independent judiciary.
Particular criticism was leveled against the Catholic Church, which in France and Austria had immense land holdings and represented an entirely separate estate. “Enlightened despots” like Joseph II of Austria took on the church, bringing it under royal control. France was another matter.
Voltaire, when asked about the church, famously answered, “crush the infamous thing!” Rousseau was also a critic of the church, writing about moral laxity among priests and equating the hierarchy with the corrupt and extravagant nobility. Indeed, most bishops and archbishops came from the upper nobility.
Writing in the early 1840s, Mikhail Bakunin, the father of Anarchism, stated in a letter that “he shared Rousseau’s faith in the future victory of mankind over priests and tyrants.” (Kelly, 108) Not only did the church perpetuate mysticism and superstition to control the people, according to Enlightenment thinkers, but it was intimately allied with the ruling elites that merely exploited the masses.
Rousseau and the Social Contract
The Social Contract begins with one of Rousseau’s most often quoted phrases: “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.” Rousseau’s point is that natural freedom does not translate into natural rights because of barriers erected by the ruling elites. As in his book Emile, only nature can produce and stimulate the freedom of innate goodness. In contrast, the political, religious, and social institutions that maintained the status quo structures corrupted man. In the next century, Russian radicals would apply this concept to the millions of Russian serfs.
Other Enlightenment Thinkers
Philosophes like Montesquieu influenced the forms of government. Montesquieu’s book, Spirit of the Laws, called for, among other things, a separation of governmental powers, highlighting a strong and independent judiciary. The American idea of “separation of powers” and “checks and balances” was influenced by Montesquieu.
Scottish philosopher Adam Smith rejected mercantilism and government regulation of trade and business in The Wealth of Nations (1776), arguing that laissez faire would produce a prosperous and unfettered merchant and business class, creating in England a “nation of shop keepers.”
Men of Letters and Correspondence
The ideals of Enlightenment thinking were spread at fashionable salons, Masonic lodges, and coffeehouses. The proliferation of printing presses helped disseminate Enlightenment thinking. But it was the correspondence networks that perhaps most influenced the spread of progressive ideas. Voltaire and Diderot corresponded with Russia’s Catherine the Great, Diderot even accepting an invitation to visit Catherine at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.
Long Term Effect of the Enlightenment
Although the 19th Century would rebel against sterile rationalism and foster movements like Romanticism and, in America, the Second Great Awakening, social philosophies, notably those of Voltaire and Rousseau, would fuel Utopian Socialism and subsequent movements of revolution. Long after death, Rousseau would prove that empires might rise and fall, but ideas live on forever.
Sources:
- Michael Burleigh, Earthly Powers: The Class of Religion and Politics in Europe from the French Revolution to the Great War (HarperCollins, 2005)
- Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation Volume II (Alfred A. Knopf, 1969)
- Aileen Kelly, Mikhail Bakunin: A Study in the Psychology and Politics of Utopianism (Yale University Press, 1987)
- David MacKenzie, Violent Solutions: Revolutions, Nationalism, and Secret Societies to 1918 (New York: University Press of America, 1996)
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