Abstract
Most nineteenth century French philosophers had a view of the Enlightenment as inherently skeptical. The reason for this is to be found in the trauma provoked by the experience of the Terror. Indeed, they held modern philosophy responsible for the destruction of old beliefs; to them, it expressed a kind of aggressive nihilism, a negative dogmatism that was much more dangerous than religious fanaticism. Their equating of the Enlightenment with skepticism led the nineteenth century French philosophers to elaborate a new science of society that made it possible to understand how the social reality contains its own species of rationality.
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Notes
- 1.
For a contemporary reassessment of this problem, see Dan Edelstein, The Terror of Natural Right. Republicanism, The Cult of Nature, and The French Revolution, Chicago/London, The University of Chicago Press, 2009, which sheds an altogether new light on Terror.
- 2.
On this aspect of counter-revolutionary thought, see Gérard Gengembre, La Contre-Révolution ou l’histoire désespérante, Paris, Imago, 1989; Jean-Yves Pranchère, L’autorité contre les Lumières. La philosophie de Joseph de Maistre, Genève, Droz, 2004.
- 3.
Burke, “A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly”, in Further Reflexions on the Revolution in France, D. E. Ritchie (ed.), Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, 1992, p. 66: “A certain intemperance of intellect is the disease of the time, and the source of all its other diseases. […] Your architects build without a foundation.”
- 4.
Post-Revolutionary contemporaries typically spoke of “the eighteenth century” or of “the nineteenth century” as an entity or as a whole.
- 5.
Proudhon, De la justice dans la Révolution et dans l’Église, 1858, M. Rivière (ed.), Paris, 1930, vol. 1 p. 251: “le scepticisme, après avoir dévasté religion et politique, s’est abattu sur la morale: c’est en cela que consiste la dissolution moderne”. On the fear of social dissolution, see P. Rosanvallon, Le Moment Guizot, Paris, Gallimard, 1985.
- 6.
See Patrice Vermeren, Victor Cousin. Le jeu de la philosophie et de l’État, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1995.
- 7.
Following the murder of the Duc de Berry by Louvel in 1820.
- 8.
The papers of Royer-Collard are lost. Fragments of lectures have been published by Jouffroy in his translation of the complete works of Reid, Œuvres complètes de Thomas Reid, 1828, Paris, vol. IV, p. 427.
- 9.
Ibid., p. 430.
- 10.
Guizot, Essai sur l’histoire et sur l’état actuel de l’instruction publique en France, Paris, 1816, chap. 3 p. 37–38.
- 11.
Guizot, ibid., p. 36.
- 12.
Portalis, De l’usage et de l’abus de l’esprit philosophique durant le xviii e siècle, Paris, 1820, II-482. The book has been written in 1796 during Portalis’ exile in Germany.
- 13.
Ibid., p. 484.
- 14.
Rémusat, “Passé et présent”, in Essais de philosophie, tome I, Paris, p. 64 (around 1829), p. 105–106.
- 15.
Rousseau was perfectly aware of the necessity of a legislator knowing the passions of men. See Du contrat social, II-7.
- 16.
Cousin, Cours de philosophie professé à la faculté des Lettres pendant l’année 1818, Paris, Hachette, 1836, reprints Geneva, Slatkine, 2000, p. 7–8.
- 17.
Cousin, op. cit., p. 8–9.
- 18.
Jouffroy, Cours de droit naturel [1834–1835], Paris, Fayard, 1998, 8e Leçon, p. 217–218.
- 19.
Jouffroy, Mélanges philosophiques, [1833], Paris, Fayard, 1997, p. 182.
- 20.
Jouffroy, Mélanges philosophiques, op. cit., p. 19.
- 21.
Ibid.
- 22.
Ibid.
- 23.
Ibid., p. 26.
- 24.
Ibid., p. 26–27.
- 25.
The words of Burke on the people, Reflexions on the Revolution in France, C. C. O’Brien (ed.), London, Penguin Classics, 1986, p. 173.
- 26.
Rémusat, Essais de philosophie, tome I, op. cit., p. 64.
- 27.
Ibid.., p. 111.
- 28.
Rémusat, Essais de Philosophie, Paris, 1842, tome II, p. 522 (the essay on skepticism was written in 1834, i.e. at the same time as Jouffroy gave a new publication of Comment les dogmes finissent).
- 29.
Ibid., p. 523.
- 30.
Proudhon, De la justice, vol. I, p. 253.
- 31.
Ibid., p. 254.
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Brahami, F. (2013). Building Without a Foundation. The Equation of Enlightenment with Skepticism in Post-revolutionary French Thought. In: Charles, S., J. Smith, P. (eds) Scepticism in the Eighteenth Century: Enlightenment, Lumières, Aufklärung. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 210. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4810-1_22
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