_sample_grame garrard.pdf

Counter-Enlightenments

The Enlightenment is a key organising concept in philosophy social theoryand the history of ideas and its legacy is still being actively debated todayCounter-Enlightenments is the first general book-length study of the historyand development of Enlightenment criticism from its inception in theeighteenth century through to the present It examines the various ways inwhich the Enlightenment has been both constructed and attacked by itsenemies on the left the right and in the centre

Engaging in a critical dialogue with Isaiah Berlinrsquos seminal work on thissubject this book analyses the concept of Counter-Enlightenment and someof the most important conceptual issues and problems that it raises GraemeGarrard explores the diverse forms of Counter-Enlightenment thought witha wide-ranging review of the Enlightenmentrsquos principal opponents of thepast two hundred and fifty years and concludes with an assessment of thepersuasiveness of some of the most common and important criticisms of it

Graeme Garrard teaches political theory and European thought at CardiffUniversity UK

Routledge studies in social and political thought

1 Hayek and AfterHayekian liberalism as a researchprogrammeJeremy Shearmur

2 Conflicts in Social ScienceEdited by Anton van Harskamp

3 Political Thought ofAndreacute GorzAdrian Little

4 Corruption Capitalism andDemocracyJohn Girling

5 Freedom and Culture inWestern SocietyHans Blokland

6 Freedom in EconomicsNew perspectives in normativeanalysisEdited by Jean-Francois LaslierMarc Fleurbaey Nicolas Graveland Alain Trannoy

7 Against PoliticsOn government anarchy andorderAnthony de Jasay

8 Max Weber and MichelFoucaultParallel life worksArpad Szakolczai

9 The Political Economy ofCivil Society and HumanRightsGB Madison

10 On Durkheimrsquos ElementaryForms of Religious LifeEdited by W S F PickeringW Watts Miller and N J Allen

11 Classical IndividualismThe supreme importance of eachhuman beingTibor R Machan

12 The Age of ReasonsQuixotism sentimentalismand political economy ineighteenth-century BritainWendy Motooka

13 Individualism in ModernThoughtFrom Adam Smith to HayekLorenzo Infantino

14 Property and Power in SocialTheoryA study in intellectual rivalryDick Pels

15 Wittgenstein and the Idea ofa Critical Social TheoryA Critique of GiddensHabermas and BhaskarNigel Pleasants

16 Marxism and Human NatureSean Sayers

17 Goffman and SocialOrganizationStudies in a sociological legacyEdited by Greg Smith

18 Situating HayekPhenomenology and the neo-liberal projectMark J Smith

19 The Reading of TheoreticalTextsPeter Ekegren

20 The Nature of CapitalMarx after FoucaultRichard Marsden

21 The Age of ChanceGambling in Western cultureGerda Reith

22 Reflexive Historical SociologyArpad Szakolczai

23 Durkheim andRepresentationsEdited by W S F Pickering

24 The Social and PoliticalThought of Noam ChomskyAlison Edgley

25 Hayekrsquos Liberalism and ItsOriginsHis idea of spontaneous orderand the Scottish EnlightenmentChristina Petsoulas

26 Metaphor and the Dynamicsof KnowledgeSabine Maasen and Peter Weingart

27 Living with MarketsJeremy Shearmur

28 Durkheimrsquos SuicideA century of research and debateEdited by W S F Pickering andGeoffrey Walford

29 Post-MarxismAn intellectual historyStuart Sim

30 The Intellectual as StrangerStudies in spokespersonshipDick Pels

31 Hermeneutic Dialogue andSocial ScienceA critique of Gadamer andHabermasAustin Harrington

32 Methodological IndividualismBackground history andmeaningLars Udehn

33 John Stuart Mill and Freedomof ExpressionThe genesis of a theoryK C OrsquoRourke

34 The Politics of Atrocity andReconciliationFrom terror to traumaMichael Humphrey

35 Marx and WittgensteinKnowledge morality politicsEdited by Gavin Kitching andNigel Pleasants

36 The Genesis of ModernityArpad Szakolczai

37 Ignorance and LibertyLorenzo Infantino

38 Deleuze Marx and PoliticsNicholas Thoburn

39 The Structure of SocialTheoryAnthony King

40 Adorno Habermas and theSearch for a Rational SocietyDeborah Cook

41 Tocquevillersquos Moral andPolitical ThoughtNew liberalismM R R Ossewaarde

42 Adam Smithrsquos PoliticalPhilosophyThe invisible hand andspontaneous orderCraig Smith

43 Social and Political Ideas ofMahatma GandhiBidyut Chakrabarty

44 Counter-EnlightenmentsFrom the eighteenth century tothe presentGraeme Garrard

Counter-EnlightenmentsFrom the eighteenth century to the present

Graeme Garrard

First published 2006by Routledge2 Park Square Milton Park Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge270 Madison Ave New York NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor amp Francis Group

copy 2006 Graeme Garrard

All rights reserved No part of this book may be reprinted orreproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic mechanicalor other means now known or hereafter invented includingphotocopying and recording or in any information storage orretrieval system without permission in writing from the publishers

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication DataA catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN 0ndash415ndash18725ndash7

This edition published in the Taylor amp Francis e-Library 2006

ldquoTo purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor amp Francis or Routledgersquoscollection of thousands of eBooks please go to wwweBookstoretandfcoukrdquo

ISBN 0-203-64566-9 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-67432-4 (Adobe eReader Format)(Print Edition)

To the MemoryofFrank Ernest Garrard

Contents

Preface xiAcknowledgements xiv

1 Introduction 1

Cleaning the stables 5The Enlightenment perversion of reason 10Overview of the book 11

2 First shots 16

Introduction 16The Counter-Enlightenment republic of virtue 17Prophet of the secret heart 29

3 Counter-Enlightenment and Counter-Revolution 36

Introduction 36A philosophic revolution 38The triple conspiracy against throne altar and society 42Crime and punishment 48

4 The return of faith and feeling 55

Introduction 55The mighty womb of revelations 56Night sacred night 63Midnight of the soul 68

5 The strange case of Friedrich Nietzsche and the Enlightenment 74

We children of the Enlightenment 74Volte-face 77

6 Enlightened totalitarianism 80

Introduction 80From Marx to Max Weber 81Counter-Enlightenment liberalism 85The epigones of Burke 89Conclusion 93

7 The postmodern challenge 95

Introduction 95The disciplinary society of the eighteenth century 98Androcentric Enlightenment 101The curious Enlightenment of Professor Rorty 104

8 From Enlightenment to nothingness 109

Introduction 109The road to nowhere 111The failure of the lsquoEnlightenment projectrsquo 114Grayrsquos Elegy 117

9 Conclusion hits and misses 122

Introduction 122The necessity of faith 122A very cautious optimism 124Enlightenment without revolution 125Reason perverted 126Truth and tolerance 128Knowledge and happiness 130

Notes 133Bibliography 165Index 183

x Contents

Preface

My interest in Counter-Enlightenment thought was first sparked when Iread Isaiah Berlinrsquos essay on lsquoJoseph de Maistre and the Origins of Fascismrsquoin the New York Review of Books in the autumn of 19901 It was not longbefore I was reading his essay on lsquoThe Counter-Enlightenmentrsquo (1973)which by situating Maistre within a much broader context of ideas openeda door through which I gingerly stepped into a strange fascinating eclecticsometimes morbid frequently exaggerated but not wholly misguided intel-lectual world in which I have been immersed (although I hope not lost) eversince I then greedily devoured all of what Berlin had published on theEnlightenment and its enemies in preparation for my first direct encounterwith him during my first term at Oxford the first of many we had over thenext five years This volume grows directly out of that experience withBerlin and his work on the Enlightenment and its enemies It is in part acritical dialogue with him on the subject one that attempts to build and Iwould like to think improve upon his pioneering work in this area ratherthan simply to bury his work and him with it or to leave it untouched asthe lsquodefinitiversquo map of Counter-Enlightenment thought2

The other significant influence on my outlook has been James SchmidtHis approach to the Enlightenment and its enemies could hardly be moredifferent from Berlinrsquos although I do not think that they are entirely incom-patible Berlinrsquos approach to intellectual history has an impressive rangeboldness and sweep that I find irresistibly attractive and stimulating Butscholarship on the Enlightenment has undergone a revolution in the pastthirty years and scholarly standards and methods in the historical study ofideas have changed dramatically since Berlin retired as Chichele Professor ofSocial and Political Thought at Oxford in the 1960s So the time is nowright to revisit his work on Counter-Enlightenment thought in light ofthese changes and James Schmidt has helped me to appreciate the needfor this

This book attempts to strike a balance between these two approachescombining some of the expansiveness and range of Berlinrsquos work with agood measure of the scholarly rigour and precision of Schmidtrsquos It is boundto be both less colourful than Berlinrsquos and less rigorous than Schmidtrsquos as a

consequence But I believe that it is possible to have enough of what is valu-able from each to satisfy most of my readers and I hope that I have foundthat juste milieu here a good part of the time at least

This study makes no pretence to being exhaustive Even if it were pos-sible for a single volume to encompass all of the Enlightenmentrsquos enemiesover the past two centuries it would likely end up being too superficial tobe of much value By restricting the range of material covered by focusingon a limited number of examples I have tried to avoid this hazard and tostrike a balance between breadth and depth The result while necessarilyselective is not wholly arbitrary for I have followed two rules of inclusion

First as a work of intellectual history this study concentrates on whatmay be called lsquohigh Counter-Enlightenmentrsquo which is not to deny eitherthe existence or the importance of a lsquolow Counter-Enlightenmentrsquo A completepicture of Counter-Enlightenment thought (if such were possible) wouldhave to span not only its entire temporal geographical and ideologicalrange but its full cultural and social breadth as well Such a work wouldnecessarily be a massive history of several movements high and low far andwide covering over two centuries across a broad range of national contextsand ideological perspectives probably running to several volumes Bystrolling along the summits of lsquohigh Counter-Enlightenmentrsquo to adapt ametaphor of Friedrich Meineckersquos this study offers at most some insightinto one stratum of Counter-Enlightenment thought (even at this level it isnecessarily selective and incomplete) although it tries to do so as widely aspossible I aim simply to show that there are more summits than Berlinimagined without denying that there is much of interest in the valleysbelow as historian Darrin McMahon has recently shown3

Second I have included only those thinkers who offered some conceptionof what we now call lsquothe Enlightenmentrsquo This is partly to limit the scope ofmy study to manageable proportions and partly because I am interested notonly in the ways in which the Enlightenment has been attacked but also theways it has been depicted by its enemies which is no less interesting andimportant To make something an object of criticism requires that one firsthave a particular conception of that object A history of the Enlightenmentrsquosopponents must therefore be a history of their constructions of lsquothe Enlighten-mentrsquo as well as their destructions of it Thus I have paid considerable atten-tion here not only to the many different criticisms of the Enlightenmentover the past 250 years but also to the different ways it has been portrayedto suit the particular beliefs prejudices agendas and interests of its enemiesThere are many thinkers who have attacked specific tenets of Enlightenmentthought and have exerted great influence on its critics without actuallyoffering a clear conception of it as a historical movement One such isMartin Heidegger (1889ndash1976) who plays almost no part in the story I tellFor Heidegger the roots of the crisis that afflicts Western modernity are tobe found well before the Enlightenment Descartes plays a much morecentral part in his attack on modernity than do his eighteenth-century suc-

xii Preface

cessors In fact Heideggerrsquos work says virtually nothing about the latter4

This explains the absence from my text of some writers who might other-wise have been included among the enemies of the Enlightenment

This study lies somewhere between a textbook and a narrowly specialisedmonograph although it is rather closer to the latter than to the former It isbroad and synthetic rather than narrow and analytical aiming like JohnBurrowrsquos exemplary The Crisis of Reason (2000) to provide a context formore specialised studies without being a substitute for them5 It is alsothematic it does not try to provide a comprehensive account of the ideas ofeach of the thinkers with which it deals Rather it focuses on one particulartheme (the Enlightenment and its alleged shortcomings) across a broadrange of writers and how each of them dealt with it Like most books inintellectual history it does not fit neatly within the boundaries of conven-tional academic disciplines and I have not adhered strictly to any particularmethodological orthodoxy

Preface xiii

Acknowledgements

Part of this book was written in the congenial surroundings of Boston Uni-versity where I spent a term as a Visiting Scholar in the University Profes-sors Program I then crossed the Charles River to spend a stimulating andenjoyable term as a Visiting Fellow at the Minda de Gunzburg Center forEuropean Studies at Harvard University I owe much to friends and col-leagues at both institutions and I am glad to have this opportunity publiclyto thank them for welcoming me into their ranks for a time

From Cambridge I took my manuscript with me to rural New Englandwhere I spent a delightful year teaching at Dartmouth College in NewHampshire followed by a happy and productive year at Williams College inwestern Massachusetts I had the greatest pleasure teaching Mark Yohalemand Steve Menashi at Dartmouth and thank them for reminding me of justhow rewarding teaching can be The friendship and intellectual companion-ship of James Murphy made my New England sojourn truly memorable andenjoyable The same must be said of my Williams friend and colleagueSung-Ho Kim ndash citizen scholar lsquoman of vocationrsquo gastronomer

I am grateful to Gunnar Beck for reading and commenting upon earlierdrafts of some of the chapters that follow correcting my German and for hisadvice and intellectual companionship over many years I have benefited agreat deal from the work of Darrin McMahon and from our occasionalexchanges on the subject of Counter-Enlightenment I am indebted toRichard Lebrun for reading and commenting on Chapter 3

The friendship of my colleagues Chris Ealham David Hanley and SeanLoughlin has made my time at Cardiff University as stimulating and pleas-ant as it could be

The final stage of the manuscript was completed while I was on sabbaticalleave in Paris during 2003 and 2004 I am very grateful to the UK Arts andHumanities Research Board for providing me with funding that made itpossible for me to give my undivided attention to this work for an extendedperiod Without such support it is certain that this bookrsquos completionwould have been much delayed

Paris summer 2004

1 Introduction

Like it or not the West today (and not only the West) is a legacy of whathas come to be known in English as lsquothe Enlightenmentrsquo Many of thevalues practices and institutions of our present civilisation are rooted in theeighteenth century which helped to liberate a vast human potential thatdetermined much of the shape and direction of the world we now inhabitMichel Foucaultrsquos claim that the Enlightenment lsquohas determined at least inpart what we are what we think and what we do todayrsquo is beyond seriousdispute1

Assessing this legacy is much more difficult than merely acknowledgingits scale and significance On the one hand the Enlightenment was a lsquogreatleap forwardrsquo in many ways leading to an unprecedented expansion ofscientific discovery and application political reform social liberation andindividual empowerment Its legacy of religious toleration has been a pre-cious gift for reasons made obvious by the long history of religious persecu-tions and crusades in the pre-Enlightenment West and the fundamentalistexcesses so common in our time Its faith in the potential of modern scienceto enhance human knowledge ndash and thereby power ndash has been vindicated toa degree far exceeding the wildest dreams of the most optimistic philosophesOn the other hand the experience of the twentieth century has revealed thedark side of knowledge to a degree that may have startled many of theEnlightenmentrsquos eighteenth-century proponents With increased freedomand mobility the spread of literacy the decline in infant mortality the pro-longation of human life and the alleviation of physical suffering throughmodern medicine have come a potentially catastrophic degradation of thenatural environment the depletion of vital and irreplaceable naturalresources the advent of nuclear chemical and biological weapons and thedystopic possibilities of genetic engineering The destructive potential at thedisposal of the human appetite for power cruelty stupidity and hatred isnow enormous and growing In addition the increase in individual freedomof conscience religious expression mobility and self-determination that theEnlightenment helped to facilitate has undermined many traditional sourcesof conflict while fostering others For many today the balance between thecosts and the benefits of living in an enlightened civilisation ndash if we really

can call ours such ndash cannot sustain the buoyant optimism usually associatedwith the Enlightenment For increasing numbers of others the balanceclearly favours a deeply pessimistic ndash even apocalyptic ndash reading of the tra-jectory of human history since the eighteenth century Either way few nowretain the relatively simple faith in science progress reason and the naturalgoodness of human beings commonly associated with the age we now callthe Enlightenment Given this scepticism it is hardly surprising that there-emergence of lsquoenlightenmentrsquo as a key organising concept in philosophysocial and critical theory and the history of ideas since the SecondWorld War has been shadowed by a proliferation of new forms of Counter-Enlightenment thought resulting in yet another round in the continuingwar between the Enlightenment and its enemies

Although criticism of the Enlightenment has been a central theme intwentieth-century thought ndash particularly in intellectual movements such ascritical theory hermeneutics pragmatism feminism post-modernism andcommunitarianism ndash and the term lsquoCounter-Enlightenmentrsquo is now quitewell established and widely used2 the concept of Counter-Enlightenment isunderdeveloped lagging at least a generation behind the scholarly literatureon the Enlightenment the sophistication of which has increased dramati-cally in the past quarter of a century Indeed the only significant scholarlystudy devoted exclusively to this subject in general is Isaiah Berlinrsquos 1973essay lsquoThe Counter-Enlightenmentrsquo which is the necessary starting point ofany discussion on the concept in English3

As far as I have been able to discover the term lsquothe Counter-Enlighten-mentrsquo made its first appearance in English in William Barrettrsquos 1949 PartisanReview essay on lsquoArt Aristocracy and Reasonrsquo where it is mentioned only inpassing4 He also employs it as follows in his popular 1958 book on existen-tialism where he writes lsquoExistentialism is the counter-Enlightenment comeat last to philosophic expression and it demonstrates beyond anything elsethat the ideology of the Enlightenment is thin abstract and therefore dan-gerousrsquo5 Barratt says little about Enlightenment criticism beyond this TheGerman expression lsquoGegen-Aufklaumlrungrsquo is older probably coined by Nietzscheat the end of the nineteenth century although he only uses it in passing6

The first significant use of the term in English occurs in a chapter on lsquoTheCounter-Enlightenmentrsquo in Lewis White Beckrsquos study of Early GermanPhilosophy (1969) which is about Counter-Enlightenment in Germany sinceit focuses exclusively on J G Hamann J G Herder and F H Jacobi7 Heargues that at the height of the Aufklaumlrung lsquothere was a reaction which Ishall call the ldquoCounter-Enlightenmentrdquo rsquo8 After decades of enlighteneddespotism under Frederick II (1712ndash1786) Beck claims a counter-movement arose in Germany attacking what it saw as Frederickrsquos soullesssecular authoritarian state This enlightened conception of the state reflectedthe mechanical Newtonian view of disenchanted nature that dominatedEnlightenment thought in the eighteenth century In opposition to this thelsquofaith and feelingrsquo philosophers of the Counter-Enlightenment epitomised

2 Introduction

by Hamann favoured a more organic conception of social and political life amore vitalistic view of nature and an appreciation for beauty and the spir-itual life of man that they thought had been neglected in the eighteenthcentury

It has only been since the republication in 1981 of Berlinrsquos essay lsquoTheCounter-Enlightenmentrsquo in a popular collection of essays that the term hasbeen widely used9 Like Beck Berlin claims that the Germans lsquorebelled againstthe dead hand of France in the realms of culture art and philosophy andavenged themselves by launching the great counter-attack against theEnlightenmentrsquo10 Both believe that it was in late-eighteenth centuryGermany that Counter-Enlightenment thought really took off starting withthe Koumlnigsberg philosopher Hamann lsquothe most passionate consistentextreme and implacable enemy of the Enlightenmentrsquo11 This German reactionto the imperialistic universalism of the French Enlightenment and Revolutionwhich had been forced on them first by the Francophile Frederick II then bythe armies of Revolutionary France and finally by Napoleon was crucial tothe epochal shift of consciousness that occurred in Europe at the time leadingeventually to Romanticism According to Berlin the surprising and unin-tended consequence of this revolt against the Enlightenment has been plural-ism which owes more to the Enlightenmentrsquos enemies than it does to itsproponents most of whom were monists whose political intellectual and ideo-logical offspring have often been terror and totalitarianism12

In Liberalism and the Origins of European Social Theory (1983) StevenSeidman distinguishes between three distinct strands of Counter-Enlightenment thought only one of which is primarily German Conserva-tives (eg Joseph de Maistre Louis de Bonald Edmund Burke theHistorical School of Jurisprudence) German Romantics (eg FriedrichSchiller Friedrich von Schelling Auguste Wilhelm and Friedrich vonSchlegel Friedrich von Hardenberg [lsquoNovalisrsquo] Johann Gottlieb FichteFriedrich Schleiermacher) and French Revolutionaries (eg Franccedilois NoeumllBabeuf and Louis-Auguste Blanqui)13 Rejecting the stark dualism ofEnlightenment versus Counter-Enlightenment Seidman recasts the latter asa transitional phase between a traditional social order that was in retreat inthe eighteenth century and an emergent new form of industrial civilisationthat typified the nineteenth century The Counter-Enlightenment was alsquotransmitterrsquo of innovations in social theory originally made by the Enlight-enment refining and adapting them in the process For example Seidmanargues that the Enlightenment rejected the methodological individualismand atomistic assumptions of classical social contract theory in favour of abelief in lsquothe interpenetration of the individual and societyrsquo14 Rather thanrejecting these views the Enlightenmentrsquos enemies adopted them andlsquoinsinuated them into the centre of the intellectual milieu of the nineteenthcentury In short the counter-Enlightenment formed a bridge between theeighteenth and nineteenth centuries which was of immense significancersquo15

For Seidman Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment are forms of

Introduction 3

communitarianism united in their basic belief in social holism but dividedin their particular views on culture and politics The real difference betweenthe Enlightenment and its enemies is that the latter replaced the pluralisticideal of the Enlightenment with lsquothe ideal of a uniform and common culturewhich integrates and harmonizes the interests of the individual and thecommunityrsquo16

Like Seidman John Gray has also emphasised the continuity between theEnlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment which he regards as currents ofthought lsquowatered by the same stream of humanism which flowed into andstrengthened one anotherrsquo17 For example a belief in a universal human narrat-ive is common to both the Enlightenment and its reactionary opponents suchas Joseph de Maistre According to Gray both belong to a single tradition ofWestern thought and culture that he traces back to antiquity The differencesthat separate them exist within a broad consensus about the narrative structureof history the unity of truth and the objectivity and compatibility of valuesthat was not seriously challenged until late modernity above all by Nietzsche

Darrin McMahon taking his cue from historian Robert Darnton hasrecently examined the early enemies of the Enlightenment in France frombelow documenting the existence of a long-forgotten lsquoGrub Streetrsquo liter-ature in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries aimed at thephilosophes18 In Enemies of the Enlightenment (2001) he delves into the obscureand at times unseemly world of the lsquolow Counter-Enlightenmentrsquo thatattacked the encyclopeacutedistes and fought an often dirty battle to prevent the dis-semination of Enlightenment ideas in the second half of the eighteenthcentury19 By extending it both back to pre-Revolutionary France and downto the level of lsquoGrub Streetrsquo this approach marks a major advance in scholar-ship on Counter-Enlightenment thought

All of these authors end their accounts fairly abruptly in the earlynineteenth century thereby reinforcing the idea that lsquothe Counter-Enlightenmentrsquo is a period term like lsquothe Enlightenmentrsquo which it is notAlthough the trend of recent scholarship has been to broaden the geographi-cal intellectual and social range of Counter-Enlightenment thought beyondGermany its temporal scope remains narrowly circumscribed No balancedaccount of this subject can ignore the fact that criticism of the Enlighten-ment has returned in the twentieth century with a vengeance One of theprincipal objectives of the present study is to challenge the idea of theCounter-Enlightenment as a single historical movement more or lessrestricted to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries I do soprimarily by focusing as much on the Enlightenmentrsquos twentieth-centurycritics as on its earlier opponents Each of the Enlightenmentrsquos enemiesdepicted it as they saw it or wanted others to see it resulting in a vast rangeof portraits many of which are not only different but incompatible TheCounter-Enlightenment understood as a single movement is a fiction andnot a particularly useful one at that There were ndash and are ndash many Counter-Enlightenments20 This is most apparent when seen from a perspective that

4 Introduction

encompasses the full breadth of Enlightenment criticism in Germany andbeyond and from the mid-eighteenth century to the present

Cleaning the stables

A major obstacle impeding intelligent discussion of this subject is the con-fusing and inconsistent use of terms a problem that not only divides writersfrom each other but often divides them against themselves Above all theinterchangeable use of lsquoenlightenmentrsquo lsquoEnlightenmentrsquo lsquothe enlighten-mentrsquo and lsquothe Enlightenmentrsquo utterly confounds sensible discussion of thissubject Examples abound In a single passage in his study of Nietzsche andthe Political for example Daniel Conway refers to the lsquodialectic of enlighten-mentrsquo lsquodialectic of Enlightenmentrsquo lsquohistorical enlightenmentrsquo the lsquodream ofthe Enlightenmentrsquo and the lsquoimage of Enlightenmentrsquo21 In an otherwiseadmirable translation of Hegelrsquos Phenomenology of Spirit A V Miller renderslsquodie Aufklaumlrungrsquo as lsquoEnlightenmentrsquo lsquothe Enlightenmentrsquo and lsquothe enlight-enmentrsquo all on a single page thereby imposing distinctions on Hegel thatare not at all apparent in his German text22 Charles Frankelrsquos The Faith ofReason contains the following sentence lsquoIt was in France that enlightenmenthad its most lively career and it was from France which was the socialcentre of the Enlightenment that such tenets of enlightenment as the beliefin progress were most widely disseminated The Enlightenment was a move-ment that transcended national boundaries it fostered and was in turn sus-tained by a European culturersquo23 George Friedman gives us the followingusages all in one paragraph lsquoThe crises of Enlightenment the purpose ofEnlightenment the crisis of the Enlightenment the crisis of Enlight-enmentrsquo24 One might go on indefinitely

It is not at all clear to what the terms lsquoEnlightenmentrsquo and lsquothe enlight-enmentrsquo refer They add nothing but confusion to the debate and are there-fore best avoided I shall restrict myself to lsquoenlightenmentrsquo (no definitearticle small lsquoersquo) as a generic concept referring to both the general goal andthe process of replacing darkness with light taken metaphorically to refer towisdom or insight (however defined) replacing ignorance or a lack of under-standing and lsquothe Enlightenmentrsquo (definite article capital lsquoErsquo) to designateone historically specific conception of this process usually associated withEurope and America after (roughly) 1750 with many national variations(eg the French Enlightenment the Scottish Enlightenment the GermanEnlightenment) A concept offers only a vague and general account of some-thing whereas a conception is a specific interpretation of it25 While there isone generic concept of enlightenment there are many particular conceptions ofit For example we may speak as the philosopher and classical scholarHans-Georg Gadamer does of lsquothe enlightenment of the classical worldrsquo(lsquoDie antike Aufklaumlrungrsquo26) when as he puts it lsquothe view of life enshrined inthe epics and myths of Homer and Hesiod was dissolved by the new passionfor discoveryrsquo epitomised by the allegory of the cave in book seven of

Introduction 5

Platorsquos Republic27 Another conception of enlightenment may be found inBuddhism where it refers to the lsquoexperience in which one is said to ldquoseerdquothings as they really are rather than as they appear to be To have gainedenlightenment is to have seen through the misleading textures of illusionand ignorance through the dark veils of habitual comprehension to thelight and clarity of truth itselfrsquo28 The necessary path to enlightenment thusunderstood is through spiritual self-transcendence something completelymissing from the conception that emerged in Europe and America in theeighteenth century epitomised by although by no means confined to theParis-based philosophes such as Diderot drsquoAlembert Voltaire and CondorcetThis conception emphasised the centrality of reason and sensory experience assources of knowledge looked to modern science as the principal vehicle ofhuman progress and championed religious toleration Each of these particu-lar conceptions (ancient Greek Buddhist eighteenth-century European ndash toname just a few) exhibit distinctive even incompatible features yet all areinstances of the general concept of enlightenment since all involve replacingignorance or darkness with knowledge or insight of some kind My concernin this study is confined to the opponents of that particular conception ofenlightenment now known in English as lsquothe Enlightenmentrsquo of the eight-eenth century

So what was the Enlightenment This question raises its own semanticproblems No such term was used by the philosophes in eighteenth-centuryFrance While they did use the general concept of enlightenment (eacuteclaircisse-ment) and sometimes referred to themselves as lsquoles hommes drsquoeacuteclaircissementrsquo(men of enlightenment) they never used it to refer to a particular historicalperiod let alone a movement However the French expression lsquole siegravecle desLumiegraveresrsquo (the century of lights) was used from the late eighteenth centurywhile lsquoLumiegraveresrsquo on its own has been popular in French only since the 1950sto refer to what is known in English as the Enlightenment29 But there is nolsquolrsquoEclaircissementrsquo in French (definite article capital lsquoErsquo) even now The termlsquothe Enlightenmentrsquo came into use in English only long after the eighteenthcentury and it was not until after the Second World War that it usurpedthe expression lsquothe Age of Reasonrsquo in common parlance as in Isaiah BerlinrsquosThe Age of Enlightenment (1956) Jack Livelyrsquos The Enlightenment (1966) andin particular Peter Gayrsquos influential two-volume study The Enlightenment AnInterpretation (1966ndash1969)30 Philosopher John Grier Hibben appears to havebeen the first to use the term in the title of a book in English The Philosophyof the Enlightenment (1910) and historian Alfred Cobban used it throughouthis study of Edmund Burke and the Revolt Against the Eighteenth Century(1929)31 The 1932 publication of Carl Beckerrsquos Storrs lectures at Yalewhich uses lsquothe Enlightenmentrsquo and the 1951 translation of Ernst Cassirerrsquoswidely read Die Philosophie der Aufklaumlrung (1932) into English as The Philo-sophy of the Enlightenment appear to have been important milestones in thisshift towards the use of lsquothe Enlightenmentrsquo as a period concept in English32

In German lsquodie Aufklaumlrungrsquo has been used from the late eighteenth century

6 Introduction