A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy
Language: English
Pages: 296
ISBN: 0691152608
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Democracy, free thought and expression, religious tolerance, individual liberty, political self-determination of peoples, sexual and racial equality--these values have firmly entered the mainstream in the decades since they were enshrined in the 1948 U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. But if these ideals no longer seem radical today, their origin was very radical indeed--far more so than most historians have been willing to recognize. In A Revolution of the Mind, Jonathan Israel, one of the world's leading historians of the Enlightenment, traces the philosophical roots of these ideas to what were the least respectable strata of Enlightenment thought--what he calls the Radical Enlightenment.
Originating as a clandestine movement of ideas that was almost entirely hidden from public view during its earliest phase, the Radical Enlightenment matured in opposition to the moderate mainstream Enlightenment dominant in Europe and America in the eighteenth century. During the revolutionary decades of the 1770s, 1780s, and 1790s, the Radical Enlightenment burst into the open, only to provoke a long and bitter backlash. A Revolution of the Mind shows that this vigorous opposition was mainly due to the powerful impulses in society to defend the principles of monarchy, aristocracy, empire, and racial hierarchy--principles linked to the upholding of censorship, church authority, social inequality, racial segregation, religious discrimination, and far-reaching privilege for ruling groups.
In telling this fascinating history, A Revolution of the Mind reveals the surprising origin of our most cherished values--and helps explain why in certain circles they are frequently disapproved of and attacked even today.
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Egalitarian values, the Dutch democrats disliked both Montesquieu’s relativism and his aristocratic preferences, enthusiasm for constitutional monarchy, praise of Britain, and antipathy to the Dutch Republic (where nobility played scarcely any role). Hence, in the Dutch political battles of the day, Montesquieu’s thought proved far more conducive to Orangist than to the democratic ideology of the radical Patriots.60 Nevertheless, he was much respected, especially by those of moderate and.
On, he exhibited a particular attitude toward the peasantry and the poor, and, unlike his radical-minded young friend Condorcet, saw absolutely no need to lessen the disproportion in men’s fortunes or check what the latter considered the prevailing excessive inequality.49 Rather Turgot, like Smith and Ferguson, considered the whole debate about equality and inequality irrelevant and fundamentally misconceived. Assuredly, he had no wish to make men insensitive to the distress and suffering of the.
Other’s throats; and who say that it is not the highest honor that a man can arrive at, to sell himself to another man for life at a certain daily price, and hold himself in readiness, night and day, to kill individuals or nations, at home or abroad, without ever enquiring the cause.” “It is no compliment to the judgment or humanity of a man” to lead such a life, felt these unbelievers, who could “not see why aristocrats should not learn both judgment and humanity “as well as other people.”39 Of.
Priests of false religion since they preach “virtues of prejudice” and have a vested interest in keeping men as ignorant as possible. Ignorance underpins their authority. What, for instance, is more ridiculous than the ban on Montesquieu’s L’Esprit des Loix imposed by ecclesiastical authority in “certain countries” (that is, in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Austria)?91 Elements of Helvétius’s moral thought, however, appeared simplistic to Diderot and d’Holbach. What disturbed Diderot about.
Working outside and independently of all known mechanical causes.42 This “first cause,” responsible, in his view, for all movement, must be both free and “intelligent” like the soul of humans, and since “freedom of the will” seemed to him equally undeniable, he totally rejected the arguments by which “les philosophes irréligieux”—that is Diderot, Helvétius, and d’Holbach—sought to show its “impossibility.” Minds, as Turgot formulated his metaphysical dualism and Lockean psychology, are determined.