Revolutionary politics between Enlightenment factions and their aftermath

Review essay on The Enlightenment that Failed: Ideas, Revolution, and Democratic Defeat, 1748–1830 by Jonathan Israel

Though the title is a blatant provocation – I guess “failed” is a more marketable title than “partially succeeded” – this is a rich intellectual history. It argues that the “radical” Enlightenment philosophes played a key role in the late 18^th century revolutions, losing out to the conservative reaction of the next century. The book is beautifully written, places innumerable intellectual and political movements in rich historical context, and offers real feeling of the “ideas in the air”. Unfortunately, my hardcover copy of the book was so shoddily constructed that it was falling apart after a single reading: pages are peeling out, the spine is cracked.

The story begins in the late Renaissance with the discovery of Lucretius’ epic poem, De Rerum Natura, an evocation of epicureanism. Its claims so flatly contradicted Christian doctrine – the Earth was eternal, nature and society needed no God to keep everything going, and the soul was not immortal – that it generated great interest, not just intellectually, but offering a vision that transcended the violent depredations of the Reformation wars. Because epicureanism preached withdrawal from society into a self-contented, secret, private sphere, it was not really a political call to action.

The poem sparked a wellspring of philosophical speculation, a trajectory that challenged ecclesiastical authority and all that it supported. Grotius argued for a God that no longer acted as an omnipotent executive who presided over the moral community, but was subject to universal laws beyond him. This was the kernel of an idea that culminated in Deism.

Extending Luther’s advocacy for personal interpretations of Scripture, Socinus preached that religious authority should be subordinated to individual thought and liberty, that the good of humanity and morality should be understood in a more secular manner.

Though Montesquieu concluded that Christianity was inherently superior to other religions, he attempted to study religion and morality as social contrivances rather than unquestionable dogmas. The result: theology was separating, however timidly, from philosophy.

Spinoza took it the next step, arguing that there was no place for the supernatural, that the universe was made of a single substance (monism, which eliminated the dualistic “sacred” realm), hence philosophers must search for universal explanations of all phenomena through reason; scripture, miracles or the views and advice of religious authorities either did not exist or could not be proven; this was the beginning of the end of metaphysics. He also espoused ideas for collective action, a kind of proto-democratic advocacy. This line of reasoning was indeed revolutionary: denying divine anointment or legitimacy (a heretical position that could result in criminal convictions and even execution into the 18^th century), the Monarchy itself was subject to challenge, weakening the entire structure of governance that had emerged after the fall of Rome. The next generations took up his ideas, forming the cercle spinoziste, a clandestine network of discussion groups that grew into the Radical Enlightenment.

Israel explains that there are four factions that emerged. First, there were the reactionary traditionalists: Kings, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical authorities. This triad worked more or less in self-reinforcing concert, reaching its apogee in the feudal era. Kings enjoyed a “mandate from heaven”, which the intellectuals in the church supported and the aristocrats carried out, at least, in theory. No other members of society enjoyed or deserved institutional representation.

Second, there were the moderate Enlightenment philosophes. They argued that reason could and should be applied to everything holistically, resulting in a seamless web of knowledge – of incontrovertible objective truth – that would show the “best way” to do things; aristocratic privilege and ecclesiastical power had to be limited or perhaps stamped out. As Voltaire argued, only enlightened despots were able to carry this out, thanks to their riches, refinement and education; lacking these, the “masses” remained ill-suited and vulnerable to demagogues and rabblerousers, whether religious or political.

Third, while agreeing that complete truth was within reach, the radical enlighteners (e.g. Thomas Paine and d’Holbach) believed that the “masses” were essential to the creation of new societies that would be democratic, with initiatives coming from the bottom up. This would require educating them, constructing inclusive institutions, and providing checks on power by the rule of law. Of course, this implied that the existing power structures would evolve or perhaps be swept away, starting with the ecclesiastics and aristocratic privilege, ending with the monarchy.

Finally, there were a number of counter-Enlightenment Romantics, ranging from Rousseau and Robespierre to Marx at the close of the period. They were variously intelligentsia in support of reactionaries and radicals advocating such romantic fantasies as a return to “nature”, the empowering of a nationalistic “genius”, and even some forms of socialism. What they shared was a skepticism regarding the primacy of reason itself; they despised the zealous certainty of the philosophes to find objective solutions to societal woes via reason.

While Israel’s emphasis on the radical enlighteners added nuance to my understanding of the period, this is a pretty conventional analysis. Where the book is really original is in the coverage of the global political impact of these ideas in practical terms – how they inspired revolutionaries to act, what they tried to do, and where their efforts led. If you will, the bulk of the book is applied political theory in historical context. It is a genuinely inspiring read.

American revolutionary institutions, in his analysis, took the moderate Enlightenment as its principal model. As engineered by Hamilton and the Federalists, it was aristocratic in that it filtered the will of the people through a cumbersome system of legislation by both Representatives and Senators (appointed notables at the time); with its checks and balances, their executive President was relatively weak. While the Bill of Rights offered freedoms to white men, it excluded women, slaves, and indigenous peoples. This was a republic that only became democratic in later generations.

The French Revolution unfolded in witness to the American Revolution and, Israel argues controversially, its goals of republican empowerment and universal rights were virtually identical at first. It moved, if I understood correctly, from moderate Enlightenment to more radical; it was only with the rise of the populist demagogue, Robespierre, that the Revolution degenerated into a violent dictatorship led by a leader who felt he embodied the will of the people intuitively and without need of consultation. According to Israel, observers took these events as a catastrophic repudiation of the radical Enlightenment.

Israel doesn’t stop there, but goes into detailed examinations of the revolutions in Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Scandinavia and even South America under Bolivar, among many others. It is a dazzling and nuanced tour into revolutionary-movement variations that few would know. I certainly didn’t and must now widen my own research.

The aftermath of Reaction, or “failure” as Israel puts it, came with the defeat of Napoleon and others, which empowered Austria to create a new international system in the Vienna Congress of 1814. Here, the Ancien Régime seemed to have been reimposed, curtailing freedoms, rolling back access to institutions, and imposing restrictions on potential exporters of revolution as well as scaling back notions of universal rights.

It is at this point that Israel’s characterization wears thin. Sure, the Reaction seemed in control, but at least to me, it is clear that the notion of representative democracy was taking hold, even if inchoate and only among the intelligentsia (peasants opted for tradition up to 1848, a major theme of the book). Even Napoleon, as a dictatorial emperor, applied many Enlightenment-inspired reforms in the countries he conquered and administered, such as in Spain, where he disenfranchised the Inquisition; innovations, such as the Code Napoléon, had lasting impact, in particular regarding the dismantlement of feudal law. It might have taken a century for more democratic republics to emerge, but emerge they did. Indeed, the details that Israel covers seem to support my view – in philosophy, the struggles for intellectual freedom in the secular universities that were being created to serve bureaucracies in the emerging nation-states, and in many other venues. How can this be construed as failure?

Today even the great challenges of the totalitarian regimes to liberal democracy seemed to reinforce the modernist legitimacy of liberal democracies after the fall of the USSR in 1990 or Hitler in 1945. If populist nationalism remains a threat to the liberal order, with the exception of Robespierre, it is not a major theme of the book. Here, too, it cannot be viewed as a failure, at least for the time being.

Another theme that I believe Israel underplays is the influence of social movements and economic development.  His version pushes Enlightenment ideas to the forefront, in effect denying that industrialization and urbanization, with their revolutions in communications and transportation, were the principal determinants of change at the time. I think the jury is still out on this one. Nonetheless, Israel's argument in favor of intellectuals is as stimulating as it is controversial.

I must include a note on the design and construction of the book. If the contents are absolutely first rate, the look, feel, and quality of the book itself is unacceptable – mine is falling apart. In addition, the type is small, the margins too thin, the line spacing too tight. I suppose the Oxford press wanted it all in one massive volume, but they cut too many corners.

I recommend this book as a very full intellectual meal. Israel may have exaggerated his thesis of failure, but the reading experience is immensely rewarding, even inspiring. Its level is high undergraduate; many phrases in French and German go untranslated and a lot of knowledge is assumed.