Philosophy of the Enlightenment

The French Enlightenment of the 18th Century

The true leader of the French Enlightenment was François-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire. With 137 pseudonyms to his name, he has entered history under this particular one. Exceptionally gifted and universally educated, characterized by a combative spirit, Voltaire embodied the core ideas of the Enlightenment. He possessed the talents of a philosopher and historian, dramatist and novelist, poet and publicist, standing as an adversary to despotism and a patriarch of free thought.

From the ages of ten to sixteen, Voltaire was educated at the Jesuit college of Le Grand, and later at a law school in Paris. There, he became part of a circle of free-thinking aristocratic youth and began his literary career. For an epigram and pamphlet against Regent Philip of Orléans, he spent nearly a year in the Bastille. However, he did not waste his time there, writing his first tragedy, Oedipus, along with several poems. From 1728 to 1729, Voltaire lived in England, an experience that significantly influenced the development of his philosophical views. He then resided in France until 1750, but due to persecution from clerics, he moved to Prussia, spent some time in Geneva, and from 1755 until nearly the end of his life, he lived at his estate in Ferney on the border of France and Switzerland. Here, he engaged in vigorous anti-clerical activities, participated actively in the creation of the Encyclopédie, and authored a multi-volume philosophical dictionary and various philosophical tales. In early 1778, Voltaire returned to Paris, where he was met with enthusiasm, but he died on May 30 of the same year. Thirteen years later, during the revolution, his grave was moved to the Panthéon.

A recurring motif throughout Voltaire's works is his critique of official religion and the church. This is entirely understandable, as anyone seeking to organize societal life on new principles at that time had to oppose the authority of the ruling church and theological dogmas, advocating for the liberation of consciousness from false stereotypes. Anyone criticizing the prevailing economic and political relations could not refrain from raising their voice against the religion and church that sanctified the monarch's power and the entire system of life and thought that had developed.

Another characteristic of Voltaire's work is that all his writings are imbued with philosophical ideas. His "theater" (comprising over 50 plays), philosophical tales, and novels reflect this. The posthumous edition of his works consists of 70 volumes, including Philosophical Letters, Metaphysical Treatise, Philosopher, Ignoramus, and Philosophical Dictionary.

In philosophy, Voltaire was an adherent of Locke. Assimilating the sensualism of English philosophers, he actively promoted it in France. Relying on the doctrine of sensation as the primary source of knowledge, Voltaire criticized Cartesian teachings on innate ideas. He also rejected Berkeley's subjective idealism, noting that if a falling stone were to break my shoulder, it would be quite difficult to suppose that this occurred due to the exertion of memory.

Regarding religious questions, Voltaire remained a deist, acknowledging the possibility of God's existence only as the prime mover of the universe. He dismissed the substantiality of the soul, asserting that the soul is not an independent and autonomous principle. What we call the soul is merely the capacity of a person to think. "Why not consider thinking a property of matter?"—Voltaire raises yet another important question, responding, "And which person on Earth would dare, without falling into senseless impiety, to claim that God cannot bestow sensation and thought upon matter? It is said to me that it is impossible for matter to think. However, I do not see such impossibility."

Voltaire fervently advocated for the inductive method of Bacon and Newton in France, though he remained skeptical about philosophical knowledge itself, believing that philosophy does not explain the essence of things, naming one of his works Philosopher, Ignoramus in its second edition, "Questions of a Person Who Knows Nothing."

In his early works, Voltaire was a proponent of the idea of free will (indeterminism), but later he succumbed to determinism. It would be strange, he pointed out, if the universe were to obey its own laws while only one tiny creature could act against them. In reality, to be free means to be able to do what we want. A person is one link in the chain of the universal connection of things.

In ethics and aesthetics, Voltaire conveyed the notion of the relativity of ideals and criteria for goodness and beauty. Conceptions of these change from era to era, from place to place. Judgments on these matters depend on who articulates them. For instance, he wrote: "Ask a male frog: What is beauty, the beautiful 'to kalon'? He will respond that it is the female frog with her huge, round, bulging eyes on her small head, with a flat mouth to her ears, a yellow belly, and a brown back. Ask a Guinea negro: for him, beauty is black, shiny skin, deep-set eyes, and a flattened nose." Thus, Voltaire undermined the notion of absolute norms that had long outlived their time.

Voltaire was an excellent historian, the first to propose the idea of creating the history of culture, and he formulated the concept of "philosophy of history."

Charles-Louis Montesquieu (1689-1755) was one of the first representatives of French Enlightenment. His Enlightenment ethos manifests in several aspects. First, he believed in the civilizing role of science, which is beneficial with its discoveries and inventions, and also contributes to human happiness. Secondly, the natural science successes, based on empirical methods, open the path to investigating history and social processes. He was convinced that natural laws governed social life, given that there is no randomness or divine providence within it.

In his principal work, The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu asserted that, in general, law is human reason, which guides all nations of the earth. Political and civil laws are merely specific instances of applying reason to the peculiarities of the lives of particular peoples. These laws must correspond to the characteristics of the people for whom they are established. They should reflect the physical characteristics of the country, its climate—whether cold, hot, or temperate, the quality of the soil, the size, the way of life, the religion of the populace, its inclinations, and so on.

He identified three forms of government—republican, monarchical, and despotic. Each of these forms corresponds to a specific moral principle: for republicanism, it is virtue; for monarchy, honor; for despotism, fear. Montesquieu also justified the necessity of separating powers into legislative, executive, and judicial branches. He noted that it is not possible for legislative power to be combined with executive power in one person. Furthermore, if the judicial power is not separated from the first two, it would lead to the reign of arbitrariness in society.

Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715-1771) was greatly impressed by John Locke's work, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and became a proponent of materialistic sensualism. His most significant works include On Man, His Intellectual Abilities, and His Education and On the Mind, the latter of which was condemned and burned by the executioner.

Considering the distinctions of humanity as a rational being, Helvétius highlights its cognitive abilities, which are rooted in sensations. Upon this foundation, ideas are formed. A novel aspect was the introduction of the category of "interest" into the theory of knowledge and social theory. Interests articulate the needs and desires of individuals. Naturally, little in humanity is innate; everything is determined by the environment, both natural and social (including political). The environment is so crucial that it dictates the formation of good or bad inclinations. Thus, a change in the environment towards a desired direction automatically leads to favorable consequences for progress.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), like Voltaire, was a prominent figure of the Enlightenment, yet they stood as opposites, representatives of extreme poles. Voltaire was primarily an ideologue of the large bourgeoisie, while Rousseau embodied the spirit of petty-bourgeois democracy. In his marginal notes on Rousseau's treatise "Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men," Voltaire referred to the ideas of social equality that Rousseau championed as the "philosophy of the ragpicker," wishing for the poor to rob the rich.

In his works, Rousseau takes the ideas of Hobbes and Locke to their social and political conclusions, articulating his own views with clarity and precision. His most renowned work that attests to this is "The Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right." Rousseau demonstrates that the sovereign, the sole ruler of a society emerging from a contract, is the "collective people." He emphatically underscores the principle of popular sovereignty. Like other Enlightenment thinkers, Rousseau envisioned his ideal state as a realization of the kingdom of reason. It is noteworthy that Rousseau was perhaps the first to sense the contradictions of modern civilization, which was only just emerging, asserting in his work "Discourse on the Sciences and Arts" that science and industry bear not only benefits: "How many dangers, how many false paths threaten us in scientific inquiries!... If our sciences are incapable of solving the problems they set for themselves, then they are even more dangerous due to the results they lead to."

Paul-Henri Holbach (1723-1789) was one of the youngest French Enlightenment thinkers. His work "The System of Nature," published in 1770, represents the most systematic exposition of materialism of his time. The central idea of this work lies in the consistent application of the principle of reduction, meaning the possibility of reducing all phenomena of nature to different forms of motion of material particles.

Human beings, as creations of nature, exist within nature and are subject to its laws. Individuals become dependent, enslaved by their ignorance of their own nature, needs, aspirations, and rights. A person who does not comprehend the nature of society, unaware of its purpose and the aims of government, is easily deceived, oppressed, corrupted, and rendered miserable.

Holbach understands nature in two senses. In a broad sense, it encompasses the entire universe as a unified entity resulting from the interaction of various things and their movements. In a narrower sense, nature pertains to each individual thing, what derives from its essence. The essence of a thing is the sum of properties that compose the individual nature of that thing. Nature, in both senses, is in a state of constant motion, the cause of which should not be sought outside the confines of nature itself, for the essence of nature lies in action.

In addition to "nature," Holbach employs the concept of "matter," defining it as "everything that somehow influences our sensations." In essence, he equated matter with substance, viewing "matter" as an abstraction from any particular thing. Holbach utilizes the entire arsenal of knowledge available in mechanics at that time to explain all processes and transformations, from simple interactions of bodies to mental processes in humans, as well as moral relationships and political phenomena in societal life. The principle he employs is reductionism, the reduction of all complex phenomena to simple ones, to combinations of simple mechanical motions (such as gravity, inertia, and so forth).

From his mechanistic worldview follows Holbach's perspective on the relationship between necessity and chance. Everything in the world has its cause, leaving no room for randomness: "In all phenomena of human life, from birth to death, we see only a chain of necessary causes and effects that correspond to the laws common to all creations of nature."

The particularities of each individual, the differences among people, are explained purely mechanistically. From these differences, inequality emerges, which can give rise to slavery; however, inequality, in general, serves a beneficial purpose—individuals become necessary to one another, forming the foundation of social life. Addressing legal and political matters, Holbach confidently asserts that society can always, when its interests demand it, remove the government, alter the form of rule, and expand or restrict power. Failed rulers are those who do not govern people according to their nature, neglect the enlightenment of the populace, and are solely preoccupied with how to deceive the people.

In his work "Natural Politics, or Conversations on the True Principles of Government," Holbach delves more deeply into the social, moral-legal, and political questions of societal life. He disagrees with the notion of a natural state of primitive man living an individualistic lifestyle. Instead, he proclaims that humanity has always existed within society, echoing Aristotle's sentiment. Society itself is a creation of nature, for it is nature that determines human life within society, which has but one aim: to enable individuals to more fully utilize their natural properties and capabilities to achieve personal happiness. Individual differences and inequalities, in mutual exchange, become the foundation not of discord and enmity, but of sociality.

Cooperative living is regulated by laws that arise from necessary relations based on the nature of things. Holbach distinguishes between natural laws and civil (positive) laws. There is no contradiction between them, as the former are directly grounded in human nature, while the latter are mere adaptations of natural laws to the specific, changing circumstances of a given people. Natural laws are recognized by the human mind and can thus be called laws of reason, which are the same for all people, given their shared nature.

Examining the organization of political life in society, Holbach discusses the "inconveniences" of forms of government such as absolute monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, as they all serve only a particular estate, whereas societal equilibrium is possible only under a form of governance where all estates are equally distanced from the helm of power. Hence, Holbach leans towards constitutional monarchy, which could only arise with the consent of the entire society.

As is well known, French Enlightenment fervently espoused the ideals of freedom. Holbach did not shy away from this theme: "The love of freedom is the strongest of human passions," he asserts. Freedom is the capacity to do whatever nature permits for one’s happiness, as long as one lives in society. The emphasis on "society" is crucial; the measure of freedom for members of society should be the welfare of society as a whole. In uniting into society, individuals take on the obligation not to exercise unchecked independence that would disrupt the ties that bind them together. As members of society, individuals are free only to the extent allowed by the laws of reason. Since the laws of reason and just laws are one and the same, "to submit only to just laws is to enjoy the fullest freedom that a citizen could desire."