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Burning Laws and Strangling Kings? Voltaire and Diderot on the Perils of Rationalism in Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2011

Abstract

The thinkers of the French Enlightenment are frequently depicted as political rationalists, meaning that they advocated subjecting all laws, institutions, and practices to the withering light of reason, and discarding those found wanting by its standards. However, two of the most prominent philosophes, Voltaire and Diderot, were in fact opponents of the kind of political rationalism that they are often thought to have embraced. Both of these thinkers rejected the idea of a single “rational” political order, advocated gradual reform rather than wholesale change, and denied that the steady application of reason could produce inevitable or endless progress. In effect the Enlightenment was a “revolt against rationalism” (as Peter Gay has called it) not only in the epistemological, psychological, and ethical spheres, but also in the political one.

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Research Article
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Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2011

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References

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2 D'Alembert's “Preliminary Discourse” to the Encyclopedia, for instance, famously contrasts the inductive and empirical “systematic spirit” (esprit systématique) of his own age with the deductive and rationalist “spirit of system” (esprit de système) of the seventeenth century. See d'Alembert, Jean Le Rond, Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot, trans. Schwab, Richard N. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955), 2223Google Scholar, 94–95.

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12 Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution, 196.

13 Michael Oakeshott, “Rationalism in Politics,” in Rationalism in Politics, and Other Essays, 9. Oakeshott maintains in this essay that the key progenitors of rationalism were not the philosophes but Bacon and Descartes, both of whom attempted to formulate new, infallible techniques of inquiry that would yield certain and universally applicable knowledge. He acknowledges that both of these thinkers harbored doubts about the techniques that they developed, but claims that rationalism arose from “the exaggeration of Bacon's hopes and the neglect of the scepticism of Descartes.” Oakeshott speaks only vaguely of later “commonplace minds” who corrupted or simplified the thought of these “men of discrimination and genius,” but his earlier depiction of the philosophes in “The New Bentham” suggests that he saw them as having played a large role in this process. See “Rationalism in Politics,” 22.

14 Berlin, “The Counter-Enlightenment,” 244.

15 Lanson, Gustave, Voltaire, trans. Wagoner, Robert A. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1960),Google Scholar 48.

16 Rowe, Constance, Voltaire and the State (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955)Google Scholar, 6.

17 Besterman, Theodore, Voltaire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976)Google Scholar, 361, 364; see also 298, 300.

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19 See Bremner, Geoffrey, Order and Chance: The Pattern of Diderot's Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)Google Scholar, especially chap. 4.

20 It should be noted, however, that Voltaire fell out of favor among the revolutionaries soon after his apotheosis in 1791 (Rousseau being much more in vogue in the later, more radical stages of the revolution), and Diderot was largely ignored by the revolutionaries both before and after the brief period when these works were published in 1796. See Waldinger, Renée, Voltaire and Reform in the Light of the French Revolution (Geneva: Librarie E. Droz, 1959), 8286Google Scholar; Furbank, P. N., Diderot: A Critical Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 456–60Google Scholar.

21 This use of the term “liberal” is, of course, anachronistic when applied to eighteenth-century thinkers, but Voltaire's and Diderot's political outlooks fit readily into the tradition that we now call “liberalism” or “classical liberalism.”

22 Voltaire, Questions on the Encyclopaedia, in Voltaire: Political Writings, ed. Williams, David (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 6061Google Scholar. Wherever possible, I have cited widely available English translations of the works of Voltaire and Diderot for ease of reference for nonspecialist readers, although I have occasionally altered the translations slightly for the sake of a more literal rendering. Where reliable English translations are not available, I have cited standard French versions; in these cases, the translations are my own.

23 Diderot, Denis, Histoire des Deux Indes, in Diderot: Political Writings, ed. Mason, John Hope and Wokler, Robert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 189.

24 On Voltaire's refusal to use natural law as a standard by which to judge existing regimes and laws, see Perkins, Merle L., “Voltaire's Principles of Political Thought,” Modern Language Quarterly 17, no. 4 (1956): 298300CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 See, for example, Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, trans. Besterman, Theodore (New York: Penguin, 2004), 190–94Google Scholar. While Voltaire did occasionally suggest that France should be ruled by a uniform civil and criminal code—largely in hopes of curbing local abuses of power like those of the parlement of Toulouse that led to the infamous trials of Jean Calas and Pierre-Paul Sirven—he never suggested that this code would be applicable in all times and all nations, or could be constructed wholly in accordance with reason. See, for example, Voltaire, “Commentary on the book On crimes and punishments,” in Voltaire: Political Writings, 278.

26 Voltaire, Questions on the Encyclopaedia, 37.

27 See Locke, John, Second Treatise, §§ 90–91, in Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 326–27Google Scholar.

28 It should be noted, however, that Voltaire distinguished between “absolute” and “despotic” authority, favoring the former in some situations but not the latter. He argued that even “absolute” rulers must rule through and be bound by laws; what he advocated in the case of Frederick and Catherine was rather (extreme) centralization than despotism. Thus, he could perhaps be more accurately described as a proponent of “enlightened royalism” than as one of “enlightened despotism.” See, for example, Voltaire, The A B C, or Dialogues between A B C, in Voltaire: Political Writings, 98; and Voltaire, Thoughts on Public Administration, in Political Writings, 221. See also Cranston, Philosophers and Pamphleteers, 42; and Gay, The Party of Humanity, 29–30.

29 See Voltaire, Questions on the Encyclopaedia, 56–60.

30 Ibid., 61.

31 Gay, The Party of Humanity, 92.

32 Lester Crocker rightly claims that Voltaire was a “pragmatist” who advocated “a limited correction of abuses, not an endeavor, based on abstract truths, to change the bases of society and direct it anew toward a ‘rational-natural’ ideal” (Crocker, Lester G., Nature and Culture: Ethical Thought in the French Enlightenment [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1963]Google Scholar, 450).

33 Arthur Wilson notes that while Diderot occasionally appealed to the idea of natural law in his Encyclopedia articles, he essentially discarded this idea in his mature political thought (Wilson, Arthur M., “The Development and Scope of Diderot's Political Thought,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 27 [19631873]: )Google Scholar.

34 Diderot, Observations sur le Nakaz, in Diderot: Political Writings, 149.

35 Ibid., 88; see also 92, 113. See also the editors' introduction in the same volume, xxxiii–xxxiv.

36 Muthu, Sankar, Enlightenment against Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 7980Google Scholar.

37 See Cranston, Philosophers and Pamphleteers, 99. This last reading, at least, is almost certainly erroneous: despite his occasional praise of Catherine and some of her reforms, Diderot was a steadfast opponent of enlightened despotism. For instance, he writes to Catherine that “all arbitrary government is bad; I do not except the arbitrary government of a good, firm, just, and enlightened master. Such a master accustoms people to respect and cherish a master, whoever he is. One of the greatest misfortunes that could befall a free nation would be two or three consecutive reigns of a just and enlightened despotism. Three sovereigns in a row like Elizabeth, and the English would have been imperceptibly led toward a slavery of indeterminate length” (Diderot, , Mémoires pour Catherine II [Paris: Garnier, 1966], 117–18Google Scholar). For an account of the relationship between Diderot and Catherine, see Wilson, Arthur M., Diderot (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972)Google Scholar, chaps. 37 and 44.

38 Diderot's Encyclopedia entry “Political Authority,” admittedly, seems to posit a rather strict standard for political legitimacy, suggesting that all rightful authority is derived from a social contract, and thus that all regimes must be both limited and based on the consent of the governed. See Diderot, “Autorité Politique” (article from the Encyclopedia), in Diderot: Political Writings, 6–11. As several scholars have noted, however, this entry was in fact drawn in large part from the abbé Girard's Synonymes françois rather than written by Diderot himself. See Lough, John, Essays on the “Encyclopédie” of Diderot and D'Alembert (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 427–29Google Scholar; Proust, Jacques, Diderot et “l'Encyclopédie,” 2nd ed. (Paris: Armand Colin, 1967)Google Scholar, 560. That this entry does not entirely reflect Diderot's considered views is suggested by the fact that it contains several other statements that diverge sharply from the rest of his writings, such as the claim that every individual “has one supreme master … to whom he belongs completely. That is God, whose power over His creatures is always direct” (“Autorité Politique,” 7). More importantly, in his mature writings Diderot moved away from the Lockean viewpoint according to which all illiberal regimes can and indeed should be overthrown. Even in the midst of applauding the American colonial rebellion, he insisted that political authority can end up being legitimate whether it begins “with the consent of the subjects or with the strength of the master” (Histoire des Deux Indes, 201).

39 See Diderot, Observations sur le Nakaz, 96–97.

40 See Diderot, Mémoires pour Catherine II, 18–19.

41 Diderot, Histoire des Deux Indes, 189.

42 Diderot, “Encyclopedia” (article from the Encyclopedia), in Rameau's Nephew, and Other Works, trans. Barzun, Jacques and Bowen, Ralph H. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1956)Google Scholar, 296.

43 Voltaire, Treatise on Tolerance, in Treatise on Tolerance, and Other Writings, ed. Harvey, Simon and trans. Masters, Brian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 2526Google Scholar.

44 Voltaire, Pocket Philosophical Dictionary, in Voltaire: Political Writings, 20.

45 Voltaire, Treatise on Tolerance, 25.

46 See ibid., 26.

47 Voltaire made this point even more clearly in “Republican Ideas,” an essay in which he poses as a “member of a public body” writing to his fellow citizens in Geneva: “When times have palpably changed, there are laws that have to be changed. … If a republic has been created during a time of religious war, if during these troubles it has removed sects that are hostile to its own from its territory, it has behaved wisely, because it saw itself as a country surrounded by those stricken with the plague, and feared that someone might bring the plague in. But when those dizzy times have passed, when tolerance has become the dominant dogma of all respectable people in Europe, is it not a ridiculous barbarity to ask a man who has just settled in our country and brought his wealth to it: ‘What religion do you belong to?’” (Voltaire, “Republican Ideas,” in Voltaire: Political Writings, 199–201).

48 Voltaire, Pocket Philosophical Dictionary, 20. This reflection may have been inspired by a similar one in René Descartes, Discourse on the Method, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 116–17Google Scholar.

49 See especially Voltaire, Pocket Philosophical Dictionary, 19–20, 22.

50 See Voltaire, “Commentary on the book On crimes and punishments.”

51 David Williams, introduction to Voltaire: Political Writings, xiv.

52 Bottiglia, William F., introduction to Voltaire: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Bottiglia, William F. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1968)Google Scholar, 7; see also 12.

53 Lanson, Voltaire, 159.

54 Voltaire to Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, 23 June 1760, in Complete Works of Voltaire, ed. Besterman, Theodore, vol. 105 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1971)Google Scholar, 409.

55 See especially Voltaire, Letters Concerning the English Nation, ed. Cronk, Nicholas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)Google Scholar, 24, 26, 33.

56 Voltaire, Treatise on Tolerance, 20; see also 24–25.

57 Diderot is sometimes quoted as insisting that “we must trample mercilessly upon all … ancient puerilities” and “overturn the barriers that reason never erected,” but in these lines he is clearly referring to the arts and sciences and not politics. His complaint in this passage is that in the arts and sciences “achievements that ought to have been regarded only as first steps came blindly to be taken for the highest possible degree of development, and so, instead of advancing a branch of art toward perfection, these first triumphs only served to retard its growth by reducing all other artists to the condition of servile imitators” (Diderot, “Encyclopedia,” 298).

58 Diderot, Histoire des Deux Indes, 209.

59 Crocker, Lester G., Diderot's Chaotic Order: Approach to Synthesis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974)Google Scholar, 163.

60 The leading studies of Diderot's hostility to colonialism are Benot, Yves, Diderot, de l'athéisme à l'anticolonialisme (Paris: Maspero, 1970)Google Scholar; Muthu, Enlightenment against Empire, chaps. 2 and 3.

61 Quoted in Muthu, Enlightenment against Empire, 110–11.

62 See Diderot, Histoire des Deux Indes, 198–204.

63 See, for example, Diderot, Lettre apologétique de l'abbé Raynal à Monsieur Grimm, in Oeuvres philosophiques, ed. Vernière, Paul (Paris: Garnier, 1990)Google Scholar, 640; Diderot, Réfutation d'Helvétius, in Oeuvres politiques, ed. Vernière, Paul (Paris: Garnier, 1963)Google Scholar, 466. See also Mason, John Hope, The Irresistible Diderot (London: Quartet Books, 1982), 330–31Google Scholar, 345–46.

64 Denis Diderot, Pages contre un tyran, in Oeuvres politiques, 144.

65 See Mason, The Irresistible Diderot, 327.

66 Diderot, Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville, in Diderot: Political Writings, 74. For a useful analysis of Diderot's reformist (but not revolutionary) intentions in this work, see Goodman, Dena, “The Structure of Political Argument in Diderot's Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville,” Diderot Studies 21 (1983): 123–37Google Scholar.

67 Mason, The Irresistible Diderot, 10; see also 343–44; and see the editors' introduction in Diderot: Political Writings, xxviii–xxix.

68 Diderot, Histoire des Deux Indes, 170.

69 Ibid., 197; see also 199.

70 See Wilson, Diderot, 599–600.

71 The French original reads “la nature n'a fait ni serviteur ni maitre; / Je ne veux ni donner ni recevoir de loix; / et ses mains ourdiroient les entrailles du prêtre, / au défaut d'un cordon pour etrangler les roix.” A critical edition of the poem can be found in Dieckmann, Herbert, “Three Diderot Letters, and Les Eleuthéromanes,” Harvard Library Bulletin 6 (1952): 6991Google Scholar; for the quoted passage, see 87.

72 See Dieckmann, Herbert, “The Abbé Jean Meslier and Diderot's Eleuthéromanes”, Harvard Library Bulletin 7 (1953)Google Scholar: 231–35.

73 This is a paraphrase of a similar sentiment in Brumfitt, J. H., The French Enlightenment (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 138.

74 Wokler, Robert, “The Enlightenment Science of Politics,” in Inventing Human Science, ed. Fox, Christopher, Porter, Roy, and Wokler, Robert (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995)Google Scholar, 326.

75 That the philosophes were far from unqualified believers in progress was demonstrated decades ago by Vyverberg, Henry, Historical Pessimism in the French Enlightenment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

76 Maurice Cranston, for one, seems to see no conflict here: “Voltaire, in his celebrated novel Candide, mocked optimism, but the Enlightenment itself was an age of optimism. Although the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 shattered belief in a benevolent Deity, nothing seemed able to modify the encyclopédistes' faith in progress” (Cranston, Philosophers and Pamphleteers, 6).

77 It should be noted, however, that Voltaire had shown a degree of sympathy with Leibniz's optimism earlier in his career. Scholars have traditionally maintained that Voltaire's optimistic worldview was shattered by the Lisbon earthquake in 1755, as well as a series of personal misfortunes in the years leading up to it. Recently, though, several scholars have persuasively argued that Voltaire's views were actually far more consistent than this traditional explanation implies, and that he believed throughout his life both that personal happiness is often attainable but also that such happiness should not lead us to the kind of optimism that dismisses the suffering of others. See the discussion in the translator's introduction to Voltaire, Candide, and Related Texts, trans. Wootton, David (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000), viiixxxiiiGoogle Scholar.

78 Pearson, Roger, The Fables of Reason: A Study of Voltaire's “Contes Philosophiques” (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 113.

79 See Voltaire, “Poem on the Lisbon Disaster,” in Candide, and Related Texts, and Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, 68–74.

80 See Voltaire, Candide, 79. The famous final line, “Il faut cultiver notre jardin,” can be literally translated as “it is necessary to cultivate our garden,” although Wootton renders it as “we must work our land.” The question of what this line is supposed to convey has provoked a great deal of scholarly discussion and debate; see especially Bottiglia, William F., Voltaire's “Candide”: Analysis of a Classic, 2nd ed. (Geneva: Institut et Musée Voltaire, 1964), 96138Google Scholar; Langdon, David, “On the Meanings of the Conclusion of Candide,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 238 (1985): 397432Google Scholar.

81 See Wootton's introduction to Candide, and Related Texts, xv.

82 See Voltaire, Candide, 76–77.

83 See ibid., 41. For a helpful discussion of this episode, see Mason, Haydn, Candide: Optimism Demolished (New York: Twayne, 1992), 5457Google Scholar.

84 Several scholars have emphasized, however, that Candide's affirmation that we must cultivate our garden is not meant to rule out political engagement or a duty to do what we can to help others. See especially Langdon, “On the Meanings of the Conclusion of Candide,” and Lanson, Voltaire, 129.

85 Voltaire, The Ingenu, in Candide, and Other Stories, trans. Pearson, Roger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)Google Scholar, 221.

86 Voltaire, Essai sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations, ed. Pomeau, René, vol. 2 (Paris: Garnier, 1963)Google Scholar, 804.

87 Voltaire, The Age of Louis XIV, trans. Pollack, Martyn P. (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1961), 1718Google Scholar.

88 Voltaire, Questions on the Encyclopaedia, 84.

89 Gray, Voltaire, 12; see also 45.

90 Voltaire, The Age of Louis XIV, 238. This is not to say that Voltaire admits no impersonal forces acting in history, such as those produced by economic and technological advances, but rather that he does not see such forces as determining the entire course of history.

91 See especially Diderot, Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville, 41–45. In one of his contributions to the History of the Two Indies, Diderot goes so far as to say that “the history of civilized man has been only the history of his misery. Every page has been covered in blood, some with the blood of oppressors, others with the blood of the oppressed” (Diderot, Histoire des Deux Indes, 199; see also 193–97).

92 Ibid., 191.

93 See especially Diderot, Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville, 60, 63–64.

94 Diderot, “Histoire de la Russie depuis l'an 862 jusqu'en 1054,” ed. Schlobach, Jochen and Carriat, Jeanne, in Oeuvres complètes de Diderot, vol. 18 (Paris: Hermann, 1984)Google Scholar, 354.

95 Diderot, Histoire des Deux Indes, 207.

96 Diderot, Salon de 1767, ed. Lorenceau, Annette, in Oeuvres complètes de Diderot, vol. 16 (Paris: Hermann, 1990)Google Scholar, 556.

97 See Diderot, “Encyclopedia,” 289.

98 Diderot, Aux insurgents d'Amérique, in Oeuvres politiques, 491.

99 Diderot to Mme de Maux, ? May 1769, in Correspondance, ed. Georges Roth, vol. 9 (Paris: Minuit, 1963), 61. See also Diderot, Observations sur le Nakaz, 92, 98.

100 Diderot, “Hobbisme” (article from the Encyclopedia), in Diderot: Political Writings, 28.

101 Diderot, “Foreword to Volume VIII of the Encyclopédie,” in Encyclopedia: Selections, trans. Hoyt, Nelly S. and Cassirer, Thomas (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965)Google Scholar, 114.

102 On the conservative hostility to the philosophes—especially Voltaire—in eighteenth-century France, see McMahon, Darrin M., Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

103 See, for instance, Bird, Stephen, Reinventing Voltaire: The Politics of Commemoration in Nineteenth-Century France (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2000)Google Scholar, chap. 1; Gordon, Daniel, Citizens without Sovereignty: Equality and Sociability in French Thought, 1670–1789 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994)Google Scholar, 127; and Schilling, Bernard N., Conservative England and the Case against Voltaire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1950)Google Scholar, chaps. 11 and 12.

104 See Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. Cohler, Anne M., Miller, Basia C., and Stone, Harold S. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)Google Scholar, 602.

105 Smith, Adam, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. Raphael, D. D. and Macfie, A. L. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1976), 233–34Google Scholar.

106 Kant, Immanuel, Idea for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Intent, in Basic Writings of Kant, ed. Wood, Allen W. (New York: Modern Library, 2001)Google Scholar, 125.