Scholarly controversy over the âRadical Enlightenmentâ has markedly escalated in recent years. Defined as an intellectual and socio-cultural movement that first assumed its basic features during the third quarter of the seventeenth century, it has become the focus of extraordinary disagreement. Combining a philosophical revolution â strict separation of philosophy from theology and the advent of a one-substance immanent naturalism â with democratic republican doctrines based on equality, it subsequently evolved in stages for some two centuries, becoming the most widespread and comprehensive international opposition culture, or counter-culture, in the West. Eliminating miracles, Revelation and divine providence, and proclaiming scientific and philosophical âreasonâ the exclusive criterion for determining truth, this wing of the Enlightenment sought to reconceive and reorganize the entire moral and political order. Until its successive defeats in the 1830 and 1848 revolutions, after which it was largely displaced by socialism, the Radical Enlightenment fought to improve human existence generally and emancipate oppressed sections of society by changing the way men think. It sought to replace credulity, âignoranceâ, âsuperstitionâ, and âfanaticismâ with a fundamentally new conception of the individual as a free, educated, and enlightened citizen participating on an equal basis in society and politics. Vehemently opposed from the outset, Radical Enlightenment remains fiercely contested today.
Defining the âRadical Enlightenmentâ
Given the evidence, one cannot deny that such an oppositional revolutionary underground tendency existed. Until recently, though, historians and philosophers mostly treated it as marginal and relatively unimportant. There is still today a broad tendency to misrepresent it as mainly âa fundamental critique of the rationality and coherence of religious beliefâ and ânecessarily based on the monist metaphysics of Spinozaâ, rather than defining it correctly as rejection of religious authority in politics, law, and education coupled with democratizing republicanism.1 The broad consensus has been to locate the Enlightenmentâs early stages firmly in the Lockean project, coupling pure empiricism with reconciling reason and faith by reserving a sphere of reality that is supra rationem (above reason), and the exclusive domain of theology. In general, Lockeâs dualist empiricism, linked to Newtonianism and building on âthe argument from designâ, undoubtedly represented the dominant Enlightenment tendency during most of the eighteenth century, especially in terms of government and ecclesiastical support and acceptance by journals, universities, and academies. Alongside another widely institutionalized dualist approach harmonizing science and religion, and purporting to present a holistic view of reality, the Leibnizian-Wolffian tradition (dominant from the 1730s to around 1780 in central Europe, Russia, and Scandinavia), the Lockean-Newtonian consensus reigned supreme. But the question remains whether this âModerate Enlightenmentâ mainstream was also the main trajectory in the Enlightenmentâs overall, long-term project of social and political reform, moral reformation, and general amelioration.
Reconciling reason and faith in the divergent styles of Locke, Newton, Leibniz, and Wolff long remained hegemonic in the public sphere. But privately or in small-group discussion, their reputedly clear and cogent harmony of âreasonâ and faith did not necessarily sway most philosophes â even among those eager to compromise with the political and social status quo. But despite growing doubts about the coherence of such systems, the indispensability of religious authority and ecclesiastical guidance continued to be insisted on, if not for themselves then certainly for the masses, even by such notorious religious sceptics as Voltaire, Montesquieu, Hume, Gibbon, and Frederick the Great. These all assigned a curtailed but still substantial moral, social, educational, and political role to religion and the churches. Classifying the split between Radical and Moderate Enlightenment philosophically, in terms of reason alone versus reason qualified by truths âabove reasonâ and accessible only to theology, however, is only part of the Radical Enlightenment thesis as it has evolved since the early 1990s: it is equally concerned with the wide-ranging social, cultural, and educational repercussions of this intellectual clash, not least the quarrel over whether all of society needed to be enlightened or, as âmoderatesâ advocated, only societyâs elites.
Since âmoderatesâ did not seek to overturn existing social hierarchies and broadly upheld the existing order, they saw no need for everyone, or indeed anyone beyond the elites, to become âenlightenedâ. It was unnecessary and probably impossible, held Voltaire and Frederick, to enlighten more than a small segment of society. The last phase of Voltaireâs career, from the late 1760s until his death in 1778, was overshadowed by a widening public split among the philosophes, especially provoked by dâHolbachâs attacking two (in his conception intimately connected) targets â religious authority and the existing social order â in his Système de la nature (1770). This work, published clandestinely in large quantity, with numerous re-editions and wide distribution, had a considerable impact. It greatly disturbed Voltaire, who was angered both by its political implications and rejection of any providential guiding hand designing the order of Nature. Its double attack, assailing organized religion together with the social-political order, split Parisian opinion philosophique down the middle, Voltaire joked sourly, as neatly as any âminuet at Versaillesâ.2
The ânegative critiqueâ â denying that the materialist, one-substance âRadical Enlightenmentâ constituted a coherent tradition over generations and fundamentally divided the Enlightenment into opposing tendencies, âmoderateâ and âradicalâ â has undoubtedly now become formidable.3 It refuses to see any such philosophical-political theoretical rift as the key to understanding the inner dynamics and ultimate trajectory of the Enlightenment or the ensuing political revolutions of the 1775â 1848 era. But the scholarly contingent acknowledging the division between âradicalâ and âmoderateâ as the Enlightenmentâs primary category frame, both in terms of philosophical debate and clandestine opposition networks, and building on this new way of conceptualizing the Enlightenment with its long post-1789 phase lasting down to the mid-nineteenth century, has equally burgeoned in recent years.4
The âpositive critiqueâ broadly accepting the categories set out here views the âRadical Enlightenmentâ as closely linking rejection of religious authority with forms of political subversion tending toward democratic republicanism. Combining these two projects produced a sweeping reform programme aspiring to replace all prevailing principles of religion, politics, social organization, and education with a new general outlook rooted in materialist (or pantheist) monist philosophy. It grounded a thought-world that became far more comprehensively revolutionary than the Enlightenmentâs public face and moderate âmainstreamâ. A notable criticism (which I now accept) of my Radical Enlightenment interpretation by a contributor to the âpositive critiqueâ is that my account fails sufficiently to acknowledge that this Radical Enlightenment underground stream included in its sweeping demolition programme the entire existing corpus of European philosophy itself, rejecting all dualistic systems flourishing since Plato and Aristotle along with all Epicurean and sceptical traditions.5
The scale of the present-day controversy reflects its importance and how much is at stake. As Vincenzo Ferrone recently remarked, the very fact there is now so âvirulentâ a contest with accusations abounding of âbiasâ, âunscholarly use of sourcesâ, propensity to âidealismâ, âessentialismâ, âreductionismâ and ârigidityâ, shows the issues remain unresolved and that it will take time before final conclusions can be drawn.6 Acknowledging that the Enlightenment was characterized throughout by a fundamental intellectual rift â monist naturalism versus philosophical systems acknowledging and compromising with ecclesiastical authority and theology â and that the first in certain respects proved more important as well as intellectually more cogent and durable than the second, would involve re-conceptualizing the Enlightenment on many levels and revising our understanding of the whole history of modernity, including the relationship of the American and French revolutions to each other. Our entire approach to the history of philosophy and the history of political thought, and the relationship between science and religion in the Western world, would need adjusting. Given that Counter-Enlightenment fideism, loyalism, and reaction also remained a powerful cultural and political force, postulating two incompatible and antagonistic enlightenments means dividing ideas and attitudes between 1650 and 1850 broadly into three categories: Moderate Enlightenment, Radical Enlightenment, and anti-revolutionary Counter-Enlightenment.
The thesis that the Enlightenment had two main strands, moderate and radical, was first conceptualized in detail by Leo Strauss (1899â1973) around 1928.7 The idea was later further developed by Strauss himself, GĂźnter MĂźhlpfordt (whose major contribution is often neglected),8 Henry F. May, Giuseppe Ricuperati, Margaret C. Jacob (who, however, rejects the interpretation presented here), Silvia Berti, and Wim Klever. As conceived by Strauss, âRadical Enlightenmentâ preceded the âModerate Enlightenmentâ chronologically and outlived it. From the late seventeenth century onwards, âModerate Enlightenmentâ remained the primary project as far as governments, churches, and educators were concerned; but beneath the surface, held Strauss, the radical impulse turned out to be stronger, philosophically and culturally. It constituted the ârealâ or main Enlightenment not least in shaping the Enlightenmentâs troubled legacy â the intellectual paradoxes and dilemmas of post-1800 modernity.9 Strauss unhesitatingly classified Radikale Aufklärung as the âveritableâ Enlightenment, casting Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Moses Mendelssohn, and other committed âmoderatesâ as cautious compromisers whose unworkable philosophical âfixesâ unwittingly weakened rather than strengthened their ultimately untenable theses reconciling reason with religion.
As Frederik Stjernfelt points out in this volume, Strauss first employed the term âRadikale Aufklärungâ as part of a general reinterpretation of the Enlightenment on which he embarked while researching Spinozaâs Bible criticism in the late 1920s. Since Radikale Aufklärung for him meant essentially philosophical âatheismâ, Strauss chiefly distinguished what by 1928 he already termed âModerate Enlightenmentâ by the latterâs theistic premises and willingness to compromise with ecclesiastical authority.10 Eliminating religious authority, Strauss knew, must have far-reaching political and social consequences; but he barely discusses this dimension in the early modern context. While not attaching any specific political character to either intellectual trend, Strauss did stress that Radikale Aufklärung was further characterized by a purely naturalistic conception of science, philosophy, and knowledge that radicals deployed to rule out all supernaturalia. Underlying Radikale Aufkl...
