Reaffirming the Enlightenment

January/February 2007 · Historically Speaking Reaffirming the Enlightenment John Robertson The 18th-century Enlightenment, it seems, is now back in fashion among scholars on both sides of the Adantic. During the 1980s and for much of the 1990s it lay behind the front lines of scholarly activity. Good work was being done in specific areas, but those looking for an account of the Enlightenment as a whole had to refer back to Peter Gay's two-volume synthesis, The Enlightenment : An Interpretation (1966, 1969). Despite its qualities, Gay's book seemed dated, having been dismissed by critics such as Robert Darnton for its supposed elitism and neglect of social history . By the early 1970s it was the social history of ideas that set the agenda. Even if Darnton himself never denied the existence of the Enlightenment , he and others redirected the focus of research onto what he christened the "low life of literature," on the grounds that the latter milieu did far more to foster the intellectual climate of the French Revolution. The impression that the Enlightenment had fallen from grace was reinforced by the postmodern critique of the "Enlightenment project ." The idea that there had been an "Enlightenment project" was always a philosopher 's rather than a historian's construction. Those who adopted diis view assumed diat Enlightenment philosophers had sought to base all morality on reason and went on to charge the Enlightenment as a whole with die deadly sins of universalism, Western triumphalism, and a belief in social engineering—all of which led more or less direcdy to the great disasters of the 20th century. Scholars still sympadietic to die Enlightenment found diemselves on die back foot, trying (as in the title of one thoughtful collection) to answer the "postmodern question": "What's left of Enlightenment?"' As is often the case with shifts in scholarly fashion , there is no simple reason for the recovery of the Enlightenment's reputation. It began before the upsurge in concern over religious extremism in the contemporary world and the fear that Islam is at war with the legacy of die Enlightenment. As good a signal as any of this recovery was Robert Darnton 's—to his admirers unexpected—defense of die high Enlightenment in the New York Review of Books in 1997. In diis essay Darnton construed the Enlightenment as a concerted campaign on behalf of liberty and happiness, the latter condition exemplified by George Washington's false teeth as a remedy for toothache.2 Another signal was the appearance of a whole series of collaborative encyclopedias and dictionaries of the Enlightenment—indisputably an Enlightenment project, but also an indication, now as in the 18th century, of publishers' anticipation "Imprimerie en lettres, l'opération de la casse." Illustration from Diderot's Encyclopédie. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number, LC-USZ62-110399]. of a market.' Their confidence growing, scholars began to reclaim the Enlightenment for causes to which its critics had supposed it irredeemably hostile : die groundbreaking collaboration that produced Women, Gender, and Enlightenment, edited by Barbara Taylor and Sarah Knott (2005), may well prove the most significant new beginning in 21st-century Enlightenment studies. Yet the recovery of the Enlightenment's standing has come at a price. The ideas, places, and people that scholars want to associate with Enlightenment are so diverse that it has become difficult to think in terms of a single Enlightenment . "The" Enlightenment, its unity and coherence secured by the definite article, has been replaced by multiple "Enlightenments," which may be thought of as forming a "family" but which are impossible to homogenize into a single object of study. There are good reasons for this tendency. The traditional equation of Enlightenment, les lumières, with a period of French literature has long since been abandoned, by literary scholars as well as historians . Supporters of Enlightenment were active in places far from Paris: in Italy and Germany, in Spain and Russia, in Scodand and the North American colonies. Many of these visited Paris, of course; but they did so to recharge their intellectual batteries and return home, not because they were in flight from lands of permanent darkness. They read the texts of...