The Intellectual Origins of the French Enlightenment (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 407 in the context of the strange mix of Iberian, Jewish and Christian forces around them. Yerushalmi's study breaks important ground in showing us what happened in one amazing case. Studies of the important Jewish intellectuals in Amsterdam may help us understand this world. Menasseh ben Israel figured greatly in the European understanding of Jewish thought, and was involved with major personages in both the Jewish and Christian worlds. Orobio de Castro had a similar career to that of Cardoso, but retained his concern with general philosophy and theology. His answer to van Limborch and Locke was an important document of the time, and his refutation of Spinoza (the only one we know of by a member of the Amsterdam Jewish community) was printed by F~n~lon. Orobio's anti-Christian polemics were used by d'Holbach. Besides the figures who returned to Judaism, others who stayed in Iberian Catholic world, need to be examined in the context of Jewish, Jewish-Christian and New Christian theologies. Kart Kottman's recent study of Luis de Leon reveals the novel contribution of one of Spain's greatest theologians when he is seen in the context of the converted Jews seeking a meaningful place for themselves and their heritage in Christianity . Others, descendents of Iberian Marranos, like Isaac La Peyr~re, developed revolutionary theories about man and the Bible in their attempt to justify being JewishChristians rather than either Jews and Christians. The examination of the careers and ideas of Iberian New Christians, Marranos, and Jewish refugees may give us a fuller and richer picture of the role of the infusion of Spanish ideas, Marrano attitudes and Jewish traditions into the making of modern thought. Yerushalmi's study is indispensible for those concerned with this neglected aspect of our past. RICHARD H. POPKIN University of Cali/ornia, San Diego The Intellectual Origins of the French Enlightenment. By Ira O. Wade. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971. Pp. xxi-l-678. $20.00) This is the first volume of an enormous project, a three-part history of the French Enlightenment, a synthesis presenting the results of forty years of study by one of the outstanding historians of eighteenth-century ideas. After some introductory matter briefly handling social and economic history and explaining in general terms how Professor Wade understands the historical evolution of ideas, the present work concentrates almost exclusively, as its title implies, on the principal thinkers whose ideas would contribute to the intellectual formation of the philosophes, an ambitious undertaking , impressive in its scope. Montaigne, Bodin, Gassendi, Descartes, Hobbes, Pascal, Moli~re, La Fontaine, Malebranche, Leibniz, Locke, Newton, Bayle---what a cast of players! And they are only the major figures of a drama that relegates thinkers like Rabelais, Charron, La Mothe Le Vayer to minor roles. To my knowledge no single work attempts to bring together in one vohtme the complete panorama of the origins of the Enlightenment. Naturally the histories of Bruneti~re, Lanson, Busson, Hazard, and Spink, to name only the most significant, have paved the way for Professor Wade. He presents their theories in an interesting section early in his work, clearly outlining their differences and the difficulty in deciding just when and how the Enlightenment began. Professor Wade settles for the date 1348 and follows the established view that 408 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY the Paduan school engendered a succession of freethinkers and scientists. When their ideas merge with certain aspects of Cartesianism, the foundations of the philosophic movement are laid. After confessing his awareness of the dangers of oversimplification, Professor Wade dauntlessly undertakes to outline his general concept of the Enlightenment adventure, As he sees, it, he is tracing the history of "rationalism" to its floodtide when "the human mind camo to know and to turn into realities its inner powers," but also learned "their ultimate unreality and their uselessness in achieving human satisfactions " (p. 16). He denies that the philosophic movement developed a new body of teaching; instead, it was "encyclopedic and propagandistic." Future volumes will show us this floodtide and its subsequent disenchantment, and will also, one hopes, elaborate more on what we are to take the Enlightenment to be. We have...