Educational Philosophy in the French Enlightenment: From Nature to Second Nature (review)

To begin with a quotation that seems strikingly topical: ‘Increasingly, education was tied narrowly to the “practical”, and even the most abstract subjects were redefined in a way that emphasized their role in strengthening state power and ensuring national prosperity’ (p. 5). At a time when some argue that the broader notion of ‘education’ is once again under threat of being reduced to utilitarian ‘instruction’, Natasha Gill’s intelligent and wide-ranging study helpfully reveals the intellectual origins of this debate as it was framed by the educational theorists of the French Enlightenment. It does much more besides, repeatedly explicating the philosophical oppositions that characterized eighteenth-century French pedagogical literature: freedom versus constraint, nature versus habit, individuality versus socialization, enlightenment versus utility. The key terms of ‘childhood’, ‘nature’, and ‘virtue’ are interrogated and problematized; and the work also benefits from consistently addressing the implications of divergent educational philosophies for the schooling and empowerment (or otherwise) of the poor, the working classes, and women. Gill organizes her investigation of these issues more or less chronologically, from Locke’s formative influence on French educational thought of the time through to Rousseau’s radical reformulation of it in Émile. This approach is useful in showing how Locke is specifically adapted by his French readers and, equally, how Rousseau’s work is much less the starting point of French educational philosophy in the eighteenth century than the culmination of the work of pedagogical pioneers such as Fleury, Rollin, Crousaz, Mme Lambert, and the greatly neglected Étienne-Gabriel Morelly. Indeed, Gill maintains that Morelly’s educational thought of the 1740s represents the most coherent and concerted attempt to reconcile the emerging binarisms of Enlightenment pedagogy. Nonetheless, as Gill relates it, far from heralding a consensus on what might constitute enlightened education in France, Morelly’s work was loudly superseded by the rival contentions of Helvétius and Rousseau — the strident materialist utilitarianism of De l’esprit, the eloquent individualism of Émile — not to mention the urgent appeals for practical collège reform precipitated by the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1762. Pertinent lessons emerge too for today’s ongoing discussions over educational policy in so far as Helvétius’s watchword of social ‘utility’ rarely realizes its apparent egalitarian promise and more often than not thwarts social mobility, being little other than a rephrasing of ‘education for one’s station’ (p. 100) and no more. Rousseau fares little better, with his attempt to empower Émile being continually contradicted by the presence and omnipotence of his tutor, leading Gill to suggest that the unfinished sequel Émile et Sophie; ou, Les Solitaires represents an aborted effort on Rousseau’s part to resolve some of the contradictions, aporia, and prejudices that dogged the earlier work. Greater consideration of how ‘perfectibility’ might have informed educational thinking could have proved useful here. Nonetheless, what Gill’s thoughtful and well-argued text shows is that by the mid-eighteenth century educational philosophy in France was already grappling with issues that continue to inform and divide fields as varied as child psychology, curriculum development, and the politics of state education.