How Did We Miss This?: A New Take on the Enlightenment in Practice

Once upon a time, a young philosophe named Jean-Jacques Rousseau went to visit his friend Denis Diderot at the Vincennes prison, where the latter was incarcerated for having written skeptical remarks about religion in a book titled Letter on the Blind for the Use of those who See (1749). While on his way to Vincennes, Rousseau noticed an advertisement in the Mercure de France newspaper for an essay contest sponsored by the Academy of Dijon. The academy was asking contestants to answer the question of whether “the reestablishment of the sciences and the arts” had “contributed to the purification of morals.” Rousseau’s response, a “Discourse” that surprisingly blamed the arts and sciences for recent moral decline, won first prize, and the author who had previously been obscure suddenly became famous.

Students of eighteenth-century history and thought are familiar with this story because it grippingly recalls the moment at which a great genius appeared on the intellectual scene, but for Jeremy Caradonna, the story is a fitting point of departure for a different subject. Rather than focus on the ideas or career of Rousseau, or of any other philosophe, Caradonna focuses on the institution of the academic prize contest. What sort of practice was this, and what can its history tell us about “intellectual culture” in the Ancien Régime and in Revolutionary France?

To begin with, Caradonna has found that the academic contests—that is, the contests sponsored by royal academies—were remarkably inclusive. Unlike the more famous but much more restrictive institution of intellectual sociability, the salon, the academic contest elicited entries from a very large number of people from all walks of life. Caradonna estimates that 12,000 to 15,000 people participated in the contests between 1670 and 1794. He writes, “These figures suggest that academic prize contests were one of the largest venues of formal intellectual exchange before the modern period. More important, the social diversity of the concurrents transcended the traditional boundaries of the Republic of Letters. Academic contests brought women, amateur writers, and the lower classes into contact with elite intellectual institutions” (45). Moreover, during the selection process, the names of authors were removed, so reviewers were unaware of the identities and social standing of the contributors.

Caradonna also demonstrates that the topics the academies suggested, and the responses they received, were surprisingly radical, given that the academies were royal institutions. Although contests under Louis XIV were largely designed to elicit praise for the Sun King, during the eighteenth century, the academies took on such controversial topics as the inhumanity of slavery and the legal disabilities under which Jews languished. Sadly and paradoxically, the “democratic” Revolution put an end to this practice by which a multitude of citizens freely weighed in on matters of public importance, disparaging it as an “aristocratic” relic.

Perhaps the most interesting finding in this book is that the essays produced for academic competitions were not strictly “academic” exercises. Government officials frequently consulted them when looking for practical solutions to problems. Whereas Alexis de Tocqueville introduced us to the meddling Ancien Régime bureaucrat who lectured French subjects on the most up-to-date, enlightened ways of conducting their business, Caradonna has found evidence that, on the contrary, officials eagerly sought the advice of the ordinary French men and women who participated in the contests. In the entries, the officials found answers to such practical questions as how to make saltpeter (an essential ingredient in gunpowder) more efficiently, and how to light the streets at night.

Caradonna’s study lends support to certain revisionist interpretations of the French Revolution insofar as it suggests that the Ancien Régime was more vibrant, liberal-minded, flexible, and, indeed, modern than the “classic” (that is, Marxist) accounts would have us believe. In particular, The Enlightenment in Practice is reminiscent of Simon Schama’s depiction of a pre-Revolutionary regime that was in principle...