The Rest Is History - 86. The Enlightenment

Episode Date: August 16, 2021

Once there was darkness and then there was light. What was the Enlightenment and why did it matter? Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook explore the Enlightenment and its path towards reason, science, revolution and the guillotine. A Goalhanger Films & Left Peg Media production Produced by Jack Davenport Exec Producer Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Once there was darkness and then there was light. Once human beings lived in a state of superstition and savagery, enslaved by magic and the doctrines of the Catholic Church. And then, beginning in the salons of 18th century France, a group of thinkers in wigs led them out into the light of reason, science, revolution,

and the guillotine. That's the traditional... That's the... Dominic! That's the traditional explanation of the Enlightenment. Anyway, and I'm joined by my very own Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a man of chilly, cerebral faith. Tom Holland. Tom, was that a fair description of the Enlightenment, do you think? Well, you could almost have been describing the Protestant Reformation, of course.

I could, yes. Well, we'll go on to say, won't we, whether they are different or not. Well, yes. I mean, I know that I'm kind of nervous about what I'm about to say, because I know that certain listeners to the podcast have begun a drinking game in which huge amounts of alcohol have to be drunk if I mention Christianity. Essentially, the mythology of the Enlightenment is that it's an emancipation, not just from the Catholic Church, but from Christianity and religion, full stop. Yes. out that your description of the Enlightenment could equally have applied to the Protestant Reformation, and indeed with certain kind of provisos with how Christianity saw itself against the context of pre-Christian paganism, is that I think that the Enlightenment is best understood as one of the great mutational processes in the history of Christian Europe. Western thought, Tom. I mean, it's bigger than just Christian Europe, isn't it?

Well, I'm not sure about that. I mean, so what Christians do is to say that there was darkness and then there was light. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Yeah. And the darkness is equated with with with paganism what the protestants do is to is to equate the darkness with you know the romish church popery and reformation is about bringing people into light it's about toppling superstition it's about banishing idols what the enlightenment does is to is to cast the

whole sweep of christian history as the darkness and to essentially identify philosophy as the it's not you i see you waving at me i am because i'm conscious that some people won't know what the enlightenment was so i think you should you are the master of this you should give a 90 second overview of the dates some of the characters um what are we talking about here because the people you know even at the time they use the word enlightened a lot um this 18th century but there's never really been an agreed definition of where it where it happened or indeed when it happened no so it's incredibly difficult uh but one of the things about the enlightenment that does set it apart say say, from the Reformation,

is that there were people living through it who identified it. The name the Enlightenment comes from the 18th century. Yes. And it's such a kind of mythologized period because essentially for lots of people today the enlightenment stands as the kind of fountainhead of their sense of their identity so the enlightenment is often equated with kind of good things that liberal people feel about themselves yeah the enlightenment values i am a defender of enlightenment values it's generally it's yeah it's the sort of thing colonists say yes absolutely i think

that to see the enlightenment to equate the enlightenment as it existed in the late 17th early and 18th century with you know modernity with the fruits of liberal secular democracy as we have it now is is simply wrong because i think it's much more complicated than that and the complexity of it is what makes it so slippery a subject to define well what you've done is you've very nicely you've you've you've you've basically refused to give the dates okay well i i would say that um i would date it from 1660 i i would i would identify it with spinoza do you know tom do you know the date i had i have written down in my in my notes here?

1660? 1660. But I've written it down because of the foundation of the Royal Society. Well, that shows how much more cosmopolitan I am than you. Well, why do you hate Britain? That's my question. I don't hate Britain. I love the Dutch.

Oh, no, don't give me all that. So let's say mid to late 17th century to the, I guess, we would agree. Yeah, the French Revolution is generally taken, the advent of Napoleon. Napoleon is often described as the last enlightened despot. So, yeah, it's a sort of, it's a ferment of ideas, isn't it? And that sort of cliched description that I gave at the beginning of men in wigs and salons, I mean, that is a huge part of it. It's about clubs, coffee houses, literary salons, people like Voltaire and Diderot

traveling across Europe, exchanging ideas, writing books, a very literate public, and this sort of sense of intellectual excitement, I suppose. Yes. I mean, and there are incredible varieties so so i think on the continent it's much more court-based yeah and i think in the netherlands and in england it's it's much more sociable but i think in both cases the the it's kind of fun i think there's with a lot of the uh the the kind of the key enlightenment thinkers you have a sense that these are people who are really enjoying themselves yeah there's a kind of sense of excitement about it and absolutely the kind of sociable quality of it

is absolutely fundamental um and and the philosoph see themselves as so the philosoph of these french french thinkers yeah Yeah, yes. Identifying themselves with the philosophers of ancient Greece. They see themselves as, well, it's kind of a class apart. They see themselves as people leading the way into light out of darkness. And therefore, they are not in any way modest people. Well, that brings up fordex question one of our listeners and he or she um i don't know why i assume a man would call

himself fordex it just seems like a more stereotypically you know i imagine him as a reader of the patrick o'brien novels which you foolishly despise anyway fordex says um was it really that big a deal and was it that? That's the key question, really. So why does it matter? Why is it a big deal? I think it matters. I mean, I think it's of seismic significance and not just for Europe or for America.

I mean, I think America is, the United States is inconceivable without the Enlightenment, but because of the impact of Europe and the United States on the world, it's of global significance. And in a way, it matters because although I think it's very culturally contingent, I think it's bred very, very specifically of the particular cultural circumstances of Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries,

it's brilliant at disguising itself as universal. So Voltaire, who's probably the most famous of all the Enlightenment figures, he says of the church fathers that they thought the whole world should be Christian and that therefore they were necessarily the enemies of the whole world until it was converted. And he saw himself as being superior to that. But actually, of course, Voltaire and the philosopher were doing exactly the same. And enthusiasts for Enlightenment values tend to feel exactly the same way that the entire world should be converted to Enlightenment values. But because they're able to kind of cast it as somehow universal. Voltaire talks about there being a commonality of intellectuals from Peking to Cayenne, famously. He's able to pass off this very, very kind of European, West European phenomenon as being universal. I mean, what do you think? How would you identify the Enlightenment? It's a massive question. So I think it's so there's a there's a very famous historian of it called Jonathan Israel. And he argues that it's all about ideas.

And he says it's not out of circumstances. It's the ferment of ideas. So you shouldn't – well, the social economic context have been overplayed. But I think the social economic context are massively important. So I think, you know, it's post – Europe has gone through the wars of religion after the Reformation. So there's a question from Mark Taylor. To what extent was it a reaction to the excesses of the early 17th century? I think it is a reaction.

I think there's a huge element of that. So, I mean, we've talked before about the English Civil War, obviously Ireland, Scotland, the horrific impact of the Thirty Years' War in Central Europe. And I think you can see generally a sort of, you know, the next couple of generations are, they're not traumatised as too strong, but they're very strongly affected, influenced by that. There's a reaction against it.

But also this is an age of sort of mercantilism, trade, printing, obviously an explosion of printing. And literacy. Yeah, literacy going up. So I think something like by the end of the 18th century, about 60% of English men could read and write. I think a smaller percentage of women. So there's just far more readers and writers.

And I think the other thing that we haven't, the word we haven't mentioned is science, really. And I think science, the idea of the world as a machine with laws, Kepler and his observing the kind of planetary motion. Obviously, Newton is massive. I mean, Newtonpler and his observing the kind of planetary motion. Obviously, Newton is massive. I mean, Newton is a colossal enlightenment figure, I think. Everybody had read him.

Everybody knew about his ideas. And this idea that the world is a kind of watch. I read a brilliant book, actually, a few weeks ago about clocks in history. Do you see this by a guy who's the curator of the um greenwich sort of observatory and stuff and um this is the key point really when people are making clocks and they're obsessed by this idea of the world as a clock and is there a watchmaker as the watch god god is the watchmaker and you can understand how it works i think that's something all all those ideas. You know, on that topic, a brilliant thing. So Voltaire, he settles in Geneva and he also has a place at Ferny across the Swiss-French border. And in the later years of his life, he wants to plough something back in.

So he sponsors people in Switzerland to manufacture watches. Does he? Yeah. So he becomes a watchmaker. He becomes a... Well, he's kind of the presiding watchmaker. Where Voltaire led, Rolex followed. Yeah, where God had led.

Yeah, but I think the other thing that strikes me about the Enlightenment, and maybe you'll say that this is nothing new, but you get a real sense of, you could argue this is where the citizens of nowhere started. So you've got Voltaire and Diderot and all these French guys who are travelling to Russia and stuff, and actually spend a lot of their lives, Voltaire obviously, in exile. And they see themselves as part of a republic of letters.

They're not bound by nationality, by the nationalisms of the, not nationalism is the wrong word, but by the narrow loyalties of the past. Well, but also by religious identification. Well, I'll tell you what's really interesting. There's so much sort of swapping of identities. So Rousseau, he was a calvinist wasn't he and then he becomes a catholic converts to catholicism i think and gibbon i mean gibbon is sent to geneva i think

it is or certainly sent to switzerland because he has been flirting with converting to catholicism so these are people who are beginning to sort of i don't want to lapse completely into the 21st century and say their identities are fluid, but they're certainly more fluid than they would have been 100 years previously. And they see themselves as part of a cosmopolitan, they self-consciously see themselves as part of a sophisticated cosmopolitan community, don't they? I mean, I think that the 18th century is a period of massive religious ferment. you've got a kind of incredible revival process is going in the catholic church you've got methodism you've got the great awakening in evangelical process and i think that the the enlightenment is best seen as a further kind of

expression of that seismic yeah attempt to make sense of the world. And I think it does absolutely exist in the context of the traumas and the carnage and the horror of the religious wars of the 17th century. And it's often today, that process is often cast as a kind of process of discovery of toleration. I think that that mistakes it. I think that basically what people are after is to try and find a kind of um what they would call a civil religion a way of um a religious settlement that will promote kind of stability civilized living um virtuous citizenship all these kind of things. And how you get there, you know, it is contested,

but it's not so contested that people are going to fight over it. And in a way that is the fact that you can travel, you know, as Voltaire does to, to Protestant, the Protestant Dutch Republic, to Protestant London, to Frederick the Great,

likewise Protestant Geneva. That is absolutely fundamental to Voltaire's sense of himself. Yeah, I agree with that. I think that's all true. But I think a key part of it is this idea of light and darkness. Graham Bradbeer has a question. Who decided and when that it should be given the name the Enlightenment? Now, Tom, this is mean of me because I looked this up beforehand and you didn't so yeah go on so give it to me it's a man called jubo frenchman

who used the word lumière called talked about les lumière the lights um but actually that the idea of light and darkness i know you're going to have loads to say about this but i'll just say this you see this again and again so kant talks about emmanuel kant the great german So Kant talks about, Immanuel Kant, the great German thinker, talks about Aufklärung, kind of, I don't know, clearing of light or whatever. You see people talking again and again about light, obviously the secret society, the Illuminati, very Enlightenment group.

But also I always think the great Enlightenment paintings are those paintings which I know you will know and lots of listeners will know by a guy called Joseph Wright of Derby. And the most famous one, Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump, 1768. You can look it up online, an amazing painting. And people are all looking around

and they're surrounded by darkness and shadows. And from the experiments, there's this sort of fantastic glow of light. And that's how people thought of themselves in the 18th century. They thought what has gone before was darkness and shadow and superstition. And we are leading the 18th century. They thought what has gone before was darkness and shadow and superstition, and we are leading the world into light. And I think key to the sense

of the Enlightenment is a sense that before that, the previous 1700 years were all about darkness and night and sort of foolishness and ignorance. Now, I'm sure you will say that that is based on a colossal and utterly misleading stereotype, won't you? No, because I think that... No. I think a sense that people are in darkness and they have to be brought into light has been a kind of abiding theme of European civilisation since the coming of Christianity.

Yeah, but they thought that people in 1200 or something were living in darkness, but you don't think they were living in darkness, do you? I mean, you're not one of these people who... Because some people say, oh, before the Enlightenment, all was medievalism and foolishness, and people lived in huts and doled themselves in mud, and they didn't care about science.

And that's obviously rubbish, to my mind. I think there was lots of science. There was lots of intellectual experiments and discovery. I think there's almost nothing about the Enlightenment that doesn't have medieval roots. And I would say, you know, what I'm saying is that the very idea of worrying that people are in darkness and they need to be brought into light is absolutely constant.

So the 12th century reformers, that's exactly what they're doing you know they it's the 12th century reformers who come up with the word modernitas the idea that uh modernity is equated with light you know this isn't something that comes that's invented in the 18th century yeah it's it it has its roots in in the process of reform in the 12th century. But they come to believe that they've invented it. And that idea has lasted. So people now, you know, you'll open the Guardian or the Times and there'll be a column saying, well, we are standing for enlightenment values against the medieval barbarism of the Taliban or whoever.

So in other words, we've completely imbibed that enlightenment sense of itself. And we don't even question it now. Well, but I think that there have been three great convulsive processes where the ambition of kind of, I guess, kind of intellectual elites to reform the world has generated a revolutionary process. One of which is 11th and 12th century, where essentially you get the medieval church, the Roman church. And I would say that Catholics today still look back to that as an exemplification of darkness being banished by light. You have it with the Reformation. And I would say that believing Protestants likewise would see the Reformation as absolutely a process of enlightenment. And then you have what we call the Enlightenment. And I would say that kind of liberal, secular, atheist, agnostic, whatever, look back to the Enlightenment.

So those three processes seem to me absolutely, you know, they are obviously each one in turn is a reaction to what has gone before. But they also are obeying very, very similar and identifiable. They're repeating the formulas, basically. Yes, exactly. OK, so that raises Owen Williams's question. He says, what did the Enlightenment do for Western intellectual progress that the Renaissance didn't? And that's a really good question because I was thinking, it's only who I was thinking about, I was thinking about Shakespeare.

So Shakespeare is obviously a Renaissance figure, but in some ways he feels like a very kind of proto-Enlightenment figure as well, doesn't he? He's got a sense of himself clearly as part of a wider, sophisticated European orbit. He's looking back to the classical world. There's lots of stuff about kind of, you know, he's obviously thinking through things. Somebody like Hamlet is using the power of reason. So Shakespeare does seem a very proto-Enlightenment figure, even though we wouldn't put him in that. So is there a difference, Tom, between the Enlightenment and the Renaissance? And and is the enlightenment doing something different but again the renaissance is

an incredibly slippery term and what we call the renaissance you know kind of whatever 15th century florence um but the the idea of looking back to the classical world and finding things there that are worthy of bringing back to life is something that's going on, you know, at least from the time of Charlemagne. And so in a sense, the Enlightenment is a process of Renaissance because you have, you know, the way in which many of the leading Enlightenment figures in their kind of ambition to shove Christianity to one side claim to be the heirs, say, of Socrates or whoever. It's another form of Renaissance. But there is, okay, I accept that this is a whole massive continuum and that we just are dividing it up slightly artificially and putting labels on it.

But people at the time had a sense of ferment, didn't they? They had a sense of time, intellectual history accelerating, and a sense of ideas being swapped in a way they weren't being swapped before, and that they're living it. That's why they talk about themselves as Les Lumiere, as enlightened. It's why they're... And there's a particular kind of vocabulary, isn't there? I mean, even Edmund Burke,

who's often seen as a sort of counter-Enlightenment figure, because he's the father of conservatism, talks about when he writes to the electors of Bristol and he says, I owe you my light and judgment and my conscience. And he's using a lot of kind of Enlightenment words and reason and science. I mean, those things do make it feel different. Even just the tone and the sort of the flavour of it

feels a little bit different than, let's say, the ferment of ideas in the early 16th century. Okay, so they're not using the word science, and certainly not in English, because the word science doesn't take on the meaning that it does until the late 19th century. And I think that there is a tendency, which is to kind of identify the sense of a war between religion and science, which emerges in the late 19th century back onto the 18th century. And undoubtedly that's the case because Voltaire again, in particular, is brilliant at picking on, say, Galileo. He enshrines Galileo as an example of an enlightened figure who is silenced by a repressive apparatus of the Catholic Church.

And so this gets reconstructed in the late 19th century as an example of this kind of timeless war between religion and science. But those categories are not seen as mutually opposed in quite the same way. So there's maybe an argument that the Enlightenment has slightly been invented by Victorian writers, do you think? I think absolutely. I think our modern understanding of the 21st century is one that's been massively mediated by what's gone between the 18th century and now. Okay, that all sounds right. But reason, I mean, again, reason. So it's often, again, the Enlightenment is often described as the age of reason. Yes. But that's a very old-fashioned way of seeing it. And the relationship of the leading Enlightenment figures to reason is incredibly ambivalent and contested. So Kant's great work is the critique of pure reason.

Hume famously says that reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions. Well, so this raises an interesting question about the difference between continental enlightenment and, let's say, an Anglo-Saxon enlightenment. So there's always been this idea that the continental, you know, which people like me love to trade in, such a thing, is all about being sceptical and empirical and rooted in kind of common sense, Dr. Johnson kicking his rock or whatever and saying that he's therefore proved matter exists and all this sort of stuff. Do you think there is a difference?

Do you think that there is a kind of Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism going on and that the French are talking about one thing and we're talking about something different? So I think the fundamental division is not between, say, Britain and the continent, but between essentially Protestant countries and Catholic countries. Right.

So I think that, say, in England, in Scotland, in the Dutch Republic, by and large, although there are exceptions, Spinoza being the most obvious, the process of enlightenment is conservative. It tends to go with the grain of the establishment. It doesn't aim to overthrow it. it um i think in france catholic country the leading figures of the of the enlightenment are much more um much more confrontational yeah the spies about so they're spiky aren't they yeah much yeah uh or diderot you know who, who kind of writes the Encyclopédie. That was most beautiful French. That was like Peter Sellers doing Anticluso.

I know. Well, I was about to pronounce it in the English way and I suddenly am slamming on the brakes. Chief Inspector Diderot. Chief Inspector Diderot. So Diderot is an overt atheist. Voltaire, I mean, vehemently detests Christianity. He famously says that if God didn't exist, we'd have to invent him.

And he expresses it in a way that you would, I'm sure, entirely approve. It would confirm your darker suspicions of the snobbery of French intellectuals. He says that he doesn't believe in Christian nonsense, but he wants his, you know, his tailor, his servants and his wife to believe in God, because otherwise he'll be cheated or cuckolded.

That's so Virginia Woolf, isn't it? Yes. Yes. So, and of course, you know, Voltaire has this,

this famous letter that he writes in 1764, where he, he, he kind of predicts that the enlightenment, the blaze of the enlightenment will kind of create a great ferment and that the younger generations are incredibly lucky because they're going to see great things, amazing things are going to happen. And Voltaire and Diderot, we cannot help but now see them in the context of the revolution that's going to come. But that's that idea, isn't it, that they are more radical and more abstract and more idealistic and that Protestant thinkers tend to be more conservative. But for example, historians like Roy Porter say, but that's because the Enlightenment has been successful

in, let's say, Britain, that it's embedded, that that kind of thinking is embedded in kind of political circles, in Whiggish circles. And so they don't have to be confrontational. So people like, you know, I was just trying to think of, you know, you think of some of the great figures. I mean, Jonathan Swift, Edward Gibbon, Burke, Hume, Locke, Hobbes. You know, there's a great list of British Enlightenment thinkers.

Adam Smith, all the Scottish. Well, you say British. I mean, I think the Scottish and the English Enlightenment are very distinctive. So if we just look specifically, so question from Michael Taylor, great historian, friend of the show. He asked, Scotland had an Enlightenment, but did England? Well, Scotland, okay, so I have a very firm answer to this, Tom. Do you, Dr. Johnson?

Scotland, understandably, has a very strong sense of having had an Enlightenment, and absolutely rightly so you know people like adam smith um are you know some of the great thinkers of early modern modern western um sort of culture they and it's understandable that a small country like scotland especially one that's now in the 21st century that is becoming much more uh seeing itself as distinct from England, is very keen to celebrate that. England never talks about having an English Enlightenment, but that doesn't mean that there weren't English Enlightened thinkers. So of course there are. I mentioned Gibbon. Dr. Johnson is nothing if not an Enlightenment figure with his dictionary and his

club and all that sort of carry on. I mean, I think it's undeniable that England has an Enlightenment, but because there's less to kick against, because they're not kicking against the grain, because they are going with the grain, there's less of a sense of them as a movement because they don't have to have that sense because they're not outsiders. They're part of the establishment.

But isn't it also, and the English say this throughout the 18th century with a tone of immense smugness, which I'm now going to repeat. Yeah, do. Basically, the kind of the key, you know, the people that people in the Enlightenment look back to,

and this absolutely includes French philosophes, Voltaire preeminently, are looking to figures of the English 17th century. So Bacon, Francis Bacon. Yeah, Francis Bacon and the scientific method, exactly. Newton.

Yeah, massive. Locke. All of them, absolutely massive figures that get enshrined by 18th century thinkers. Well, Shakespeare. Voltaire was obsessed with Shakespeare. Yeah, but Shakespeare's different because Shakespeare is condemned

for not obeying the kind of classical regularities. But Bacon, Newton and Locke are all massive, massive figures. And then you have the Glorious Revolution, which you can debate. I mean, the views in Scotland and Ireland on how glorious it is would be contested. But in England, it comes to bed down and it embeds an idea of the english constitution yeah which of course as one as one that yes that that that kind of um enables enlightened values to flourish yeah and and so a crucial part of the 18th century enlightenment is anglomania it's a kind of looking to england as an absolute model i completely agree with you tom i think so if you see one of the great creations of the enlightenment is the american constitution

and the the american republic itself then um that is informed by the ideas of the french thinker montesquieu the idea of the separation of powers and so on. And he thought he'd got that from Britain, from the English model. I mean, he was wrong. He slightly misunderstood the English model. But his Anglomania was what he then transported. Anglomanie. Anglomanie. Very good, Inspector Clouseau.

Right. I think on that patriotic note, we should go to a break. Should you go and practice your French and then we'll reconvene and shed some more light on the world of darkness and superstition after the break. A bientot. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment.

It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. hello welcome back to the rest is history we are talking the enlightenment um and when we left we were being very patriotic dominic so i think we should we should slightly um we should allow the clouds slightly to to blot out the blaze of of the sun and go and begin with a question from native classicist yeah who writes as a native

american i was only aware of thomas jefferson calling us merciless indian savages listening to gibbons the history of the decline and fall of the roman empire on audiobook he describes countless peoples as savages can you discuss the 18th century european mindset so this feeds in very well to a kind of sense that is also very popular at the present. You know, there are people who enshrine the Enlightenment as absolutely the seedbed of liberalism and everything. But also there are those who argue that it essentially has created all the worst in the modern world, that it's underpinned Western colonialism and racism. Scientific racism. So what's your take on that? It's underpinned Western colonialism and racism. Scientific racism.

So what's your take on that? Well, the Enlightenment clearly coincides with the great peak of the slave trade, doesn't it? And there's no doubt that there was always a darker side to the Enlightenment as there was a dark side to all ages. I don't think that necessarily means the Enlightenment is uniquely depraved. But I think it's certainly true that when you think about scientific racism, for example, the idea that the world is divided into different – humanity is divided into different races, some with different achievements, different accomplishments, and so on, that are innate. That obviously is informed by an age that loves to classify

and loves to divide things up and label them, and is also an age in which a lot of these people and their associates are making tons of money from the triangular trade with the colonists. So I think that side of it is undoubtedly there. And there is undoubtedly, I mean, I'm sure you all have a lot to say about this, that there is this obsession and absolute fascination with the idea of the savage. And you see that in Robinson Crusoe, you see that in Rousseau, the idea of the noble savage, people in a state of nature. And they're absolutely obsessed with this idea, with the tension between civilization and barbarism or savagery. And I think Gibbon writing about all that in The Decline and Fall,

that is merely one example of, you know, a huge sort of range of stuff. Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the ways in which, say, Voltaire or Hume, both of whom are some of the more radical enemies of Christianity, one of the ways in which they're able to liberate themselves from the heritage of Christianity is that they the ways in which they're able to liberate themselves from the heritage of Christianity is that they don't feel the need to subscribe to the Genesis story, the idea that all humans have descended from Adam and Eve and therefore have one single source. So Voltaire in particular is a great enthusiast of the idea of polygenesis, the idea that different races have emerged at different points of time. And that that of course i mean he's he's pretty racist he he is able to kind of rank

races according to ability and it seems that hume does the same i mean there's there's this kind of controversy over hume that he's been cancelled yeah he's been cancelled by edinburgh university i mean he was the great you know i mean he's, he's the titanic figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. I mean, what you would say in their defence is they don't know where that racism is going to lead. But at the same time, you would in the case, the prosecutors would say, but they do know that the trade in slaves is going on. Yeah, but so Hume, I mean, Hume is not in favour of the slave trade. And it's unclear why he says, you know, Africans are inferior to white people. And he seems to, I mean, it's unclear why he thinks that.

But he did think that. Yeah. And I think that, you know, I would imagine that what underlies it is, you know, as I say, he doesn't feel any obligation to hold this idea that all human beings are essentially created in the image of God. On the specifics of Native Americans, actually, a lot of the Enlightenment figures are very hostile to European colonialism. They regard it as very pernicious. You have William Robertson, again, one of the great figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, historian who writes History of the Americas. And he brilliantly describes the Aztecs and the Incas as polished nations, which is the highest praise that any figure in the Enlightenment can offer.

You're a polished nation. I mean, that's absolutely the best. And he describes the Native Americans as being like the ancient Britons. So the key there is that he's not in favour of savagery. And Gibbon does the same. I mean, Gibbon has great fun in describing, say, the Scots as being cannibals and utter savages. But he's doing it in the full consciousness that Scotland is now the great centre of enlightenment. So the philosopher, with the exception of Rousseau, tend not to be in favour of people they would describe as savages.

But I think most of them see this as part of the kind of the Enlightenment universalism, that everyone can become enlightened. And as examples of that, they would show the development of, say, Britain's from the savagery of the Roman period to the enlightened, polished state of Britain in the 18th century. Yeah. Although this is then quite different, isn't it, from Rousseau? Rousseau deplores what he sees as kind of, what's he called, a civil man or something like that. He thinks very badly of the kind of process of civilisation.

He thinks we should get back to a kind of state of grace that we're born in before civilisation has had its corrupting effect. So he's the man that you associate more than anybody else with the idea of the noble savage, don't you? Well, I mean, that kind of, in one sense, goes back to Locke, who argues that there are no innate ideas, that each human being is a kind of tabula rasa, a blank slate. Locke is also a human rights man, isn't he? The idea of inalienable human rights. But also this is, get ready with your drinking game this is also framed by a kind of christian argument that goes it was going to be cricket i thought it was going to be cricket it wasn't because because there's this argument between augustine and pelagius um at the you know the uh in the um fourth or fifth century about whether are humans fallen?

Are they naturally evil? Yeah. Is there a kind of taint of sin or are they naturally good? And Pelagius argues they're naturally good. Augustine argues, no, you know,

we're all steeped in sin and it's the Augustinian vision that wins out. I think a crucial part of the Enlightenment is a reaction against that and a kind of return to the Pelagian idea

that actually we are naturally good. Yes. So Rousseau famously, man is born free, everywhere is in chains. But you get it with Diderot as well, who argues that humans are not naturally evil, that it's bad education, it's pressures in society, it's evil laws that serve to corrupt us and that's absolutely you know that's clearly a crucial part of what feeds into modern political argument i mean there's a kind of buried argument there between augustine and plagiarism between i guess it would be kind of rousseau and hobbes wouldn't it yeah it is buried there life is nasty brutish and short versus you know let's

all be kind um but of course famously you would love this russo is an absolute horror he's actually i've actually dug out your diderot said about russo false as vain as satan ungrateful cruel hypocritical and wicked he sucked ideas from me used them himself and then affected to despise me let's hope i never say that about you, Tom. Yeah. It'd be a horror, wouldn't it? So, I mean, by and large, you know, we talked about the philosophical, the Enlightenment figures are fun.

I mean, they're kind of entertaining people to be with. Rousseau is not. So he goes to stay with Hume. And Hume is a famously charming man. I mean, he's great company. Everybody loves Hume is a famously charming man. I mean, he's great company. Everybody loves Hume, even people who are shocked by his atheistical views. But Rousseau and Hume, even Hume couldn't get on with Rousseau. But Rousseau is troubled, isn't he?

Because he has a dreadful problem about going to the toilet. Yes. Did you know this? He has some issue. I did. It's kind of a bit unclear. Is it that he can't go? And he just is storing up vast quantities of urine? And that makes him very uncomfortable.

And so he doesn't go out or something. Is that what it is? Well, what I do know is that Boswell, the biographer of Dr. Johnson, he goes on a tour and he goes to visit Rousseau. And Rousseau is always trying to get away from him by going on the toilet. Right. And Boswell follows him into by going on the toilet. Right. And, and Boswell follows him into the toilet on several occasions. And what happens? What's going on in there?

Exactly. What's happening? Yeah. Also Diderot. Do you know, um, what Diderot blamed the greatest cause of flatulence on? Rousseau?

The potato. Really? Yeah. Well, the potato, I suppose it was a relative novelty. relative novelty um uh probably say he was not a fish and chips man clearly no no absolutely not um anyway listen uh we mustn't get into let's do some questions let's do um so let's do jeff jeff let's do jeff and caffeine jeff says what's

the role of caffeine in the era's narrative do you want to answer that tom what Tom? What is the role of caffeine? No, I think you should answer that. That's very much you. I think it's very important. And I think, actually, if you put England back into the story, England and Holland, I suppose, back into the story of the Enlightenment, from which they're often left out, then caffeine looms very large. Because, of course, coffeehouses are one of the paradigmatic public spaces where people are getting information, reading newspapers, they're swapping ideas.

So caffeine absolutely matters. And I think particularly in England. I think in Scotland, it's the universities that are the powerhouses of the Enlightenment. And I think in France, it's the court, particularly the court of Frederick the Great, where Volta goes. And then they have Spadaglia bust up and he has to leave

so I think it's courts universities and coffee houses and they're different in each country I think that's absolutely right so Gordon Smith asked about Scotland the Scottish Enlightenment where does it come from

why does it come from such a small country you've kind of answered that haven't Why does it come from such a small country? You've kind of answered that, haven't you, Tom? I mean, Scotland is a small country, but it's also part of a much bigger enterprise at this point. So Scotland and the cities are enjoying massive economic growth. But as you said, the universities are absolutely crucial to the Scottish Enlightenment, aren't they? Yeah, unlike England, where we only have Oxford and Cambridge, which are at their most kind of port-soaked. Yes, that's true.

Yeah. That's just sort of old clergymen contemplating the meaninglessness of life. Snuff-stained waistcoats. Dusty wigs. Yeah. Okay. Brilliant. So we've solved the causes of Scottish Enlightenment there.

Pat Roberts. Pat Roberts. Is it possible to have a the causes of Scottish Enlightenment there. Pat Roberts. Pat Roberts. Is it possible to have a good drama about the Enlightenment when compared with Tudors and Nazis, it's just blokes in a room writing books? Well, that's a very glamorous pastime, I would say. E.G. Pat Roberts mentions Amadeus, Barry Lyndon, The Great on TV, a royal affair about Enlightened absolutism in Denmark.

I'm not aware of that series or film or whatever but um could you have a the great have you seen the great no it's catherine the great catherine the great is it good is it great i think it's hilarious i mean it has absolutely tangential relationship to right i mean it's more like black adder than it is okay barry linden but it's very funny there was a very funny episode where, was it actually Voltaire? Completely ahistorically turns up and is Catherine the Great is all over him and decides he's very boring. And sends him away.

Yeah. Is he played by a comedy Frenchman? I can't remember. I'd love if they got Gérard Depardieu to play him. He's too large. Yeah, but that would be the joke there, wouldn't it? He'd be completely wrong. What about John Adams?

Have you seen John Adams? That's a brilliant series and very enlightened. I mean, he's a very enlightened figure, as are Jefferson and Franklin and all the other people that crop up in the series. Have you seen that, Tom? No, I haven't. Paul Giamatti is John Adams, and he's very good.

But if you haven't seen it, there's no point talking about it. But what I would like to say about, about Franklin, inventor of the lightning rod. Yeah. But there was another inventor of the lightning rod. He was a Czech Catholic priest. Was there? So Benjamin Franklin has,

he's done a bit of a Russo. He's stolen, he's sucked. No, he hasn't stolen it, but, but, but it's kind of interesting that,

that one of them, you know, is enshrined as a, yes, of course it's kind of interesting that one of them you know is enshrined as a yes of course a kind of model of progress whereas the fact

that there was a Czech Catholic priest is slightly buried okay yeah well that I mean the faith generally gets

written out of this I mean I don't want to set you set you off again but you will set me off but faith generally gets written out

of this story doesn't it because a lot of these people are fascinated by religion. Some of them are very religious themselves. Most of them are.

I mean, the atheists are an absolute minority. But that kind of gets suppressed. So what people now do is talk about atheists and deism and that other side of things. Well, deism, by definition, isn't atheism. Yeah, of course. Of course. Okay, how about Lloyd? Now, Lloyd asks what I would call the John Gray question. Brilliant thinker, John Gray, essayist for the New Statesman. He says, while Western liberalism is often described as part of an enlightenment project, how much can we say that the competitor ideologies of communism or fascism are also enlightenment projects and of course the thinker john gray would say they absolutely are they are the they are the kind of logical development of enlightenment ideas about

reason and the general will and these kinds of things so what do you think about communism and fascism tom enlightenment well you know because we've done we've done episodes on them yeah so and you know that i you i would trace its origins much further back than the enlightenment would you i would say there are enlightenment certainly. Certainly communism is an Enlightenment project, isn't it? Post-Enlightenment project? It's a post-Christian project. Post-Christian, of course. That's another drink on.

That's another tick on the bingo card. And talking of which, Diogo Morgado, does the Muslim world need a kind of Enlightenment today? The power of the religion in everyday life is staggering, something that isn't seen in the West. I think you should answer that question. Okay, I think that's a really interesting question. We're planning to do an episode on Napoleon in Egypt, which is really, I mean, it's a fascinating episode

because you talked about Napoleon as an enlightenment despot. It's the first meeting between the Enlightenment and the world of Islam. What I think that question highlights, and I think that the episode of Napoleon in Egypt definitely does, is the degree to which, as I've been saying throughout, the Enlightenment is a very culturally contingent phenomenon. It's rooted in the specifics of Western Europe and specifically in deeply rooted Christian assumptions. And it's when it comes up against, say, a civilization as rich and complex and ancient as the Muslim world that you come to recognize that. And today you see that people often talk about the enlightenment values in the context of Islam.

They say, I'm a defender of the enlightened values and that therefore entitles me to do draw cartoons of Mohammed or whatever, or pose the veil or something like that. And it highlights the way in which the enlightenment like islam and like the christianity that it emerges from is universalist in its scope yeah of course it is people talk about exporting enlightenment values don't they absolutely and so that thing that i said you know where voltaire is sneering at the church fathers because they want to convert the whole world to their way of thinking

that's exactly what the enlightenment is is all about. And so therefore, what do you do with something like Islam that is similarly universalist, similarly rich and complex? It's very indigestible. And really, if you're an Enlightener, if you're an enthusiast for the Enlightenment, then of course you think that the world should should should have an enlightenment in exactly the same way that if you're a de facto christian you think that muslims should become christian or indeed if you're a muslim you think that that the rest of the world should become muslim it's it's and you know we we still live in the 21st century in this kind of tension between the rival universalisms of what we could used to call christendom and the Muslim world. Yeah, I pretty much agree with that, Tom.

I think the key thing is defenders of the self-declared enthusiasts for the Enlightenment often don't accept and don't see what I think you rightly say, that the Enlightenment is itself culturally contingent, that it comes out of a particular world at a particular place in time, and that its claims to universal human values are themselves rooted in something. And to me, it's as though they can't see that that is itself, you know, a universalizing project, just as you say.

You know, that sort of thing of like, let's go to Afghanistan, let's go to Iraq with our copies of Candide. Yes. And we're doing it in the name of universal human rights. Yeah. I sort of think, why can't you see why to them, to the people you're claiming for China, which he sees as a kind of enlightened despotism that should be a model for Europeans and doesn't have Christianity and therefore is highly to be applauded. But he knows nothing about China whatsoever. And then he meets with a Jesuit who's been in China, who's been at the imperial court and corrects him on his, you know, misapprehensions.

So Volta volta has a massive strop about this and starts trying the india as the model of it that's funny has he been to india no of course no no there's nothing about it no there's nothing about it at all so he's basically volta volta is a great enthusiast for rejecting his idea of what of how a state should be organized you know in china or india or whatever uh's funny. I think we have we sort of we done the Enlightenment now? There's one more question, which somebody asked online. I've forgotten who it is. I'm terribly sorry if this is your question, but I thought it was fascinating about Freemasonry and about Freemasonry and the Enlightenment.

And so many of these people were Freemasons. Voltaire was a Freemason. Montesquieu was a Freemason. Diderot, Goethe, Mozart, Benjamin Franklin, who you talked about, was a very were Freemasons. Voltaire was a Freemason. Montesquieu was a Freemason. Diderot, Goethe, Mozart. Benjamin Franklin, who you talked about, was a very keen Freemason. And, of course, Masonic imagery appears on the dollar and in sort of the American Republican, the iconography of the American Republic.

And I think Freemasonry was absolutely central to the Enlightenment. I mean, a Masonic lodge was like the sort of Soho house, the trendy private members club of the Enlightened world. So Masonic lodges would be established all over Europe. And again, it's something that starts in Scotland and in England, which sort of reinforces that point that we always think of the Enlightenment as continental, but that all these people basically belong to Anglo-Scottscottish clubs which are their masonic lodges so are you basically saying the enlightenment is essentially british it's british british masonic conspiracy

i think that's what i'm that's what i'm basically saying um no i think it is i think it's a patriotic note on which to end it is neat but i tell you what we should do though tom which we haven't done which we said we would do who's your favorite and least favorite enlightened enlightenment thinkers um i'm very fond of diderot what because you like encyclopedias he was he was a very kind brilliant generous man um i i think the the scale of his his kind of intellectual inquiries is just phenomenal. I think he kind of is a contradiction to the idea that the Enlightenment was just about classifying and splitting and dividing. He was fascinated by the gaps, by the kind of areas where things didn't quite fit.

So he's very, very sophisticated. And he was very fond of beavers. The furry kind. And he was reduced to tears by the way that the beavers were being wiped out by trappers in North America. And he said, how can people persecute this gentle, appealing, pitiable animal?

And I think that's the Enlightenment at its absolute best. Well, I can't improve on that, actually. I'm just not going to say anything. Okay. Well, you can come in with your worst. Who's your... Oh, my worst is Rousseau. Obviously, I think Rousseau is a terrible man. I mean,

we've sort of advertised how bad Rousseau was. Edmund Burke. I didn't mention Edmund Burke on Rousseau, but obviously a great... I think a great product in the Enlightenment. One of my favourite Enlightenment thinkers. Burke said of Rousseau, he entertained no principle but vanity with this vice he was possessed to a degree little short of madness.

And obviously, you know, Rousseau slightly... If I was Rousseau, I would be looking at the French Revolution and thinking, you know, it doesn't look great for me, my reputation. You know, where did I go wrong? But of course, Rousseau was so vain that he would never have done that. He was a terrible father as well, wasn't he? Yeah, I mean, he's just a terrible man. That business about separating kids from their parents and educating them and you know all that stuff

he's very much the kind of the ancestor of the um the kind of person on twitter who says be kind be kind and then you've found that they're behaving appallingly yeah they say be kind and then you find they've written to your employer to get you sacked. That's exactly who Rousseau is. I can think of so many real current 21st century Rousseaus, but I'm not going to name them because I don't want to end up in a libel court. And so on that note, I think we really should end.

Don't you, Tom? Yeah. I think we've brought enormous light to this murky topic and nobody ever need talk about the enlightenment again, because we've done it. Nature and nature's laws lay hidden night. God said that the rest is history be and always light. Bye-bye.

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