HISTOCRACY - Philosophes: What Revolt were they responsible for? // French Revolution

WAS IT THE PHILOSOPHES WHO USHERED IN THE REIGN OF TERROR?

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The Enlightenment is a term retroactively given to a period between the persistent failures of European monarchists and theocrats vying for control of both populace and purse, and the age of industrialization.

It can reasonably be seen as the child of the Renaissance, furthered by another century of printing presses and the advancement in the distribution of ideas that governments could not control. In France (and for this context, Switzerland, as we understand these countries today), a unique cradle was developing. Protestantism, lacking a central authority like the Vatican, continued to fracture. Puritans migrated west to the Americas. Catholicism, still reeling from the centuries of persecution it inflicted, persisted with the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, as active as ever before. Culture was advancing beyond the Church, in large because religious authoritarianism was simply exhausted by vice of its own empire building and defending.

Voltaire mustered an army of wit, blazing the trail for tolerance in an age subdued by centuries of religious persecution and monarchical arrogance across Europe. Carrying the minds of Locke, Milton, Shakespeare, Newton and many others with him as both allies and arsenal, Voltaire took on the corruption of religious organization as he saw them.Rousseau, a wandering philosophe, found himself among the right people at the right time, though his personal failings led to eventual estrangement from his peers and empowerment to his intellectual kin. He wanted to teach France how to rear children, despite failing with his own. He proposed significant societal reorganization without fully considering the consequences if society adopted his ideas.

Denis Diderot, a once-in-a-century autodidact, plotted poetry and deism like his contemporary Voltaire. He was deeply committed to bringing the mechanical arts and sciences to the public, helping to catalog them into the monumental compendium known as the Encyclopedia. His work, "Philosophical Thoughts," published mid-century, was poignant in its call for balance between passions and reason, reflecting the century's transition from one to the other, which would nevertheless cause both to erupt in conflict.

Jean le Rond d'Alembert, co-contributor to the Encyclopedia, took the work seriously in tone, writing, and the travel required to engage with fellow contributors, including Voltaire and Rousseau. A tremendous mathematical talent, d'Alembert abandoned Cartesian principles in favor of Newtonian physics, advancing fluid mechanics, motion, and music theory.

You wouldn't call these intellects the founding fathers of the French Englightenment, you would perhaps best think of them as a bon vivant band: brilliant, ebullient in their own character, yet fiercely independent, causing strife implicitly and explicitly when not performing. Also, their works were largely suppressed by both the French Monachy and the Vatican, leaving for a more subversive, 'gutter-Rousseau' literature to fester and stalk the alleyways, coffee-shops and undergrounds of the Third-Estate, paving the way to a passionate display of defiance, rather than an elegant, 'Enlightened', Salon-fodder depiction that the philosophes so frequently are misrepresented as directly influencing. '83(d'Alembert) '77 (Rousseau) '84(Diderot) '78 (Voltaire) all died within the same 10-year span, their voices now confined to only the books they wrote, quieted by censors and non-existent to the illiterate, moving to the backdrop. To the forefront, more radical spirits would arise.

Commonly, there's a belief that a primary ingredient that leading to the Reign of Terror was the 'atheistic' messaging found in the literary works of Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and d'Alembert, who are considered keystones of the Enlightenment.

However, this is a distortion created by the lens of modernity looking back, as it is impossible to discern the record of history in the moment. Every epoch is a hostage to the hysteria of its era.

History isn't written by the winners, but the survivors. Arguably, each of the prominent figures from that time survived together, separately, based on their own merits, whims, fortunes, and luck.

***ORIGINAL SOURCES***

Slide 1:AN ESSAY UPON THE CIVIL WARS OF FRANCE (Voltaire)

https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_an-essay-upon-the-civil-_voltaire_1727/page/n39/mode/2up?q=At+last+Henry+tired&view=theater

LETTERS CONCERNING THE ENGLISH NATION (Voltaire)

https://archive.org/details/lettersconcernin00voltuoft/page/34/mode/1up

Slide 2:PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHTS (Diderot)

https://archive.org/download/earlyphilosophic00dide/earlyphilosophic00dide.pdf

Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (Rousseau)DISCOURSE ON THE ARTS AND SCIENCES (Rousseau)

https://archive.org/details/rousseau-discourse-on-the-arts-sciences-gourevitch/page/n3/mode/2upSlide 3:THE SPIRIT OF THE LAWS (Montesquieu)https://archive.org/details/spiritoflaws01montuoft/page/n51/mode/2up

CANDIDE (Voltaire)

https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_candid-or-all-for-the-_voltaire_1759/mode/2up

Slide 4:PRELIMINARY SPEECH (D'Lambert)

http://enccre.academie-sciences.fr/encyclopedie/section/S01-85e1e524ff91/?p=v1-p19&Slide 5:DE L'ESPRIT (Helvétius)https://archive.org/details/delespritoressa02helvgoog/page/n6/mode/2up

https://archive.org/details/delespritoressa02helvgoog/page/11/mode/1up?view=theater

THE SOCIAL CONTRACT (J.J. Rousseau)

https://archive.org/details/rousseau-discourse-on-the-arts-sciences-gourevitch/page/n1/mode/2up

Slide 6:

IDEES REPUBLICAINES (Voltaire)

https://archive.org/details/republican-ideas-english-voltaire/page/n7/mode/2up?view=theater

Slide 7:

GAZETIER CUIRASSE

https://archive.org/details/legazetiercuira00moragoog/page/n12/mode/1up?view=theater

https://archive.org/details/logesdemadamege00logoog/page/n7/mode/2up