Gay - The Englightenment

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Gay (date and who is he)

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1966
lover of enlightenment Crane Brinton wrote "Peter Gay likes the philosophes he writes about, and shares their basic belief in the ability to use thought to make this earth a better place."
Born in Berlin 1923 family fled to America 1941
Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University
prolific writer 26+ books
Freudian in thought, focusing on the psychosocial
Earlier work focused on Voltaire

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Gay (thesis)

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The enlightenment freed humanity from the shackles of orthodoxy allowing humanity to progress forward.
hegalian thesis (Christian), antithesis (Greco-Roman criticism), and synthesis (modern paganism)

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Gay (place in universe)

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Places himself in the middle between those who attack the enlightenment (the conservative right) and those who are too naively optimistic (liberal left). he wants to surface the complexities of the E. so as to avoid overly simplistic and unfair aversion or optimism toward it. Thus, he searches for unity and diversity and find it in the philosophes.

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Gay (philosophes)

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Gay is concerned with the philosophes. [This is contra G. Himmelfarb who contends that modernity arose from at least three different enlightenments: French (an ideology of reason), British (a sociology of virtue), and American (the politics of liberty). British and American E. didn't see religion as the enemy.]

Philosophes goal was a dialectical struggle between Christianity and paganism in order to secure independence. "Theirs was a paganism directed against their Christian inheritance and dependent upon the paganism of classical antiquity. But it was also a MODERN paganism, emancipated from classical thought as much as from Christian dogma" (xi).

Philosophes Virtues: Criticism and Power

Background: The philosophes (French for philosophers) were the intellectuals of the 18th century Enlightenment.[1] Few were primarily philosophers; rather, philosophes were public intellectuals who applied reason to the study of many areas of learning, including philosophy, history, science, politics, economics and social issues. They had a critical eye and looked for weaknesses and failures that needed improvement. They promoted a "republic of letters" that crossed national boundaries and allowed intellectuals to freely exchange books and ideas. Most philosophes were men, but some were women.

They strongly endorsed progress and tolerance, and distrusted organized religion (most were deists) and feudal institutions.[2] They faded away after the French Revolution reached a violent stage in 1793.

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Gay (Philosophe generations)

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1st (before 1750): Voltaire--anticlericalism and scientific speculation

2nd (mid-18th C.): Franklin, Buffon, Hume, Rousseau, Diderot, Condillac, Helvetius, and d'Alembert. This generation helped fuse anticlericalism and scientific into a coherent modern view of the world.

3rd (mid-late 18th C.): Holbach, Beccaria, Lessing, Jefferson, Wieland, Kant, and Turgot. All turned criticism on itself and its own works.

summary: continuity and evolution, growing radicalism

In the first century the leading philosophes had been deists and had used the vocabulary of natural law; in the second half the leaders were atheist and use the vocabulary of utility (18).