The Enlightenment

by Norman Hampson

Armed with the insights of the scientific revolution, the men of the Enlightenment set out to free mankind from its age-old cocoon of pessimism and superstition and establish a more reasonable world of experiment and progress. Yet by the 1760s, this optimism about man and society had almost evaporated. In the works of Rousseau, Kant and Goethe, there was discernible a new inner voice, and an awareness of individual uniqueness which had eluded their more self-confident predecessors. The stage was set for the revolutionary crisis and the rise of Romanticism. In this book, Norman Hampson follows through certain dominant themes in the Enlightenment, and describes the contemporary social and political climate, in which ideas could travel from the salons of Paris to the court of Catherine the Great - but less easily from a master to his servant. On such vexed issues as the role of ideas in the "rise of the middle class" he provides a new and realistic approach linking intellectual and social history.

Genres: History, Philosophy, Nonfiction, France, 20th Century, Religion, 18th Century

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Norman Hampson was the Professor of History at the University of York from 1974 to 1989 and fellow of the British Academy in 1980. He specialised in the French Revolution and European Enlightenment. During the Second World War Hampson's service in the Royal Navy included two years as liaison officer with the Free French Navy.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

The best thing, I felt, about this book is the sense of a long conversation unfurling across time between many people.

Hampson's argument is that the Enlightenment was marked first by a shift from seeing existence as governed by a wrathful God to a more cheerful, relaxed sense of Providence shaping our lives for the best. Then, this in turn gave way to pessimism and determinism. After the French Revolution there were in Hampson's view, two distinct reactions to Enlightenment thought - one to deny it, and to seek to limit education and stress the authority of religion, the other from Rousseau's conception of the general will via German Idealism which moved towards a sense of history as an inevitable process.

These trends in Hampson's opinion were shaped by the political climate. The years of European peace from the 1720s to 1740s and moderate prosperity giving rise to the intellectual optimism of the early period, while later conflict shaped the pessimism, with the Revolution of 1789 frightening others into political reaction.

The downside to this view as the author points out, is the shift from optimism to pessimism wasn't quite so clear cut chronologically, and the frequent admiration of ancient Sparta suggests that some Enlightenment writers were partial to some vigorous manly warfare and as a consequence rather strictly ordered societies which would produce tough fighters and tough mothers to give birth to them and bring them up toughly, at least in theory. This we might see as indicating a fundamentally bleak world view - there will be violence, so the most wise society will ensure it has a violent and warlike population so that it is the one doing the kicking rather than being kicked, and a rather totalitarian view - the purpose of the individual is to serve the whole. All a long way from a cheerful tolerant pursuit of human flourishing. Even from as small and as slim a book as this one sees that the Enlightenment was a complex phenomenon, not to be summed up and casually wheeled out as the embodiment of intellectual niceness and progress. Or if you do s, you may well find the views and opinions of varied Enlightenment thinkers sinking their teeth into your soft hind quarters.

Consolidating the two chapters on the political background would have allowed more space to discussing individual books and particular responses to them, but otherwise it read well as an introduction to the Enlightenment.

There was an interesting sense of how books like Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations have been left like rock-pools sparkling with Pangloss even when the tide of optimism was out. The assumption that the invisible hand of God, or social order will produce the best of all possible results is precisely the sense of optimism that Hampden sees as typical of one, and only one of several, strand of Enlightenment thought.

However this - and the same also goes for Enlightenment pessimism and determinism - was little affected by experimentation. The long sense of pre-historical time opening up through geology impacted on social and historical thinking, but the implicit possibility of better adaptation through evolution demonstrated by livestock breeders didn't impact on higher level thinking which instead saw the natural world as either unchanging or in degeneration, or in other words in a deterministic or pessimistic way. In this way we might regard much Enlightenment thought as surprisingly unenlightened and regressive.

[Xander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent essay on the Enlightenment and its connection with the French Revolution by historian Norman Hampson. Basically, there are two main points Hampson stresses throughout the book:

(1) What we call the Enlightenment was a continuous, living and evolving historical phase that started off with the results and consequences of the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century, emphasizing human rationality as a means to study nature and improve society. Gradually the emphasis on rationality made way for a new emphasis on emotion (sentiment) as the spring of human behaviour and our conscience as the principle to morality. Rousseau and Kant embody the emotive-conscious-side of the Englightenment; Montesquieu, Voltaire and Diderot embody the rational side of the Enlightenment.

(2) Contrary to popular belief, the Enlightenment was a an elitist project: the middle and lower classes weren't interested in nor capable of joining in the intellectual debates - rather, Enlightenment was more a lifestyle for people with too much time on their hands than an intellectual movement. Most books weren't even accessible to the public at the time they were written and/or published. It's mostly historians writing after the period that projected their own intellectual synthesis onto the people and times they studied... This, by the way demolishes the standard thesis that the Enlightenment was a bourgeois product, culminating in the bourgeois overthrowing church and nobility in the Revolution of 1789.

(3) A third and final remark has to do with the connection between the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Hampson stresses that there is no simple, causal explanation and while skipping over any attempt to theorize such a connection, simply describes the different reactions to it: a Roman Catholic reactionary one and a German idealist one. The former tried to turn back the Revolutionary changes while the latter used the Revolution to build collectivist utopias - the ones that did so much damage during the twentieth century...

Written and published in 1968, The Enlightenment is a rather outdated book. Also, Hampson doesn't attempt to sketch a detailed oversight of events and ideas; rather, he just offers general trends and outlines. This approach leads to a very readable book but, unfortunately, not a very insightful one. I'm no historian so I can't really comment on how his general theses have withstood the test of time, although I'd wager historians nowadays will disagree with him on details but not so much on his general ideas (?).

[Mir Bal · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the great achievements of the Enlightenment was the idea that you must understand the origin of a phenomenon in order to be able to describe what it. From its first major critics in Giambattista Vico to its completion in Georg Friedrich Hegel, this is an idea and a legacy that will forever be associated with the same even if the idea goes back much much further. Therefore, it is all the more surprising that an introduction to the Enlightenment (which is also an unabashed defense of the same) so fatally fails in this task. The task to understand where it comes from and how it came to be.

This is my first thought after reading the first chapters of Norman Hampson's book. Although it pretends to be a brief introduction, it is more of a defense. This becomes clearest in the treatment of the historiographical question. "From darkness we rise to the light." Can best summarize the thesis. From a dark barbarism based on ignorance and oppression where knowledge was not worth anything, Western civilization was lifted to something much more rational. From the dark ages to the Enlightenment. Not only is this a grave simplification (which most serious historians would now dismiss as wild fantasies), this image makes it impossible to understand the roots of the Enlightenment in medieval practice and its thought. It did not arise ex nihilo as Hampson seems to believe. But this is just a symptom of the much bigger problem with the book, which is that Hampson seems to read history backwards, from the liberal democratic ideals that he himself professes to, he reads in ideas and implications that would have been foreign to the authors thinkers of the time he is supposed to describe.

Despite these devastating errors that dismiss the book as an introduction, there is a lot of treasure in it. Good accounts of ideas and exciting explorations of the spread of ideas. The author is at his best when he describes the early natural historians of the era and his description of both the institutional and the intellectual obstacles in their path that made it almost impossible for them to take the last step to a fully developed theory of evolution. But even where Hampson is most captivating, his normative historiography overshadows his ability to treat this times and ideas as something in there own right, instead diminishing all enlightenment to a step on the path to what we are today.

Unfortunately, this big mistakes makes the book worthless for anyone who wants to understand the enlightenment. Its only lasting value is the historiographical, for those who wish to understand how the view of the subject in question has changed over time and how old notions of the Enlightenment today are as foreign to historical sciences as the Middle Ages are to Hampson.

[Caity · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel definitely got me thinking and I enjoyed it, however, the writing did not flow. I felt like I was constantly reminded I was reading a book rather than being absorbed in it.

I also do not know how much I learnt from it which is ironic because it was rich in detail but I think the author did not do a good job of explaining the information he presented.

This had potential to be great.

[Gareth Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enlightening!

I came to this book with no knowledge of philosophy or much background in 18th century European history. My interest being piqued by a radio programme on Hume. Hampon's synthesis is stunning, clear, well written and thought provoking. As a novice, I found it helpful to have my iPad by my side to distinguish between deists and material determinists. It is not a book written for the novice. Nevertheless, I found it to be an excellent introduction to a fascinating subject. Hampson's intention is to provide a synoptic overview that will encourage the reader to investigate the literature for him/herself; his intention is more than fulfilled -stunning.

[Aurélien Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Enlightenment embodied such a rich and multifaceted intellectual trend that it's quite challenging to sum it up into a short history, especially since it has to be put into a very particular socio-political context. The English historian Norman Hampson, though, who was a specialist of the era, manages here to brilliantly pull it off.

He exposes the different concepts at the core of it all (deism, materialism, empiricism, even burgeoning atheism...), while focusing, in specially dedicated and thematic chapters, on the impact of this whole new trend of thoughts upon various fields as diverse as science or economics. Beyond mere philosophy, he even succeed, skilfully, to portray the whole societal context then about to radically change by taking the whole continent by storm. Especially fascinating is how he tackles the spread of the philosophes' ideals, not only within countries, but, also, from one country to another.

Of interest too here is the Appendix; really nice because offering a list of major works from the period, besides being completed by a bibliography, which may be a bit dated by now but nevertheless remains quite solid.

Straightforward and accessible, here's an excellent introduction to what was a fascinating intellectual and cultural storm in waiting.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did not really enjoy this one. Flicked though about half of it. Also read for history degree.

[Ed Crutchley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A novice will struggle with the nitty-gritty of the ideas coming from Newton and Locke to other key protagonists such as Descartes, Voltaire, Diderot, Maupertuis, Montesquieu, Hume, Hoblach, and numerous others. However, the author paints a very readable picture of the lead-up to, ambience, and aftermath of the Enlightenment and its key thinkers as they exploited contemporary mediatic opportunities such as coffee houses and a growing printing industry in which publishers became a new breed looking for opportunity. He describes the age as one of reasonableness, as men wrestled with the growing realisation that scientific phenomena and exploration could explain what had hitherto been attributed to divine intervention. To quote, “Science . . . seemed to have dispensed with the Middle-Age need for God as a necessary factor in the explanation of the universe”. The empirical age denoted the shift between soul and body, from the belief in original sin to man being guided by beneficent providence. He makes as astonishing claim: “Most people – for the first time, perhaps, in modern history – preferred their own age to any that had gone before.” Superstition, the Inquisition, and trials for witchcraft saw their demise. Maupertuis said “If we think we know anything, this is merely because of our extreme ignorance”, and around mid-eighteenth century arrived a rescuing drive towards mind over matter, away from the domination of science and reason towards a cult of sensibility, of sentiment, emotional writing, moral duty, genius and individuality, the recognition that passion, imagination and conscience should take precedence. Instead of man having to conform with society, society should conform with man. However, clouds grew. Social order remained static, the rabble remained unenlightened, and the drive towards a truly cosmopolitan society in Europe met, for example, with the contradiction that the period was marked by a dramatic fall in the number of books printed in universal language (Latin). The arrival of wars meant that monarchies had to widen the net of taxation to include the hitherto privileged classes and the Church, there was resistance to this, and Europe descended into revolution by the educated but unprivileged classes, and eventually the masses.