The French Revolution and Enlightenment

© Mukesh Williams


The French Revolution was a watershed in the history of hereditary imperative and political privilege. It initially began as a financial crisis and gradually went out of control as the French elite began to seek political reform at the expense of the French monarchy. It rode on the twin wings of the American Revolution and the Enlightenment ideas. The first phase of the French Revolution saw emergence of constitutional government and the curtailment of the privileges of the Old Regime. The next phase saw the rise of radicalism in response to the threat of foreign invasion and the various maneuvers of the King, legislators and people. The radical phase became intense when Robespierre initiated the Regime de la terreur. At last a French general Napoleon Bonaparte seized power and initiated an unstable conservative government.

MARQUIS DE CONDORCET
In July 1793 Marquis de Condorcet wrote his now famous essay Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progres de l’espirit humain or The Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind. In April 1974 he was executed by the Jacobins. The essay was published in 1795. The essay became the central text of the French Enlightenment and the idealistic manifesto of the post-Thermidorian reconstruction in France.

Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat or Marquis de Condorcet as he was called (1743-1794), was an aristocrat, a mathematician, an official of the Academy of Sciences, and a friend of Voltaire (1694-¬1778). He was one of the early French enlightenment figures who supported the French Revolution of 1789, but during its short-lived Radical period became a victim through betrayal and frankness. Though he could hide for a short while after the completion of the Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, he was arrested. It is said he killed himself by taking poison. Others say he was poisoned by someone as he was loved by the people too much and the authorities could not afford a public execution.

REASON AS THE HERO OF ESQUISSE
The hero of Condorcet’s work is reason that first appeared in philosophy, then in natural sciences and afterwards in moral and political sciences. With the coming of the printing press the full possibilities of reason, through the publication of books, became possible. Reason triumphed over the stratagems of priest, tyrants and hypocrites and gained great energy.

Condorcet’s concept of progress was teleological and involved the infinite possibilities of human perfection. He believed that the future could be predicted based on the general laws of the universe but it was more of a utopian dream. Condorcet thought that eventually everyone would enjoy racial and sexual equality and nations would share economic wealth as equal partners. This would allow the transformation of our biological nature and lead to the extension of human life. Condorcet’s Esquisse seems ironic today in the light of the atrocities of the two world wars in the twentieth century and various other human shortcomings. Condorcet confused faith in scientific progress with virtue and human happiness. But even today many hope that his dreams may come true through healthy public debates and enlightened mass education.

THE DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHTENMENT
A century later Max Weber began to expose the myths, stage models, social evolutionism and the dark side of Enlightenment. He argued that freedom and republican democracy did not constitute the telos of human history. The rise of capitalism posed a significant threat to freedom and democracy.
No one ever believed that the human mind would exhaust all the ‘facts’ or facets of nature, all the refinements of measuring and analyzing these facts, the inter relationship of objects, and all the possible combinations of ideas.

Condorcet believed that over the centuries nations had come to realize that they cannot conquer and colonize without losing their hard-fought freedoms. It was only in global federations that nations could find their interdependence and independence. If nations sought security then acquiring power was not the means to get security. The increased power of nations invariably brought in an increased sense of insecurity. The whole idea of economic progress at the cost of others had only resulted in bloodshed. He felt that his utopian conceptualizations would eventually come true.

He further stated that the false mercantile economy based on self-interest and prejudice must give way to an intimacy of peoples based on foundational principles of politics and morality. In such a world skills based on industry or exploitation of nature will be shared equally amongst natives and foreigners. This will become the surest way to eradicate national animosities and stereotyping. He avowed that,

Every thing tells us that we are approaching the era of one of the grand revolutions of the human race. What can better enlighten us to what we may expect, what can be a surer guide to us, amidst its commotions, than the picture of the revolutions that have preceded and prepared the way for it? The present state of knowledge assures us that it will be happy. But is it not upon condition that we know how to assist it with all our strength? And, that the happiness it promises may be less dearly bought, that it may spread with more rapidity over a greater space, that it may be more complete in its effects, is it not requisite to study, in the history of the human mind, what obstacles remain to be feared, and by what means those obstacles are to be surmounted?

Condorcet’s was a rather simplistic vision of the future for Kant who saw a gap between the “is” and the “ought. Kant argued that the only way to bridge the gap between the two was to introduce a universal moral imperative.

Foucault on Kantian Enlightenment

© Mukesh Williams 2010


Foucault understands Kantian enlightenment as blackmail. For Kant enlightenment is an “exit” and a “way out.” It is a “difference” that the present introduces with respect to the past. Therefore Kant’s Enlightenment is located “at the crossroads of critical reflection and reflection on history.”

DISCURSIVE SYSTEMS
Foucault believes that certain discursive systems—the ways in which objects, concepts, and enumerative modalities are organized—generate specific strategies that are finally embodied in themes and theories. He talks about a diffraction in discourse when two incompatible objects or concepts emerge under similar conditions and occupy the same discursive space (either/or). However, the conditions that become a part of the discourse exist outside the discourse as a kind of discursive constellation. Discourses are also shaped by authority which decides who can say and who can spend. The field of authority is in turn governed to some extent by the field of desire—fantasy, forbidden and satisfaction.

KANT’S PERMANENT CRITIQUE OF HISTORY
Kant introduced a new kind of philosophical inquiry in western thought that reflects upon man’s relationship to the present, his historical mode of being and his individual self as an autonomous subject. Kant according to Foucault introduced a permanent critique of our history and changed the philosophical environment we inherit. According to Foucault we should not get trapped in either accepting or denying the project of Enlightenment. Instead we should see it as an ongoing critique of our historical practices.

ENLIGHTENMENT AND HUMANISM
Foucault points out that we should differentiate between the concept of Enlightenment and humanism. The notion of humanism comes from religions, science and politics. The concept of humanism enters religion and ideology—whether it is Christian humanism or Nazi humanism—and creates a conception of man. Enlightenment forces us to reinvent ourselves, while humanism gives us an unexamined conception of man. Enlightenment does not seek “formal structures with universal values” but investigates into the nature of events—as to how we think and what we do with our thinking. It functions as archeology, design and method not as metaphysics or moral action which is the domain of humanism.

Foucault argues that there is no “complete or definitive knowledge” of our historical limitations. However in spite of knowing this we still wish to go beyond it. And this is seen as a contradiction in Foucault’s epistemology and thought. Foucault wants us to believe that though we do not have a definitive knowledge of our historical condition we always want to begin anew. We always wish to critique the present.

HABERMAS AND TAYLOR
Foucault has been criticized by Jurgen Habermas for his lack of normative standards in his philosophical inquiry. How can we have a permanent critique of power without an analysis of truth inquires Habermas. Charles Taylor talks about rescuing freedom and truth from a discourse of discursive practices and power. The claims to power, Taylor argues, belongs to a linguistic field from which categories of truth and freedom cannot be excluded. How can we understand Foucault if he does not deal with our liberation from dominating forms of power? If we talk of illusion, mask or disguise that control us, then we should also talk about a standard of truth that can be used in unmasking them. A Foucauldian irony which does not take sides is not enough to resolve our dilemma. There should be one standard to critique the present otherwise it becomes a totalitizing exercise of philosophy. If there is no single standard we would lack a position from which to judge. A panoptical gaze is not enough.

STYLE OF DISRUPTION
The argument against the objections to Foucault is that such criticism forces him into a binary opposition. Foucault himself considers these objections a kind of Enlightenment blackmail. He interrogates the multiple uses of language by interrupting the epistemological, normative and rhetorical narrative through different claims on the subject. He asks questions to show how social practices shape us, bind us and limit our understanding of self, truth and rationality. His style of disruption follows earlier iconoclastic philosophers such as Socrates and Nietzsche. He is not anti-self. We can see in his writings that on the one hand he ridicules and dismisses the self that has come about as a result of power-knowledge regime, but on the other hand allows the self to establish a relationship with itself in an act of reconstitution. There are some pro-Foucauldian scholars who see Foucault’s language and lack of a single standard as exciting us into action rather than limiting us into inaction.

MODERNITY
We can understand Foucault better if we see his understanding of modernity as an attitude, an ethos—“a mode of relating to contemporary reality.” Modern man therefore constantly tires to “invent himself” and produce himself; he does not possess an essence. So producing and inventing ourselves is what ethics means.