Democratic Enlightenment Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750-1790 JONATHAN I. ISRAEL OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Contents List of Plates List of Abbreviations xiii xv 1. Introduction 1 1. Defining the Enlightenment 1 2. Interpreting the Enlightenment: The Argument 8 3. Social Context, Cultural Process, Ideas 17 PARTI: THE RADICAL CHALLENGE 2. Nature and Providence: Earthquakes and the Human Condition 39 1. The Great Enlightenment Earthquake Controversy (1750-1757) 39 2. Philosophy and Interpreting Disaster 50 3. The Encyclopedic Suppressed (1752-1760) 56 1. Fighting 'la Philosophic Moderne' 56 2. Diderot Loses his Contributors 64 3. The 'War' of the Encydopedie after 1759 82 4. Rousseau against the Philosophes 93 1. Breaking with the Encyclopedistes 93 2. Virtue Restored 100 3. Deism and the Roots of Political Radicalism 106 5. Voltaire, Enlightenment, and the European Courts 110 1. Moderate Enlightenment Dominant? 110 2. Regrouping at Cleves 124 3. A Faltering Mainstream 130 6. Anti-philosophes 140 1. Anti-philosophie as a Cultural Force 140 2. Catholic Enlightenment against Radical Thought 151 3. Philosophy, Religion, and the Social Order 158 4. Anti-philosophie versus Spinoza and Bayle 162
viii Contents 7. Central Europe: Aufklarung Divided 172 1. The Legacy of Leibniz and Wolff 172 2. Berlin and its Royal Academy 188 3. Kant: Searching for the Middle Passage 195 4. Reimarus: Erosion from the Centre 200 PART II: RATIONALIZING THE ANCIEN REGIME 8. Hume, Scepticism, and Moderation 209 1. Hume's Enlightenment 209 2. Hume, Aristocracy, and the British Empire 220 9. Scottish Enlightenment and Man's 'Progress' 233 1. Smith, Ferguson, and Civil Society 233 2. Kames, Race, and Providence 248 3. Reid and 'Common Sense' 256 10. Enlightened Despotism 270 1. Radical Enlightenment against 'Enlightened Despotism'. 270 2. The German Small States 278 3. Joseph II, 'Josephism', and the Austrian Monarchy, N 283 4. Music, Literature, and the Fine Arts >- 296 11. Aufklarung and the Fracturing of German Protestant Culture 302 1. Deism besieged 302 2. Bahrdt and Freedom of Expression 310 3. Lessing and the Fragmentenstreit 315 12. Catholic Enlightenment: The Papacy's Retreat 326 1. Moderate versus Radical Enlightenment in Italy 326 2. Beccaria and Legal Reform 336 13. Society and the Rise of the Italian Revolutionary Enlightenment 349 1. The 'Reform of Italy' Controversy 349 2. Reforming Austrian Milan 356 3. Deprivation, Revolution, and the 'Two Sicilies' 364
Contents ix 14. Spain and the Challenge of Reform, 374 1. Remaking a Transatlantic Empire 374 2. The Jesuits and Carlos Ill's Church Policy 383 3. The Olavide Affair 389 4. Spain and the Radical Challenge 395 PART III: EUROPE AND THE REMAKING OF THE WORLD 15. The Histoire philosophique, or Colonialism Overturned 413 1. The Book that made a World'Revolution' 413 2. Philosophy and the Indies 425 3. Transatlantic Impact 436 4. The Histoire philosophique as a Project of World Revolution 438 16. The American Revolution 443 1. Enlightenment and the Birth of the United States 443 2. Counter-Enlightenment and Modernity 460 3. Princeton, Harvard, Yale, and Columbia 465 4. Undemocratic States 470 5. An Inconclusive Legacy 478 17. Europe and the Amerindians 480 1. Aztecs and Incas Reconfigured 480 2. Amerindians: Saved, or to be Saved? 489 3. The Tupac Amaru Rebellion 497 18. Philosophy and Revolt in Ibero-America (1765-1792) 504 1. The Creole-Peninsular Rift 504 2. Bourbon Enlightenment in the Americas 510 3. Radical Enlightenment Diffused across the Atlantic 516 4. The American Revolution and the Spanish American Revolution (1780-1809) 522 5. Philosophy and Self-Emancipation from Spain 527 19. Commercial Despotism: Dutch Colonialism in Asia 535 1. An Asian Empire 535 2. The Enlightenment Radiating from Batavia 543
x Contents 20. China, Japan, and the West 558 1. Sinophilia in the Later Enlightenment 558 2. Chinese Society: Two Incompatible Radical Accounts 564 3. Enlightenment in Asia: The Case of Japan. 572 21. India and the Two Enlightenments 583 1. Radical Critique of the British Raj 583 2. Administration and Law in British India 595 22. Russia's Greeks, Poles, and Serfs 609 1. Russia's'Liberation of Greece'(1769-1772) 609 2. Diderot's Clash with Catherine 619 3. Russia's First Radical 626 PART IV: SPINOZA CONTROVERSIES IN THE. LATER ENLIGHTENMENT 23. Rousseau, Spinoza, and the 'General Will' 633 1. Towards the Modern Democratic Conception of Sovereignty 633 2. Radical Enlightenment, Revolution, and Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment 641 24. Radical Breakthrough 648 1. D'Holbach's'Bombs' 648 2. Voltaire's Last Encounter: Battling Spinoza 658 3. The Trial of Delisle de Sales (1775-1777) 675 25. Pantheismusstreit (1780-1787) 684 1. Lessing's Legacy 684 2. The Early Stages of the German'Spinoza Controversy' 688 3. Mendelssohn, Jacobi, and the Public Rift 703 4. Kant's Intervention 709 5. Later Stages of the Pantheismusstreit 712 26. Kant and the Radical Challenge 721 1. Dilemmas of Moderation 721 2. Critiquing Kant's Critical Philosophy 729
Contents xi 27. Goethe, Schiller, and the New'Dutch Revolt'against Spain 741 1. Drama and Political Philosophy 741 2. Art as the New 'Religion' 754 PART V: REVOLUTION 28. 1788-1789: The 'General Revolution' Begins 761 1. Nobility versus the Third Estate 761 2. The Revolution's Second Phase 769 3. Books and Revolution 773 29. The Diffusion 779 1. Publishers, Booksellers, and Colporteurs 779 2. Anti-philosophie and the Diffusion of Radical Literature 802 30. 'Philosophy' as a Maker of Revolutions 808 1. D'Holbach's Politics 808 2. Representative Democracy 814 31. Au/ftZarwng and the Secret Societies (1776-1792) 822 1. 'Revolution' and the Secret Societies 822 2. Weishaupt's'General Reformation of the World' 834 3. Bavaria's Counter-Enlightenment 841 4. The Deutsche Union 846 5. Prussia's Counter-Enlightenment 852 32. Small-State Revolutions in the 1780s 859 1. The Geneva Revolution of 1782: Democrats versus'aristocrats' 859 2. Aachen, Liege, and the Austrian Netherlands 873 33. The Dutch Democratic Revolution of the 1780s 883 1. How to make Democracy 883 2. Liberation Movement in Exile 893 34. The French Revolution: From 'Philosophy' to Basic Human Rights (1788-1790) 897 1. From the Bastille to the King's Return to Paris (July-October 1789) 897 2. Ideas and the Revolutionary Leadership 924 3. Philosophes against the Revolution 933
xii Contents 35. Epilogue: 1789 as an Intellectual Revolution 937 1. The 'General Revolution' as a Global Process 937 2. Commemorating the Revolutionary Enlightenment's Heroes 944 Bibliography 953 Index 1031