How Do We Write the Intellectual History of the Enlightenment? Spinozism, Radicalism, and Philosophy

We have previously written about the debates over the political relevance of the Enlightenment today, drawing on Antoine Lilti’s critical review of the histories of Jonathan Israel. We present the English translation of his essay, which has import far beyond any disciplinary boundaries: Viewpoint Magazine

David A. Bell: The Uses and Abuses of Enlightenment: AV lecture; January 2025

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Antoine Lilti (2017)

For many years, the French Revolution has served as an origin story: for contemporary France of course, but also for the entirety of a political modernity marked by the horizon of revolutionary emancipation more generally. Today, with revolutionary passions having apparently been tempered and our relation to technological progress, secularization, and civilizational dialogue put into question, the Enlightenment seems to have picked up the relays and discovered a historical and political actuality. The number of studies in the scholarly field has grown rapidly, expressing a renewed interest in the subject. Within public debate and discourse, a major recent exposition at the National Library of France presented the Enlightenment as a “legacy for tomorrow,” generating both intense support and sharp critiques. ¹

This might be true, but which Enlightenment? On this point, there is little agreement among historians concerning the multiplicity of approaches, and existing works seem to discourage an overarching framework. At a time when grand narratives have fallen out fashion, one cannot help but be struck by the gap between, on the one hand, the proliferation of historiographical studies which offer a fragmented landscape, and on the other hand, the essayist discourse striving to actualize the Enlightenment amidst contemporary debates. This situation might seem discouraging; Jonathan Israel has not been discouraged. In a massive work, two volumes of which have already appeared, with a third having been announced, he proposes a broad reinterpretation of the Enlightenment based on the notion, borrowed from Margaret Jacob, of the “Radical Enlightenment,” and a re-evaluation of the impact of Spinoza’s thought, which he deems to be essential. ²

The monumental scope of this enterprise, as well as its significant and largely favorable, even enthusiastic, reception, makes this an indispensable work. Both an encyclopedic synthesis and an engaged piece of writing, Israel’s work marks an unquestionable intervention in Enlightenment historiography – all the more since this solitary work is not isolated, but rather indicates and renders more visible an ensemble of works that aim to rethink the subversive energy and charge of the Enlightenment. Even the recent currency of the term “Radical Enlightenment” largely seems to signal a change in orientation, if not paradigm. While twenty years ago, the influence of Jurgen Habermas’s works had solidified a neo-Kantian interpretation of the Enlightenment, articulated through the critical paradigm and study of the public sphere, the works on this clandestine philosophy and the Radical Enlightenment would seem to herald a new interpretative framework, which features Spinozism both as the matrix of the Enlightenment and as a resource for contemporary social science.

Still, this label raises as many questions as it answers. First of all, we can say that even while recognizing the contributions of Israel’s work, I will focus here on the questions that his interpretation elicits, as well as attempt to discern the limits of his enterprise. This will be less a matter of discussing his analyses point-by-point, than a reflection on the tools utilized by the author and the concepts at work: what is Spinozism? In what way can the Enlightenment be called radical? How do we conjoin or combine the history of philosophy with the cultural history of intellectual productions? Is Europe important as a dimension? The core of the discussion will bear upon the equivalence Israel establishes between a classic category in the history of philosophy – Spinozism – and a historiographical category – the Radical Enlightenment.

This will enable us to formulate several alternative paths for approaching the radicality of the Enlightenment and its relation to modernity, a particularly tangled term but important for Israel. In this sense, our discussion will be essentially historiographic: it invites us to inquire, more broadly, as to the way in which the history of the philosophy of the Enlightenment is and can be written today.

A Re-Reading of the Enlightenment

At first glance, Israel’s two published volumes seem to render a synthetic interpretation impossible, as a dense, sometimes obscure set of authors shuttle across some two thousand pages and thousands of footnotes. The first volume patiently follows, over the course of a century (1650-1750), the development of a radical thought in Europe inspired by Spinoza’s work, as well as the reactions it sparked not only from the authorities, but also more moderate authors. ³ The point of departure is the emergence in the Netherlands of a philosophical radicalism in the second half of the 17th century, specifically around what is commonly called the Spinoza Circle: Spinoza himself, who is undoubtedly the protagonist of the book; but also Franciscus Van Enden, a professor of Latin; Joannes and Adriaen Koerbagh, two young radical authors; and Louis Meyer, a Cartesian doctor, friend of Spinoza, and author, in 1666, of Philosophia S. Scripturae interpres, in which he aims to interpret the Bible through a philosophical critique. The book ends right before the publication of the Encyclopédie, which is presented as the apotheosis of radical Spinozism.

The second volume, which reprises nearly the same chronological framework, takes a thematic approach to the radical corpus, engaging the positions of authors in the domains of religion, politics, social thought, and ultimately the relations between civilizations. Israel shows that the Radical Enlightenment can be defined by its complete opposition to any compromise between philosophy and religion, by an intransigent materialism based on the Spinozist thesis of the unity of substance, by a purely rationalist and mathematical view of the world, by its democratic and republican convictions, and finally, by its rejection of all forms of inequality – social, racial, or gender. ⁴

In this voluminous, prolific, and at times repetitive work, one thesis – powerfully presented – very clearly emerges: Spinozism had a considerable influence throughout Europe from the end of the 17th century, but mainly because of censorship, it was often expressed in a clandestine manner, to such an extent that historians have consistently underestimated or downplayed it, rather showcasing the more moderate, liberal, empiricist, and deist authors, around which the intellectual history of the Enlightenment has been written. From this perspective, Israel’s aim is clear: to present a new general interpretation of the Enlightenment that emphasizes its radical, materialist, and democratic current, and identifies in it the true locus of Western modernity, instead of and in place of the moderate reformism of Voltaire, Wolff, or Locke.

Israel does not hide his priorities in the slightest: the Radical Enlightenment holds all of his sympathy, and must be studied, rehabilitated, and defended. This is the heritage we must reclaim and recover. ⁵ The “moderate” Enlightenment, on the other hand, only inspires his barely concealed contempt: far from being an emancipatory force, it was often allied with conservative reaction, or in the best case scenario, forces of compromise. ⁶ Whatever one’s judgment or opinion on this thesis, these two volumes’ appeal would be not be doubted, if only for the sum of knowledges that it gathers together and makes available. Israel’s considerable erudition, his mastery of several European languages, and his capacity to reread and cite an impressive number of forgotten texts all have been commended by several reviewers; the success of this book is for good reason, as it presents itself in all respects as an encyclopedic summation or synthesis.

But its seductive power lies elsewhere; it is both a historiographical and political narrative.

In the first instance, Israel’s art is to propose a grand narrative, centered around the spread or dissemination of Spinozism, in a manner that 18th century historiography has not produced for a long time. This aspect of the book does only apply or refer its ability to order a large number erudite or esoteric monographs within a wider tapestry, but also to the specifically narrative dimension of the book, since the major currents of the Enlightenment that the author identifies (Spinozist radicalism, but also the moderate Enlightenment and the Counter-Enlightenment) confront each other, align with each other, and then clash again through the entire period, in a sort of “triangular battle of ideas.” ⁷ As we will see, this narrative dimension follows from a political reading of the intellectual field, whose cost is often a simplification of intellectual genealogies.

The seductive power of the book is tied to three major displacements undertaken in regards to Enlightenment historiography. First, a thematic displacement, since revolutionary and materialist radicalism occupies the primary level here, at the expense of more classic and more accepted [consensuelles], figures in the Enlightenment pantheon, which would be nothing more than a result of a compromise with authorities, or even a reaction against such audacity. Next, a chronological displacement, with Israel locating the beginnings of the Enlightenment in the 1660s, in advance or ahead of the “crisis of the European mind” important for Paul Hazard or the pre-Enlightenment (Frühaufklärung). While the boldest commentators usually locate the intellectual tipping point in Europe around the 1680s, with the works of John Locke and Pierre Bayle, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the Glorious Revolution, Israel sees the essentials of the Enlightenment playing out earlier, in the 1660s-1670s, when Spinoza’s work was developed, written, and published. ⁸ Moreover, he argues that at a philosophical level, everything had been said by the beginning of the 18th century, with authors like Voltaire, Hume, or Montesquieu only contributing “minor additions” to the intellectual developments of the previous period. Through measured provocation, he affirms that “even before Voltaire came to be widely known, in the 1740s, the real business was already over.” ⁹

Lastly, a geographical displacement, since the Dutch Enlightenment plays both a preliminary and leading role here, which Enlightenment historiography has not adjusted to. As a preeminent specialist of the history of the Dutch Golden Age, Israel is right in his element, and draws upon the renewed interest in the study of 17th century Dutch radical thought in order to reinsert Spinoza within this intellectual culture. ¹⁰ On the other hand, the British world – whether John Locke’s England or David Hume’s Scotland – is for the most part excluded from this landscape, which is also surprising.

At any rate, the attraction of this book is also political, in that Israel is not content to merely shed light on the omnipresence of Spinozism in the 18th century, but ostensibly advocates for the legacy of the Radical Enlightenment. At a time when Spinoza has become an important reference point in social sciences and political philosophy, and which has meant a significant return to Spinoza in critical theory, such an illustration is obviously invaluable to those seeking to trace an intellectual genealogy of contemporary critical thought. ¹¹.

This could, however, cause a certain misunderstanding. The neo-Spinozists owe much to Gilles Deleuze’s interpretation of Spinoza, which sees in the latter’s thought a philosophy of affects, a kinetics or energetics of bodies and desires, an ethology of human behaviors on a plane of total immanence, as well as Antonio Negri, who makes Spinoza into the prophet of the political power of the multitudes, against contractualist theories of the sovereignty of the people. Israel, on the contrary, sees and presents Spinozism above all as a radicalization of Cartesian rationalism, stripped of its dualism and extended into the political sphere. ¹²…. read more…

https://viewpointmag.com/2017/05/22/how-do-we-write-the-intellectual-history-of-the-enlightenment-spinozism-radicalism-and-philosophy/

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Jonathan Israel’s three volume history of the Enlightenment (Reviewed: Thomas Munck, 2016)

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