ABSTRACT
The French Enlightenment is not just a convenient label devised by historians of philosophy, and the thinkers to be discussed in this chapter and the next were for the most part conscious of belonging to a movement. They shared to a remarkable degree, if in varying proportions, the negative and positive features which characterized it: on the one hand criticism, even rejection of traditional authority, especially that of the Church, and on the other a bold and constructive attempt to understand and explain man and the universe, and in particular to define man’s place and role in society, both as it was and as it should be. On many topics (such as the origin of life, epistemology, natural law, religious toleration, political freedom), they held broadly similar views and differed only in matters of detail. The very term ‘philosophes’ came to be used to designate the thinkers who held these views, and the philosophes actually saw themselves as a kind of brotherhood involved in a campaign, a group of ‘frères’ who shared the same attitudes and aspirations. Many of them were friends, or at least acquaintances, who met frequently, energetically exchanged ideas on such matters as metaphysics, morality, politics and economics-as well as gossip-and even contributed to each other’s works in a variety of ways. Quite apart from the Encyclopédie, edited by Diderot and d’Alembert, which had over 130 contributors, several works were in a sense collective ventures, embodying the results of discussions within the group-or even, in the case of Raynal’s Histoire des deux Indes, actual contributions by different individuals.
