Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment

689 Pages·2008·6.47 MB·English

Encyclopedia of
the enlightenment
REVISED EDITION
Peter Hanns Reill
University of California, Los Angeles
Consulting Editor
Ellen Judy Wilson
Principal Author
Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, Revised Edition
Copyright © 2004, 1996 by Book Builders Incorporated
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wilson, Ellen Judy.
Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment / Peter Hanns Reill, consulting editor;
Ellen Judy Wilson, principal author.—Rev. ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8160-5335-9
1. Enlightenment—Encyclopedias. 2. Philosophy—Encyclopedias.
I. Reill, Peter Hanns. II. Title.
B802.W48 2004
937.25'03—dc22 2003022973
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C
ONTENTS
List of Illustrations
iv
Preface to the Revised Edition
vii
Introduction
ix
How to Use This Book
xii
Chronology
xiv
Entries A to Z
1
Selected Bibliography
643
Index
647
L I
IST OF LLUSTRATIONS
Royal palace at Versailles 2
John Adams 5
Jean Le Rond d’Alembert 11
George III 13
William and Mary 17
18th-centurymap of the stars 25
Johann Sebastian Bach 34
Jeremy Bentham 49
William Blackstone 58
Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon 75
Edmund Burke 78
Domestic clothmaking 92
Catherine II (the Great) 97
Marquise du Châtelet 102
Antoine and Marie-Anne Lavoisier,by David 104
Alchemical-chemical lab 105
Workers carrying and examining tea 107
Bird beaks and feet 116
Ships in front of East India Company warehouse 121
Étienne Bonnot de Condillac 123
Marie-Jean Caritat, marquis de Condorcet 125
Grand orrery, by Rowley 128
Residenztheater, Munich 137
The Death of Socrates,by David 140
“The Signing of the Declaration of Independence,” by Savage 142
Madame du Deffand 145
René Descartes 152
Denis Diderot 159
Coat of arms of the East India Company 168
Engraving from Émile 173
Page from the Encyclopédie 175
Birds from the Encyclopédie 176
iv
List of Illustrations v
Portrait/frontispiece of Equiano’s autobiography 187
AYoung Girl Reading,by Fragonard 201
Benjamin Franklin 205
Freemasons 210
Louis XVI and the Paris mob 213
Parisian women march to Versailles to demand the return of
Louis XVI to Paris 214
Mrs. Garrick,by Gainsborough 218
Engraving of Ferdinando Galiani 219
Luigi Galvani 222
“Ancient of Days” by Blake 227
Salon of Madame Geoffrin, by Debucourt 229
Edward Gibbon 231
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 235
Henri, Abbé Gregoire 245
Broken Eggs,by Greuze 247
Drawing of the residence of governor-general of the West Indies,
Guadeloupe Island 249
François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture 253
George Frederick Handel 260
Johann Gottfried Herder 268
Frontispiece for Leviathan 273
Marriage à la Mode:“The Marriage Settlement,” by Hogarth 276
“Orgy at RoseTavern,”by Hogarth 277
Monument of George Washington 281
David Hume 284
Francis Hutcheson 289
Political cartoon featuring John Bull 294
Mineral technology, from the Encyclopédie 297
Thomas Jefferson, by Peale 307
The Hoshana Rabba festival 311
Immanuel Kant 318
Laocoon 333
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 338
Mademoiselle de Lespinasse 341
Lending library, Margate, 1700s 346
Louis XIV 354
Louis XVI 357
The Death of Marat,by David 369
Maria Theresa 370
Queen Marie-Antoinette with Her Children,by Élizabeth Vigée Lebrun 372
Frère Jacques performing surgery 381
Moses Mendelssohn 384
Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau 394
“John Law Crowned by Folly” 395
Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu 397
vi List of Illustrations
Montgolfier hot-air balloon 401
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, at age seven, with his father and sister 406
Kassel Wilhelmshohe,by Eleazar Zeisig 409
“The Horse America, throwing his Master” 415
Formal garden, Hatfield House 417
Pantheon, Rome 421
Reflecting telescope 424
Cover art, Gulliver’s Travels 430
Scene from The Magic Flute 435
Thomas Paine 442
Monticello 444
Frederick the Great 451
François Quesnay 454
Madame de Pompadour, portrait by Boucher 465
Joseph Priestley 471
18th-century public sanitation projects 474
Oxford Canal lock 475
Interior of public health facility-hospital, Middlesex 483
“Louis XVI and Malesherbes,” political cartoon 484
Enslaved Africans 491
Allegorical representation of America’s struggle for independence 506
Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse 508
Bill of Rights 510
The Kaisersaal, Würzburg 517
The Last Words of Jean-Jacques Rousseau,by Moreau le Jeune 525
Friedrich Schiller, sketch by Professor Weitsch 535
Benjamin Thompson, count Rumford 538
La Reveuse,by Greuze 547
Adam Smith 558
British coffeehouse 560
Mathematician Karl Gauss 573
Illustration from Gulliver’sTravels 581
“Agriculture, Ploughing,” engraving from the Encyclopédie 585
Actor James Quin as Coriolanus, engraving 588
The Captureof Carthage,by Tiepolo 591
David Rittenhouse 597
Stalking Turkey 598
Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, baron de l’Aulne 601
Giovan Battista Vico 612
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) 619
Engraving of Captain Cook in the Sandwich Islands 621
Gilles,by Watteau 626
“Portland vase,” by Wedgwood 628
Christian Wolff 635
Mary Wollstonecraft 636
P
REFACE TO THE
R E
EVISED DITION
The revised edition of the Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment great weight to individual experience. New articles on
expands upon the first in many ways. Inspired by the “Gallicanism,” the “Great Awakening,” “millenarianism,”
latest scholarship on the 18th century, it incorporates and the “Abbé Henri Gregoire,” among others, make this
new themes and extends others. It contains 140 new, point clearer.
updated, or expanded articles. Among the new themes are Through the addition of new articles, as well as the
two of major significance: the Enlightenment in a global expansion of earlier ones, other central issues of the
context and what is sometimes called the “Counter- Enlightenment receive new emphasis in this edition.
Enlightenment,” that is, the interest in spiritualism and The topic of political thought and action, an issue as
esotericism that emerged in the late 18th century. A third vital to us today as it was to the men and women of the
theme, religion and the Enlightenment, received signifi- Enlightenment, now includes articles on “rights,” “jus-
cant attention in the first edition but has been enriched tice,” “revolution,” “capital punishment,” “civil society,”
in the present one by the inclusion of several new arti- “virtue,” and “honor,” which, when read with the cross-
cles. Contemporary scholarship increasingly has demon- referenced articles, provide the reader with a thorough
strated that the Enlightenment was a global movement, introduction to the central political questions we have
affecting peoples across the Earth in ways positive and ne- inherited from the Enlightenment. We also address the
gative and also borrowing and transforming ideas from the Enlightenment’s utilitarian side by introducing articles
cultures of lands “discovered” by Europeans. Articles such on “statistics,” “demography,” “public health,” “probabil-
as“colonialism,” “imperialism,” “Haitian Revolution,” “ori- ity,” “free trade,” and “capitalism,” tools and concepts
entalism,” “Noble Savage,” “voyages of discovery,” “pictur- developed during the Enlightenment to assist in the
esque,” and many more chart the Enlightenment’s spread practical goal of improving society. Guided by contem-
and impact as well as its reception of non-European cul- porary scholarship, which has also looked at the
tural impulses. Although there were many articles in the Enlightenment as a broad movement engaging much of
first edition that covered issues centering on spiritualism Europe’s and America’s educated elite, we also include
and esotericism, movements usually considered outside articles on the “Republic of Letters,” “cosmopolitanism,”
the pale of the Enlightenment, they are now complement- “politeness,” and the “Radical Enlightenment.” Finally,
ed by articles on “hermeticism,” “magic,” and “secret soci- we have increased our coverage of the arts and sciences
eties.” The first edition challenged the traditional view of as well as the already strongly represented areas of gen-
the Enlightenment as a body of thought opposed to reli- der and race.
gion, and recent research has underlined the fact that it The new volume thus remains faithful to our origi-
was not. There was indeed a “religious Enlightenment,” a nal goal of presenting the Enlightenment in all its won-
movement toward tolerance within religious establish- derful depth and complexity. Students will find that this
ments, a renewal of belief based on the translation and volume can help them meet the demands of the recently
application of Enlightenment concepts into religious formulated national standards for world history and
terms, and a modernization of religious practice that gave American history. Lay readers, in turn, will find in its
vii
viii Preface to the Revised Edition
pages an opportunity to meet the many ways that the most comprehensive single-volume coverage of the
Enlightenment contributed to creating the world and the Enlightenment in print.
crucial issues of the 21st century. In all, this second edi- —Peter Hanns Reill
tion of the Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment offers the
I
NTRODUCTION
The Enlightenment is one of the crucial periods in Crimes and Punishments, boldly launched an attack upon
Western history. For both admirers and critics alike, it is torture, the death penalty, and a judicial system that
considered the beginning of modernity, the time when the favored the wealthy and powerful over the poor and the
basic questions facing our world were posed, though not weak; it inaugurated a widespread movement that led to
answered, at least adequately. As such, the Enlightenment the curtailment of torture, limited the death penalty, and
can be seen from two vantage points. On the one hand, its instituted the beginnings of prison reform. Economic
shapers and followers undertook a far-ranging critique of reorganization became the central plank in the Physio-
the world they had inherited. All aspects of traditional cratic program and was revolutionized by Adam Smith in
life—religion, political organization, social structure, sci- The Wealth of Nations, which laid out an economic pro-
ence, human relations, human nature, history, economics, gram that still enjoys great popularity today. Political the-
and the very grounds of human understanding—were ory found its direct application in the new constitutions
subjected to intense scrutiny and investigation. On the established during the last third of the century, the most
other hand, proponents of the Enlightenment attempted prominent being the American and French experiments;
to establish adequate grounds for a clearer and surer Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and the writings
understanding of these topics. In short, the Enlighten- of Madison, Jay, and Hamilton supporting the new federal
ment was characterized by the dynamic between criticism constitution still reverberate as does the equally, if not
and innovation. Both sides of this equation—the criti- more influential, Declaration of the Rights of Man
cisms leveled and the solutions proposed—still shape penned during the French Revolution. Most of the politi-
much of our contemporary culture. cal assumptions Americans hold dear—separation of
The traditional definitions of the Enlightenment have church and state, the balance of power, and protection of
located the source for these activities in its supposed ven- individual rights as embodied in the Bill of Rights—are
eration of reason. In fact, the Enlightenment is often direct, pragmatic applications of Enlightenment theory.
called the “Age of Reason.” The title is misleading on two Not only was the Enlightenment critical of abstract
counts. It seems to imply that the proponents of the reasoning and utopian solutions, it also laid the basis for
Enlightenment were abstract thinkers, more concerned the critique of reason by rediscovering the darker side of
with utopian proposals than with practical solutions. But human nature—the passions, desires, and sensations.
more important, it suggests that reason as an activity was Seventeenth-century assertions of the primacy of human
enshrined over everything else, that recognition of the reason as the defining feature of human existence
passions, desires, and the senses was largely ignored. (embodied by Descartes’s assertion “I think, therefore I
Both assumptions are incorrect. However one evaluates am”) soon came under attack. Feeling and sensation
Enlightenment proposals, one basic strain runs through replaced reason as the grounds upon which all human
them all, namely a great disdain for abstract answers understanding and activity were founded. Beginning with
based upon empty logic. Perhaps the worst epithet one the formulations of Locke progressing through those of
could hurl at an opponent was that he or she was a vic- Condillac, Hume, Reid, Rousseau, and culminating in
tim of “the spirit of systems.” Kant’s Critique of Reason, reason as an autonomous activi-
One need look at only three of the problems directly ty, inborn and universally distributed, was subjected to a
addressed—legal reform, economics, and political reform— thoroughgoing reevaluation. In the process, new areas of
to apprehend the pragmatic bent of Enlightenment human experience became the subject of reflection: They
thought. Cesare Beccaria, in his epoch-making work On included the concept of the sublime in literature, attempts
ix