The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Routledge Revivals) by Goldmann Lucien;

Author:Goldmann, Lucien;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Humanities
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2009-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

II

The Enlightenment and Christian Belief

It is both easy and difficult to speak of the relation between the Enlightenment and Christianity. The task is comparatively simple because for the socio-phenomenological analysis we have Groethuysen’s excellent Entstehung der bürgerlichen Welt- und Lebensanschauung in Frankreich. Although this was intended as no more than the prolegomenon to a work that was left unfinished at the author’s death, it carried the analysis of the conflict to an advanced point. The difficulty comes from the fact that it is not easy to fix the position of the Enlightenment in the development of the individualist world vision in terms of social history.

In my study of Pascal I wrote that there are three important stages in the history of French rationalism and that each of them assigned a qualitatively different place to the practical application of theory. I suggested that these stages are characterized by the terms in which each of them conceived the relation between rational thought and action.

To Descartes this was no problem at all: rational thought, in his view, automatically entails correct action, and the philosopher need concern himself only with the problem of the proper use of his reason.

Valéry, writing during one of the gravest crises of bourgeois society, found the connection between reason and action a major, insoluble problem. For him reason occupies a position of supreme importance, but possesses purely intellectual power and has almost no influence on the outside world, which the thinker can master in its sensible appearances only through poetry.

The Enlightenment stands between these stages of rationalism. It is characterized by its view of reason as the decisive weapon in the practical struggle against despotism, superstition, privilege, ancien regime and Christianity. This is what makes it necessary to see it in at least two perspectives in determining its position in the development of western thought.

On the one hand, rationalism and empiricism, the two principal forms of individualism, present a purely static world vision which knows nothing at all of the concept of historical becoming. Thus if we follow Hegel, Goethe and Marx in treating history and historical action as the only genuine content for human consciousness, we may truly say that the individualist world visions of the Enlightenment were purely formal and possessed no true content, as this historical consciousness ultimately remained alien to the movement. But if instead we take into account the fact that the struggle against the old social and political order, with its obsolete privileges, and likewise the battle with the Church, constituted real historic and progressive action, then the individualist view of the Enlightenment does, despite all its limitations, have a content, even if the movement never attained a dialectical awareness of its nature.

It would be more precise, and would take into account the fact that the individualist world vision remains alive in our own times, if we adopted a formula along the following lines: The individualist view possesses content only in certain historical situations; it did so most notably in the eighteenth century, but it can still do so now, whenever its basic values (freedom, equality, toleration, etc.

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