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I just finished reading Jonathan Israel’s book A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2010).
His thesis is that during the 18th century, the philosophical movement we call the Enlightenment was divided by two schools of thought. The Moderate Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire did not want to go as far as to say that monarchies should not remain in place. The Radical Enlightenment thinkers like Diderot, d’Holbach, and Helvetius advocated that Reason mandated the dissolution of all authoritative institutions that stand in the way of total inequality of all people.
The 17th century thinker Baruch Spinoza gave impetus to the Radical side of the new, radical way of viewing reality, with implications for education, religion and politics. Spinoza said that reality is not material and spiritual; rather, everything is material. God is the world, and the world is God; there is nothing else. This is pantheism—a Natural theology. Ethics for Spinoza is all about what is beneficial for the common good. It all boils down to justice.
Jonathan Israel sums up the two schools of Enlightenment thought as Spinoza versus Voltaire; the Radical versus the Moderate. The Moderate thinkers were willing to leave powerful institutions in place and not shake up the status quo. The Radical philosophers wanted to go further.
SO WHAT?
The more I understand the forces that have shaped our world, the more I can understand the forces at work today. Ideas matter. Debate is good. The status quo is hard to budge. I saw this in church after church. To get people and institutions to change is almost impossible. But when peoples’ intellectual assumptions are shaken, change is possible. I wonder how much Enlightenment ideas drove the French Revolution and how much the people’s desperation and hunger influenced it. I suspect that the idea and belief that they had a ‘right’ to revolt gave the needed impetus to act on their hunger.
The belief in universal human rights is a powerful idea. It’s clearly stated in the Charter of the United Nations. That’s one reason the UN is a good institution to have around.
The basic belief in the equality of all people was driven by the Radical Enlightenment, not by the Church. There are times when atheists serve God better than Christians.
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