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| Voltaire |
As French urban society grew wealthier, it also became more literate. In
academies and salons, where social distinctions among the wealthy ceased
to be made, nobles and bourgeois began to
debate philosophy and science with each other. Even artisans joined reading
groups and began paying attention to the newspapers then cropping up all over the
country.
This
was the height of the Enlightenment, when a group of French writers known as philosophes
spread the values of free inquiry and open debate throughout France and
later across the rest of the Western world. At the core of their belief was the
idea that reason was the basis for all human improvement. Inspired by the many
advances recently made in science, they wanted to apply the same rational method
to all forms of human endeavor, including political philosophy.
Because
the phihophes despised irrationality, they frequently attacked the mysticism
and religious intolerance of the Catholic Church. In 1762, for example, Voltaire
(1694-1778) launched a public campaign to free Jean Calas, a Huguenot being put
to death by the Languedoc parlement for allegedly murdering his son to prevent
him from embracing Catholicism. Voltaire used the trumped-up Calas case to
demonstrate the extent to which French public institutions had become infused with
religious bigotry, but he couldn't save Calas.
The philosophes
also offered a sophisticated critique of ancien regime economic policy,
pointing out the irrationality of France's protectionist tariffs and outmoded seigneurial
agricultural system. Technological innovation and free trade, they argued, were
the keys to future prosperity. So long as
France retained its traditional forms of industry and agriculture, so long as
social status continued to be accorded on the basis of privilege rather than
merit, individuals would continue to fill below
their full productive potential.
As for
their political beliefs, most philosophes condemned absolute monarchy as
arbitrary and oppressive. Voltaire and Denis Diderot (1713-84) both argued for
a more "enlightened form of monarchy in which the king used his power to
rationalize society. Montesquieu (1689-1755), who considered personal liberty the
primary goal of any government, proposed a system of checks and balances to
limit oppressive rule. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) went farthest of all: He
argued that, because sovereignty rested ultimately with the people, the ideal government
was a republic - that is, a government elected by the people – in which the
citizens themselves acted for the public good. (Most of Rousseau's philosophe
colleagues found this utopian idea a little too radical.) (‘The Bedside
Baccalaureate’, edited by David Rubel)