Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

Ritchie Robertson, in his book The Enlightenment, opens his chapter on cosmopolitanism with the observation that “[a]n ideal of the Enlightenment was to be a cosmopolitan or ‘citizen of the world’.” [p. 600] As always with Robertson, he himself traverses a wide terrain, elucidating along the way that nothing is exactly as it seems.

Vain Hope!

Jacques Bertaux, “The storming of the Tuileries Palace on 10 August 1792” (1793)

“Vain hope! The moral possibility is lacking, and a moment so prodigal of opportunity finds a generation unprepared to receive it.”—Friedrich Schiller

A recent Times Literary Supplement opened with a review by Ritchie Robertson entitled “Liberty in danger: The failure of enlightened hopes.” Within it, Robertson offers the observation that the French Revolution “did not bring freedom because the people conducting it were not free.” [TLS, 2/2/24, p.4]

“A new knowledge of reality”

“It was like/A new knowledge of reality”—Wallace Stevens

Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1817)

Ritchie Robinson begins his chapter on the Enlightenment’s approach to aesthetics with the phrase, “[c]onsistent with its emphasis on happiness.” [p. 464] Funnily enough, I have found little addressing the “pursuit of happiness” that forms the subtitle of his book. And just when I think Robertson might be embarking on a demonstration of that pursuit, it morphs.

To people still spellbound by the cliché ‘the age of reason’

“To people still spellbound by the cliché ‘the age of reason’, it may seem astonishing that the incidence of insanity was as great as at other times.”
—Ritchie Robertson

Once one starts on a journey into the age of Enlightenment, invocations of what it’s alleged to have signified jump out everywhere. Here are three examples:

“Put a man in a forest and he will become wild”

Lupa Capitolina: she-wolf with Romulus and Remus. (13th century; twins are a 15th-century addition)

Man is born to live in society. Separate him, isolate him, and his way of thinking will become incoherent, his character will change, a thousand foolish fancies will spring up in his heart, bizarre ideas will take root in his mind like brambles in the wilderness. Put a man in a forest and he will become wild; put him in a cloister, where the idea of coercion joins forces with that of servitude, and it is even worse.

—Denis Diderot, The Nun, p. 104 (1780)

“Enlightenment thinkers agreed that humanity was naturally sociable.” [p. 351] So saith Robertson in the first sentence of his chapter on sociability. He then quotes the above paragraph from Diderot.