Two Revolutions and Enlightenment Legacies

Emanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851)

In the penultimate chapter of his book The Enlightenment, Ritchie Robertson turns to the subject of revolutions, specifically the American and French revolutions. Robertson writes that these revolutions “might be seen as the climax of this book. Both, after all, famously invoked the ideal of human happiness.” [p. 706]

“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.