Jonathan Israel - Radical Enlightenment and the Making of the French Revolution (1750-1800)
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- Опубликовано: 5 сен 2024
- UNE Center for Global Humanities and its founding director, Anouar Majid, host Jonathan Israel on "Radical Enlightenment and the Making of the French Revolution (1750-1800)." This event was recorded on April 29, 2013.
Jonathan Israel is a national treasure. Especially in light of recent events in the US, his scholarship in Enlightenment ideals and foundations of modern democracy is more important than ever.
I love listening to Jonathan Israel, particularly when he talks about radical Enlightenment by explaining how it affected various aspects of Europe at that time, which was still very much controlled by ecclesiastical authority, especially its politics and history. It is this synthesis that makes radical Enlightenment accessible for people who are not experts in the field and it also makes the movement as a whole much more meaningful, since he explains the effects it had on modernity in Europe and in America with such clarity and breadth of connections that don't seem overreaching.
I really appreciate the distinction that Israel makes between the radical and moderate enlightenments', but I find it quite astounding that his partiality towards the Girondist faction of the Jacobin Club is effectively a stand with the moderates of the revolution while bestowing upon them the title of "radicals". This is very unorthodox. It is common knowledge that the Mountain club was the radical faction of the revolution, not the Girondists.
It is undoubtedly the case that some of the most progressive factions in thought, be that those who founded the friends of the negro organisation, or who advocated for women, were in fact associated with the Girondists. In the early days of the revolution, it was Brissot who stood up for the mixed race deputies from the colony of Saint Domingue against the maritime bourgeoisie and the professionals who feared empowering them would threaten colonial interests and colonial slavery. Years later however, it was under the leadership of the Girondist faction that the revolution in Saint Domingue (what would become Haiti) was ignored. It was not until geopolitical pressure from Britain seemed to imply that they could lose the colony, that the Girondists were moved to abolish slavery. Meanwhile, and CLR James notes this very clearly in the Black Jacobins, it was Robbespriere who was arguing (and often against the dominant Girondist faction) that the abolition of slavery should be enacted, regardless of so-called practical reasons to deny slaves the rights of man.
What Israel calls a "coup" in June 1793, furthermore, was actually a popular insurrection, famously led by the Sans-culotte, the radical and militant poor. Despite their great philosophies, the Girondists had won the loyalty of the press because anyone who criticised them was in fact condemned and arrested. In fact, one arrest in particular, that of Camille Desmoulin whose only crime was to criticise the history of Brissot, was a key reason for the insurrection. Though undoubtedly, the Mountain faction went waaay too far with the terror, they did take their marching orders from the streets. The truth was not vice versa. That doesn't make them "authoritarian populists", it made them the only faction who actually listened to the poor.
Their attack against philosophy can only be seen as an attack against the enlightenment proper, as Israel puts it, if the enlightenment is seen as people who hold lofty ideals but don't put them into practice. It was this perceived hypocrisy which inspired the Ire of Robespierre, a quick glance at his writing and work demonstrates that on paper, if anything, he should be put into the camp of the radical enlightenment, not banished from the entire project entirely. But this is ultimately the weakness of Israel's approach. He sees the radical enlightenment as "a revolution of the mind", as an amalgamation of ideas which can be abstracted from the socio-historical conditions that make some ideas, as opposed to others, triumphant. And those conditions ought to include things like the age of Empire, colonial slavery, and the need to recuperate losses after the Seven Years War and restore France's glory on the global imperial stage. The threat of war, the power of commerce, etc..
For Israel, when good things happen (albeit shortlived) that's the radical enlightenment. When bad things continue, that's the moderate enlightenment. And when he is faced to deal with someone like Robespierre, he is forced to excommunicate him from the enlightenment entirely. The typology is way too convenient. Hard-headed interests, and cold facts, led to the triumph of certain ideas over others. And the distance between realpolitik of material conditions and lofty ideals was the very reason why the Girondist faction fell in the first place. It's not because the wrong ideas (what he conveniently calls "authoritarian populism") came to the fore, and more enlightened ideas were sidelined in a conspiratorial coup. It's because, ultimately, the highest ideals of what he calls the radical enlightenment could never come into fruition, insofar as France had her imperial interests.
'But it is a fascinating example of the sixteenth-century French taste for literary imitations of classical archetypes, through which authors sought to impress their readers by being the first to introduce them to an ancient text in new, French guise. The French also recognized early that Aristophanic texts themselves had the potential, at least, for being translated into contemporary tongues and performed on the contemporary stage. Racine drew on Wasps for his comedy Les Plaideurs in 1668, and the performance potential of Aristophanes seems to inform the presentation of the excellent French version of Le Plutus et les Nuées d’Aristophane, translated with notes by Anne Le Fèvre (by marriage Madame Dacier) and first published in 1684.' E. Hall
While there are various interesting details in the lecture, JI depicts things as too clear-cut, black and white.
First of all, Robespierre and his friends, while their left their own bloody mark, were not these outsiders in the early revolution or distinct from the mainstream. They agreed with a lot of what was done and wanted to go further. And that included Brissot and his Girondists, who after all were the ones calling for a republic. They differed from the Jacobins on whether to kill the king.
Also, the early revolution contains atrocity after atrocity, which JI's cherished philosophical revolutionaries approved of. Starting with the attack on the Bastille (ending in a massacre), the kidnapping of the king to Paris, the attack on the Tuileries. It was actually the Girondists' prosecution of Marat that opened the door for purging members of parliament.
Also, Robespierre went through a drastic development in his views. There is no basis for JI's claim that the Saint Just's Constitution was merely a ploy to win over malcontents.
And how do people like Danton fit into his scheme. He certainly was no philosophical and he certainly was violent. He invented hhe Terror but then he opposed Robespierre's continuation of it.
As for the women: the early revolutionaries might have been tolerant of women's associations but they didn't consider giving women the vote either.
Oppression of the Catholic religion started very early before it turned to an outright rejection of Christianity or even all religion. Robespierre, BTW, actually defended the right to practice religion, though he did not reverse the atrocities of the Hebertists.
The first violation of the principles enshrined in the Declaration of Rights was when, apparently, the Church's property was not as inviolable as that of others. (And why again did the Church have to pay for the financial malaise caused by royal policies and the Versailles lifestyle.) And not just property: priest were turned into civil servants, monks and nuns driven from their monasteries. And if they refused m they were killed - not by the Heberts, Dantons or Robespierres but by JI's lauded Philosophes. It was actually these measures that made it virtually impossible for the king to cooperate.
I'm studying Earyl-Modern right meow. Good stuff
Nice talk.
Still waiting to hear the beginning of a proof of what Jonathan Israel is saying about Robespierre, seems like he has none.
What do you mean?
Seryerie oh your so clever, so deep. Cock.