When we think about the Age of Enlightenment, we immediately identify this cultural trend of the 18th century with culture, education, tolerance and other progressive values, that is, with the complete opposite of what tyranny and obscurantism represent. For some, the world today would need to reactivate this type of thinking in order to confront increasingly disturbing reactionary forces. But... does historical reality adjust to this very favorable vision?
The historian Antoine Lilti (1972), a great connoisseur of the era, discovers the lights and shadows of modernity in The Inheritance of the Enlightenment (Gedisa, 2023), an investigation as documented as it is sharp in its approaches.
To begin with, the book warns us about what we thought we knew. In recent decades, from the left, some voices have denounced the enlightenment movement as complicit with European imperialism by trying to impose universal values, without respect for other cultures. His ideas would be the basis of a selfish ideology, based on individualism and the market economy. From this perspective, we would find ourselves facing an obvious moral superiority complex.
On the other hand, representatives of the right use the same thinkers to defend a capitalist society based on science and technology, both placed above all criticism. Lilti then asks a dramatic question: “Has the Enlightenment, which was long considered an emancipatory thought, become conservative?” The question is even somewhat traumatic for those who have been educated in the conviction that the enlightened and the progressive came to form an indissoluble whole.
However, before continuing, let's ask ourselves for a moment what we are talking about. In history, concepts are essential. Well, little of what we thought we knew is clear in the light of recent historiography. Was the Age of Enlightenment, perhaps, an anti-religious project in the name of secularization?
Now we talk about Catholic, Protestant and Jewish Enlightenment. Did we think that the 18th century had put reason on a pedestal? Well: sentiment, and even esotericism, also had an unsuspected importance in the Enlightenment.
In any case, it is evident that it was not a unitary doctrine. What there was was a variety of responses, more moderate or more radical, to the challenges of changing times. Goodbye, then, to the old monolithic image of the Lights. It was a time – deep down, like all times – of controversies, with its doubts and questions.
At this point, not even the list of authors is the same: long-forgotten women have emerged, such as Émilie du Châtelet, the aristocrat who explained Newton's physics to Voltaire, whom she had translated into French.
We can also mention, among others, Louise-Félicité de Keralio, the writer and feminist who founded, in 1789, the Journal d’État et du cytoyen. She did it under a motto that provided a declaration of intent: “Live free or die.” Thus, the world of the Enlightenment, as Lilti points out, “is no longer the circle of gentlemen that it once was.”
As for the old Eurocentrism, it has experienced a strong shake with the incorporation of intellectuals from other continents such as the Mexican Jesuit Francisco Clavijero or the Peruvian doctor and naturalist Hipólito Unanue.
Drawing from these debates, The Inheritance of the Enlightenment strives to offer a nuanced view that is neither entirely “pro” nor entirely “anti.” Voltaire, for example, raised his voice against slavery, although his attention was directed more against the abuses of the masters than against the institution itself. Although it may seem contradictory, it can be said, at the same time, that he anticipated his time and that he fell far short of his denunciation.
For Lilti, caricaturing the Enlightenment as white and colonialist is an excess. Within such a plural movement, there was everything, although we cannot reduce the issue to a struggle between Eurocentrists and anti-imperialists. Montesquieu, without going any further, was capable of criticizing slavery while justifying the laws that guaranteed the commercial exploitation of the colonies.
The Age of Enlightenment was a period, as we have seen, complex and, at times, contradictory. His legacy, therefore, was ambiguous. It contributed the same to engendering progressive movements as it did to incubating, so to speak, the snake's egg. For Michel Foucault, the well-known French thinker, the Enlightenment was the root of totalitarianism.
Perhaps this criticism may seem exaggerated, but... wasn't Hitler an admirer of Frederick II of Prussia, friend and protector of Voltaire? It does not seem unreasonable to suppose that, with the same bricks, very different buildings were built.
Do we then have to separate what is disposable from what can still be useful for the 21st century? For Lilty, that is not the question: “The challenge is to highlight the complexity of this moment of thought, reconstruct the controversies and debates, and highlight the tensions and ambivalences.”
