It’s hard for me to resist a book about the Enlightenment, and I’ve just read [amazon_link id=”0691161453″ target=”_blank” ]The Enlightenment: History of an Idea[/amazon_link] by Vincenzo Ferrone. I have to confess it was quite hard work because it’s written in the scholarly language of another discipline. But the argument is interesting: that the Enlightenment as a set of philosophical ideas and as an historical phenomenon need to be kept separate, and are all too often conflated.

[amazon_image id=”0691161453″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Enlightenment: History of an Idea[/amazon_image]

There is a definition in the introduction of the historical Enlightenment: “A conscious and passionate creative effort aimed at bringing about a fairer and more equitable society, made by man for man [sic], an attempt to put into practice individual rights, giving political space to what was the truly revolutionary discovery of the natural right of man to pursue happiness as the ethical foundation of a new universal morality.” I suppose it’s historically accurate that it was mainly by and about men, but it would have been good if Ferrone had explicitly acknowledged this limitation, as this language is so exclusionary.

He adds: “One can scarcely imagine a greater challenge to the political action and coherence of those European citizens who were working with passion and intellectual honesty to spread the new political language than the deportation of millions of African slaves mostly to the United States of America, the self-styled homeland of rights and freedom.” Economics, or rather political economy, was born of the Enlightenment, and economists were on the side of the angels in the anti-slavery campaign. Carlyle labelled it the ‘dismal science’ because he was pro-slavery and disliked the argument by political economists such as J S Mill and  – I learned from Sydney Padua’s [amazon_link id=”0141981512″ target=”_blank” ]The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage[/amazon_link] – by Charles Babbage. (I’ve now started Babbage’s 1832 book [amazon_link id=”B004TS7610″ target=”_blank” ]On The Economy of Machinery and Manufactures[/amazon_link], which is a ripping good read so far.)

[amazon_image id=”0141981512″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer[/amazon_image]  [amazon_image id=”1511434422″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures[/amazon_image]

Back to Ferrone. He wants to preserve a historical understanding of the Enlightenment from those from the post-modernists to [amazon_link id=”0691151725″ target=”_blank” ]Jonathan Israel[/amazon_link] who, he argues, make it too philosophical: “The idea of natural rights is not philosophical in origin. It is an extraordinarily important moral idea …. that in the course of the 18th century became a powerful new political and juridical discourse. … Far from being a project single-mindedly aimed at the goal of modernity, the Enlightenment is more accurately understood as a cultural experience defined first and foremost by the values it has bequeathed us.” As a process or experience, it has no definitive conclusion, he concludes. Of course I understand the importance of the historical context, but I must say I don’t see that Ferrone entirely avoids the same pitfall himself as the scholars he critiques. Aren’t ‘inherited values’ staking a philosophical claim? Luckily I feel no need to reach a firm conclusion about a debate in another discipline.

[amazon_image id=”0691169713″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution from The Rights of Man to Robespierre[/amazon_image]