# The Dream of Enlightenment  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Anthony Gottlieb]] - Full Title:: The Dream of Enlightenment - Category: #books ## Highlights > Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) perhaps put it best, in his writings about vacuum—which was not abhorred by nature at all, according to recent experiments, despite what the ancients had said: Those whom we call ancient were really new in all things, and properly constituted the infancy of mankind; and as we have joined to their knowledge the experience of the centuries which have followed them, it is in ourselves that we should find this antiquity that we revere in others. ([Location 37](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=37)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Here is the mark of Descartes’s real method, if it can be called a method. What guided all of his reasoning, including his thoughts about physics, was his determination to escape what he saw as the limitations of the senses. How exactly it did so emerges more clearly in his masterpiece, which was published in 1641. I would not urge anyone to read this book except those who are able and willing to meditate seriously with me, and to withdraw their minds from the senses and from all preconceived opinions. ([Location 227](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=227)) > Descartes urged his readers to focus above all on things that are “objects of the intellect alone and are totally separate from matter,” which is an unmistakable echo of Plato’s main piece of advice to his aspiring philosopher-kings. Like a true follower of Plato, Descartes repeatedly insisted that we must turn aside from the world of the senses and look in our own minds to find the truth. Indeed, the extreme doubts which he entertained at the beginning of his meditations were useful not only because they could strip us of erroneous preconceptions, but also because they provided “the easiest route by which the mind may be led away from the senses.” Many ancient Platonists had looked for such a route, and one Platonist, namely St Augustine, trod virtually the same path as Descartes. ([Location 240](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=240)) > “I am not merely present in my body as a sailor is present in a ship, but . . . am very closely joined and, as it were, intermingled with it.” ([Location 398](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=398)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - Note: Descarte > The final version ranged over questions from the physiology of perception to the nature of shame, impudence and disgust, and ended with a defence of the ancient Stoic doctrine that “the chief use of wisdom lies in its teaching us to be masters of our passions and to control them with such skill that the evils which they cause are quite bearable, and even become a source of joy.” In the judgement of later thinkers, however, this book did not succeed in explaining how a ghost can live and work in a machine, either joyfully or otherwise. ([Location 442](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=442)) - Note: Descarte > The moral ideas of the Stoics had long appealed to Descartes. In his first major publication, the Discourse on Method, he wrote that one of his maxims was “to try always to master myself rather than fortune, and change my desires rather than the order of the world.” “Nothing,” he said, echoing Epictetus, “lies entirely within our power except our thoughts.” ([Location 446](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=446)) > Bacon maintained that there are really three kinds of philosophers: ants, spiders and bees. Empiricists are like ants. They “simply accumulate and use; Rationalists, like spiders, spin webs from themselves; the way of the bee is in between; it takes material from the flowers of the garden and the field; but it has the ability to convert and digest them. . . .” Bacon advocated the way of the bee: one should combine the best parts of the experimental and rational faculties. Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz and Hume all aspired to be bees, though none of them quite put it that way. ([Location 652](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=652)) > That is also the gist of some virtuosic invective by Hugh Trevor-Roper (later Lord Dacre), a British historian who died in 2003. Dacre summed up Leviathan curtly: “The axiom, fear; the method, logic; the conclusion, despotism.” ([Location 755](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=755)) > Hobbes also made the better reply that, even if a sovereign is not granted absolute power, but instead just enough to do his job, there is still some danger that he will abuse it, since “he who has enough strength to protect everybody, has enough to oppress everybody.” ([Location 797](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=797)) > One exception to this rule concerns the equality of citizens. Hobbes was a sort of egalitarian. He criticised the crude belief that “one man’s blood [is] better than another[’s],” and Aristotle’s idea that, as Hobbes put it, “some men are by nature worthy to govern, and others by nature ought to serve.” Even if there were such natural differences, Hobbes argued, men would disagree over how they were in fact distributed, so the idea of a natural inequality would lead to quarrels: as long as men arrogate to themselves more honour than they give to others, it cannot be imagined how they can possibly live in peace: and consequently we are to suppose, that for peace sake, nature hath ordained this law, That every man acknowledge [every] other for his equal. ([Location 823](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=823)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > There was an intellectual scandal when, a few years after Hobbes’s death, Pierre Bayle suggested that it was possible for unbelievers to be decent and virtuous.* Hobbes did not in fact advocate a godless society, and he may well have shared the conventional opinion that such a thing would be disastrous. ([Location 858](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=858)) > men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention, shall furnish them withal . . . there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious Building . . . no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short. ([Location 1085](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1085)) > Thus the popular image of Hobbes shows only one side of him. He is remembered as a man who warned that without strong government, life would be nasty, brutish and short. But he also maintained that our rationality and desire for self-preservation would bring us to seek peace, and thereby make life pleasant, civilised and long. ([Location 1122](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1122)) > For example, he defined “pity” as “imagination or fiction of future calamity to ourselves, proceeding from the sense of another man’s present calamity.” Does this mean that when we pity someone else, it is really ourselves for whom we feel sorry—that our emotion amounts only to displeasure at the thought that the other person’s misfortune may eventually befall us, too? Hobbes did seem to believe that the force of our emotion is somehow caused by a thought or feeling about ourselves, which is questionable. ([Location 1127](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1127)) > Aubrey told an intriguing story about a poor and infirm old beggar whom Hobbes met on a London street. Beholding him with eyes of “pitty and compassion,” Hobbes gave the man sixpence, whereupon he was questioned by a cleric: Sayd a Divine . . . that stood by—“Would you have donne this, if it had not been Christ’s command?”—“Yea,” sayd he.—“Why?” quoth the other.—“Because,” sayd he, “I was in paine to consider the miserable condition of the old man; and now my almes, giving him some reliefe, doth also ease me.” ([Location 1137](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1137)) > Allegiance to a regime does not require one to approve of the way in which it came to power; indeed, as Hobbes noted, “there is scarce a Common-wealth in the world, whose beginnings can in conscience be justified.” ([Location 1278](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1278)) > Hobbes was often agitated by the frightful effects and ridiculous elements of what he took to be mistaken religious views. The polemical intensity of his tirades against the papacy (which he called “the Ghost of the deceased Romane empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof”) ([Location 1401](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1401)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > There is some truth to the idea that he was an enemy of religion, but only in the sense that Luther, Calvin and Jesus himself were all enemies of religion. That is to say, Hobbes was a reformer who rejected some of the dogmas of his day and proposed new ideas instead. ([Location 1407](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1407)) > Many religious pioneers are at first hailed as heretics or worse. Luther and Calvin were described by some Catholic writers as “atheists,” which is what some Romans and other pagans in the first three centuries of our era called all Christians. One Roman emperor speculated that the Christians got their “atheism” from the Jews. ([Location 1409](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1409)) > Thomas Paine (1737–1809) once wrote that “all of us are infidels according to our forefathers’ belief.” ([Location 1420](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1420)) > Some passages of his Ethics could almost have been written by Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius. “Human power,” wrote Spinoza, is very limited and infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes. . . . Nevertheless, we shall bear calmly those things which happen to us . . . if we are conscious that we have done our duty, that the power we have could not have extended itself to the point where we could have avoided those things, and that we are a part of the whole of nature, whose order we follow. ([Location 1893](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1893)) > The Second Treatise of Government has been called an inspiration not only for the French Revolution but for the American Constitution and Declaration of Independence as well. Thomas Jefferson, the main author of the Declaration, wrote that “as to the general principles of liberty, and the rights of man . . . the doctrines of Locke . . . and of Sidney [a British politician and writer] . . . may be considered as those generally approved by our fellow citizens.” Jefferson rather exaggerated the influence of Locke on his fellow revolutionaries. Nowadays, British scholars are mainly sceptical of the notion that Locke’s ideas had much of an effect on the American Revolution; American writers tend to be fonder of the claim. But the respect accorded to Locke’s political writings by intellectuals is attested by the fact that Jefferson’s Royalist opponents invoked them, too. Locke’s ([Location 1958](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1958)) > Newton and Locke were often pronounced to be the twin prophets of the Enlightenment, of which the bible was the French Encyclopédie (1751–1772). ([Location 1966](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1966)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > He cannot be given any more, even if he is the king of France, because the people do not have any more to give. (The codename Locke used for the manuscript of his Second Treatise was de morbo Gallico—the “French disease,” a medical term for syphilis. He regarded authoritarian monarchy as a similarly noxious French malady.) When God made the world, he gave it to all “mankind in common,” Locke wrote, citing the Psalms. How, then, does man in the state of nature come to have any right to private property? ([Location 2304](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=2304)) > “Enlightened times will enlighten only a small number of honest people,” he wrote to a friend. “The vulgar masses will always be fanatics.” ([Location 3958](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=3958)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - Note: Voltaire > Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains”— ([Location 3985](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=3985)) - Note: Jjr > The “multitude . . . often does not know what it wills, because it rarely knows what is good for it.” ([Location 3994](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=3994)) - Note: Jjrousseau > The multitude must sometimes, as Rousseau put it, “be forced to be free.” According to Bertrand Russell, writing in 1946, such sentiments made Rousseau “the inventor of the political philosophy of pseudo-democratic dictatorships.” It followed, in Russell’s view, that “Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau.” Russell claimed that Rousseau’s doctrine of the general will made possible the mystic identification of a leader with his people, which has no need of confirmation by so mundane an apparatus as the ballot-box. . . . Its first-fruits in practice were the reign of Robespierre; the dictatorships of Russia and Germany (especially the latter) are in part an outcome of Rousseau’s teaching. This goes too far, since many tyrants had held sway long before Rousseau was born, and no doubt some of them thought they were supplying the sort of leadership that the multitude really wanted. Even if Rousseau is guilty of inventing a political philosophy for dictators, he was not guilty of inventing dictators. ([Location 3996](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=3996)) > The Enlightenment has at various times been found responsible for the French Revolution’s reign of terror—despite the fact that this was also somehow the fault of Rousseau, who was mainly an enemy of the philosophes—and for fascism, communism, psychiatric malpractice, economic exploitation, sexism, the extinction of species, madcap utopian schemes, environmental degradation and much else. It is generally admitted that none of the key figures of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment advocated or condoned any such evils (except sexism); nevertheless, it is alleged that they somehow prepared the ground for them, or influenced people who did. ([Location 4096](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=4096)) > In addition to the accusation that the Enlightenment negligently produced ideas that can be abused, and proposed schemes that can be taken too far, it has also been charged with setting goals that are unlikely to be reached and with promoting optimism, which is always naïve, because nothing is perfect, and something may always go wrong. In a letter, Berlin acknowledged the virtues of the philosophes—“these thinkers . . . effectively attacked superstition and ignorance, cruelty, darkness, dogma, tradition, despotism of all kinds, and for that I truly honour them.” ([Location 4105](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=4105)) - Tags: [[favorite]] # The Dream of Enlightenment  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Anthony Gottlieb]] - Full Title:: The Dream of Enlightenment - Category: #books ## Highlights > Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) perhaps put it best, in his writings about vacuum—which was not abhorred by nature at all, according to recent experiments, despite what the ancients had said: Those whom we call ancient were really new in all things, and properly constituted the infancy of mankind; and as we have joined to their knowledge the experience of the centuries which have followed them, it is in ourselves that we should find this antiquity that we revere in others. ([Location 37](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=37)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Here is the mark of Descartes’s real method, if it can be called a method. What guided all of his reasoning, including his thoughts about physics, was his determination to escape what he saw as the limitations of the senses. How exactly it did so emerges more clearly in his masterpiece, which was published in 1641. I would not urge anyone to read this book except those who are able and willing to meditate seriously with me, and to withdraw their minds from the senses and from all preconceived opinions. ([Location 227](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=227)) > Descartes urged his readers to focus above all on things that are “objects of the intellect alone and are totally separate from matter,” which is an unmistakable echo of Plato’s main piece of advice to his aspiring philosopher-kings. Like a true follower of Plato, Descartes repeatedly insisted that we must turn aside from the world of the senses and look in our own minds to find the truth. Indeed, the extreme doubts which he entertained at the beginning of his meditations were useful not only because they could strip us of erroneous preconceptions, but also because they provided “the easiest route by which the mind may be led away from the senses.” Many ancient Platonists had looked for such a route, and one Platonist, namely St Augustine, trod virtually the same path as Descartes. ([Location 240](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=240)) > “I am not merely present in my body as a sailor is present in a ship, but . . . am very closely joined and, as it were, intermingled with it.” ([Location 398](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=398)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - Note: Descarte > The final version ranged over questions from the physiology of perception to the nature of shame, impudence and disgust, and ended with a defence of the ancient Stoic doctrine that “the chief use of wisdom lies in its teaching us to be masters of our passions and to control them with such skill that the evils which they cause are quite bearable, and even become a source of joy.” In the judgement of later thinkers, however, this book did not succeed in explaining how a ghost can live and work in a machine, either joyfully or otherwise. ([Location 442](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=442)) - Note: Descarte > The moral ideas of the Stoics had long appealed to Descartes. In his first major publication, the Discourse on Method, he wrote that one of his maxims was “to try always to master myself rather than fortune, and change my desires rather than the order of the world.” “Nothing,” he said, echoing Epictetus, “lies entirely within our power except our thoughts.” ([Location 446](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=446)) > Bacon maintained that there are really three kinds of philosophers: ants, spiders and bees. Empiricists are like ants. They “simply accumulate and use; Rationalists, like spiders, spin webs from themselves; the way of the bee is in between; it takes material from the flowers of the garden and the field; but it has the ability to convert and digest them. . . .” Bacon advocated the way of the bee: one should combine the best parts of the experimental and rational faculties. Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz and Hume all aspired to be bees, though none of them quite put it that way. ([Location 652](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=652)) > That is also the gist of some virtuosic invective by Hugh Trevor-Roper (later Lord Dacre), a British historian who died in 2003. Dacre summed up Leviathan curtly: “The axiom, fear; the method, logic; the conclusion, despotism.” ([Location 755](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=755)) > Hobbes also made the better reply that, even if a sovereign is not granted absolute power, but instead just enough to do his job, there is still some danger that he will abuse it, since “he who has enough strength to protect everybody, has enough to oppress everybody.” ([Location 797](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=797)) > One exception to this rule concerns the equality of citizens. Hobbes was a sort of egalitarian. He criticised the crude belief that “one man’s blood [is] better than another[’s],” and Aristotle’s idea that, as Hobbes put it, “some men are by nature worthy to govern, and others by nature ought to serve.” Even if there were such natural differences, Hobbes argued, men would disagree over how they were in fact distributed, so the idea of a natural inequality would lead to quarrels: as long as men arrogate to themselves more honour than they give to others, it cannot be imagined how they can possibly live in peace: and consequently we are to suppose, that for peace sake, nature hath ordained this law, That every man acknowledge [every] other for his equal. ([Location 823](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=823)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > There was an intellectual scandal when, a few years after Hobbes’s death, Pierre Bayle suggested that it was possible for unbelievers to be decent and virtuous.* Hobbes did not in fact advocate a godless society, and he may well have shared the conventional opinion that such a thing would be disastrous. ([Location 858](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=858)) > men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention, shall furnish them withal . . . there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious Building . . . no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short. ([Location 1085](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1085)) > Thus the popular image of Hobbes shows only one side of him. He is remembered as a man who warned that without strong government, life would be nasty, brutish and short. But he also maintained that our rationality and desire for self-preservation would bring us to seek peace, and thereby make life pleasant, civilised and long. ([Location 1122](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1122)) > For example, he defined “pity” as “imagination or fiction of future calamity to ourselves, proceeding from the sense of another man’s present calamity.” Does this mean that when we pity someone else, it is really ourselves for whom we feel sorry—that our emotion amounts only to displeasure at the thought that the other person’s misfortune may eventually befall us, too? Hobbes did seem to believe that the force of our emotion is somehow caused by a thought or feeling about ourselves, which is questionable. ([Location 1127](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1127)) > Aubrey told an intriguing story about a poor and infirm old beggar whom Hobbes met on a London street. Beholding him with eyes of “pitty and compassion,” Hobbes gave the man sixpence, whereupon he was questioned by a cleric: Sayd a Divine . . . that stood by—“Would you have donne this, if it had not been Christ’s command?”—“Yea,” sayd he.—“Why?” quoth the other.—“Because,” sayd he, “I was in paine to consider the miserable condition of the old man; and now my almes, giving him some reliefe, doth also ease me.” ([Location 1137](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1137)) > Allegiance to a regime does not require one to approve of the way in which it came to power; indeed, as Hobbes noted, “there is scarce a Common-wealth in the world, whose beginnings can in conscience be justified.” ([Location 1278](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1278)) > Hobbes was often agitated by the frightful effects and ridiculous elements of what he took to be mistaken religious views. The polemical intensity of his tirades against the papacy (which he called “the Ghost of the deceased Romane empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof”) ([Location 1401](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1401)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > There is some truth to the idea that he was an enemy of religion, but only in the sense that Luther, Calvin and Jesus himself were all enemies of religion. That is to say, Hobbes was a reformer who rejected some of the dogmas of his day and proposed new ideas instead. ([Location 1407](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1407)) > Many religious pioneers are at first hailed as heretics or worse. Luther and Calvin were described by some Catholic writers as “atheists,” which is what some Romans and other pagans in the first three centuries of our era called all Christians. One Roman emperor speculated that the Christians got their “atheism” from the Jews. ([Location 1409](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1409)) > Thomas Paine (1737–1809) once wrote that “all of us are infidels according to our forefathers’ belief.” ([Location 1420](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1420)) > Some passages of his Ethics could almost have been written by Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius. “Human power,” wrote Spinoza, is very limited and infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes. . . . Nevertheless, we shall bear calmly those things which happen to us . . . if we are conscious that we have done our duty, that the power we have could not have extended itself to the point where we could have avoided those things, and that we are a part of the whole of nature, whose order we follow. ([Location 1893](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1893)) > The Second Treatise of Government has been called an inspiration not only for the French Revolution but for the American Constitution and Declaration of Independence as well. Thomas Jefferson, the main author of the Declaration, wrote that “as to the general principles of liberty, and the rights of man . . . the doctrines of Locke . . . and of Sidney [a British politician and writer] . . . may be considered as those generally approved by our fellow citizens.” Jefferson rather exaggerated the influence of Locke on his fellow revolutionaries. Nowadays, British scholars are mainly sceptical of the notion that Locke’s ideas had much of an effect on the American Revolution; American writers tend to be fonder of the claim. But the respect accorded to Locke’s political writings by intellectuals is attested by the fact that Jefferson’s Royalist opponents invoked them, too. Locke’s ([Location 1958](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1958)) > Newton and Locke were often pronounced to be the twin prophets of the Enlightenment, of which the bible was the French Encyclopédie (1751–1772). ([Location 1966](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=1966)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > He cannot be given any more, even if he is the king of France, because the people do not have any more to give. (The codename Locke used for the manuscript of his Second Treatise was de morbo Gallico—the “French disease,” a medical term for syphilis. He regarded authoritarian monarchy as a similarly noxious French malady.) When God made the world, he gave it to all “mankind in common,” Locke wrote, citing the Psalms. How, then, does man in the state of nature come to have any right to private property? ([Location 2304](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=2304)) > “Enlightened times will enlighten only a small number of honest people,” he wrote to a friend. “The vulgar masses will always be fanatics.” ([Location 3958](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=3958)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - Note: Voltaire > Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains”— ([Location 3985](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=3985)) - Note: Jjr > The “multitude . . . often does not know what it wills, because it rarely knows what is good for it.” ([Location 3994](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=3994)) - Note: Jjrousseau > The multitude must sometimes, as Rousseau put it, “be forced to be free.” According to Bertrand Russell, writing in 1946, such sentiments made Rousseau “the inventor of the political philosophy of pseudo-democratic dictatorships.” It followed, in Russell’s view, that “Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau.” Russell claimed that Rousseau’s doctrine of the general will made possible the mystic identification of a leader with his people, which has no need of confirmation by so mundane an apparatus as the ballot-box. . . . Its first-fruits in practice were the reign of Robespierre; the dictatorships of Russia and Germany (especially the latter) are in part an outcome of Rousseau’s teaching. This goes too far, since many tyrants had held sway long before Rousseau was born, and no doubt some of them thought they were supplying the sort of leadership that the multitude really wanted. Even if Rousseau is guilty of inventing a political philosophy for dictators, he was not guilty of inventing dictators. ([Location 3996](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=3996)) > The Enlightenment has at various times been found responsible for the French Revolution’s reign of terror—despite the fact that this was also somehow the fault of Rousseau, who was mainly an enemy of the philosophes—and for fascism, communism, psychiatric malpractice, economic exploitation, sexism, the extinction of species, madcap utopian schemes, environmental degradation and much else. It is generally admitted that none of the key figures of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment advocated or condoned any such evils (except sexism); nevertheless, it is alleged that they somehow prepared the ground for them, or influenced people who did. ([Location 4096](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=4096)) > In addition to the accusation that the Enlightenment negligently produced ideas that can be abused, and proposed schemes that can be taken too far, it has also been charged with setting goals that are unlikely to be reached and with promoting optimism, which is always naïve, because nothing is perfect, and something may always go wrong. In a letter, Berlin acknowledged the virtues of the philosophes—“these thinkers . . . effectively attacked superstition and ignorance, cruelty, darkness, dogma, tradition, despotism of all kinds, and for that I truly honour them.” ([Location 4105](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016CAJIZO&location=4105)) - Tags: [[favorite]]