A Perverse Sense of Humor?

Why else would I choose Christmas Eve to start reading a biography of Baruch Spinoza, progenitor of the Enlightenment and bete noir of Reformation religious establishments (both Jewish and Christian)? The book is Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge 1999).

A Great Sen-tence and a Bad Review

From Amartya Sen's article in the forthcoming Dec. 29, 2011 issue of The New Republic (behind a pay-wall here), "The Boundaries of Justice: David Hume and Our World":

The usefulness of reasoning is not dependent on its being able to solve every problem at hand.

Sen believes a contrary presumption has harmed decision theory and the theory of rational choice, and observes that understanding the incompleteness of our knowledge is in fact central to human reasoning.

Sen's observation is usefully borne in mind while reading the review of Jonathan Israel's Democratic Enlightenment, which appears in this Sunday's New York Times (here). I've previously blogged about the Israel book here and here. While some of the reviewer's criticisms hit the mark (Israel does too strongly distinguish and elevate radical enlightenment thinkers, such as Spinoza and Diderot, over their more moderate brethren, like Voltaire and Hume), the overall tenor of the review is far too glib and jaundiced, treating Enlightenment studies, and seemingly the pursuit of reason itself, as somehow passe.

A Provocative Assertion about the Conservatism of the Legal Profession in the 18th Century

From Jonthan Israel, Democratic Enlightenment (Oxford 2011), pp. 231-2:

Modern historical surveys of the Enlightenment often seem to suggest that Europe's judicial systems could be and were swiftly and almost painlessly reformed in the eighteenth century, as if this was just a question of ending judicial torture, modifying the harsh treatment of debtors and unmarried mothers, and a few other widely acknowledged defects, and as if there was widespread support for the proposed changes in society and among the legal profession. But the evidence strongly suggests otherwise. Significant sections of the Enlightenment, and Hume in particular, systematically undermined every overall approach to rationalizing the law, thereby drastically limiting the scope for legal reform. In the legal and moral sphere, it was neither public opinion, nor economic pressure, nor governments, and especially not ... magistrates or lawyers that acted as agents of change. The legal profession in fact contributed practically nothing to the reform programme anywhere in Europe. Rather it was philosophy itself - and especially la philosophie moderne - helped by the sheer accumulation of social difficulties and pressures (as distinct from public attitudes), that spread awareness of deficiencies and urged root and branch reform.

I am not enough of a legal historian (especially of Europe in the 18th century) to adjudge the accuracy of Israel's strong claim. I suspect he is correct about the general conservatism of the legal profession, which seems a persistent quality. On the other hand, I find it hard to imagine that the successful legal reforms Israel discusses could have been achieved without at least the strong support, if not the instigation, of some enlightened magistrates and lawyers. If the legal profession, as a whole, possesses a conservative (perhaps Humean) mindset, the existence within that profession of a minority of reformers - both moderate and radical - seems another of its persistent qualities. Of course, Israel's apparent bias for the philosophes, especially those like Spinosa, Bayle, and Diderot with a more radical reform agenda, is understandable given his own heavy investment in their works. But it seems doubtful that they their works were the sole drivers of enlightened political, legal, and economic reform.

Finding Diderot

Reading Jonathan Israel's intellectual histories of the Enlightenment (see here) has motivated me to start reading the French essayist Denis Diderot. But his writings, including his Pensees philosophiques and his Pensees sur l'interpretation de la nature do not seem to be available online in English translation in either Kindle, pdf, or html format. I find it very disappointing that important works by a major Enlightenment thinker, which are in the public domain, are not freely available. I guess I'll have to resort to the library. How old-fashioned.

Enlightened by Jonathan Israel

Oxford University Press has just published the latest book in Jonathan Israel's impressive series on the intellectual history of the Enlightenment, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750-1790. Needless to say, I've bought it, but I won't be reading it for a while because I have to read his earlier installments first, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750 (Oxford 2001) (which I've only just started reading) and Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man, 1670-1750 (Oxford 2006).

Israel, who is Professor of Modern European  History at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, is an amazing scholar. His books are to intellectual history what William Cronon's books are to environmental history, though perhaps a bit more demanding of the reader. Ranging from 700-1000 pages each, Israel's tomes are monuments of erudition with references to so many major and minor scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it is hard work keeping track. The books are not dry or especially difficult to read, but it is easy to get lost in the detail. This is not a criticism; arguably, authors should demand more of readers than they typically do. Israel's books represent the kind of meticulous and comprehensive scholarship that all scholars, myself included, wish we could write.