Beyond the Text: The Intellectual Historian's Podcast

The Interviews - Professor Ritchie Robertson on 'The Enlightenment and the Pursuit of Happiness'

• Samuel Woodall • Season 1 • Episode 20

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Embark on a journey through the corridors of history as Ritchie Robertson, a distinguished scholar in German literature and intellectual history, unravels the complexities of the Enlightenment era in his seminal work "The Enlightenment and the Pursuit of Happiness 1680 to 1790." Our insightful conversation peels back the layers of this transformative period, examining the nuanced relationship between Enlightenment thinking and religion, and the myriad of intellectual figures who championed reason while fostering a culture of happiness and freedom. Robertson's engaging narrative, drawn from the personal accounts of a varied readership, underscores the enduring relevance of these historical debates in today's quest for a just and enlightened society.

The tapestry of the Enlightenment is further enriched as we traverse the landscape of emotions and literature, scrutinizing the era's evolving attitudes towards gender, sexuality, and the societal role of the individual. Enlightening discussions on how literary giants like Shaftesbury and Rousseau navigated the interplay between reason and passion provides listeners with a fresh perspective on the depth of intellectual thought during this period. Robertson's analysis offers an intimate portrayal of the characters and dramas that defined Enlightenment literature, inviting us to consider how these narratives shaped contemporary views on human behavior and morality.

Concluding our exploration, we dissect the legacy of the Enlightenment, from the rationality of burgeoning bureaucratic systems to its impact on cultural diversity and the genre of travel literature. Robertson challenges us to rethink historical narratives, shining a light on the multifaceted and often misrepresented views of Enlightenment thinkers. His unique take on this well-trodden path through history is not only a testament to the value of diverse perspectives but also a clarion call for a re-examination of our own understanding of the pursuit of happiness. Join us for this captivating conversation that promises to ignite the intellect and inspire the heart.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to a special series of Beyond the Text the interviews. I'm your host, samuel Woodall, and in this podcast series we'll embark on a captivating exploration of ideas in intellectual history and political thought through in-depth conversations with former colleagues, esteemed academics and influential public figures. Whether you're an academic, a history enthusiast or simply curious about the world of ideas, each episode provides a unique opportunity to engage with brilliant minds who have left an indelible mark on our intellectual landscape. Join me as we journey through intellectual history and political thought, guided by the insights of my guests. Welcome to Beyond the Text the interviews, where we delve into the mind of prolific scholars shaping our understanding of literature, history and culture.

Speaker 1:

Today we have the privilege of speaking with Richard Robertson, a luminary in the realm of academia, particularly renowned for his groundbreaking work on German literature and intellectual history. Born in 1952, robertson's scholarly journey has been illustrious, marked by a sincere dedication to unraveling the complexities of human thought and expression. Today, we'll be focusing on his work the Enlightenment and the Pursuit of Happiness 1680 to 1790. Join us as we embark on a captivating conversation with Richie Robertson, delving into the nuances of his scholarly pursuits, the inspirations behind his work and the enduring significance of the Enlightenment's quest for happiness. Welcome, richie.

Speaker 2:

Thank you.

Speaker 1:

Fantastic. Well, we'll dive straight into question one To begin. The literary review regards your work as the best single volume study of the Enlightenment that we have. How do you believe your work the Enlightenment and the Pursuit of Happiness will influence the future direction of Enlightenment studies, particularly in terms of its comprehensive approach and focus on nuanced reading of texts? And why did you do it in the first place?

Speaker 2:

I see. Well, to answer the last part of the question first, I would never have thought of doing it myself. Well, I became a professor of German at Oxford. I gave an inaugural lecture and as I was interested in the time in conspiracy theories, I talked about 18th century conspiracy theories concerning, on the one hand, flea basins, on the other hand, jesuits. And then I was sponsored from both Flea Basins and Jesuits and, perhaps most of the point, a wholly unexplained letter from Stuart Profitt, the director of Penguin Books, invited me to write a book on the Enlightenment. Stuart is well known to be a publisher of genius and he somehow spotted that I had a book inside me that needed to come out. In fact, over a period of about five years the book came out quite easily, most of the work being done in a very concentrated way during a year of sabbatical, to the extent as our research fellow, the Lischenberg colleague at the University of Göttingen.

Speaker 2:

As for the possible impact of my book, I've had good reviews. Was also very concerned to me is the number of letters, which I can fairly call fan letters, that have had from a variety of people, the majority in North America, and they range from well-known academics and the commentator, george Will, to a very touching letter I had from a man in San Diego, california, told me that since he wasn't able to go to university because he had to look after his invalid mother, he had to educate himself while working as a grocer and that my book had been of value to him in doing so. That's kind of what makes it especially worthwhile. So I wrote the book to explain the enlightenment as I understood it, with no thought about what impact it might have in the future. And I must stress, it's not first and foremost an academic book but a book for the general interested reader.

Speaker 1:

We have a copy of it right here and it's certainly a very accessible large to work through, but it gives you such a well-rounded and accessible approach to the period of what we call the enlightenment.

Speaker 2:

And on the point, thank you very much. There's also, as you say, recently, a number of long chapters, each divided into different sections, so you read a section at a time before going to bed and you don't have to plow through the whole thing from beginning to end.

Speaker 1:

And I believe it's an audiobook as well now, is it not? I believe so. Yes, I have heard it. So, on the point of the approach you were talking about not taking an academic approach to the way you wrote this, can you elaborate on your more inductive approach to studying the enlightenment and how it differs from more deductive methods, particularly in terms of understanding the era's core principles and development? I know you focus a lot on primary texts, for example.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yes, that was very important. I kept at arm's length enormous studies of the enlightenment by Peter Gay, anthony Pagaton, jonathan Israel and many others, because I really didn't want to make the leader climb over a mountain of other studies of the enlightenment. As I say somewhere, it's a book about the enlightenment, not a book about books about the enlightenment. I wanted to let enlightenment authors speak in their own voices as much as possible and in some ways the book is a kind of mosaic of quotations from a number of well-known, sometimes less well-known figures. Also, I wanted to get away from some familiar ways of approaching the enlightenment. It comes naturally to think of the enlightenment as a philosophical movement and that's the line taken, for example, in the very good book the enlightenment, a very short introduction by my namesake, the novel relative John Robertson. John gives you a heavy dose of philosophy in the first chapter, which is very instructive, since he knows everything about the enlightenment. But I wanted to give the reader a different way into the enlightenment and I wanted to present the enlightenment also as a change in outlook, in sensibility, in mentality, if you like. So the first chapter is quite a lot about enlightenment as a way of guiding people towards happiness and freeing people from fear. It has quite a lot about the material conditions of eating, sensory life, especially about illness, war, famine and so forth, and in fact that part of the book, and in some ways the book as a whole, is a homage to Keith Thomas, whose book Original and the Line of Magic had read as a formative period and have continually gone back to. Thomas says enormous amount of documentation, impressed and still impresses me, and that's the model I'm trying to follow, also, of course, the model of Lucid Exposition. I made the also on a personal note, that of all my books, this is the one where I feel I've exceeded most in finding my own voice and speaking in my own voice. It was important, therefore, to quote a great deal to let enlightenmenters I use that word, it's a calc on the useful German word ofcleaner let enlightenmenters speak for themselves as much as possible and also, when necessary, to argue with them, because it's absolutely essential to be in mind that the issues that concern the enlightenment are still alive.

Speaker 2:

And I wanted both to see the enlightenment in historical perspectives but also to treat it as some writers, above all its thinkers, as some interlocutors who doesn't simply report but can also argue with. And you have to do that because enlightenment was very far from the homogeneous movement and you'll find representatives on enlightenment holding diametrically opposite views on many important subjects. For example, just to give one example very briefly, the death penalty. The famous enlightenment treatised by Shazer and Becariah on crimes and punishments argues on the whole cogentry, the abolition of the death penalty, and is cogentry replaced by forced labour. But Adam Smith in the theory of moral sentiments and Emmanuel Kant and many others are quite clear that justice must be in part a matter of retribution. The offender should pay for his offence in a similar way, and Kant calls on binding and effected. Humanity shouldn't interfere with the course of justice and find more to Becariah and Kant. But obviously both views contain a great deal of reason.

Speaker 1:

And on that point about reconciling the varied perspectives with enlightenment, specifically on religion, how do you reconcile the varied perspectives and what insights would you say your book offers into the integration of enlightenment ideas into religious thought, the Catholic enlightenment and institutions?

Speaker 2:

Well, that's a particularly good question. I tend to say how long have you got One book for writing? Book is? I tend to be suspicious of orthodox opinions. As soon as they acquire a title for granted status, I start to question them. The idea that the enlightenment of anti-religious is, at the very least, far too simple, I figure, like Hume, one of my favorite authors, is that respect something of an outlier. His dialogues in natural religion, which make a very incisive case for skepticism, aren't representative of the mainstream of enlightenment thought. In contrast to, say, voltaire and Diderot, majority of thinkers whom we can call enlightenment wanted a rational religion inclined towards deism, the belief that God existed but then didn't intervene in human life.

Speaker 2:

Voltaire, for example was now thought to have been a deist. That has immense consequences for the understanding of Christianity. It does away with the idea of the incarnation, which in a case is very duperously founded in the New Testament. It puts the emphasis not on supernatural belief but on morality. It suggests that Christianity can remain compatible with the scientific revolution which are the major force behind the enlightenment, and it only name Isaac Newton and it also means that you would be a Catholic and enlightened.

Speaker 1:

You would even be a.

Speaker 2:

Jesuit and enlightened, as we mentioned, jesuit Maximilian Hel would travel to the North Cape. It also observed the transit of Venus in 1767. That was why James Cook was sent on an expedition to Tahiti to make astronomical observations. There was a strong movement in the Catholic Church to play down observances and practices that were thought to be superstitious, for example the maintenance of shrines, the belief in miracles, pilgrimages to holy places, to put multiple emphasis on morality and pastoral care and to make church services more orderly. Before people would wander in and out at any time. But Catholic Enlighteners referred a service which people behaved in orderly fashion and in fact, what I could say, in practice they made Catholic devotion a bit closer to Protestantism. Anyway, the Catholic Enlightenment also had a significant movement. In fact it wouldn't have to name a major figure in it, but it would have to be the Italian Eric Ludovico Moratori, who was also an important historian, who spread especially in Austria and South Germany, but also throughout the Catholic world. He even had adherents in Scotland, and thinking especially of Alexander Giddes, who wrote a Latin poem celebrating the French Revolution. So a simple opposition between the Enlightenment and religion wouldn't do if it's not true to the facts.

Speaker 2:

Strictism yes, and the strut of the supernatural and emphasis on morality were very important, and along with that, of course, went the historical study of the Bible. This was pioneered, ironically, by the French Catholic priest Richard Seymour in the late 17th century. Seymour made critical studies of the text of the New Testament as an exercise in anti-Protestant polemic. He wanted to show that the Protestant doctrine of Sola stuttura by the word of scripture alone was unreliable, because the text of the New Testament couldn't be established with certainty. But this bank fired.

Speaker 2:

Because once you start analyzing the text of the New Testament less known and old you find an immense number of variant readings. The early 18th century verbal scholar, john Mill, came up with a list of 30,000 variant readings in the New Testament. Some important verses can be shown to be interpolations. The Doctor of the Trinity, for example, rests on a single verse which may be an interpretation and whose meaning is in any case disputed. Other central doctors of Christianity lack a biblical foundation. So once you start looking critically and historically at the text of the Bible, you open. The sluggish and major landmark in that process comes in the 19th century with a book that's Neban Jesu. Critics Betrusted Life of Jesus, critically Examined by David Strauss 1836. It was written into English by.

Speaker 2:

Marian Evans, later known as George Eliot Strauss' book, is a compelling book, written in a wonderful style but doesn't quite survive translation. I mean, that's an outcome of the Enlightenment, but a century later.

Speaker 1:

And on the matter of you were saying bits that were perhaps glossed over or you took an interest in elements that weren't yet examined in a beautiful, could you discuss your analysis in the book of some ideas of gender, sexuality, ethnicity and race within the Enlightenment and how these factors shaped the social landscape of the period and specifically, I suppose, how you deal with those concepts in the Enlightenment, for the Enlightenment, say, rather than a present history reading?

Speaker 2:

I think I must refer you to the excellent book by Aaron Meyers de Pauliola called the Oranges of Sex, which is precisely about sexuality in the Enlightenment, and he makes a very important point that religious toleration accompanies a degree of sexual tolerance. In the early modern period, sexual morality was public matter. Adulteracy, for example, was punished by church courts. There was the case until the restoration in England and continued with the case throughout the 18th century in Scotland. Robert Burns, for example, was punished for adultery by doing pens in a white sheet in church on successive Sundays. However, other people learned, however reluctantly, to live with different religious sects and groups. So as religion became a private matter, so did sexuality. When I refer you to the book the Oranges of Sex, I wouldn't like to portray the Enlightenment as a period of liberalization in matters of gender. In some respects it went the other way. Enlightened thinkers and especially medics moved towards the conception of humanity which the body and the mind were intimately linked. The phrase used by German physiologists was Durgantz, imensch, the whole man and mensch. In German is non-gendered, it means human being, and that term replaced the Cartesian view. The body and mind were separate but connected in some serious way through the pineal gland at the base of the neck. But the practical advantage of the old Cartesian view was that the mind and the body were separate. Therefore there was no such thing as a male or female mind.

Speaker 2:

In the 17th century, more than 18th, you find women who, by good luck, sometimes by having academic fathers, managed education and contributed to scholarship. If you want to read about these and refer you to, peter Berks called the polymath the politic he left, which lists a large number, and there are certainly some learned women, learned ladies as they were called in the 18th century. But as the century wore on they got a bad name. They were thought to be unfeminine, unwomanly. According to example, a passage from the diary of Francis Burnley which tells how she was in a library she was taking down a new translation of Cicero. A gentleman came in and she hastily put the book away. The fear, she says, of being thought studious and affectant. She also has a very familiar example of satire the learned ladies just need to open pride and prejudice, eating the leaven. But Jane Olson joins in mocking Mary, the studious Bennett sister, in a decidedly unkind way. So in that respect the Enlightenment was bad news for feminism.

Speaker 2:

One of the aspects of gender, as I mentioned, is homosexuality. It was of course it happened, it was known about, it was taboo, and in this country you carry the death penalty. So tolerance for homosexuals was extremely difficult. At the same time, they're well-known examples. One was the art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who became a Catholic in order to have access to art collections in Rome, who was well-known to be homosexual, who was murdered in 1767, not, as people sometimes thought, by Roth's trade, but just by a casual robber. His biography was written by Goethe in 1884. And Goethe refers to Winckelmann's homosexuality and clearly it thinks none the worse of him for it.

Speaker 2:

So on the continent some tolerance was creeping in. Or another example one of Schiller's many unfinished plans, the fragment called the Knights of Malta. It is an all-male cast, it's set in Malta, where the knights are under siege by Turkish forces. And since the tragedy has a love interest, schiller introduces a very clear love relationship between two young men. So more tolerance on the continent. I might add too that in Germany the laws on divorce were relaxed In most places. You could have no fault divorce by the end of the 18th century, whereas in Britain, until I'm not quite sure when, but certainly well into the 19th century, a couple could only get divorced by a special act of parliament. So questions of sex, gender and sexual tolerance are certainly important in the Enlightenment, but not always in the way that, from a present day perspective, we would ideally wish.

Speaker 1:

And I think from there, I think what I'd like to go on to is what led you to prioritize literary texts in your interpretation of the Enlightenment, and how do these texts shed light on the emotional and rational dimensions of Enlightenment thought.

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you. I should be clear that I'm not a historian, although some of my historian friends were kind enough to treat me as one. I'm a literary scholar. I work with texts in various languages.

Speaker 2:

One important feature of literature is it gives you access to changes in sensibility, in emotion, in feeling, and what Raymond Williams called structures of feeling. To give you an example, people still think of the Enlightenment, wrongly, as the age of reason. There's also the age in which reason was increasingly qualified by an appreciation of the value of emotion. The word sympathy was the one always used. Humor even goes so far as to say reason is, and should only ever be, the slave of the passions, making thereby an important philosophical point. That reason can tell you what to do, but it can't make you want to do it. Emotion, passion, has to do that. Now, the appreciation of what we're called the passions or the emotions runs right through the century. You can find it developed very strongly in Shaftesbury, writing the first decade of the century. It talks about sympathy, fellow feeling, which binds people together, and in fact, a very interesting strand in the Enlightenment is the increasingly subtle analysis of what this sympathy or fellow feeling is.

Speaker 2:

Adlis Smith has a particularly interesting thesis in the theory of moral sentiments, to the effect that her ideas of right and wrong are created, or at least enormously strengthened, by the approval of others. When I decide how to act, I think of what a spectator what Smith calls the impartial spectator would think of my actions. I want the approval of others, but I also want to deserve the approval of others, and that is a major motive, perhaps the major motive for good actions. So we're looking at the role that emotions play in human behavior, and the place to find out about that is literature. When Adlis Smith was in student Oxford, he was shocked to find that the philosophy being taught was completely old fashioned and out of date. His lecturers were still Aristotelians, so he didn't bother going to lectures, or not much. Instead, read English and French fiction and learn a great deal about human behavior from that. He gives a number of literary references in the theory of moral sentiments, including to Racine. He thinks that Pheidch is the greatest drama ever. Now, if Pheidch, you find passions getting absolutely out of hand and at least some increased interest in the emotions.

Speaker 2:

The passions was fed by the great novels of the mid-century, above all Richardson, clarissa, 1748. People tend to put off reading it because it's a very, very large book. The Penguin Edition which I have has some almost 1600 pages. And such a big break of a book. You could use it as an offensive weapon. Nevertheless, once you get into it, you can read it very rapidly. It's a page turn. In fact, when I read it for the second time this summer on the holiday in the North of Scotland where there wasn't a lot else to do, I was absolutely spellbound by carried away, as I don't think I have been by any other book. And Richardson was enormously popular this time and so was Rousseau. Rousseau's novel Julie, or the Novel in Louise, was a best-selling and attractive and men's-about-to-fan mail. You read to that Goethe's the Sorrows of Werther, which provoked enthusiastic responses. It said even that some people were tipped over the brink into suicide. A Werther's example, I hope not, in any case what I can never know for sure.

Speaker 2:

To understand the 18th century you have to familiarize yourself with these hugely influential books.

Speaker 2:

And of course it's in these novels that different philosophies, different understanding of the humanity are acted out. In Clarissa you have on the one hand the libertine standpoint of lovelace, the seducer, on the other the as you can see puristicism, but that's not quite fair. They devout but undermetic outlook of Clarissa, and the one is tested against the other. So there's a drama not only of human interaction but, if you stand back far enough, a drama of conflicting philosophies, conflicting understandings of humanity. And indeed the major endeavor of the late enlightenment, especially but not only in Germany, was what is called the time anthropology, the study of human nature. But in fact there wasn't only a German preoccupation David Humes treatise of human nature, which came out, I remember, in 1739, and those of yourself as a contribution to the science of man and in fact following the scientific revolution of the 17th century, the work of Newton, galileo, harvey, etc. I think you've turned their attention to humanity and tried to do some analogous for the study of human nature.

Speaker 1:

Professor Richie Robertson will be back shortly, and on that point I think about, about studying man, studying science of man. Can you expand on your exploration of enlightenment practices themselves, particularly regarding issues such as education, social welfare and other issues such as slavery and colonialism, and how they contribute to reflect a more accurate interpretation of the enlightenment areas, ideals and realities?

Speaker 2:

Yes, I was very concerned in my book to do what I think is not very commonly done and talk about what I call the practical in life, that is, the application of reason and sensibility to social issues by justice, punishment, prisons, education, etc. I wanted to emphasize the extent to which enlightenment was not only intellectual but a practical, hands-on matter. It's not a building roads, building canals, improving infrastructure. Now, while Britain these things were done by private companies, on the continent they were done by governments, which I personally think is much, much pressurizing, but never mind. For example, a major spokesman for enlightenment, turgot, was the administrator of a French province, the province of Limoges, and part of his duties was to supervise the building of roads. It's very important, this rather remote and isolated province In Germany, certainly from 17th century onwards, the many princely states were about 300 of them, some large, most small employed administrations.

Speaker 2:

Some of them were university graduates with degrees in the new science called chemicalistic, which we would probably call management. They applied the studies to what was called in the 18th century police in English, police in French, policy in German. Now, that doesn't mean fighting crime, or only incidentally. It means regulating social life. It means creating a reliable infrastructure, it means regulating social behaviour to avoid public disturbances. It means also regulation of manners, the punishment of offenses like adultery. A good society for enlightenment was one that was well policed. And again, you must put aside modern, unattractive associations of the word policed. A more accurate term would be civilised. Civilisation was to be enforced by the agencies of the state. Now, that wasn't always done efficiently. In fact, the number of proclamations issued in Germany to regulate people's behaviour shows that they were very often ignored. Nevertheless, it was done, and Mary Walsencraft, at the end of the century, remarks on how much more of an enlightened spirit obtained in Germany than in France and Britain as a result of government regulation.

Speaker 2:

You should remember, I think, that although there's always a lot wrong with bureaucracies, nevertheless modern life I may come back to this point later depends on bureaucratic organisation. That in turn depends on reason or, perhaps better, on practical rationality. Another byproduct of this some bureaucratic rationality was the science of statistics. We take statistics for granting. In fact they were invented in the late 17th century. By looking at the records of birth and death, you would find out important facts concerning the well-being of the population. The collection of what we call sociological data all came under the heading of statistics, not only numerical data but information about people's well-being. Indeed, one of the great works of the Enlightenment was the first statistical account of Starland that was his title An immense collective work produced in the 1790s. The organisers of John Sincer built to the minister of every parish with a questionnaire asking him to provide the required information. As a result, you've got a huge and absolutely invaluable historical source. I think bureaucracy and statistics have a great deal to recommend them.

Speaker 2:

You mentioned, or I mentioned, prisons. Well, how do people feel criminals in the problem that we haven't solved, which the Enlightenment solves? Prisons were hellish If you were in prison for debt and obviously, as you couldn't pay the debts for in prison, they were stuck unless some kind friend helped them. Prisoners used to beg for support from the public through little windows in the prison wall, and they were so dreadful in prison that you actually had to pay other prisoners to get a share of time at this window. So prison reform was very necessary. Apart from in the else prison's bread disease, prison suffered from what was called jail fever. Not sure what it was in medical terms, but it was a killer. Great figure here is John Howard, who toured prisons and also lunatic assailants throughout Europe in order to compile a report and make proposals for reform, and hence you have the Howard League for Penal Reform. And then the question of the treatment of the insane. We all know, and unfortunately it isn't a myth, that insane people are confined as they seem to have come to amuse themselves of their antics. Lutic assailants were extremely inhumane. There was a widespread idea, for example, that bad people didn't feel the cold, so they kept you freezing conditions. You were cheaper and gradually you have some improvement. It must give you credit to the Quakers for pioneering a humane treatment of the mad at the York retreat. I may have mentioned that I was a Scotsman, if you can tell. My wife was a Quaker and I bring Scotsman and the Quakers into the book a very great deal.

Speaker 2:

Now, when it comes to prisons, we readily think of Jeremy Benson, a very interesting writer. He has a bad name because he thought to advocate and lighten the pur rationality of the part of the inhuman. But there's much more to it than that. He has, for example, a legal analysis of the French Declaration of Human Rights which makes a very cogent point. Declaration says, for example, that man is born free, and Benson says in what sense is a newborn infant free? It will die, not immediately looked after. I think he does puncture some rather cloudy rhetoric there.

Speaker 2:

Benson was also an advocate, privately, of the decriminalization of homosexuality. You couldn't advocate for the cause openly. But in relation to prisons Benson is not so admirable. Everyone knows that Foucault makes much of it. It's about his scheme for the panopticon, in which the governor would sit at the center of the prison and all around the concentric circles of cells, each of the windows that the governor could see, and so the prisoners, each in solitude and fine, will have a constant eye care for their good behavior. Well, although this held up as an example of enlightenment, hyper rationality, it's a myth in the sense that although Benson drew up detailed plans and presented them to Parliament, the panopticon was never built. A bill for its erection never got through. Benson also thought you could have a similar arrangement from schools, so the schoolmaster would keep an eye on all the schoolboys at once and present them from copying each other, and right over there's some. It does sound a little bit mad, I must say.

Speaker 2:

But, anyway, he's right in so far as prisons badly needed reform, but not necessarily reform that he advocated. Benjamin Rush, one of the American founding fathers, was a great advocate of solitary confinement, because it's true and well known that the crew was in prison, learn criminal tricks of each other and make each other worse. So they should be confined in separate cells that are led to repent of their misdeeds. Well, the Philadelphia Penitentiary which Foucault talks about at the beginning, of discipline and punish, was this idea in practice. But when Dickens visited in 1840, he thought it utterly, utterly inhuman. I think we would have to agree. So the Enlightenment thought about prisons, sometimes a good effect, often a bad effect, but a wrestle to the problems that we still haven't solved.

Speaker 1:

I suppose the final question I'd like to pose on your work is how do you respond to critiques of alternative interpretations of Enlightenment presented in your book, particularly regarding some of the points discussed in terms of political, social and cultural dimensions?

Speaker 2:

In the epilogue. I take issue with Adorno and Hochheimer, who could die of Enlightenment, and with Isaiah Berlin. Think about the book Dialect of Enlightenment. By the way, the German title is ambiguous because it was translated as Enlightenment or the Enlightenment. There have been two English translations, each which in the text takes a different alternative, but the more I think about it, the more I think that Adorno and Hochheimer were reacting not against the Enlightenment, not against Enlightenment in general, but against ideas particularly associated with Max Weber.

Speaker 2:

Weber is a great theorist of bureaucracy and their target is the bureaucratic rationality the Weber analysers. You want to claim that bureaucratic rationality is in itself bad, dehumanising, abstract. But for a start they claim too much. At the beginning of the book, drawing in the myth of Ulysses, they claim that the use of intellect, of abstract thought, is already dehumanizing because it alienates you from nature, from what you're thinking about. So from Ulysses onwards, it's all been downhill. However, I would say in reply that we need bureaucracy, and bureaucracy is neither good nor bad, but it is neutral. It's very bad if it's used to administer death camps. It's good if it's used for humane and socially-corrective purposes. Blaming bureaucracy as such is like saying that sport is bad. Sport is neutral. It's neither good nor bad. Some sport is corrupt Think of the scandal surrounding the international food policyization. Some sport is cruel, like talk something and other practices which, for the way, some enlighteners are criticized.

Speaker 2:

But sport also is a great deal of value. It encourages teamwork, it's good for health, etc. Etc. Sport and bureaucracy are in themselves neutral. However, adorno and Hawkeimer don't see it that way. Another drawback of the book is they wrote the first version in 1944. The version we're familiar with came out in 1947. It was first translated in the 1960s. The technological rationality which they complain about was flourishing, if anywhere in the Soviet Union. But they don't mention the Soviet Union, and understandably wouldn't want to, because when they wrote the book the Soviet Union was taking the major part in defeating Germany. So the Soviet Union is the elephant in the room of dialectic enlightenment.

Speaker 2:

The other person I take issue with, though I feel much more warmly towards him, is Isaiah Berlin, whom I remember as a captivating lecturer. However, he wasn't really an authority on the Enlightenment. When you look into the matter, it turns out he first paid attention to the Enlightenment. He was writing his book on Karl Marx, marx-thread Philizof, who I would fairly call radical Radical materialists, such as Helvetius and Dullabach. They have very extreme views, again, the most of the mainstream. Helvetius, for example, is the person who thinks that every day is by nature equally talented. Every day has the potential to do everything and therefore education is all important. This is taking Locke's empiricism to a crazy extreme. It makes out that these figures are typical of the Enlightenment and identify the Enlightenment with extreme rationality, whereas, as I argue with Locke, as you can easily see, what the Enlightenment means by reason is more good sense, cicero's right reason, ratio extra, and not any kind of quasi-mathematical reasoning. In his view the Enlightenment is skewed. He is much more interested in figures than what he calls the counter-enlightenment. One is the Neapolism philosopher Vico, who actually belongs to the pre-enlightenment period, another is the mystical writer Haaman and the third is Herder Johann Gottfried Herder, the philosopher and theologian and critic who figures quite largely in my book, who is, among many other things, an advocate or a defender of cultural diversity. Any kind of attempt of homogenization at one side fits all is anathema to Herder.

Speaker 2:

In his great work, ideas for the Philosophy of Human History, which translation for the first time is due shortly from Princeton University Press, he goes through the history of humanity. Well, it actually begins by talking about the planet we live on and gives you a great deal of physical geography to show how our physical surroundings have shaped our human nature. But in about the second half of the book he goes through the history of civilization and shows that each nation has distinctive characteristics which contribute to the great mix which is humanity. He ends with the Slavs, and he thought that the Germans were top nation at present. But the Slavs would shortly become top nation and question mark is that happening? And if so, is it a good thing? But not refraud. Herder is a generous advocate of the greatest possible diversity and understanding of humanity and not at all an opponent of the Enlightenment, but rather somebody who develops its implications.

Speaker 2:

It's worth mentioning too that travel literature in the Enlightenment is extremely interesting and you find many, many travelers with a sympathetic interest in the people they visit or live among and no desire to denigrate them or run them down as inferior to Europeans. I have given a number of recommendations at this point and very formed an example of a book by one, peter Colburn, about the Hottentots of South Africa, who we knew well and liked. But I do want to mention one very underrated Enlightenment classic, that is the Istvárd of the Díders and the history of the East and West Indies, a compilation written mainly by the Abbey Reynál, with help above all from Dídero, as on the other hand. It's quite hard to get hold of a readable copy. I certainly read it in the Library of Max Planck Institute for History at Göttingen and it is absolutely fascinating. It's the very history of European colonialism, beginning with the Spanish and Portuguese, ending with the British, is written at the time of the American War of Independence and very strongly backs the Americans Along the way. It gives you an immense amount of ethnological, geographical, zoological information, a particularly light with a broad passage about the beaver, the habits of the beaver, which will mention how this harmless animal, whose conduct is described at some length, is endangered, being exterminated by greedy trappers and fur traders. So, among other things, tremendous hodgepodge, you can find anything there. I have urged Princeton to commission a new translation, but there are no signs of activity. So let me put the idea out there, whoever wants to take it out, a new translation of the Istvárd in fact a translation there hasn't been one a translation of Istvárd de Díders.

Speaker 2:

And the Enlighteners, although not strong in feminism, are very strong on anti-colonialism, in particular the plurivictivities of the East India Company.

Speaker 2:

India wasn't colonized directly by the British government, by an independent, licensed company which had its own private army and continued until 1858, which, like the Indian mutiny, should, should, should, britain, the thing is, couldn't go on as it had done. As Adam Smith points out, the East India Company suffocated the trade that was already going on in India, suffocated its manufacturers and reduced the problems of Bengal to an appalling famine in which probably three, three billion died. But this old Evans, who was Smith's very strong case against monopolies, businessmen, wants to be left alone to get on with business. They don't like interference, but, smith points out, we're left to themselves. They destroy competition and create, create monopolies in the wealth of nations. With the tension, perhaps a contradiction between Smith's case against monopolies and his advocacy of the free market. As far as I can see, the contradiction is not resolved. But anyway, one side of the equation, the critique of monopolies, is extremely strong and marked, I think. I think we're coming to the end of our time.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yeah, no, I was going to say we have a couple of questions on your review of the end of enlightenment, but perhaps I'll have to wait for another time. But I mean, it's been very kind of you to give up your time to discuss your work. And, yeah, I suppose it would just leave me to say thank you very much indeed for sharing your thoughts and ideas on the enlightenment and pursuit of happiness. And yeah, sorry we haven't had time to get to your time. Literally standard review of the end of enlightenment. I mean, unless you have any very brief comments about your review in and of itself that you've just liked to share before we finish. And I know we've written out the three questions, but if you have, any.

Speaker 2:

Just a word perhaps. I enjoyed Richard Watworth's book the End of Enlightenment and he tells some shows of the late 18th century in Britain, to a small extent in France, in an unfamiliar perspective he shows that, far from being naive believers in unlimited progress, the leading thinkers of the time Hume, gibbon, burke were very apprehensive about the future and provide a great deal of evidence to support this view. Curiously, I had last night an email from a queen of mine in Minneapolis who had read the review and congratulated me on presenting what most view of the enlightenment as quote dark, dark, dark. But I think it's not as bad as that, but what more, certainly something to see. I'm glad he said it.

Speaker 1:

And it's fantastic to see a nuanced perspective on the enlightenment coming from Richard Watmore and a unique perspective from a literary background in the enlightenment and pursuit of happiness coming from you, Professor Richard Robertson. Thank you very much indeed for being with us today.

Speaker 2:

It's been a pleasure. Thank you, richard. Thank you.

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