The Philosophic Crusade

Abstract

The decade which centred on the year 1750 was the golden age of the philosophes. It saw the publication of De l’Esprit des lois, of Condillac’s major works, of L’Homme machine, of the Lettre sur les aveugles, of the first volumes of Encyclopédie and Buffon’s Histoire naturelle, of Voltaire’s Histoire universelle. Turgot’s Sorbonne Discours of 1750 laid the foundations of the theory of progress, and Rousseau’s first two Discours (1750 and 1755) already contained the essence of his mature thought. The list could be extended, but it is already long enough to show that, by 1755, the main positions of the French Enlightenment were clearly established. It is true that Helvétius, d’Holbach and Condorcet were still to come; that Voltaire and Rousseau had still to produce the works by which they are best remembered; that the economic theories of the physiocrats (which I cannot attempt to discuss within the compass of this book) had yet to be elaborated. It is true also that many minor figures (such as Mably or Raynal) had still to produce their individual (and sometimes influential) interpretations of the ‘philosophical’ ideal.