Wicked Company, Part 2

It's probably not a good idea to take "The Enlightenment" for granted. What is it?

Today, if you or I lived in Iran, we'd be subjected to a theocracy, a society run by religious zealots and bureaucrats; we'd have to be careful not to run afoul of an extensive control and punishment apparatus. Free speech freely expressed would more likely be punished than not, to the point of imprisonmment, perhaps even torture and premature death.

How Iran operates today gives a rough approximation of the situation in many parts of Europe in the late 1600s and 1700s. In France, the Catholic Church was closely allied with the monarchy (the king and his circle), aristocracy and armed forces, who together formed an apparatus of control and punishment that operated to maintain the status quo, rich on top, poor at their feet.

"Enlightened" thinkers question(ed) that status quo, putting a lot of ideas on the table for thought, some of them new and some going back to the ancient Greeks and Romans. This not only was (is) perceived as a threat to the powers that be, it actually was (and still could be) a threat to those powers. When Enlightenment writers put their ideas in the public sphere, they risked direct repression. Voltaire and Denis Diderot were imprisoned and harassed for their efforts, and lived in constant vigilence lest they be hauled away permanently. 

That's the backdrop for the Enlightenment "project," what Michel Foucault quipped was "a patient labor giving form to our impatience for liberty."*  Put in today's terms, don't passively accept the world as it is, but try to work things out in your own mind! If changes are needed, make them. Learn! Think! Do! Try something new! Question all! Be wary, but do not be afraid!

Pictured above: Jeanne Julie Éléonore de Lespinasse, (1732-1776), who ran an influential salon (i.e. private gathering of yakkers) and was for quite some time Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert's "special lady friend."  In these circles, there were many special friends and acquaintances which -- even aside from their ideas -- is part of what makes them so compelling and modern, even futuristic.

The basic scene: ". . . long discussions fueled by the old triad of literary drugs -- coffee, alcohol, and tobacco . . ."**

*"What is Enlightenment ?" ("Qu'est-ce que les Lumières ?"), The Foucault Reader (1984), page 50.

**Philipp Blom, A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment (Basic Books, 2010), page 17.  

Today's Rune: Warrior.