Two Concepts of Moderation in the Early Enlightenment

ABSTRACT

This essay proposes a bifurcation within the concept of moderation in early modern Europe. To draw this out it reconstructs an “encounter” between two citizens of the scholarly Republic of Letters in the years around 1700—Lodovico Antonio Muratori and Jean Le Clerc—and the concept of moderation each maintained. It proposes that the former maintained an ideal of moderation which was “hard” principally about self-regulation, while the latter maintained an ideal of moderation which was “soft” and principally about (religious) toleration. It then attaches this “encounter” to an analogous conflict between uses of moderation in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England. It concludes by proposing that this bifurcation, while occurring within scholarly and theological debates, has enduring significance for our interpretation of the Enlightenment, and for the passage of political moderation into the modern world.

KEYWORDS:

• moderation
• Enlightenment
• Jean Le Clerc
• Lodovico Antonio Muratori

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. Skinner, “A Third Concept of Liberty.”

^2. Spencer, “Four Conceptions of Freedom”; Forst, “Political Liberty: Integrating Five Conceptions of Autonomy.”

^3. Nelson, “Liberty: One Concept Too Many,” 63.

^4. A position marked out in the introduction to Nelson’s The Greek Tradition, 18.

^5. Skinner, “Concepts Only Have Histories,” 1 (italics in the original).

^6. See Palonen, “History of Concepts.”

^7. Koselleck, “Richtlinien für das Lexikon politisch-sozialer Begriffe der Neuzeit,” 91–94.

^8. Working with Koselleck’s method but focusing on moderation in the ancien regime, ended by its adaptation in the eighteenth century. See Kuhfuß, “‘Moderation’”; On adapting Kuhfuß’ model, see Benrekassa, “‘Modéré’, ‘modération’, ‘modérantisme’.”

^9. It served to “fixe les limites de l’Augustin des doctes.” Quantin, “L’Augustine du XVIIe siècle,” 14.

^10. In addition to Quantin, “L’Augustine du XVIIe siècle,” see Backus, “The ‘Confessionalization’ of Augustine”; Visser, Reading Augustine in the Reformation.

^11. Volume 11 of the Maurist opera omnia opens with a “praefatio generalis,” penned by the senior Benedictine scholar Jean Mabillon. See Kriegel, “Le complot janséniste”; De Francheschi, “L’orthodoxie thomiste.”

^12. Le Clerc wrote to Locke on 13 January 1701 that he had begun work on “une édition des oeuvres de S. Augustin, dont il va paroitre une essai.” Le Clerc, Epistolario, 293.

^13. Le Clerc, Appendix augustiniana: “ex recta ratione, Grammaticaque ac cerissima Scripturae Interpretatione deducta. … Aegre serent, nimirum, nos de S. Augustino, de quo ferme quasi de oraculo quodam, non sine horrore religios, loqui solent, ita saepe egisse quasi de quovis alio homine ageremus” (praefatio, iii).

^14. On Augustine’s thought on free will, Le Clerc concludes: “sed haec ad Theologicas quaestiones non pertinent. Multa hic sunt quae Platonismum redolent” (Appendix Augustiniana, 555). Elsewhere, Augustine dealt with the Trinity under the influence of “Platonicae & Pythagoricae nugae” (600–602).

^15. Ibid., praefatio: “mirum tamen est S. Augustino taedium aut somnum non obrepisse, idem toties dicenti” (and similar remarks on 607).

^16. In general terms I lean upon Pitassi, Entre croire et savoir. Le Clerc’s assault on tradition rose to the fore in his 1685 exchange with Richard Simon, on which see Bernier, “Le problème de la tradition.”

^17. Le Clerc, Parrhasiana: “considérer dans ses premières sources, sans y mêler aucunes décisions humaines, ni aucunes explications de ce qu’on n’entend point” (341).

^18. Schuurman, “The Empiricist Logic of Ideas.”

^19. Le Clerc. Ars critica: “Haud magis quaeritur hıc quid verum sit, quid falsum, seu an id quod legimus veritati consentaneum sit, necne; sed tantum quı possimus intelligere quid sibi velint ii, quorum scripta legimus. Uno verbo, quaeritur vera dictorum sententia, non veritas eorum quae dicuntur” (3–4). Much has been made of Le Clerc’s hermeneutics, cleverly dubbed by J. G. A. Pocock as “proto-Skinnerian” in Barbarism and Religion, Vol. 5, 99.

^20. Collis, “Reading the Bible in the ‘Early Enlightenment’.”

^21. Launoy, La véritable tradition, 23–28.

^22. Le Clerc to John Locke, 10 February 1702: “pour pouvoir vendre les autres tomes en pais Catholiques” (Epistolario, 368–69).

^23. Muratori announces his initiation of the work in a letter to Antonio Magliabechi, 8 August 1704 (Carteggi con Mabillon… Maittaire, 411).

^24. Zeno to Muratori, 13 December 1704: “L’ars critica di Giovanni Le Clerc, dell’ultima edizione in tre tomi, qui si vende ordinariamente per venti lire. Se vi occorre, la uniro alle due copie dell’Augustinus vindicatus che non si sono ancora spedite” (Carteggi con Zacagni… Zurlini, 278).

^25. Muratori to Filippo del Torre, 25 March 1707, cited in Bertelli, Erudizione e storia, 389 note 63: “in quanti ai miei studi le diro in confidenza d’avere avanzata assai una mia opera, che servirà di difesa a S. Agostino criticato dal Clerc, e perche l’argomento mio è più vasto porterà forse per titlo De ingeniorum moderatione in Religionis negotio, dove tratterò de i diritti e de i freni che ha d’avere l’uomo in cercare, e insegnare la verità. Pensando io di parlare con una moderata liberta, dubito se potrò stampare il libro ovunque vorrò, e se v’abbia a mettere il mio nome. Percio la prego di tacere, e di credermi cattolicissimo perche tanto i cattholici, quanto gli eretici han bisogno di tale trattato.”

^26. Muratori, De ingeniorum moderatione in religionis negotio, 69–76.

^27. Ibid., 71.

^28. Ibid., Preface (unpaginated).

^29. Lehner, “De moderatione in Sacra Theologia.”

^30. On the misfortunes of the De ingeniorum moderatione, see Vismara, “Muratori ‘immoderato’.”

^31. Muratori, De ingeniorum moderatione, chap. 15.

^32. Ibid., chap. 16.

^33. Ibid., Preface: “ut honesta ineatur naturali ingeniorum libertati cum Christiana moderatione concordia.”

^34. Ibid., chaps. 6 and 7, e.g., “non ingenium, non rationem excludimus a perquirenda Religione vera, sed eorum suademus moderationem” (57).

^35. Ibid.: “prudentia tum affectuum tum virtutum omnium dux & moderatrix futura est” (14).

^36. This point is stressed by Raimondi in I lumi dell’erudizione: “moderazione vuol dire due cose per il Muratori. C’è una moderazione che bisogna esigere dagli ingegni nella ricerca della verità, ma esiste anche una moderazione della autorità nei confronti della ricerca” (91).

^37. Muratori, Riflessioni (1715): “c’insegna a camminar pel mezzo, e non discendere negli estremi” (66): A few pages later he adds: “il buon gusto c’insegna a contenerci nel mezzo. Nel mezzo sta la Verità, e la Giustizia” (68).

^38. Ibid.: “non potranno essi di meno di non moderare in questa parte gli Appetiti, che tanto possono essere al nostra volere infesti; E conformandosi col BUON GUSTO” (23).

^39. On this “giusto mezzo,” see Bragagnolo, ”Lodovico Antonio Muratori,” 68–69; The best general study of Muratori’s scholarly development remains Bertelli, Erudizione e storia, and in English, on his theology, the overview in Vismara, “Ludovico Muratori—Enlightenment in a Tridentine Mode.”

^40. A definition constant through the first edition (1612) to the fourth (1729–1738). http://www.lessicografia.it/ricerca_libera.jsp (accessed 17 March 2022).

^41. Raimondi, I lumi dell’erudizione: “la struttura mentale del Muratori” (120).

^42. Le Clerc, Parrhasiana: “la recherche de la Vérité… en observant toujours toutes les mesures, que la prudence Chrétienne demande” (441–42).

^43. Ibid.: “A qui laisseroit-on le soin de la dire, & de la défendre?”

^44. Ibid.: “les interprètes des pensées qu’ils n’osent eux-mêmes publier… comme les bouches de la Verité & de la Liberté, opprimées presque par tout ailleurs… des fruits des semences de piété, de charité, & de toutes les vertus Chrétiennes. … Modération, qui s’établit peu à peu dans les esprits des plus habiles d’entre les Protestans” (442–43).

^45. Mulsow, “The ‘New Socinians’.”

^46. For a useful panorama, see Campbell, The Religion of the Heart. This broader tolerationist movement is the subject of Marshall, John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture.

^47. Turrettini, Nubes testium pro moderato, 55: “exerceatur ubique, atque apud omnes, par Moderatio.”

^48. Ibid.: “haec semina Moderationis & Tolerantiae, Divinae benedictionis rore irrigata, feliciter germinent, & suavissimos fructos proferant, ad Dei gloriam, Ecclesiae aedificationem & concordiam, & nostram ipsorum Salutem” (56–57).

^49. On the theological affinity between Le Clerc and Turrettini, see two articles by Klauber, “Between Protestant Orthodoxy and Rationalism” and “The Drive Towards Protestant Union.”

^50. This factor is stressed by Franco Venturi in his Settecento riformatore: da Muratori a Beccaria, 162–86.

^51. Vecchi, “La critica del Muratori al Locke”; Continisio, Il governo delle passioni, 70–91; Locke’s influence on Muratori is overstated by Ferrone, who reduces Muratori’s mature thought to a “rejection of Locke’s morality and its utilitarianism, rationalism and vision of a strongly secular society open to social conflicts.” Ferrone, The Intellectual Roots of the Italian Enlightenment, 179.

^52. In Muratori’s Filosofia morale ‘moderazione’ is used recurrently between chaps. 28 and 40, with relation to “amor proprio” (chap. 28), the “appetito della conservazione dell’individuo” (chap. 33), and “appetito della Libertà e del Comando” (chap. 36), among others.

^53. Muratori: “fra il difetto e l’eccesso,” in Delle forze dell’intendimento, Preface.

^54. Ibid.: “non cercar cose più alte di noi, cioè troppo scure e superiori alla nostra Ragione e comprensione” (324).

^55. Ibid.: “ognun di noi dee regolare la sua credenza” (330–31).

^56. Muratori, Della pubblica felicità, Preface: “bene della società, del bene pubblico, o sia della pubblica felicità… nostro private bene, della nostra particolar felicità.”

^57. Ibid., “Gloria del principe è la moderazione” (65; my emphasis).

^58. Ibid., “sempre si ricordi d’essere Padrone, ma anche padre del popolo suo…. Saviezza, Moderazione ed Attenzione alla Felicità di un numero si grande di Sudditi” (11).

^59. Ibid., “ben regolare la vita de’ mortali. … Onestà, Moderazione e Pulizia” (44).

^60. Ibid., “la Clemenza, la Moderazione, il Coraggio nelle aversità, la Modestia nelle prosperità, l’Amore dovuto a i Sudditi, e tante altre Virtù” (85).

^61. Ibid., “costringendo colla forza alla moderazione…. il Popolo fa de i pazzi contratti, ne sa emendarsi da se stesso: il Principe dee farla da buon Padre, impedendo e correggendo coll’autorità i pubblici spropositi de’ suoi Figli” (144)—this within a chapter on “Luxury.”

^62. This hard/soft analogy, seemingly absent from political theory, has been proposed cautiously by scholars of content moderation in digital media: see, for instance, Gorwa, Binns, and Katzenbach, “Algorithmic Content Moderation,” 3.

^63. Le Clerc, Bibliothèque universelle et historique, vol. 19: “les uns [qui] élèvent si fort les droits des Puissances Souveraines, que la condition de leurs sujets n’est différente de celle des Esclaves” (559–60); and “les autres, en soutenant les droits des Peuples, donnent occasion aux brouillons de s’imager qu’il n’y a aucun mal à secouer les jougs des Puissances… traité avec autant de liberté, & de modération tout en semble d’un sujet si délicat” (591).

^64. Proast, A Third Letter Concerning Toleration, 22. On the Proast-Locke debate, see Tate, Liberty, Toleration and Equality.

^65. Locke, A Third Letter for Toleration, 132, 128.

^66. Ibid., 108.

^67. Ibid., 44.

^68. Variations of this include Penn, Perswasive to Moderation; before this Fowler, Principles and Practices; and between the two, Bolde, A Plea for Moderation. For a survey of tolerationist arguments in England and their opponents after 1660, see Goldie, “The Theory of Religious Intolerance in Restoration England.”

^69. Among the most explicit accounts was Puller, Moderation of the Church of England, after Hall, On Christian Moderation. A good account of a similar dynamic between rival concepts of moderation is recounted in Ahnert, The Moral Culture of the Scottish Enlightenment, 66–70.

^70. This conflict has been exposed at length by Sirota, “The Occasional Conformity Controversy,” and in a broader context by Knights, “Occasional Conformity,” and by Lake, “Joseph Hall, Robert Skinner.” A chronologically longer, though somewhat idiosyncratic view, is in Shagan, The Rule of Moderation.

^71. Swift, “On Brotherly Love.”

^72. Swift elsewhere recognises this moderation to be “the modern sense of the word,” in “The Sentiments of a Church of England Man,” 399.

^73. Swift, “On Brotherly Love,” 469.

^74. Ibid., 470.

^75. Swift’s stance is close to that suggested—and adjudged to be normatively inadequate—by Shagan as “moderate toleration,” in The Rule of Moderation, 288–325.

^76. Ibid., 10, 340.

^77. Muratori, Riflessioni: “Da che noi non possiamo riformare il Mondo, secondo le leggi della retta Ragione, fa di mestiere che la retta Ragione si conformi al Mondo, soffrendo, compatendo; e saprendo convivere con chi bisogna, che noi conviviamo, e dicendo degli Uomini tutti all’occasioni cio, che Tacito disse più necessariamente de soli Principi: Bonos voto expetere, qualescumque tolerare” (139).

^78. Muratori, Pubblica felicità, 22–23.

^79. For instance, see Sorkin, “William Warburton’s ‘Heroic Moderation’.”

^80. A slide reflected upon in Robertson, “Enlightenment and Modernity.”

^81. As laid out concisely in Israel, Enlightenment Contested: “neither the historian nor the philosopher is likely to get very far with discussing ‘modernity’ unless he or she starts by differentiating Radical Enlightenment from conservative—or as it is called in this study—moderate mainstream Enlightenment. For the difference between reason alone and reason combined with faith and tradition was a ubiquitous and absolute difference” (11).

^82. Alexander, “Radical, Sceptical and Liberal Enlightenment.”

^83. Ibid., 267.

^84. On Montesquieu’s “regulatory” concept of moderation, see Benrekassa, “‘Modéré’, ‘modération’, ‘modérantisme’,” 10–15; see also Radasanu, “Montesquieu on Moderation, Monarchy and Reform,” taking issue with “liberal” interpretations of Montesquieu’s moderation; in this Special Issue, see Thomas Osborne, “Moderation as Government: Montesquieu and the Divisibility of Power.”

^85. I follow Condren here in viewing the shift between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as witnessing a “shift from clusters of well established metaphors in political discourse to a mutually defining set of dispositional labels [and] a significant realignment of terms, their associations and meanings,” within which “moderate” along with “radical” assumed something like its contemporary political-ideological meaning. Condren, “Radicals, Conservatives and Moderates,” 535.

^86. Ankersmit, “On the Origin, Nature and Future of Representative Democracy,” 91–101.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this article received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research programme (project id: 842070).