The Enlightenment Philosopher as Social Critic

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Notes

¹ Descartes, Discourse on Method, in Philosophical Writings, translated and edited by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, D. Murdoch and A. Kenny, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985–91), vol. 1, 122; (Descartes, Oeuvres, edited by C. Adam and P. Tannery, 11 vols (Paris: Vrin, 1964–74), vol. 6, 23).

² Descartes, Discourse, 123 (AT, vol. 6, 25).

³ Descartes, Discourse, 124 (AT, vol. 6, 25–6).

⁴ Descartes, Discourse, 122–3 (AT, vol. 6, 23–4).

⁵ Descartes, Discourse, 23 (AT, vol. 6, 23).

⁶ For details of Descartes’s defensive posture with respect to the subject matter of his science, see S. Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 354ff.

⁷ Diderot, in Histoire philosophique et politique des établissemens et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, edited by G.‐T. Raynal, third edition, 9 vols (Geneva, 1783), Bk XIX, ch. 2; translation in Diderot: Political Writings, edited by J. H. Mason and R. Wokler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 209. On Diderot’s political philosophy, see Y. Bénot, Diderot: de l’athéisme à l’anticolonialisme (Paris: Maspero, 1970), and S. Muthu, Enlightenment against Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).

⁹ Jacob.

⁸ M. Jacob, ‘The Clandestine Universe of the Early Eighteenth Century’, 2001. This useful essay is currently accessible only in an online version through http://www.pierre-marteau.com/html/studies.html.

¹⁰ R. Darnton, The Forbidden Best‐Sellers of Pre‐Revolutionary France (London and New York: Norton, 1995).

¹¹ Descartes, Passions of the Soul, Pt II, § 137; in Philosophical Writings, I: 376; (AT XI: 429–30).

¹² Spinoza, Short Treatise, in Collected Works, edited and translated by E. Curley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), vol. 1, 55.

¹³ Diderot, Histoire (1783) Bk XVIII, ch. 42, translated in Writings, 199–200.

¹⁴ Diderot, Histoire, Bk XI: XXIV; second edition, 10 vols (Geneva, 1781), vol. 6, 192.

¹⁵ Diderot, Histoire (1783); Bk XVIII, ch. 4, translated in Writings, 197.

¹⁶ Diderot, Histoire, Bk XIV, Introduction, translation in Writings, 189.

¹⁷ Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk II, ch. 28, §11, edited by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), 354.

¹⁸ R. Koselleck, Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society (Oxford: Berg, 1987). Koselleck, however, considered the Enlightenment a failure, for reasons that are not entirely clear from this study.

¹⁹ See I. Hunter, Rival Enlightenments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

²⁰ Muthu, Enlightenment against Empire, 1.

²¹ Muthu, 72–3.

²² Diderot, Histoire (1781), Bk VI, ch. 1; vol. 3, 290.

²³ Diderot, Histoire, Bk XIX, ch. 15; vol. 10, 421.

²⁴ Diderot, Histoire, vol. 10, 422.

²⁶ Diderot, Histoire (1781), Bk VII, ch. 1; vol. 4, 1.

²⁵ Muthu, Enlightenment, 116.

²⁷ Diderot, Histoire, Bk VI, ch. 7; vol. 3, 327.

²⁸ Diderot, Histoire (1781) Bk XIX, ch. 12, translated by Muthu, Enlightenment, 119.

²⁹ Diderot, Histoire, Bk XI, ch. 24; translated by Muthu, 199–200.

³⁰ Diderot, Histoire, Bk X1, ch. 4, Writings, 184.

³¹ Diderot, Histoire, Bk XVIII, ch. 42, translated in Writings, 200–1.

³⁵ Kant, ‘Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View’, translated by L. W. Beck, Kant: On History (Indianapolis: Bobbs‐Merrill, 1963), 17–18. On Kant’s philosophy of history, see G. A. Kelly, ‘Rousseau, Kant and History’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 29 (1968), 347–64; Y. Yovel, Kant and the Philosophy of History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); A. Wood, ‘Unsociable Sociability: The Anthropological Basis of Kantian Ethics’, Philosophical Topics, 19 (1991), 325–51.

³² J. A. Zammito, The Genesis of Kant’s Critique of Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 190.

³³ Kant’s critique of Forster appeared as Ueber den Gebrauch der teleologischen Prinzipien in der Philosophie (1788).

³⁴ M. Larrimore, ‘Sublime Waste: Kant on the Destiny of the Races’, in Civilization and Oppression, edited by C. Wilson, Canadian Journal of Philosophy. Supplementary Volume, 29 (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1999), 99–125.

³⁶ Critique of Judgement, translated by W. S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987, 452).

³⁷ Kant, ‘Perpetual Peace’, in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, translated by T. Humphrey (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983), 44.

³⁸ Kant, ‘Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View’, translated by Beck, 15–16.

³⁹ Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals; translated by M. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 48.

⁴⁰ Kant, ‘On the Common Saying That May be Correct in Theory but It is of No Use in Practice’, in Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy, translated and edited by M. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 291.

⁴¹ Kant, ‘On the Common Saying’, 292.

⁴² Kant, Groundwork IV: 410; translated by Gregor, 22.

⁴³ Diderot, Histoire (1783), Bk IV, ch. 33; vol. 2, 499.

⁴⁵ Kant, ‘On the Common Saying’, 308.

⁴⁴ Kant, ‘On the Common Saying’, 309.

⁴⁶ Hegel, Introduction, Reason in History, translated by R. S. Hartman (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1953), 18.

⁴⁷ Hegel, Introduction, 21.

⁴⁸ Hegel, Introduction, 23.