Enlightenment in Scotland and France

Studies in Political Thought

Mark L. Hulliung

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429847011
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Enlightenment in Scotland and France: Studies in Political Thought provides comparative analysis of the Scottish and French Enlightenments. Studies of the two Enlightenments have previously focused on the transnational, their story one of continuity between Scottish intellectuals and French philosophes and of a mutual commitment to combat fanaticism in all its forms. This book contends that what has been missing, by and large, from the scholarly literature is the comparative analysis that underscores the contrasts as well as the similarities of the Enlightenments in Scotland and France.

This book shows that, although the similarities of "enlightened" political thought in the two countries are substantial, the differences are also remarkable and stand out in culminating relief in the Scottish and French reactions to the American Revolution. Mark Hulliung argues that it was 1776, not 1789, that was the moment when the spokespersons for Enlightenment in Scotland and France parted company.

1 Introduction

Enlightenment in two languages and multiple dialects

My objectives in this study of Enlightenment in Scotland and France are both modest and ambitious: modest because I do not pretend that mine is an exhaustive examination of everyone and everything; ambitious because I hope to offer new perspectives and to initiate, if possible, new debates. The focus will be on political thought, thematically presented in the chapters that follow.

For many years scholarly research on the Enlightenment focused primarily on France, confirming the view the philosophes had of themselves, that theirs was the Enlightenment of Enlightenments, Paris its Mecca. Holbach came from Germany, settled in Paris, and never returned. Galiani, while serving as secretary to the Neapolitan embassy at Paris, became a major figure of the French Enlightenment, publishing in French his influential work on commerce. One of the saddest days of his life came when he learned, after ten years in Paris, that he had been recalled to Italy. From Geneva came Rousseau, who shocked the philosophes during the 1750s less by anything he had written by 1756 than by his decision to leave Paris on April 9. In doing so he had, in effect, abandoned his former comrades and proven that he was quite serious about the writings he had initiated, which challenged the civilization the philosophes championed. Even so, Rousseau did not leave the French Enlightenment. He continued to address its themes, contributed in new ways to its established genres, and remained faithful to its values.¹ Of symbolic significance, he settled just outside of Paris rather than returning to Geneva.² Nor were the leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment immune to the delights of Paris. David Hume, for instance, was pleased to be warmly welcomed in the 1760s to the Parisian salons of Mme Geoffrin, Mlle de Lespinasse, and Holbach, where he met leading figures of the French Enlightenment. To Hugh Blair he reported that “those whose persons and conversation I like best are d’Alembert, Buffon, Marmontel, Diderot, Duclos, [and] Helvétius.”³ Adam Smith, although less comfortable than Hume in Paris, did enjoy the hospitality of the Baron d’Holbach during his visit from December 1765 to October 1766, and mentioned meeting Helvétius, Turgot, and d’Alembert.

We should not be surprised, then, that for so very many years the scholarly literature of our age concentrated overwhelmingly on France – reaching beyond its borders, if at all, only to applaud the Enlightenment’s supposed culmination in the work of a German, Immanuel Kant.⁴ In more recent years there has been, at long last, a remarkable and welcome breakthrough with the publication of a rich assortment of books, essays, and articles on the Scottish Enlightenment. David Hume is no longer confined to the history of philosophy, nor Adam Smith to the history of economics, and a great many lesser Scottish figures have finally received their due. The Scottish Enlightenment has rightly come into its own after many years of neglect. But at least one task remains. What arguably has not yet been fully treated is the relationship between the French and Scottish Enlightenments.⁵

With all his might David Hume strove throughout his life to break down the intellectual walls separating the two countries, Scotland and France. “I abhor that low practice, so prevalent in England, of speaking with malignity of France,” Hume told a French acquaintance.⁶ Mutual communication was his objective. The problem, as he commented in his History of England, was that France had been “a country at all times obnoxious to the English,”⁷ so there was a great hurdle to overcome. The triumphal Whigs could see nothing but freedom in the constitutional order of Great Britain; nothing but unfreedom in the political order of France. Hume wrote his History to deflate Whig claims that the English constitution hailed from time immemorial; he aimed to show that it had not emerged victorious until 1688. In his Essays, rather than boast about the politics of Great Britain in his day, he placed on display its vulnerabilities, a tactic which served among other things to render his audience less hostile to France. “Of Civil Liberty,” originally titled “Of Liberty and Despotism,” was an essay in which he wrote that “in monarchical governments there is a source of improvement, and in popular governments a source of degeneracy, which in time will bring these species of civil polity still nearer in equality.” France was “the most perfect model of pure monarchy” and “the most eminent instance of learning in absolute governments.”⁸ Similarly, Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations that, except for Great Britain, France “enjoys the mildest and most indulgent government.”⁹

Many instances may be cited in which the Scots did in fact reach out to their French counterparts. David Hume exchanged noteworthy thoughts with Montesquieu about the Spirit of the Laws.¹⁰ Other French recipients of letters from Hume include such philosophes as Turgot, Jean-Baptiste Suard, and Morellet. Adam Smith began his Letter to the Edinburgh Review with the recommendation that Scottish intellectuals look beyond their geographical borders; exchanges between Great Britain and France were especially to be encouraged. He was delighted that in the Encyclopédie “Mr. Diderot and Mr. Alembert express everywhere the greatest passion for the science and learning of England.”¹¹ It was satisfying to observe French appreciation of the intellectual achievements of the English-speaking world, and Smith returned the favor in the Letter by praising Voltaire’s play The Orphan of China, then saluted it again in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In this latter work he mentioned d’Alembert, his long-time friend, while making exactly the same point the Frenchman had made earlier in one of his essays: that literary intellectuals fight and squabble whereas mathematicians and natural scientists usually remain above the fray.¹² William Robertson also called upon d’Alembert, citing his essay Sur la destruction des Jésuites en France and the entry in the Encyclopédie on the Jesuits when writing The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V.¹³

If figures of the Scottish Enlightenment sometimes reached out to the philosophes, it is also true that the French intellectuals on occasion responded to the Scots. Joseph Black, whose career would be that of professor of chemistry at Edinburgh University, was born at Bordeaux, the son of a wine merchant. Adam Ferguson took note of Montesquieu’s relationship with father and son, presumably because their exchanges consisted of servings of intellect as well as wine: “While Mr. Black, the father, lived at Bordeaux, the great Montesquieu, being President of the Parliament or Court of Justice in that province, honored Mr. Black with a friendship and intimacy, of which his descendants are justly proud.”¹⁴

Diderot, in his Encyclopédie article “Beau,” critiqued Francis Hutcheson’s notion of an “internal sense” of beauty, objecting to what seemed to be the kind of innate idea or a priori truth to which the French philosophes, having read their Locke, strongly objected to as dogmatic – and as offering shelter for religious thinkers. Turgot corresponded with Hume about economics from 1766 to 1767 and translated several of Hume’s essays on that topic. Although Hume’s famous comment that his Treatise of Human Nature “fell dead-born from the press” was no less true in France than in Britain, his later Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding fared better on both sides of the Channel; in a footnote of De l’Homme, Helvétius cited Hume’s contention that we cannot prove a necessary connection between cause and effect.¹⁵ Saint-Lambert, author of the Encyclopédie article “Législateur,” in the course of denying Montesquieu’s position on physical causation, wrote “there is no climate, says M. Hume, where the legislator cannot establish strong, pure, sublime mores.”¹⁶ Relatively late in the century, 1782, at the time of Condorcet’s admission to the French Academy, his acceptance speech called attention to some of the intellectual heroes of the century, among them David Hume, Adam Smith, and Adam Ferguson.¹⁷ Nine years later he cited Adam Smith’s warning that specialization of occupations could result in limiting our outlook “to a small number of ideas, all of the same kind.”¹⁸ Most prominent of all, perhaps, were the many French translations of Scottish works. Suard won admission to the French Academy on the basis of his translation of Robertson’s History of Charles V.

With a seemingly unending list of examples of connections between Scotland and France to draw upon, we are well prepared to recognize and appreciate the recent achievements of scholars in the realm of transnational history.¹⁹ Lingering questions remain, however. Ships traveling between Scotland and France whose passengers included enlightened intellectuals always seemed to set sail from Scotland, never from France. The relationship apparently was rather one-sided: Scots crossed the Channel, the French did not cross La Manche. Another sign that the philosophes were not especially well informed or concerned about matters beyond the Tweed is that they often spoke of the Scots as “les Anglais” rather than “les Écossais.” Few of the philosophes could speak English; many Scots could speak French.

For practical reasons it may well be that the Scots needed the French more than the French needed the Scots. Despite what is obvious from our point of view, namely, that the universities in Scotland were as vibrant in the eighteenth century as those in England were an embarrassment; despite the great superiority of intellectual developments in Scotland over those in England, it nevertheless remained true that the Scots suffered from something of an inferiority complex. Knowing the likes of Horace Walpole in England were always ready to mock Scotticisms, a thinker as accomplished as Hume felt obliged to identify as a North Briton and to suppress his Scottish accent when conversing in English circles. The Scots sought vindication against English snobbery in France, and nothing signaled more visibly that they had achieved respectability than invitations to Parisian salons.

Altogether different was the situation of the philosophes. They inherited the proud world of polite conversation that dated back to the previous century in salons presided over by talented women. Diderot’s candor, his insistence upon speaking whatever was on his mind, no matter who was in the room, and despite the wishes of the woman in charge, might result in his banishment from salons other than Holbach’s, but the other philosophes were highly prized presences in enclosed societies of salonnières, aristocrats, and members of the academies. Unlike the Scots who in many respects had to invent a new culture, the philosophes could adapt a pre-existing cultural tradition to their needs. Their heritage was more self-assured and certainly more self-satisfied than Scotland’s, which had something to prove.

The larger question, of course, is to what extent did the transnational exchanges between Scottish and French thinkers matter intellectually? Was the Scottish Enlightenment significantly enriched intellectually by that of France? Did the philosophes enlarge their intellectual horizons through embracing the Scots? There are reasons to doubt the depth of the intellectual transmissions. One scholar who conducted a painstaking investigation of “Scotland in the Encyclopédie” uncovered “nothing whatsoever on eighteenth-century Scottish intellectuals. A notable such as Hume, for instance, has received no mention, despite the fact that his writings are available in French as early as 1754.”²⁰

If Hume’s absence in the Encyclopédie is revealing, so is his presence elsewhere in French commentary. Diderot suggested in 1757 that the Président de Brosses read Hume’s Natural History of Religion, a lively treatise in which Christian faith is reduced to fear and self-laceration – a thesis which made it a perfect match for Holbach’s anonymous polemics.²¹ Also to Holbach’s liking was Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, in which “natural religion,” influential in Scottish intellectual circles, fell prey to the argument that nature, in Hume’s words, “has no more regard to good above ill than to heat above cold.”²² Holbach lost no time publishing the book in French. The larger picture is that the philosophes touted Hume when his work was least Scottish and most French. Hume wanted nothing more than for his dear friend Adam Smith to publish the Dialogues posthumously. Smith adamantly refused.

What on first blush looks like the philosophes availing themselves of Scottish resources sometimes has a way of amounting to nothing particularly noteworthy. Translations into French of Scottish historical scholarship – Suard’s of William Robertson, for example – might have enriched the French version of what is called “philosophical history.” Voltaire had discussed commerce in his Letters on England but his influential philosophical histories frequently backtrack into old fashioned political history, and even at their most “philosophical” are usually about culture rather than the rise of commercial society. It is arguable that in their approach to historical studies the French could have and should have learned something from the Scots but by and large failed to do so.

The example of the accomplishments of the Scots in the realm of philosophical history suggests that they could thrive...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1. Introduction: Enlightenment in two languages and multiple dialects
• 2. Rousseau and the Scottish Enlightenment
• 3. Montesquieu in Scotland and France
• 4. Enlightened morality in Scotland and France
• 5. Monarchies and republics in Scotland and France
• 6. The social contract in Scotland and France
• 7. Conclusion: Looking back, looking forward
• Index