The Enlightenment critique of the esprit de système and its tendency towards eclecticism have often been interpreted as symptoms of speculative shallowness. The article analyses the origins of this prejudice, with special reference to the early French Enlightenment (1700-1750). It then attempts to counter such a preconception by providing a relevant counterexample. The case study presented is that of Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, usually considered a typical instance of the anti-systematic proto-positivist philosophe. In discussing his philosophy, epistemological and cosmological issues (...) in particular are emphasized, showing how Maupertuis’ thoroughly empiricist theory of knowledge led him to apply mathematics to all domains of human knowledge in order to reduce their uncertainty. It is concluded that Maupertuis is the author of a rich and interesting work, which brings some novelty to the philosophical scene of his own times, if not to the whole history of modern philosophy. (shrink)

In ‘What is Enlightenment?’, Kant claims that no women are currently enlightened. Here I argue that this exclusion is due to certain legal restrictions guiding Kant’s conception of enlightenment. As enlightenment is intended to take place in society, it appears that Kant has a specific legal context in mind that affects its enactment. His twofold conception of citizenship and the dimension of subordination he puts forward by restricting the private use of reason will prove useful in clarifying those legal restrictions. (...) It thus seems unlikely that Kant intended women to take an active part in enlightenment. (shrink)

It is a well-worn, yet astonishingly resilient, cliché that the Enlightenment was the “Age of Reason”. By focusing on Diderot and Helvétius this paper shows that, rather than proceeding in the name of reason, key figures within the progressive philosophy of the French Enlightenment were in fact extremely suspicious of abstract reasoning and attempted to construct a philosophy which purged the faculty of reason entirely from its philosophical anthropology and reduced the mind’s functions to the single faculty of sensation and (...) so to the passions. It is in this sense that philosophy of the French Enlightenment attempted to produce a philosophy without reason. This paper reconstructs this attempt. In doing so it again engages critically with the idea that the philosophy of the Enlightenment was dogmatically rationalist, it provides a historical case study of a period in which philosophy pushed against the limits of its own identity, and it uses this attempt to reflect on the mythological not historiographical service which the cliché of Enlightenment Reason plays for the philosophical identity. (shrink)