“The Dream of Enlightenment” by Anthony Gottlieb

This book is an entertaining summation of some of the most important Enlightenment philosophers. It was written by a former Economist editor, not an academic, and the breezy style shows through. This is not a criticism, however. In fact, some of the asides in and of themselves would make the book worth reading. Where else would you learn that Descartes carried around a life-sized mechanical doll that was the spitting image of his illegitimate daughter? It makes the fact that the townspeople of  Amsterdam would set their watches by his regular walks seem almost banal. Hobbes was far from confident about his theory of Leviathan, “either I alone am insane, or I alone am sane. There is no third alternative, unless, as someone might say, we are all insane.” Spinoza did not think of himself as an atheist or a pantheist, despite being branded both by his synagogue upon excommunication, “I do not differentiate between God and Nature in the way all those known to me have done.” Locke was the inspiration behind Jefferson’s famous line in the Declaration of Independence, “the state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone…. Reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it that, being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.” Bayle argued forcefully not just for Christians dissenting from the Anglican Church, but for Catholics, Muslims, pantheists, and even atheists, “a sincere heretic, even an infidel” should not suffer as long as their beliefs are honest. Leibniz discovered calculus before Newton, invented the binary code still used in computer programming, created a cipher machine, discovered a desalination process, drew up diagrams for a submarine, but perhaps his most creative invention were “spring-loaded shoes with which to escape from pursuers.” He also thought the Chinese were proto-Christians, that the I-Ching encoded the Genesis myth, and that “the Chinese scholars speak neither of Hell nor purgatory [still] it is possible that some among them believe or have believed at other times that the wandering souls which prowl here and there in the mountains and forests are in a sort of purgatory.” Hume would have written more philosophy and history, but for the fact that, as he told his publisher, he was “too old, too fat, too lazy and too rich.” Rousseau, apparently, had a good estimation of his own personality, “I have never really been suited to civil society, where there is nothing but irritation, obligation, and duty, and…. my independent nature always made me incapable of the constraints required of anyone who wants to live with men.” Finally, despite Voltaire being placed in the French Pantheon by the revolutionaries, he held a fairly dim view of the democratic spirit, “enlightened times will enlighten only a small number of honest people. The vulgar masses will always be fanatics.” If you want a more scholarly (if biased) overview of the Enlightenment thinkers you should peruse Bertrand Russell’s “A History of Western Philosophy”, but for an entertaining and quick read on some of philosophy’s greatest minds Gottlieb’s book will do nicely.