The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism: The Rise of Modern Paganism v. 1 (Taschenbuch)

The philosophes taught a cheerful kind of self-reliance. Salvation was not to be found in the heavens above, but in the human race. They fought to replace barbaric institutions with new modes of thought that would inspire, not oppress, the human spirit. New modes of government (democracy). New methods of tending the sick (see Foucault's "Birth of the Clinic") and the insane (see Foucault's "Madness and Civilization"). New modes of punishing offenders (see Foucault's "Discipline and Punish"). New modes of thought. To examine our existing institutions we need not go back to the Middle Ages (the term "Middle Ages" is an example of enlightenment newspeak: the Middle ages designates nothing more than period the West lay fallow between the death of ancient paganism and it rebirth in the "Renaissance." It is a way of saying that while the Church ruled Europe, nothing of consequence happened) except as a point of contrast. They changed everything.

We have an odd relation to these philosophes. We recognize them as simplistic, overbearing, overconfident and, in many ways, flat out wrong. We also recognize them as the founding fathers of our world. They assured us, get rid of religion and wars would cease from the world, that religion (or rather specific religions e.g. Christianity) was the source of bigotry on the earth. So we did as they suggested and the wars just got bigger, the auto-de-fe's were replaced by concentration camps and the savagery they told us would disappear simply grew when the institutions built to contain them were dismantled.

They seemed to believe that we could have the results of Christian morality, without Christianity, if we simply replace religion with reason. The problem is that Christianity is a religion with a specific content and reason has no content at all. When you make the move you end up with a categorical imperative that we can debate the validity of, but is no real morality as it is effective only over individuals who accept its terms. And not all individual will understand the argument, much less accept the terms of it. The morality of reason preaches only to it own converts, leaving the rest to their own devices. The philosophes proved to be social tinkerers and we are their experiment.

Gay's book is beautifully written, wonderfully detailed and very, very long (I refer here to the two volume set), but it brings you into touch with those amazing individuals, their struggle together, and amongst themselves, the varying social climates in which they lived (Germay was different from France which was different again from England), their resentment towards the establishment, followed by their becoming the establishment. I could barely put it down.