This piece will focus on Voltaire and Condorcet to discuss their definitions of progress and show how they used it in their works.
During the age of the Enlightenment, historians began to seek accuracy for historical sources and also begun thinking about pyrrhonism and the way a persons perspective can determine the way they personally perceive and distort facts. Neo- Classicism history entered into society again and people began to study the works of Thucydides.
Voltaire was very interested in the tensions and dialectics between religion and barbarism, and believed Christianity was not a central key to history. Voltaire was also very interested in describing histories involving Great Men of history, separating them into four stages in order to show the progression through history. The first stage was focused on the glory of Alexander and Philip, and also mentioned Pericles, Plato and Aristotle, all of which are of Greek origin, as he states ‘and this honour has been confined within the limits of Ancient Greece; the rest of the world was then in a state of barbarism’. This was followed by a second stage of Roman connections, speaking of Augustus and Caesar as well as other notable men such as Virgil and Ovid. The third stage was based around what Voltaire described as ‘the age of Italy’s glory’ and described the fall of Constantinople and the era of such artists as Titian and Michelangelo. The fourth and final stage Voltaire describes is the age of the French king, Louis XIV. He describes this saying ‘Lastly, the fourth age is that known by the name of the age of Louis XIV, and is perhaps that which approaches the nearest to perfection of all the four; enriched by the discoveries of the three former ones, it has done greater things in certain kinds than those three together’. He generally describes the good effect the monarchy had within Europe and believed in a monarchy which was constitutional, however, as previously stated he did not believe in the political dogma surrounding religion, particularly Christianity, and remained dubious of this throughout his life. He speaks of the church ‘Lastly, we shall speak of the church, which has been so long connected with the government, has sometimes disturbed its peace, and at others been its defence; and which, though instituted for the inculcating of morality, too frequently gives itself up to politics and the impulse of the human passions ’.
Condorcet separated his history into ten stages of progression through mankind, beginning with mans origins from savagery, right through to a final tenth stage which is yet to come and what he hopes will be the outcome of equality between all nations, finally aiding man to advance intellectually and technologically to achieve an almost utopian world. He notes there are particular factors that were causing the downfall of man, so far preventing the tenth stage, stating ‘These differences have three main causes; inequality in wealth; inequality in status between the man whose means of subsistence are hereditary and the man whose means are dependent on the length of his life, or, rather, on that part of his life in which he is capable of work; and, finally, inequality in education’. We can see a similar focus of equality in Karl Marx’s work several years later.
Condorcet tells us that in order for the tenth stage to arrive and be successful, we must seek the equalities between all nations, stating ‘Our hopes for the future condition of the human race can be subsumed under three important heads: the abolition of inequality between nations, the progress of equality within each nation, and the true perfection of mankind’.
In comparison, both focussed on the progression of mankind through the ages. Voltaire focussed on the Great Men of history such as Alexander and Louis XIV, whereas Condorcet focussed on everyman rather than Great Men or monarchy, predicting ‘The time will therefore come when the sun will shine only on free men who know no other master but their reason’. Both historians also spoke of the effect of science and the arts amongst the stages they speak of, believing this to be an important factor in mans progression throughout history, and they use this as evidence to back up their claims of why a particular age is so notable for progression. In conclusion, both Voltaire and Condorcet, along with other historians of the Enlightenment, believed in the use of reasoning and intellect to describe what they thought was progress through the ages, and from the past they used the progressive stages to predict what they believe would come in the future.
Bibliography
Core Reading A for seminar D- Voltaire
Core Reading B for seminar D- Condorcet
Wright, J.K, ‘Historical Thought in the Era of the Enlightenment’ in Kramer & Maza (eds.) A Companion to Western Historical Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002) pp. 123- 142
Kirk, Linda, ‘The Matter of Enlightenment’, The Historical Journal, 43 n. 4 (2000), 1129-1143.
Williams, David, ‘Arouet, François-Marie (Voltaire)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford University Press: 2004) http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/68321
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