Princes and Their Decisions in Enlightenment Eyes

This paper will reexamine the tension in Enlightenment thought between, on the one hand, critiques of despotism and advocacy of popular sovereignty, and, on the other, the increasingly close ties between leading Enlightenment authors and absolute sovereigns. To be sure, an important strain of Enlightenment writing always endorsed forms of absolute rule, from Christian Wolff’s praise of “philosopher kings” to Voltaire’s defense of the “Maupeou coup” in France. But it was still a minority strain, seemingly very much at odds with works such as Rousseau’s Social Contract or Diderot’s Encyclopédie article “Political Authority.” In my paper, drawing on new research and focusing on France between 1760 and 1789, I will show how the changing political situation of the Enlightenment in practice drove French authors towards a more “absolutist” position where, in effect, they embraced the position Kant attributed to Frederick II: “argue, as much as you want and about whatever you want, only obey!” I will start with the observation that throughout the eighteenth century, most successful French authors depended on one form or another of official support and belonged to clientage networks. Nor did any of them envisage the possibility of a radical transformation in French political institutions. The fierce official attacks on the philosophes that began around 1750 led figures like Voltaire and d’Alembert to see themselves as a “party,” but also drove them to seek ever more fervently for official protection. They found it both abroad, in contacts with monarchs such as Catherine II and Frederick II, but also at home with figures such as Madame de Pompadour, Choiseul, Turgot and Malesherbes. Major projects such as the Histoire des Deux Indes had official sponsorship. Even Rousseau had surprisingly significant involvement with the ministry. The result was a “High Enlightenment” more absolutist than historians have generally recognized.