Democratic Enlightenment

Anti-philosophes 153
greatest ‘wickedness and fury’, namely Spinoza, the ‘Genevan deist’ (Rousseau),
Voltaire, the authors of Le Christianisme dévoilé (Boulanger and d’Holbach), and
Le Militaire philosophe (Naigeon), the last deemed by Nonnotte a complete ‘fanatic’
resolved to destroy religion. 70 In denying miracles, none of these employs logic any
more than countless other now forgotten names. Such nonsense is only found ‘dans
les Spinosa, les Bayle, les Voltaire’, and the authors of Émile, the Militaire philosophe,
the clandestine text he cites repeatedly, and De l’analyse de la religion, attributed by
him to Du Marsais. These writers resembled the fumbling giants of fable, aspiring to
climb the heavens to fetch God down to earth. 71
Rousseau, though frequently denounced at first, came to be more and more often
defended by anti-philosophes from the early 1770s onwards, or at least rated only a
‘confrère timide’ of the Church’s real enemies, someone who wrote much, remarks
Condorcet, useful to theologians. 72 ‘The clergy and the devout’, concurred Madame
de Genlis, ‘have all pardoned him, from the bottom of their souls, for what he wrote
against religion, in favour of the repeated homages which he has rendered the
Gospel.’ 73 Especially lauded were Rousseau’s praise of Scripture, unrelenting stress
on ‘virtue’, and detestation of the philosophes ‘comme des empoisonneurs’. ‘No man
ever said more against philosophy,’ notes Madame de Genlis, ‘nor spoke with more
contempt of modern philosophers.’ 74 ‘Rousseau was the only man of genius of his
time’, she suggested, ‘who respected the religious principles of which we stand so
much in need’, meaning for society, the individual, and for politics. 75 Does not Émile,
for all its obvious faults, categorically assert separation of body and soul, showing
materialism is repugnant to both reason and experience? 76 Hence, if the list of
approved thinkers was headed by Locke and Newton, by the 1780s one could
add if not the whole, then certainly strands of a carefully tailored Rousseau. Antiphilosophes
loved his vehemence against his former friends and insistence that reason
is not man’s sole guide, God’s existence being proved by our feelings not reason. His
upholding divine providence and fixity of species, 77 points likewise keenly appreciated
by Kant, also helped restore him to favour. ‘The insurmountable barrier raised
by nature between the various species’, asserts Rousseau, in Émile, ‘so that they
should not mix with one another, is the clearest proof of her intention.’ The Rousseau
the anti-philosophes extol claims that ‘nature content to have established her order,
has taken adequate measures to prevent the disturbance of that order’. 78
70
Ibid. ii. 61; Nonnotte, Dictionnaire philosophique, 318, 368, 386, 393.
71
Jamin, Pensées théologiques, 530, 581–2.
72
Condorcet, Lettre à M. l’Abbé, inŒuvres, i. 307; Trousson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 524.
73
Genlis, Religion, ii. 58–9, 111–12; Jamin, Pensées théologiques, 88; Albertan-Coppola, L’Abbé, 83, 86.
74
Albertan-Coppola, L’Abbé, 353, 356; Genlis, Religion, ii. 8, 58–9, 111; de Staël, Letters, 77; Masseau,
Ennemis, 304–6.
75
De Staël, Letters, 77; Bergier, Apologie, ii. 133–4; Lamourette, Pensées, 113–15.
76
Genlis, Religion, ii. 116; Rousseau, Émile, 236, 239, 252–3; Nonnotte, Dictionnaire philosophique,
352; Paulian, Véritable Système, i. 69–70, 72–7, 70.
77
Rousseau, Émile, 238–9; Gourevitch, ‘Religious Thought’, 193, 199–200.
78
Rousseau, Émile, 238.