The Question of Enlightenment - Theory and Practice in Eighteenth ...

The Question of Enlightenment 26
materialists, enemies of religion, insufficiently appreciative of tradition, and politically
dangerous began to be constructed. Among the rhetorical strategies deployed was one that
would be reprised in the German distinction between “true” and “false” enlightenment and the
subsequent construction of neologism such as Aufklärerei: the distinction between a “true
philosophy” that found its basis in religious doctrine and an upstart that was variously labeled
fausse philosophie, nouvelle philosophie, prétendu philosophie, misophie, in-philosophie,
philosophie moderne, and a host of neologisms including philosophâille, philosopherie,
philosophesque, philosophizer, philosophisme, and philosophiste. 99 The last two terms, which
were tailor-made to convey the sense that the various philosophes formed a single sect that
pursued a common aim, would go on to have a brief, but eventful, career in English in the wake
of the French Revolution.
Philosophism entered English thanks in part to the Abbé Barruel's use of it in his rapidly
translated and widely read Memoires pour servir à l'histoire du Jacobinism (1797-1798). 100
“Philosophism [philosophisme],” as Barruel defined it, “is the error of every man who, judging
of everything by the standard of his own reason, rejects in religious matters every authority that
is not derived from the light of nature.” 101 By the last years of the eighteenth century, the word
had become the favored term of abuse employed in the pages of conservative journals such as the
Anti-Jacobin Review to refer to supporters of the French Revolution. 102 A review of the English
translation of Barruel's Memoirs offered readers an etymology lesson that borrowed heavily from
Jean-François La Harpe, a disciple of Voltaire who, in the space of a few years, went from
praising the philosophes for providing the intellectual impetus for the Revolution to condemning
them for the corruption of language and mores that made the Terror possible:
From philosophy sprang philosophism, a word which … signifies the
love of sophism, the love of falsehood, as philosophy imparts the love
of wisdom, the love of truth. In the Greek language the terms sophism
and sophists sufficed to mark the abuse; in the French language, as in
our own, this is not the case, because the sophists of modern times