Theological Origins of Modernity

8 Th e Contradictions of Enlightenment
and the Crisis of Modernity
On a cold and rainy January day in 1793, a corpulent gentleman, just thirtyeight
years old, stepped out of his carriage in the midst of a hostile Parisian
crowd. He loosened his scarf, turned down his collar, and with some assistance
ascended the steep steps of the scaff old. Speaking in a surprisingly
loud voice, he declared himself innocent, pardoned those who were about
to kill him, and prayed that his blood would not be visited upon his country
before placing his neck on the block of the guillotine. As the blade was
released and began its swift downward course, few of those present realized
that it was bringing to an end not merely the life of the King of France
but also the purest hopes of the modern age. Th e cut was not clean, but it
was mortal and fi nal. One of the revolutionaries grasped the head by the
hair and displayed it to the crowd. Aft er a brief silence, cries of “Vive la
Révolution!” began slowly and then swelled to a roar, as if the mob needed
to reassure itself that what it had seen, and in a sense achieved, was something
positive. And with good reason. While it is almost certain that Louis
XVI was guilty of treason and by the standards of his times deserved to be
put to death, his execution carried the Revolution across a line that could
not be crossed with impunity. Having transgressed this boundary, there
was nothing left to constrain revolutionary passions, and within a few
months executions had become a daily ritual, producing a Reign of Terror
that lasted until July 1794, leaving more than thirty thousand dead across
France. Despite the king’s pardon and his prayer, his blood was visited
upon his native land and particularly upon those who had put his neck on
the block. Th e Terror swallowed not just the members of the ancien régime
but also many of the leaders of the Revolution as well. While the number
killed was not great by comparison to the earlier butchery of the Wars of
Religion or to the later slaughter of the twentieth century, the Reign of
Terror had an extraordinary impact on the intellectual elite of its time,