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Anthropology in the 'Age of Enlightenment'

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Anthropology in the 'Age of Enlightenment'

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My train of thought from the last few assignments led me back to the question in module 3 regarding how the discipline of anthropology developed. I had learned bits here and there about some of the earlier, most famous anthropologists but I wanted to explore the social and political settings of the time frame a bit more. In a previous class, I wrote a paper about the Arts&Crafts movement led by William Morris and other designer colleagues. The more I explored the era of the Industrial Revolution and learned of the motivations of the Arts&Crafts movement the more I saw a connection to the times we’re living in now. I wondered if we might be at the cusp of a new ‘Enlightenment Age’ where perhaps anthropology might become a more main stream way of thinking. So I revisited the earlier anthropologists mentioned in module three and explored the social and political setting surrounding some of the philosophies of the time. I wanted to understand some of the catalysts that helped to fuel the need for the broader understanding of humanity and wondered if I could see signs of a similar movement in recent times.

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The development of anthropology as a discipline is deeply intertwined with the Enlightenment movement, a period characterized by a shift towards reason, empiricism, and a reevaluation of societal norms. During this time, several key figures played pivotal roles in shaping anthropology into a distinct scientific discipline. Here, we explore the contributions of E.B. Tylor, Henry Lewis Morgan, Franz Boas, and the emergence of social-cultural evolutionary theory, historical particularism, and relativism.

E.B. Tylor, often regarded as the father of anthropology, made significant strides in the late 19th century by emphasizing the importance of studying cultures in a systematic and comparative manner. His work, particularly "Primitive Culture" (1871), laid the foundation for cultural anthropology. Tylor introduced the concept of cultural evolution, proposing that societies progress from simpler to more complex stages over time. This idea reflects the broader intellectual climate of the Enlightenment, which favored a linear and developmental view of history.

Henry Lewis Morgan, a contemporary of Tylor, also made profound contributions to the development of anthropology. Morgan's focus on kinship and social organization led to his formulation of the social-cultural evolutionary theory. This theory posited that societies evolve through predetermined stages: from savagery to barbarism and, ultimately, to civilization. Morgan's evolutionary framework, while rooted in Enlightenment ideals, shifted the emphasis from a universal progression to a more nuanced understanding of cultural diversity and historical contingency.

The social-cultural evolutionary theory championed by Tylor and Morgan differed significantly from the biological evolutionary theory popularized by Darwin in the same era. While Darwin's theory primarily concerned biological adaptation through natural selection, social-cultural evolutionists sought to explain cultural development based on the transmission of customs and ideas. This distinction marked a departure from purely biological determinism, reflecting a broader shift towards a more holistic understanding of human development.

Franz Boas, a prominent figure in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, challenged the prevailing evolutionary perspectives and introduced the concept of historical particularism. Boas argued that each culture has its unique history, and any attempt to generalize or create a universal evolutionary model oversimplifies the richness of human diversity. This shift towards historical particularism rejected the deterministic approach of earlier thinkers, emphasizing the importance of studying cultures within their specific historical and environmental contexts.

In addition to historical particularism, Boas also championed cultural relativism. This approach rejects ethnocentrism, the tendency to evaluate other cultures based on one's own cultural standards. Boas argued for understanding and interpreting each culture on its own terms, acknowledging the inherent value and validity of diverse cultural practices. Cultural relativism became a cornerstone of modern anthropological methodology, fostering a more respectful and unbiased approach to the study of human societies.

In conclusion, the development of anthropology within the Enlightenment movement witnessed a progression from linear, evolutionary models proposed by Tylor and Morgan to the more nuanced and context-specific approaches advocated by Boas. This evolution marked a shift towards recognizing cultural diversity, historical contingency, and the importance of understanding societies on their own terms. The interplay of these ideas laid the groundwork for anthropology as a discipline that continues to thrive and adapt in the exploration of human cultures and societies.

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I took away some interesting points from this video assessment of the Enlightenment period, particularly some of the social settings that were occurring at the time. A few things that stood out to me or just triggered some thought: The notion of coffee and tea as a representation of civility….now this may seem a bit too simplistic and easily overlooked of point to make about society at the time, but I think it really sheds light on the process of cultural changes. These rituals however small, still take place today in most of our homes and even on the go. And it’s hard for us to even imagine a time before coffee & tea became a part of our culture.

Another new activity that coincided with the times was exploration and investigation of other social orders and cultures. It’s easy call this the catalyst for the interest in other cultures and countries, but I also think that there is a ‘chicken or the egg’ factor here in that one can question whether exploration and travel induced interest in other cultures or did interest in other cultures and the seeking of new ways inspire exploration and travel.

The rise in accessibility of books leading to more discovered interests in general, and

The accessibility of books perpetuating the accessibility and growth in the ideas of science. Thus raising more questions about the origins, existence, purpose, and roles of humanity.

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The Enlightenment: Crash Course European History #18

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John Locke and the Social Contract - Tabula Rasa, the ‘blank slate philosophy, and early ideas of democracy and free will. Questioning of authority

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"Its [the anthropological method] power to make us understand the roots from which our civilization has sprung, that it impresses us with the relative value of all forms of culture, and thus serves as a check to an exaggerated valuation of the standpoint of our own period, which we are only too liable to consider the ultimate goal of human evolution, thus depriving ourselves of the benefits to be gained from the teachings of other cultures and hindering an objective criticism of our own work."

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‘Tylor’s conception of anthropology as a liberal “reformer’s science” purging Victorian culture of the unexamined “survivals” of traditional “superstition ...” [Stocking, 1995: xiv]

In his obituary in American Anthropologist 1917 (19: 262-268) Robert Lowie stated:

‘Tylor’s vision embraced, to cite his own definition of culture, ‘that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society’.

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See here for Part I, Tylor's biography etc.
Note
Megan Price worked on the Relational Museum project for six months between April and October 2003. During this time she mostly researched Tylor and his collection including contacting many of the Tylor (indirect) descendants. Unfortunately Megan did not leave a full narrative account of the man and his collection when she left the project. This narrative account therefore includes all of Megan's research, and some research by Alison Petch. Almost everyone who worked on the ESRC-funded 'Relational Museum' project did some research on Tylor's collections and this page is hopefully a summary of all of their contributions (marked as appropriate with the source). Note that where it says 'pers. comm.' for Megan Price this refers to information taken from her notes. Most of the information obtained from newspapers etc of Tylor's day was provided to Megan by Chris Tylor, one of our hero's descendants and we owe him thanks for providing copies of these. In addition, since this was put on line in 2012 John Young from Wellington in Somerset sent some comments on the text, comments such as this are added in parenthesis. Tylor's anthropology
Contents:

Tylor's anthropology

Tylor's sources

What was Tylor's collection of objects for?

Tylorian archival holdings (probably an incomplete list)

According to the 2004 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry for Tylor he was described as the 'father of anthropology', and nineteenth century anthropology was known as 'Mr Tylor's science'. Stocking in 1963 suggested that the word 'culture' with its 'modern technical or anthropological meaning was established in English in Tylor in 1871, though it seems not to have penetrated to any general or 'complete' British or American dictionary until more than fifty years later'. [Stocking, 1963: 783] However, he does also add:

'Traditional account would have it that Edward Burnett Tylor created a science by defining its substance-culture. But story recognizes also that Tylor did not invent the word, that it had then and continues to have now a congeries of "humanist" meanings in addition to its "correct" anthropological meaning.' [Stocking, 1963: 783]

Later Stocking would remark about him and the discipline:

'Tylor's conception of anthropology as a liberal "reformer's science" purging Victorian culture of the unexamined "survivals" of traditional "superstition ..." [Stocking, 1995: xiv]

In his obituary in American Anthropologist 1917 (19: 262-268) Robert Lowie stated:

'Tylor's vision embraced, to cite his own definition of culture, 'that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society'.

Lowie added:

'The very idea of introducing into a branch of knowledge that is so often the happy hunting-ground of the curiosity-seeking dilettante something of the rigor of the exact sciences is one of wellnigh unparalleled magnificence. Nothing that Tylor ever did serves so decisively to lift him above the throng of his fellow-workers.'

and again:

'Over and above his specific contributions, Tylor had a clear vision of the place of ethnology in modern civilization. The facts of primitive life were to him not mere specimens for a museum of psychological oddities nor was he altogether satisfied with using them as bricks for a theory of cultural development. Beyond its academic aspects he maintained that "such research has its practical side, as a source of power destined to influence the course of modern ideas and actions."

In 1952 Kroeber and Kluckhohn observed that Tylor was 'deliberately establishing a science by defining its subject matter'. [1952, 150-1 quoted in B. Saler 'E.B. Tylor and the Anthropology of Religion', American Anthropologist vol 2 no 1 (May 1997) 'paper prepared for 95th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association November 21 1996].

Marett remarks that:

'... Tylor's interest lay rather in the unity underlying this all too conspicuous difference. The need of his age was to proclaim that mankind is a many in one, with the emphasis on one. ... Natural Science, with no dogma to uphold, no axe to grind, was now prepared to state a case for human unity ... Tylor, in throwing in his lot as a student of Man with the new archaeology and the new biology, supported their demand for an indefinite allowance of time in which to find room for the human life-process to have run its leisurely course. His scientific purpose is the same, namely, to examine origins. His contribution to the question of unity is not show wherein it consists or ought to consist, but rather how it has come about. ... Being chiefly concerned, then, with the cultural and hence mental aspect of human development, Tylor makes language his point of departure. ...' [Marett, 1936: 48]

Tylor's defined civilization as:

'Civilization actually existing among mankind in different grades, we are enabled to estimate and compare it by positive examples. The educated world of Europe and America practically settles a standard by simply placing its own nations at one end of the social series and savage tribes at the other, arranging the rest of mankind between these limits according as they correspond more closely to savage or to cultural life. The principle criteria of classification are the absence or presence, high or low development, of the industrial arts, ... the extent of scientific knowledge, the definiteness of moral principles, the condition of religious belief and ceremony, the degree of social and political organization and so forth. Thus, on the definite basis of compared facts, ethnographers are able to set up at least a rough scale of civilization. Few would dispute that the following races are arranged rightly in order of culture:- Australian, Tahitian, Aztec, Chinese, Italian.' [Tylor, 1871: I 23-24, quoted in Stocking, 1963: 788]

'Wherever anthropologists have been able to show definite evidence and inference, for instance, in the developments series of arts in the Pitt-Rivers [sic] Museum, at Oxford, not only specialists but the educated world generally are ready to receive the results and assimilate them into public opinion. Strict method has, however, as yet only been introduced over part of the anthropological field. There is still to be overcome a certain not unkindly hesitancy on the part of men engaged in the precise operations of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, to admit that the problems of anthropology are amenable to scientific treatment. It is my aim to show that the development of institutions may be investigated on a basis of tabulation and classification.' [Tylor, 1889 'On a method of investigating the development of institutions; applied to laws of marriage and descent' JAI vol 18 (1889) 245 - 272]

Tylor, like Pitt Rivers believed that 'the condition of modern savages illustrates the condition of ancient stone age peoples, representatives of a stage of culture at once early in date and low in degree. The Tasmanian specimens and records now place us in full view of the state of a people in the palaeolithic stage, who may have lasted on in their remote and unvisited home from the distant ages when rudely chipped stones grasped in the hand were still the best implements of mankind ... The life of these savages proves to be of undeveloped type alike in arts and institutions, so much so that the distinction of being the lowest of normal tribes may be claimed for them. Still, though the difference between them and even their Australian neighbours is enough to mark lowness of stage, it by no means amounts to an immeasureable interval. Their palaeolithic state does accompany a corresponding lowness of general condition, as compared with that of modern neolithic savages. But the passage from neolithic to palaeolithic only carries us back a stage. The great initial developments of language, arts, religion, society, still remain in the remote background of human development.' [Tylor, 'On the Tasmanians as Representatives of Palaeolithic Man' JAI vol 23 (1894) 141-152, 152]

Even at the end of his life he seems to have held that modern primitive peoples lives and work could be used to illustrate ancient times. A draft for a publication, which was never actually published so far as we are aware, written around 1910 says:

It is now some while since I began to press on anthropologists the importance of this comparison of ancient with modern stone age peoples, as disclosing to us the earliest available evidence of primitive savage conditions. But hitherto I have hesitated to deal fully with the subject, in hopes that more complete evidence might be accessible. As to the historical records of native Tasmanian arts and manners there seems little of consequence to be added to the information in Mr Ling Roth's 'Aborigines of Tasmania'. But of late I have been fortunate in obtaining by the help of Mr E.S. Anthony and Mr Paxton Moir fuller collections of native stone implements than had been known before. These have been taken from the shell-heaps on the coast, left there by natives who resorted there to feed on shellfish, just as in Europe on the Scandinavian coasts. The stone implements of pre-historic men are found in the ... [draft ends here] [Tylor papers, PRM ms collection, page 18]

Stocking describes Tylor as attending 'to the evolutionary study of culture, with emphasis on language, myth, religion and material culture' [Stocking, 1995: 3] Stocking describes Tylor as seeming:

'...to have collected systematic information on [the geographical distribution of "some remarkable customs" including marriage prohibitions, avoidance, and the couvade] and other sociological matters. Twenty-three years later, in what was surely the most important contribution to his later years, he presented the results of an analysis of data on some 350 different peoples, first in a public lecture at Oxford and then to his anthropological confreres in London.' [Stocking, 1995: 3]

Stocking describes this paper, 'On a method of investigating the development of institutions..' [1888], as containing 'in compressed form all the major methodological and conceptual assumptions of evolutionary anthropology ...' [Stocking, 1995: 3] Stocking believes that the '... concepts of survivals was the linch-pin of Tylor's reasoning ...' [Stocking, 1995: 6] Tylor himself summarised this in his concluding remarks:

'Even the diagrams of this paper may suffice to show that the institutions of man are as distinctly stratified as the earth on which he lives. They succeed each other in series substantially uniform over the globe, independent of what seems the comparatively superficial differences of race and language, but shaped by similar human nature acting through successively changed conditions of savage, barbaric and civilised life.' [Tylor, 1888, 'On the method of investigating the development of institutions, applied to laws of marriage and descent' JAI 21: 248, 269 quoted in Stocking, 1995: 8]

Stocking remarks that this climactic quotation suggests:

'... Tylor's paper was in fact a powerfully condensed summary representation of twenty-five years of social evolutionary argument. All of the evolutionary principles were there: the psychic unity of mankind, the uniform stages of development, the doctrine of survivals, and, of course, the comparative method, which was the primary focus of the paper. All the major evolutionary writers were not only referred to but brought together within a single interpretive frame. And throughout there was the characteristic tone of tolerantly patronizing ethnocentrism: savage customs might be farcical, but viewed in evolutionary context, they were rational, and they could be made the subject of systematic scientific investigation. If one were to choose a single paper to exemplify the paradigm of social evolutionary argument, one would be had put to find a better one than this. The difficulty-clear now, though it could not have been to Tylor-was that it was not he prospective exemplar of an ascendant paradigm, but the retrospective exemplar of a paradigm about to enter a period of decline. This is not to say that Tylor's paper was without influence on later anthropology. Quite the contrary: it was one of the most important single papers in the history of the discipline, widely influential at the turn of the century, and continuing to be widely cited ... into the second half of the twentieth century.' [Stocking, 1995: 10]

Marett remarks of Tylor's scientific methods:

'... the Tylorian method, which in this country has had a host of imitators, of whom Sir James Frazer may be selected for mention honoris causa, is to gather first and sift afterwards.' [Marett, 1936: 69]

Tylor was the quintessential 'armchair anthropologist'. Although he travelled a great deal, most of his evidence was gleaned from other authors etc rather than personal experience. Stocking remarks:

'Despite its self-consciously innovative statistical method, Tylor's paper of 1888 was a quintessential product of "armchair anthropology"-though perhaps not in a literal sense, since the tabulation of all that data, as well as the correspondence by which a good deal of it was collected, could only have been done at a desk. But the paper still took for granted the division of labour previously assumed by Notes and Queries, between the "travellers and residents in uncivilized lands," who were "not anthropologists themselves"-and whose observations it sought to improve-and those who carry on "the scientific study of anthropology at home." ... Tylor had first-hand familiarity with the United States government's Bureau of Ethnology, which under Powell's directions had since 1879 been sending investigators to collect information among the Indian tribes of the United States. He knew of the work of Frank Hamilton Cushing ... which was one of the more richly presaging premonitions of the ethnographic style of twentieth century anthropology. Tylor had in fact ended his talk with a call for an international effort to carry on "a prompt and minute observation" among the "hundred or more peoples in the world" on the verge of extinction, in order to save "some fast vanishing memory of their social laws and customs." But there was no explicit indication that this effort was to be carried out by investigators different from those for whom Notes and Queries had been intended. By 1888, however Tylor was in fact already himself involved in ethnographic enterprises foreshadowing a more modern model. At the Montreal meeting of the British Association, where he had served as first president of the newly formed anthropological section, Tylor played a leading role in the establishment of a committee "for the purpose of investigating and publishing reports on the physical characters, languages, and industrial and social condition of the North-western Tribes of the Dominion of Canada." ... Furthermore, Tylor was no longer willing to rest satisfied with research by questionnaire. From the beginning of the Northwest Coast project, it was assumed that, on the basis of the results of such an initial inquiry, some of the "more promising districts" would be the subjects of "personal survey... By the time Tylor published his 1888 paper ... the collection of anthropological data by academically trained natural scientists who came to define themselves as "anthropologists", who were directly involved in the evaluation if not the formulation of anthropological theory, [was beginning] ..." [Stocking, 1995: 84-86.]

One of the ways in which Tylor can be seen as an innovator within anthropology is by his use of statistics in his 1888 paper 'On a method of investigating the development of institutions...' when he used rough statistical methods to shore up his theorizing. Köbben states:

'... he, too, was of Bastian's opinion "that in statistical investigation the future of anthropology lies" [Tylor, 1889: 269]. Tylor ... did not expect the truth to crystallize automatically from such a process. While claiming that the rules of human conduct are amenable to classification in compact masses so as to show, by strict numerical treatment, their relations to one another, he added: "It is only at this point that speculative explanation must begin ..."' [Köbben, 1952: 131]

Stocking points out that:

'During his lifetime, Tylor had several direct experiences with ethnographic "otherness": his early travels in Mexico and the United States, his subsequent attendance at London seances with a view to their anthropological significance, and a visit to the Zuni pueblo during his American trip of 1884. But for the most part, his anthropology was very much in the "armchair" tradition. He read widely in classical sources, in travel literature, and in accounts of exploration and missionary activity-in most of the published sources, ancient and modern, that might provide information about the variety of human customs and belief. And he read critically. ... As his "adhesions" paper suggests, from an early point Tylor was interested in the improvement of ethnographic data. In 1874 he played the dominant intellectual role in the formation of the British Association's Notes and Queries on Anthropology ... Although its questions about religion and mythology were clearly structured by the categories of Tylor's Primitive Culture, the emphasis was on detailed and careful observation ...' [Stocking, 1995: 15]

Stocking comments:

'His equation was rather an attempt to define a cultureless being that could serve as base point from which to reconstruct, not the 'early history of mankind', but the 'prehistory' of human culture. In this context, the problem was no longer to trace history backward, but to reason forward, using what has since been called 'the comparative method' and 'the doctrine of survivals', to provide a plausible sequence of progressive cultural development-an account of how humans, from being once culturally close to the ape, had risen to the status of civilized gentleman. Although not explicitly so formulated, Tylor's writing of the later 1860s can be seen as an effort to complement the Darwinian argument, by providing a developmental cultural chain that would take the place of otherwise 'missing links' in the evolutionary argument. To do this required not only the rejection of the degenerationist view of savagery ... It required more than the arrangement of archaeological and ethnological artifacts in sequences from simple to complex ... It required the establishment of a plausible naturalistic account of the development of the distinctive features of human spiritual culture ... It was this task ... to which Tylor devoted his magnum opus, Primitive Culture. ' [Stocking, 1994: xvi-xvii]

Stocking again:

'By 1871, the basic framework of Tylor's anthropology had been completed. It was a structure that manifested the moments of its own evolution. The traditional ethnological issues he had treated in the early 1860s were still reflected in his writing of the 1890s. He was never a 'unilinear' evolutionist in any stereotypical sense; issues of cultural diffusion-notably the Asian origins of the Aztec game of Patolli-continued to concern him until late in his anthropological career. And although he was in some respects the quintessential 'armchair anthropologist', he was from an early point concerned with improving the quality of ethnographic information upon which anthropological comparison was based ...' [Stocking, 1994: xix-xx]

'... he may ... be considered an archetypical representative of what has been called 'classical evolutionism' in anthropology. The paradigmatic exemplar is an essay he published in 1888 'On a method of investigating the development of institutions ...'. ... Based on data on 350 societies he had collected over three decades from a wide variety of sources ... Tylor's essay sought to establish laws of evolutionary development on a statistical basis that scientists might find convincing. .. From the point of view of 'scientific revolutions', however, the difficulty is that the 1888 essay was not the prospective exemplar of an ascendant paradigm, but the retrospective exemplar of a paradigm about to enter a period of decline.' [Stocking, 1994: xx-xxii]

Hodgen states:

'Tylor was the author of over two hundred and fifty papers and five books, all of singularly high and even quality. The two treatises for which he is remembered [24] were published in 1865 and 1871, during the first ten years of his working life, a period spent almost entirely in satisfying himself that social development rather than social degradation was the rule. His work was early remarked by his contemporaries for the penetration with which he recognized materials hitherto unknown or neglected, and the originality with which they were employed. ... Although Tylor was alert to all the problems of mid-century ethnology, his judgement of other scholars was often dependent upon their willingness to be equally certain of its applicability. ... Tylor formulated theories with scientific tentativeness, but the reader of his earlier and more vigorous work cannot avoid the conclusion that their structure and merit are derived from the emotional zest with which he entered the lists in favour of the progressionists.' [Hodgen, 1931: 317]

'It was Tylor's conviction, following laborious personal practise, that more profitable work could be done by collecting data than by spinning theories. He objected with particular emphasis to the construction of sweeping generalizations on the foundations of one or two unchecked facts.' [Hodgen, 1931: 318]

'Primitive Culture is the mature statement of a seasoned scholar. In it Tylor wisely chose to return for review to his original problem, progression versus degradation, and to the arguments for each side of the controversy. Although he remained convinced that "the main tendency of culture from primeval up to modern times" was from savagery to civilization, he acknowledged other modes of connection such as degeneration, survival and revival. [Hodgen, 1931: 320]

'The data of archaeology is little used in Primitive Culture, except as a guide to the theory of development illustrated by the serial arrangement of artifacts. Language is discussed as a means of sustaining the right of primitive people to a place in the series, but secondarily, and with repetition from the Researches. Tylor's most vigorous efforts were given to the search for existing but outworn practices and ideas which could be traced to an early stage of advanced culture and paralleled with similar elements in the cultures of existing savages ...' [Hodgen, 1931: 322]

'In appraising Edward Burnett Tylor and his doctrine of survivals, it becomes apparent, that in formulating it he filled the role of a conserving rather than an innovating figure. ... Although he was less ready than many of his intellectual generation to accept all similarities in manners and customs as to equal evidential value in the reconstruction of the early history of man, there were other old methodological ideas to which he loyally adhered. With his contemporaries he accepted the idea of progress or development and employed the comparative method. With them, he utilized clues afforded by excavated artifacts. Like them, his attention was caught by the irrational but tenacious character of some beliefs and practices. This he ascribed to their greater age and their derivation without development from savage ancestors.' [Hodgen, 1931: 323]

Urry states:

'Tylor and [ Primitive Culture] were to dominate British anthropology for the next thirty years. Primitive culture was written, however, on the basis of very little evidence; Tylor had to depend on many scanty and sometimes questionable sources. ... Tylor was very sensitive to the problems involved in using such diverse sources, but in Primitive culture he stated that any theories must be firmly rooted in actual facts.' [Urry, 1972: 47]

'Tylor and his contemporaries were indeed trying to raise a science, and they fully realised the importance of accurate information and some of the difficulties involved in collecting it. They openly encouraged the collection of information: ... Tylor by contributing a number of sections of anthropological questions to guide books. Stocking has noted that Tylor's failure to produce any major work after 1881 has been attributed to his concern with the propagation of anthropology; high among these concerns was the production of such guides.' [Urry, 1972: 47] [25]

Perhaps a clue as to why Tylor decided to make anthropology the basis of his life's work can be gleaned from the following passage:

'In times when subjects of education have multiplied, it may seem at first sight a hardship to lay on the already heavily-pressed student a new science. But it will be found that the real effect of Anthropology is rather to lighten than increase the strain of learning. In the mountains we see the bearers of heavy burdens contentedly shoulder a carrying-frame besides, because they find its weight more than compensated by the convenience of holding together and balancing their load. So it is with the science of Man and Civilization, which connects into a more manageable whole the scattered subjects of an ordinary education. Much of the difficulty of learning and teaching lies in the scholar's not seeing clearly what each science or art is for, what its place is among the purposes of life. If he knows something of its early history, and how it arose from the simpler wants and circumstances of mankind, he finds himself better able to lay hold of it than when, as to often happens, he is called on to take up an abtruse subject not at the beginning but in the middle. ... It is needless to make a list of fall the branches of education in knowledge and art; there is not one which may not be the easier and better learnt for knowing its history and place in the general science of Man.' [Tylor, 1930: xi-xii]

Marett's summary of his work is interesting, as it shows what the next generation of Oxford anthropologists thought of him:

As for scope, his main point was that it must be a universal Science of Man, a synthesis of all that there is to be known about him from experience, that is, in the light of his history ... Tylorian anthropology concerns itself with the unity of mankind more directly envisaged as a continuity. As science it is history and something more, namely, an attempt not only to describe, but likewise in some measure to explain, the historical process. Tylor was an orthodox Darwinian ... Though he occasionally used ... the rather high-sounding phrase "evolution" ... Tylor decidedly prefers to speak simply of the "development" of culture. [Marett, 1936: 17-19]

What did contemporaries and others think of Tylor?
According to Ackerman, Frazer's biographer, Tylor's was an 'anthropology of origins':

'His self-assigned task was to recover the prehistory of mankind. He starts from the Enlightenment premise that a fundamental unity exists among humankind, and that the similarities among cultures far outweigh the dissimilarities. His work is thus a reflection of the tide of liberal democracy rising all over Europe among the educated middle classes, for comparative evolutionary anthropology may be thought of as a scientific, 'objective' demonstration of the unity of mankind that both the deists on one hand and the romantics on the other had been proclaiming in their different ways since the American and French revolutions. Tylor postulated the existence of an organic law of development and progress operative in the growth of human institutions. This meant that change was gradual and orderly, much the same the world over, and that human institutions, once simple and confused, had become complex and highly coordinated over the passage of time ... [this] was not easy to demonstrate. His problem was one of evidence. Writing before the archaeological data produced by the later excavations in Greece and the eastern Mediterranean became available, how was Tylor to substantiate his statement that human society had evolved, along with everything else in the natural world? ... The solution lay in the comparative method and the doctrine of survivals. Tylor ... simply asserted that, human nature and development being relatively homogeneous, one might legitimately discover, in the behaviour of contemporary primitive peoples, living links in the evolutionary chain. Despite the absence of any evidence that their histories were any less lengthy than those of their European observers, these "savages" were postulated as living fossils, to show man as he was thousands of years ago, before some or all of the great intellectual and cultural advances occurred that had (inevitably) led to the societies of the modern West. Once this giant step was taken, it was not much further to the next: to obtain the needed dynamic view of prehistoric development, one might string together items of culture taken from the most diverse primitive societies if in their totality they illustrated the steady upward movement of human development. The burgeoning ethnography of the time ... was thus levied upon to provide examples of al the various "stages" of human behavioural and social development.' [Ackerman, 1987: 77-8]

When Tylor was appointed Professor of Anthropology The Athenaeum of May 25 1895 announced the appointment saying:.

.. The name of Dr Tylor has been associated the world over with stimulating and original research, with lucid and laborious induction, with brilliant and fascinating generalization, with caution and candour as well as with depth of reasoning. His association with the Anthropological Museum of Oxford places within reach of his classes a rare means of experimental study. The other English universities may, perhaps, be expected soon to emulate Oxford. [Athenaeum, 25 May 1895, 'Anthropological Notes']

According to Urry [1972: 47] Andrew Lang, writing in 1898 praised Tylor for his careful separation of fact from fantasy in his anthropological writing. James Frazer also had a very positive view of Tylor:

'From the record of the ensuing discussion [following a talk given by Frazer to a meeting of the Anthropological Instiute in London on 10 March 1885, 'On certain burial customs as illustrative of the primitive theory of the Soul'] we learn that Tylor himselff "remarked that Mr Frazer's original and ingenious treatment of the evidence must materially advance the study of animistic funeral customs." On his side Frazer "expressed his deep gratification at the interest which Mr Tylor had expressed in his paper. It was the writings of Mr Tylor which had first interested him in anthropology, and the perusal of them had marked an epoch in his life".' [Ackerman, 1987: 67, quoting from the JAI 48-49]

When Tylor celebrated his seventy-fifth birthday in 1907 The Oxford Magazine of 31 October 1907 stated:

Though October is already some way behind, we desire to add our contribution to the stream of congratulations that has poured in upon Dr Tylor from every quarter of the world of letters on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday. At the same time we wish to congratulate ourselves as a University on being so intimately associated with the man who more than any one else ... deserves to be hailed as "the father of Anthropology" For some twenty-four years Dr Tylor has lectured in Oxford without a break on an endless variety of subjects that cover the whole vast field occupied by the science he has made his own. ... One thing that it is especially interesting to note in Dr Tylor's case is what compensations there may be for the absence of a University training. He alone, perhaps, of all our doctors and instructors has never been in for an examination in his life. Instead of repairing hither to obtain honours and "Blues'-for a man of his intellectual and physical stature might have made equally sure of both-he travelled about the world, and in particular to Mexico; in which country, as witness his first book ... he received his call-the call of the wild. And we others, academy trained, assiduous practisers of Latin prose, we have not studied the savage at first hand, and we cannot write Tylor's wonderful English, almost childlike in its simplicity, wholly giant-like in its force. May Dr Tylor long continue to abide amongst us, with health fully restored so as to match the wealth of his great learning.

In 1907 Tylor also received the Huxley medal from the Royal Anthropological Institute. In the Morning Post of November 6 1907 is stated:

'... Professor D.J. Cunningham, of Edinburgh, remarked that Dr Tylor was the great leader and thinker in those branches of anthropology which he had himself developed, and of which he was acknowledged to be the founder. His work had had a remarkable influence on the progress of the science.

The event was also recorded in the Morning Advertiser, Globe, Daily Telegraph and Pall Mall Gazette.

When Tylor announced his retirement many newspapers published accounts which give their views of Tylor:

'Dr Tylor's reputation is one of the longest enjoyed by any living man of science. He published his first book ... in 1859 and at once took his place among original observers and thinkers. ... He received the honorary degree of D.C.L. at the Encaenia of 1875. He was not then an Oxford man, but became so in 1883 on his appointment to succeed Professor Henry Smith as Keeper of the University Museum. Very shortly after he was made Reader in Anthropology, and was in 1895 raised to the status of Professor, and somewhat later because Honorary Fellow of Balliol College. His personal attractiveness, amiability, and generosity have endeared him to numberless friends.' [ The Times December 10 1909 'University Intelligence']

'It is announced from Oxford that Dr Tylor is resigning the Chair of Anthropology at the end of the year. The loss to the University is undoubtedly very great, yet not so great in reality as in appearance, since Dr Tylor will be at hand to help and advise as heretofore. After all, when a great thinker and writer has devoted the best of his time for a quarter of a century to academic work such as lecturing and organizing, he well deserves a holiday in the shape of some literary leisure. There is no need to speak here of Dr Tylor's services to the world at large. It seems a fitting occasion, however, on which to say a word about the debt which Oxford owes him. ... Classification of races, distribution of culture, ethics, games, language, law, magic, marriage, property, religion, survivals, writing-here in alphabetical order is a chance selection of the topics on which he has from time to time discoursed. Again, his work in connexion with the Pitt-Rivers [sic] Museum has been simply invaluable. Lastly he has succeeded, after many years of patient effort, in creating for anthropology not merely a nominal, but a real place in the educational studies of the University. His 'Memorandum on the Present State and Future Needs of Anthropology in Oxford' (1902) marks an epoch in the history of the subject, so far at least as Oxford is concerned. Not only is useful research work being done by senior students ... There is likewise a Diploma Course ... and the School can already boast of attracting students of very various aims, such as future "researcher", explorer, missionary, Colonial administrator and so on. Dr Tylor who has always insisted on the practical no less than the theoretical importance of anthropological science, is known to be extremely gratified at the way in which the subject has been lately gaining ground in the University. ... [ The Athenaeum, December 18 1909 'Resignation of Dr E.B. Tylor']

Twenty-five years of lecturing and organizing is a large is a large concession on the part of a thinker, and writer of genius to the [2 Greek words]. ... Thanks to Dr Tylor's untiring efforts, Anthropology has made steady progress within the University ... It is doubtless because he is satisfied that the ship is through the narrows and has fairly started on its way that Dr Tylor finds it possible to leave the bridge. [ The Oxford Magazine, 20 January 1910]

An undated reference to Tylor:

Harper's Monthly Magazine for July contains an excellent portrait of Dr E.B. Tylor (of Linden, Wellington) and in the course of an article on "Social Life in Oxford" says: Turning southward again and strolling through the west side of the Parks, one comes to the South Parks Road, where stands the house of Dr E.B. Tylor, the anthropologist. He is one of the most delightful of all the scientific men of the day, and his house, to which he and his wife delight in welcoming their friends, is a peculiarly pleasant one. I once heard a young man exclaim, after a talk with Dr Tylor, "He is the simplest 'great man' I have ever talked with," a remark which only serves to put into words the impression he makes upon all who know him.

When Tylor died there was another opportunity for the newspapers to comment on his career:

'... Tylor was a tall man of imposing appearance and his friendly, modest courtesy will never be forgotten by those who had the privilege of knowing him. ... On looking through the compendious bibliography of Tylor from 1861 to 1907 compiled by Miss Freire-Marreco .... it is obvious that, apart from his four books, his activity largely manifested itself in lectures, reviews, and addresses. His papers, even when descriptive, were always marked by a breadth of view and an endeavour to drive home the lessons to be garnered from the facts. ... Although Tylor illustrated his theses with a wealth of references, he never permitted himself to be swamped by them. He will always be regarded as the first and foremost exponent of the comparative method in this country, and though, as was natural for a contemporary of Darwin and Huxley, he was imbued with the principle of development, yet he was fully alive to the borrowing of culture and to cultural drifts ... Tylor was always interested in method, and it was mainly by his efforts in this direction that ethnology can now claim to be a science. [A.C. Haddon 'Sir E.B. Tylor F.R.S.' Nature, January 11 1917]

'The death of Sir E.B. Tylor removed a truly grand figure and one of the glories of English Science from us. If the race of mankind in its natural being and tendency was his study, he was himself in his prime a noble specimen of that race in body, heart and head. ... That he wrote a beautiful prose style the many who know his books; especially the famous earlier ones are well aware. But perhaps only a few knew that he was also a poet who could add an excellent stanza to Andrew Lang's Double Ballade of Primitive Man. He was in truth very witty and ready, as for instance when he said on the spur of the moment of a certain form of Japanese religion in which the ceremonial drinking of tea played the chief part, c'est pur théisme. It was not always possible to tell whether he was serious or in jest, as when he said in one of his lectures on Totems with regard to a certain cult being started by the Cherokee Indians, "That certainly we cannot believe, for we all know the Cherokees." And he was, with his large nature and splendid frame, as kindly and warm-hearted as he was strong and eager, one whose science Germany might envy and whose spirit they would do well to emulate. [ The Oxford Magazine January 26 1917]

Obituaries appeared in a wide ranging selection of publications including the Scotsman, Glasgow Herald, Irish Times, Western Daily News, Somerset County Gazette, Taunton Mail,, Christian World, Inquirer, Oxford Chronicle, The Wellington Weekly News, The Morning Post, Saturday Review, Birmingham Post, Northern Whig, Daily Telegraph, Globe, Manchester Guardian, The Times, etc.

The essays published for his Festschrift include one from Andrew Lang:

... my acquaintance with Mr Tylor and his great book began thirty-five years ago, when he, beside Sir John Lubbock, already towered above all British anthropologists, like Saul above his people. ... In 1871 he produced his chief work, one is constantly impressed anew by their readableness. Never sinking to the popular, Mr Tylor never ceases to be interesting, so vast and varied are his stores of learning, so abundant his wealth of apposite and accurate illustration. Ten years was this work in the writing, and it may be said that [Andrew Lang, 'Edward Burnett Tylor' in Primitive Culture, and at once appeared as the foremost of British anthropologists. The extent of his reading, his critical acumen, his accuracy, his power of exposition, his open mind, and his scientific caution makes this book no passing essay, but a possession for ever. He laid the firm foundations of a structure to which, with accruing information, others might make additions; he himself had made and is making additions; but his science passed, thanks to him, out of the pioneering stage, at a single step. ... Not the least of Mr Tylor's gifts, as the founder of his science, is the happy simplicity and unobtrusive humour of his style. Not stuffed with strange technical words, his language, as in his admirable chapter on 'Survival in Culture' ... is so attractive, so pellucid, that any intelligent child could read it with pleasure, and become a folk-lorist unawares. ... On re-perusing the long familiar pages of Primitive Culture le temps n'y mord, that though much has been learned in the last thirty years, no book can ever supersede Anthropological Essays presented to Edward Burnett Tylor ...' p1, 5-7,12 Primitive Culture. It teaches us that, in examining the strangest institutions and beliefs, we are not condemned à chercer raison où il n'y en a pas as Dr Johnson supposed.

Myres opens his chapter in Anthropological Essays for Tylor on the occasion of ... on 'The Sigynnae of Herodotus an Ethnological Problem of the Early Iron Age' with a rather obscure reference to him, thus (p.255):

'The time has now gone by when it was safe to jeer at Herodotus as a mere retailer of travellers' stories. For us the Father of History is no less the Father of Anthropology. That he is become so, for some of us, is the outcome of a request made in all diffidence by certain Oxford undergraduates, in the Easter Term of 1892, that the Reader in Anthropology would lecture, if only for once, on the earlier books of Herodotus, or at least on such passages of them as demanded anthropological commentary. No one, I think, of the audience of those lectures on 'Anthropology as related to Ancient and Modern History', has forgotten the wealth of learning, and the truly planetary outlook with which that experiment was made.' (adding that as a result, JLM has never regretted devoting his life to the mass of new material available for the interpretation of the ancient Mediterranean world.)

Developing an evolutionary perspective, he began to view culture as a continuum and to search for the origins of culture, and the laws of cultural progress. The latter, he believed, were to be found in the nature of the human mind.

How did Tylor acquire information (and objects)?

Wilson D. Wallis states:

E.B. Tylor was no doubt the mostly highly honoured by his contemporaries. In the volume of essays in Tylor's honor presented to him in 1907, on his seventy-fifth birthday, Lang refers to him as "the father of Anthropology in English". Probably no anthropologist-using the term in its widest sense-would have begrudged him that honor. ... Like Lyell, Darwin, Galton, and a few other pioneers, Tylor had done his principal work outside academic halls. He was a Quaker. Boas told me that he was staying with Tylor the night before the University Convocation was to pass on the matter of Tylor's Professorship, and it was anticipated that the clergy would attend en masse to voice their strong opposition to it. [Wallis, 1957: 781-2]

Tylor obtained ethnographic information from people working in the field:

'Like several other armchair anthropologists, Tylor established postal contact with various "men on the spot" who seemed particularly well-situated and competent observers, often with an interest in the general issues that were the focus of his theoretical concern. Although communication could take months, some of these people became active participants in the ethnographic process, answering queries, volunteering information, sometimes writing papers which Tylor shepherded into print. A number of the most active and sophisticated were in fact missionaries ...' [Stocking, 1995: 16]

It is likely that some objects were obtained via the same route.

One report of Tylor obtaining an object, though not for himself or the Pitt Rivers Museum is given here:

'About 1880 I had chanced to go to the county parish of Holcombe Rogus in Devonshire to pay an afternoon visit to the vicar, Mr. Wills. A remark of mine as to a stone implement on the mantelpiece led to the unexpected remark that there were things upstairs from the Pelew Islands. When I protested that nothing from thence had come to England since the time when Captain Wilson brought over 'Prince Lee Boo,' whose sad story is told in the once familiar poem, it was answered that the late Mrs. Wills was of Captain Wilson's family, and had inherited his curiosities. Before that, two generations of children had played havoc with them, but in the attic there were still the great bird-bowl and the inlaid wooden sword, and the rupak or bone bracelet, that prized ornament of chiefs, with other familiar objects figured in Keate's book. I represented that they ought to be in the national collection, and not long after, Mr. Wills, on his death-bed, ordered that they should be sent to me. They duly took their deserved places in the ethnographic department of the British Museum, where no doubt they will long outlast the amiable but hopelessly degenerate islanders, the picture of whose social decay has been drawn with such minute faithfulness by Kubary.' (Tylor, Introduction to Ratzel's Völkerkunde ('The History of Mankind'): viii-ix)

Tylor obtained some objects via friends and peers in the international anthropological and archaeological worlds (for example, material from North America via the Smithsonian Institute: John Wesley Powell and James Stevenson).

Obviously gifts of objects were often prompted by conversation with Tylor as the following example suggests:

In the course of a conversation in your Drawing Room a few months ago you mentioned the superstitious habit of some people in carrying the chopped off tip of a tongue as a charm. At the same time you asked me if I ever could obtain one that had actually been carried to let you have it. Quite unexpectedly a few days ago I managed to obtain one that had been carried for some length of time and I now enclose it in this envelope in the hope that you may find it useful in adding to your collection of such things. It is a genuine specimen. I have not carried it about myself in order to qualify it. (Albert Wm. Brown, Tunbridge Wells, to Tylor 13.10.1897. Original emphasis. Tylor Papers, PRM Manuscript Collections).

This was written on college paper, by Brown, a college exhibitioner reading natural sciences at Christ Church College.

In return for the objects he was sent Tylor was not asked for a great deal:

I got the hooks and box from Captain Martin of our Mission Schooner "John Hunt", and promised him that they should be presented to your Museum in his name. When you write next, please devote a small scrap of paper to an acknowledgement of receipt that I may hand it over to him as a bait to catch more specimens (L. Fison to E.B. Tylor, 17.08.1883. Tylor Papers, PRM Manuscript Collections).

Using a list originally compiled by Sandra Dudley, subsequently amended by Petch to take account of improved information, the following list of people associated with the Tylor collection was prepared. Note that those items which appear to have been retained by Tylor as part of his private collection up to his death are marked by words '[Private EBT collection]':

1. C.C. Abbott - also objects from him donated via Arthur and John Evans, 1 object sent to Tylor by 1917, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

2. Miss A. Alger - Sent to EBT by 1917, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

3. William George Aston - Also gave directly to PRM. Sent to EBT by 1917, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

4. Adolf Bastian - Sent to EBT 1883, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

5. Octavius Bates - Also gave directly to PRM. Sent to EBT in 1885, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

6. Possibly Alexander Montgomerie Bell - Also gave directly to PRM. and via above donor. Tylor might have been a previous owner of the objects

7. Giuseppe Bellucci - Also gave via Walter Leo Hildburgh and Wellcome Institute. Sent to Tylor in 1904 and donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

8. James Theodore Bent - Also gave directly to PRM. Sent to EBT by 1917, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

9. A.W. Brown - Sent to EBT in 1885, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

10. Basil Hall Chamberlain - Sent to EBT in 1885, some donated by EBT between 1910 and 1916, others donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Some Private EBT collection]

11. Greville John Chester - One sent to EBT by 1890 rest unknown but all donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

12. Abraham Colles - Sent to EBT by 1911, donated by him 1911

13. C.P. Converse - via R.R. Redding to EBT in 1882 and donated at unknown date

14. John V. Cook - Also gave via other donors, especially Ernest Westlake. Sent to EBT in 1906, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

15. William Crooke - Also gave directly to PRM. Sent to EBT by 1916, donated by him 1916

16. J.E. or S. Dallas - Also gave directly to PRM via Sollas. Sent to EBT by 1916, donated by him 1916

17. Charles Darwin - Given by Robert Swinhoe to Charles Darwin (who was merely an other owner), given by Francis Darwin (Charles' son) to EBT in 1888. Donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

18. James Leigh Strachan-Davidson - Also gave direct to PRM. Sent to EBT by 1917, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

19. Juliet Duff - Sent to EBT by 1917, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

20. Mrs Elton - Sent to EBT by 1917, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

21. Arthur John Evans - Sent to EBT by 1917, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

22. John Gwenogvryn Evans - Sent to EBT by 1886, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

23. Thomas Douglas Forsyth - Also gave directly to PRM (in same year). Sent to EBT by 1886, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

24. Robert Frazer - via Smithsonian Institute sent to EBT November 1884, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

25. William Wyatt Gill - Also gave direct to PRM and via OUMNH. Sent to EBT in 1884, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

26. Major Grant - Sent to EBT in 1889 and donated 1889 after loaned

27. Horatio Hale - Sent to EBT in 1896 and donated 1896

28. Benjamin Harrison - Other objects from Harrison donated via Committee of the British Association. Alfred Schwartz Barnes, Lord Avebury, William G. Wallace and direct. Sent to EBT in 1912 and donated 1912 and donated by Anna Tylor in 1917 [Some Private EBT collection]

29. Dudley Francis Amelius Hervey - One given to EBT and donated by him by 1911, others received by 1917 and donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

30. Miss Heweld - Sent to EBT by 1917, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

31. Sydney John Hickson - Many donated directly. Sent to EBT by 1911 and donated 1911

32. J.R. Holland - Other owner only. Collected by Chester Macnaughton in 1890 and donated by EBT in 1916

33. P. Hopkins - Sent to EBT by 1882, donated by Anna Tylor's executors / Dorothy Tylor in 1921 [Private EBT collection]

33. Eliot Howard - ?Relative [see below] Sent to EBT in 1896, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

35. Elsie Howard - Cousin, sent to EBT by 1917, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

36. Alfred William Howitt - Donated directly, also sent to EBT by 1908, some donated 1911, some donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Some Private EBT collection]

37. Frederick Wollaston Hutton - Sent to EBT in 1905 and donated 1913

38. James Johnstone - some donated via Henry Yule, others sent to EBT in 1885, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

39. A. Konoye - Sent to EBT December 1900, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

40. Edward Tyrrell Leith - Sent to EBT in 1889, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

41. Gulielma Lister - Also donated directly. Sent to EBT in 1895, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

42. Alfred Comyn Lyall - Mostly gave directly to PRM. Sent to EBT around 1890, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

43. R.A.S. possibly Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister - Sent to EBT by 1917, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

44. Chester Macnaughton - Sent to EBT in 1890 via JR Holland. Donated by Tylor in 1916.

45. Nora Mercer - Sent to EBT in 1892, donated by him in 1911

46. Joseph Paxton Moir - Some given to EBT by 1910 and donated by him in 1910, others sent by 1917 (also associated with Alexander Morton and WL Williamson) and donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

47. James Mooney - Sent to EBT by 1897 and bequeathed by Anna Tylor / Dorothy Tylor 1921 [Private EBT collection]

48. Alexander Morton - Collected with W.L. Williamson and Joseph Paxton Moir, sent to EBT by 1917, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

49. John Linton Myres - sent to EBT by 1917, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

50. Antonio de Nino - via Janet Ann Duff-Gordon Ross, sent to EBT in 1905, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

51. Mr Parkman - Sent to EBT in 1892 as loan for museum, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

52. Cornelis Marinus Pleyte - Some donated direct to Museum, one also via Balfour, purchased by EBT from Pleyte in 1896, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

John Wesley Powell - donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

53. John Wesley Powell - James Stevenson was collector, Powell was 'other owner' (not really, it was Bureau of American Ethnology, he was just associated with it), sent to EBT around 1884, donated by EBT in 1911 or donated by Anna Tylor in 1917 [Private EBT collection]

54. R.R. Redding - other owner only, item collected by C.P. Converse, possibly donated 1882

55. Janet Ann Duff-Gordon Ross - Sent to EBT by 1911 donated by EBT in 1911, some objects collected by Antonio de Nino and given by Janet Ross to EBT in 1905 and donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

56. Johan Diedrich Eduard or Johannes Dietrich Eduard or Johannes Friedrich Eduard Schmeltz - sent to EBT by 1917, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

57. Prof Serrurier - sent to EBT by 1917, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

58. Jacob esh. Shellaby - via Alfred Harris, sent to EBT by 1917, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

59. Erminnie Smith - sent to EBT by 1917, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

60. Robert Murdoch Smith - some via OUMNH, one via EBT in 1888, others sent to EBT circa 1858 and bequeathed by Anna Tylor / Dorothy Tylor 1921 [Private EBT collection]

61. William Robertson Smith - sent to EBT by 1917, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

62. Frederick Starr - Some directly donated to PRM or via Folklore Society, others sent to EBT by 1917 and donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

63. James Stevenson - via John Wesley Powell sent to EBT around 1884, donated by EBT in 1911 or donated by Anna Tylor in 1917 [Private EBT collection]

64. F.P. Swemburgh - sent to EBT by 1917, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

65. Robert Swinhoe - via Charles Darwin and Francis Darwin, sent to EBT in 1888, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

66. Richard Carnac Temple - Sent to EBT by 1916, donated 1916

67. David Thomas - Also donated via Philip John Worsley, sent to EBT by 1917, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

68. Everard Im Thurn - Sent to EBT by 1889, donated 1889

69. Francis Fox Tuckett - Relative. Some donated to Museum direct, others sent to EBT by 1917, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

70. E.T.C. Werner Tunbridge [NB it does occur to me his name might be Werner and his place of residence Tunbridge!] sent to EBT by 1917, donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

71. John Oliver Wardrop - Sent to EBT in 1895 and donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

72. Chief White - Other owner, Field collector Horatio Hale, purchased by EBT circa 1896 and donated by him same year

73. W.L. Williamson - Sent to EBT by 1917 (also associated with Alexander Morton and Joseph Paxton Moir) and donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

74. Bessie Wilson - Sent to EBT by 1917 and bequeathed by Anna Tylor / Dorothy Tylor 1921 [Private EBT collection]

75. J. Strode Wilson - Sent to EBT by 1917 and donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]
4.4 What was his collection for?
76. Bertha Worsley - Item collected by David Thomas, given by Worsley to EBT by 1917 and donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

77. Soldier of the Rifle Brigade - Charles E. Pole Carew gave to Edward Burnett Tylor, June, 1891, and donated by Anna Tylor 1917 [Private EBT collection]

The majority of Tylor's publications do not make specific reference to objects within his collection (or the Museum's) so it seems that for the most part at least he did not obtain objects as specific examples to support his arguments, as Pitt Rivers did. He may, at least in part, have been a collector per se, collecting for the sheer delight in acquisition. It seems that, as with Balfour, he sometimes obtained objects which 'duplicated' other objects which were given direct to the museum. These duplicates were then later given to the Museum after his or his wife's death. An example of this kind of method of acquisition might be 1917.53.433 etc given in 1917 but obtained by James Stevenson much earlier, similar examples of which were given to the Museum directly. Balfour also obtained objects in this way. Such acquisitions however do suggest that there was more to their collecting than acquiring objects for the Museum, it suggests to me a more personal interest. This is especially so as the objects were often similar, or identical to, objects in the Museum's collections.

However, an unpublished ms of Tylor's in the PRM manuscript collections suggests that later in his career Tylor was specifically interested in addressing partticular objects, both within his own personal collection and within the Museum's. This manuscript is located in Box 5 'Notes'' of the Tylor ms collection and appears to be rough drafts, lists of reading and references, and notes for a publication, putatively titled, 'Origin and Spread of Cultures', and divided into 8 main chapters:

Chapter 1 - History and Prehistory

Chapter 2 - Eolithic and Palaeolithic Ages

Chapter 3 - Magic

Chapter 4 - Astrology

Chapter 5 - Deluge

Chapter 6 - Rosaries and Prayer Wheels

Chapter 7 - Games

Chapter 8 - Languages

It is chapter 4 which gives us a date for this work, as happening in 1910 or later. This is because in Tylor's notes he records that in this chapter he will look at several events forecast in various almanacks and comment upon them and he specifically mentions that he has chosen events in 1910.

It is clear that this publication, though no section appears to be finalised in this version at least, was going to deal with material culture much more directly than other publications. Here are some relevant extracts:

I possess one or two drawers-full [of stone tools] collected by Mr Benjamin Harrison of Ightham (Kent) or by myself under his guidance. [PRM Tylor ms collections, Box 5: page 15]

This clearly suggests that at some point Tylor actually undertook some practical archaeological work, if only field walking.

It is especially interesting to see what position astrology occupies in our times. It has fallen to publications price a few pence and sold in shops in villages and outskirts of towns. I have before me the 6d almanacks of Ladkiel [and several named others] ... from each of which take here or there a prophetic remark or two from each ... [PRM Tylor ms collections, Box 5: page 25]

This is somewhat incoherent passage, and it ends more or less as I give it, but it does give clear evidence that Tylor was purchasing objects (in this case, almanacks) in order to use them in his work.

There are also those [shell beads] of Cosinopara globularis from Les Boves near Amiens, now in the Pitt Rivers Museum. These plainly show that ornaments of strung beads and shells gave pleasure to mankind in remote ages, as they have continued to do since. In the same Museum may be seen in the necklaces of Elenchus shells stripped of theirr outer coating, which within our lifetime decorated the savage of Tasmania. [PRM Tylor ms collections, Box 5: page 65]

'The first home of the string of beads for counting the repitition of prayers and other sacred formulas, appears likely to have been India, where a vast population belonging to several religions still use it as they did ages ago. My own fairly complete collection of Indian rosaries was mostly made for me [draft ends here] [PRM Tylor ms collections, Box 5: page 66]

On page 67-8 there is an alternative draft of the above paragrap:

My own fairly complete collection of Indian rosaries was mostly made for me by my friend Mr Crooke, Collector of Mirzapur, and in 1893, at a meeting of the Ninth Congress of Orientalists in London ...' [PRM Tylor ms collections, Box 5: page 67-8]

Both of these paragraph drafts give a clear indication that Tylor intended to use his collection of Indian rosaries directly in the chapter, but also that he had an aim when collecting and believed that he had obtained 'a fairly complete collection', i.e. somewhat on the lines of Pitt Rivers attitude to complete-able typological series. Quite how Tylor knew, other than Crooke informing him that his set was fairly complete it is unclear from this ms.

This draft ms, if it had been published, would have been much more directly associated with material culture than his other books. He gives real and direct evidence of his connection to them:

I have on my table a pretty silver one [prayer wheel]... [PRM Tylor ms collections, Box 5: page 75]

I hold in my hand a silver prayer wheel from Tibet. On it is inscribed the familiar format Om Mani Padme Hum ... [PRM Tylor ms collections, Box 5: page 114v][Clare Harris is attempting to match this prayer wheel with the definite PRM object, there are two candidates, she also intends publishing about this]

NB there is also a long list of rosaries heading Tylor's collection of rosaries that can presumably be matched to specific objects, Tylor himself estimated he had a collection of almost 100 [PRM Tylor ms collections, Box 5: page 114v]

The use of objects whilst he was lecturing can be illustrated with the following reports:

'The Reader in Anthropology commenced his course of lectures on Monday last. He naturally commenced by discoursing on flint implements and their uses; but perhaps the most interesting feature in the lecture was his practical illustration of their manufacture. To see the learned Doctor working, and with some skill too, with the actual tools of a palaeolithic man was an interesting and instructive example of the proverb about extremes meeting.' [ The Oxford Magazine: Volume II no. 2, Wednesday January 30, 1884, p.20]

'How are we to account for the difference which exists between the agricultural Pueblo Indians and wild hunting tribes, such as the Colorado Indians? It would seem from several pieces of evidence that this difference cannot be satisfactorily accounted for by the hypothesis that the former has reached a higher stage of development than the latter: more probably the wild Indian is the descendant of tribes who had reached a higher state of life, but have, owing to the pressure of war or poverty, sunk in the scale of civilization.
Pitt Rivers ms collections
'At the outset of his lecture or before proceeding to the evidence for this view, Dr. Tylor gave a practical warning to the unwary anthropologist who deals too hastily with wild races in contact with civilized white men; the professor produced a typical tomahawk with which a tobacco-pipe was combined, the whole being apparently of Indian make, but a little consideration shows that, as the Indian has no iron, he could not have made the iron head, and also his genuine pipe or calumet is made either of stone or of terracotta, so that the idea of adding a bowl to a war hatchet is due solely to the inventive genius of the white trader. Again, strings of shell beads are bartered to the Indian, which can be distinguished from those of native manufacture by the evenness of the holes, which have been bored through the shells with a turning-lathe and fine drill.'[ The Oxford Magazine: Volume II, no.22, Wednesday November 19, 1884, p. 410]

Documentary Sources for E.B. Tylor [List compiled by Chris Wingfield in 2002 and added to by AP]

3 boxes of notebooks dated from c1862-1890. Contain notes taken from EBT's wide-ranging reading. Most of the notes are direct quotes from each book or article. He does not provide annotations to them. Include excerpts from travel/exploration literature, latest anthropological writing, philosophy and physiology etc. Some notes in Greek, French, German and Spanish. Some illustrations, especially of Mexican pottery and codices. Some of these notes were drawn upon for EBT's publications, e.g. Notebook I has numerous historical references to children raised by animals, which were clearly used in his 1863 article, 'Wild men and beast-children', Anthropological Review 1: 21-32. Also, contain several sets of notes taken at various museum visits, including Hunterian, Smithsonian, British Museum etc. Some rough notes of conversations held with A.W. Franks and Henry Christy, but very sketchy.

Correspondence - extensive correspondence from colleagues and supporters of the PRM worldwide. Includes letters from Boas, Fison, Hale, Dawson, Howitt etc. Many letters contain details of objects the writers are seeking on EBT's behalf. Also, donations to the PRM. Many contain quite detailed ethnological information (especially those of Fison and Hale). Others are more clearly written by "amateur" anthropologists, colonial officials, etc. Very few letters from EBT have been copied, though there are some rough drafts of letters, e.g. concerning the purchase and transportation of the totem poles from Masset, QCI.
Pitt Rivers Museum
Photographs - large collection of photographs donated to PRM in 1917 following Tylor's death. These were subsequently split up. Some were purchased by EBT as late as 1913. Lizzie plans using these in forthcoming project.

Charts - lifesize drawings and paintings for EBT's lectures, c. 1885-1890. Include cave paintings, driving out devils, ideas of death after life, animism, Mexican patolli players.

820 objects donated by Lady Tylor following EBT's death in 1917.
OUMNH
Numerous objects donated by EBT from 1886-1916. Some are referred to in correspondence in EBT Papers and are listed as donations from EBT, also giving collector's name. Others are just listed as from EBT and do not give collector's details, though they can still be identified in correspondence, allowing for the information in the correspondence to be included in catalogue records.
Bodleian
Correspondence within accession books and related documents files concerning artefacts donated throughout EBT's Keepership.
Natural History Museum
1884 - 1898 Letter to EB Poulton
British Library
Myres Papers - Memories of the Pitt Rivers Museum (MS Myres 93 (192-197)).
UCL
Archives - L MSS TYL: Notebook relating to EBT's life by Lady Tylor. The entries are brief, stating where EBT was and when, and sometimes for what purpose. Illnesses and deaths of people close to the Tylors are also noted. Most of the entries refer to the places that the Tylors travelled to each year, and how long they stayed there.

Add MS 5024 - correspondence 1859-1906 (97 items)
Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum
Galton Papers - NRA 19968 Galton. Letters to Sir Francis Galton
American Philosophical Society
MS ADD 88 - NRA 14256. Correspondence with G. C. Robertson
National Anthropological Archives - Smithsonian
BAAS papers
Letters to Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers

Correspondence with Franz Boas in Boas-Rukeyser Collection, 1869-1940. B/B61.ru

Cambridge University Library - Charles Darwin papers

Trinity College, Cambridge - Frazer papers
Ashmoleon Records of former anthropology students in Oxford. Syllabus. Exam papers etc. U niversity of California Tylor archive Notes
British Museum Archives - probably will contain references in Christy and Franks papers.

Royal Anthropological Institute - RAI, Ethnological Society of London, Anthropological Society of London

[24] Hodgen sites 'Researches into the Early History of Mankind..' and 'Primitive Culture..'

[25] Later in the same paper Urry says that Tylor contributed to the Admiralty Handbook as well as to Hints for travellers [Urry, 1972: 48]

[26] Later in the same paper Urry says that Tylor contributed to the Admiralty Handbook as well as to Hints for travellers [Urry, 1972: 48]

AP added to site September 2012, slightly amended March 2013

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Thomas Paine - Common Sense pamphlet and general ideas about democracy and humanity.

The use of scientific philosophies to understand human experience.

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"Rousseau understands society to be an invention, and he attempts to explain the nature of human beings by stripping them of all of the accidental qualities brought about by socialization. Thus, understanding human nature amounts to understanding what humans are like in a pure state of nature. This is in stark contrast to the classical view, most notably that of Aristotle, which claims that the state of civil society is the natural human state."

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau was one of the most influential thinkers during the Enlightenment in eighteenth century Europe. His first major philosophical work, A Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, was the winning response to an essay contest conducted by the Academy of Dijon in 1750. In this work, Rousseau argues that the progression of the sciences and arts has caused the corruption of virtue and morality. This discourse won Rousseau fame and recognition, and it laid much of the philosophical groundwork for a second, longer work, The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. The second discourse did not win the Academy's prize, but like the first, it was widely read and further solidified Rousseau's place as a significant intellectual figure. The central claim of the work is that human beings are basically good by nature, but were corrupted by the complex historical events that resulted in present day civil society.Rousseau's praise of nature is a theme that continues throughout his later works as well, the most significant of which include his comprehensive work on the philosophy of education, the Emile, and his major work on political philosophy, The Social Contract: both published in 1762. These works caused great controversy in France and were immediately banned by Paris authorities. Rousseau fled France and settled in Switzerland, but he continued to find difficulties with authorities and quarrel with friends. The end of Rousseau's life was marked in large part by his growing paranoia and his continued attempts to justify his life and his work. This is especially evident in his later books, The Confessions, The Reveries of the Solitary Walker, and Rousseau: Judge of Jean-Jacques.

Rousseau greatly influenced Immanuel Kant's work on ethics. His novel Julie or the New Heloise impacted the late eighteenth century's Romantic Naturalism movement, and his political ideals were championed by leaders of the French Revolution.

Table of Contents

1. Life

a. Traditional Biography

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born to Isaac Rousseau and Suzanne Bernard in Geneva on June 28, 1712. His mother died only a few days later on July 7, and his only sibling, an older brother, ran away from home when Rousseau was still a child. Rousseau was therefore brought up mainly by his father, a clockmaker, with whom at an early age he read ancient Greek and Roman literature such as the Lives of Plutarch. His father got into a quarrel with a French captain, and at the risk of imprisonment, left Geneva for the rest of his life. Rousseau stayed behind and was cared for by an uncle who sent him along with his cousin to study in the village of Bosey. In 1725, Rousseau was apprenticed to an engraver and began to learn the trade. Although he did not detest the work, he thought his master to be violent and tyrannical. He therefore left Geneva in 1728, and fled to Annecy. Here he met Louise de Warens, who was instrumental in his conversion to Catholicism, which forced him to forfeit his Genevan citizenship (in 1754 he would make a return to Geneva and publicly convert back to Calvanism). Rousseau's relationship to Mme. de Warens lasted for several years and eventually became romantic. During this time he earned money through secretarial, teaching, and musical jobs.

In 1742 Rousseau went to Paris to become a musician and composer. After two years spent serving a post at the French Embassy in Venice, he returned in 1745 and met a linen-maid named Therese Levasseur, who would become his lifelong companion (they eventually married in 1768). They had five children together, all of whom were left at the Paris orphanage. It was also during this time that Rousseau became friendly with the philosophers Condillac and Diderot. He worked on several articles on music for Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopedie. In 1750 he published the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, a response to the Academy of Dijon's essay contest on the question, "Has the restoration of the sciences and arts tended to purify morals?" This discourse is what originally made Rousseau famous as it won the Academy's prize. The work was widely read and was controversial. To some, Rousseau's condemnation of the arts and sciences in the First Discourse made him an enemy of progress altogether, a view quite at odds with that of the Enlightenment project. Music was still a major part of Rousseau's life at this point, and several years later, his opera, Le Devin du Village (The Village Soothsayer) was a great success and earned him even more recognition. But Rousseau attempted to live a modest life despite his fame, and after the success of his opera, he promptly gave up composing music.

In the autumn of 1753, Rousseau submitted an entry to another essay contest announced by the Academy of Dijon. This time, the question posed was, "What is the origin of inequality among men, and is it authorized by the natural law?" Rousseau's response would become the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Among Men. Rousseau himself thought this work to be superior to the First Discourse because the Second Discourse was significantly longer and more philosophically daring. The judges were irritated by its length as well its bold and unorthodox philosophical claims; they never finished reading it. However, Rousseau had already arranged to have it published elsewhere and like the First Discourse, it also was also widely read and discussed.

In 1756, a year after the publication of the Second Discourse, Rousseau and Therese Levasseur left Paris after being invited to a house in the country by Mme. D'Epinay, a friend to the philosophes. His stay here lasted only a year and involved an affair with a woman named Sophie d'Houdetot, the mistress of his friend Saint-Lambert. In 1757, after repeated quarrels with Mme. D'Epinay and her other guests including Diderot, Rousseau moved to lodgings near the country home of the Duke of Luxemburg at Montmorency.

It was during this time that Rousseau wrote some of his most important works. In 1761 he published a novel, Julie or the New Heloise, which was one of the best selling of the century. Then, just a year later in 1762, he published two major philosophical treatises: in April his definitive work on political philosophy, The Social Contract, and in May a book detailing his views on education, Emile. Paris authorities condemned both of these books, primarily for claims Rousseau made in them about religion, which forced him to flee France. He settled in Switzerland and in 1764 he began writing his autobiography, his Confessions. A year later, after encountering difficulties with Swiss authorities, he spent time in Berlin and Paris, and eventually moved to England at the invitation of David Hume. However, due to quarrels with Hume, his stay in England lasted only a year, and in 1767 he returned to the southeast of France incognito.

After spending three years in the southeast, Rousseau returned to Paris in 1770 and copied music for a living. It was during this time that he wrote Rousseau: Judge of Jean-Jacques and the Reveries of the Solitary Walker, which would turn out to be his final works. He died on July 3, 1778. His Confessions were published several years after his death; and his later political writings, in the nineteenth century.

b. The Confessions: Rousseau's Autobiography

Rousseau's own account of his life is given in great detail in his Confessions, the same title that Saint Augustine gave his autobiography over a thousand years earlier. Rousseau wrote the Confessions late in his career, and it was not published until after his death. Incidentally, two of his other later works, the "Reveries of the Solitary Walker" and "Rousseau Judge of Jean Jacques" are also autobiographical. What is particularly striking about the Confessions is the almost apologetic tone that Rousseau takes at certain points to explain the various public as well as private events in his life, many of which caused great controversy. It is clear from this book that Rousseau saw the Confessions as an opportunity to justify himself against what he perceived as unfair attacks on his character and misunderstandings of his philosophical thought.

His life was filled with conflict, first when he was apprenticed, later in academic circles with other Enlightenment thinkers like Diderot and Voltaire, with Parisian and Swiss authorities and even with David Hume. Although Rousseau discusses these conflicts, and tries to explain his perspective on them, it is not his exclusive goal to justify all of his actions. He chastises himself and takes responsibility for many of these events, such as his extra-marital affairs. At other times, however, his paranoia is clearly evident as he discusses his intense feuds with friends and contemporaries. And herein lays the fundamental tension in the Confessions. Rousseau is at the same time trying both to justify his actions to the public so that he might gain its approval, but also to affirm his own uniqueness as a critic of that same public.

2. Background

a. The Beginnings of Modern Philosophy and the Enlightenment

Rousseau's major works span the mid to late eighteenth century. As such, it is appropriate to consider Rousseau, at least chronologically, as an Enlightenment thinker. However, there is dispute as to whether Rousseau's thought is best characterized as "Enlightenment" or "counter-Enlightenment." The major goal of Enlightenment thinkers was to give a foundation to philosophy that was independent of any particular tradition, culture, or religion: one that any rational person would accept. In the realm of science, this project has its roots in the birth of modern philosophy, in large part with the seventeenth century philosopher, René Descartes. Descartes was very skeptical about the possibility of discovering final causes, or purposes, in nature. Yet this teleological understanding of the world was the very cornerstone of Aristotelian metaphysics, which was the established philosophy of the time. And so Descartes' method was to doubt these ideas, which he claims can only be understood in a confused way, in favor of ideas that he could conceive clearly and distinctly. In the Meditations, Descartes claims that the material world is made up of extension in space, and this extension is governed by mechanical laws that can be understood in terms of pure mathematics.

b. The State of Nature as a Foundation for Ethics and Political Philosophy

The scope of modern philosophy was not limited only to issues concerning science and metaphysics. Philosophers of this period also attempted to apply the same type of reasoning to ethics and politics. One approach of these philosophers was to describe human beings in the "state of nature." That is, they attempted to strip human beings of all those attributes that they took to be the results of social conventions. In doing so, they hoped to uncover certain characteristics of human nature that were universal and unchanging. If this could be done, one could then determine the most effective and legitimate forms of government.

The two most famous accounts of the state of nature prior to Rousseau's are those of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Hobbes contends that human beings are motivated purely by self-interest, and that the state of nature, which is the state of human beings without civil society, is the war of every person against every other. Hobbes does say that while the state of nature may not have existed all over the world at one particular time, it is the condition in which humans would be if there were no sovereign. Locke's account of the state of nature is different in that it is an intellectual exercise to illustrate people's obligations to one another. These obligations are articulated in terms of natural rights, including rights to life, liberty and property. Rousseau was also influenced by the modern natural law tradition, which attempted to answer the challenge of skepticism through a systematic approach to human nature that, like Hobbes, emphasized self-interest. Rousseau therefore often refers to the works of Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf, Jean Barbeyrac, and Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui. Rousseau would give his own account of the state of nature in the Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men, which will be examined below.

Also influential were the ideals of classical republicanism, which Rousseau took to be illustrative of virtues. These virtues allow people to escape vanity and an emphasis on superficial values that he thought to be so prevalent in modern society. This is a major theme of the Discourse on the Sciences and Arts.

3. The Discourses

a. Discourse on the Sciences and Arts

This is the work that originally won Rousseau fame and recognition. The Academy of Dijon posed the question, "Has the restoration of the sciences and arts tended to purify morals?" Rousseau's answer to this question is an emphatic "no." The First Discourse won the academy's prize as the best essay. The work is perhaps the greatest example of Rousseau as a "counter-Enlightenment" thinker. For the Enlightenment project was based on the idea that progress in fields like the arts and sciences do indeed contribute to the purification of morals on individual, social, and political levels.

The First Discourse begins with a brief introduction addressing the academy to which the work was submitted. Aware that his stance against the contribution of the arts and sciences to morality could potentially offend his readers, Rousseau claims, "I am not abusing science...I am defending virtue before virtuous men." ( First Discourse, Vol. I, p. 4). In addition to this introduction, the First Discourse is comprised of two main parts.

The first part is largely an historical survey. Using specific examples, Rousseau shows how societies in which the arts and sciences flourished more often than not saw the decline of morality and virtue. He notes that it was after philosophy and the arts flourished that ancient Egypt fell. Similarly, ancient Greece was once founded on notions of heroic virtue, but after the arts and sciences progressed, it became a society based on luxury and leisure. The one exception to this, according to Rousseau, was Sparta, which he praises for pushing the artists and scientists from its walls. Sparta is in stark contrast to Athens, which was the heart of good taste, elegance, and philosophy. Interestingly, Rousseau here discusses Socrates, as one of the few wise Athenians who recognized the corruption that the arts and sciences were bringing about. Rousseau paraphrases Socrates' famous speech in the Apology. In his address to the court, Socrates says that the artists and philosophers of his day claim to have knowledge of piety, goodness, and virtue, yet they do not really understand anything. Rousseau's historical inductions are not limited to ancient civilizations, however, as he also mentions China as a learned civilization that suffers terribly from its vices.

The second part of the First Discourse is an examination of the arts and sciences themselves, and the dangers they bring. First, Rousseau claims that the arts and sciences are born from our vices: "Astronomy was born from superstition; eloquence from ambition, hate, flattery, and falsehood; geometry from avarice, physics from vain curiosity; all, even moral philosophy, from human pride." ( First Discourse, Vol. I, p. 12). The attack on sciences continues as Rousseau articulates how they fail to contribute anything positive to morality. They take time from the activities that are truly important, such as love of country, friends, and the unfortunate. Philosophical and scientific knowledge of subjects such as the relationship of the mind to the body, the orbit of the planets, and physical laws that govern particles fail to genuinely provide any guidance for making people more virtuous citizens. Rather, Rousseau argues that they create a false sense of need for luxury, so that science becomes simply a means for making our lives easier and more pleasurable, but not morally better.

The arts are the subject of similar attacks in the second part of the First Discourse. Artists, Rousseau says, wish first and foremost to be applauded. Their work comes from a sense of wanting to be praised as superior to others. Society begins to emphasize specialized talents rather than virtues such as courage, generosity, and temperance. This leads to yet another danger: the decline of military virtue, which is necessary for a society to defend itself against aggressors. And yet, after all of these attacks, the First Discourse ends with the praise of some very wise thinkers, among them, Bacon, Descartes, and Newton. These men were carried by their vast genius and were able to avoid corruption. However, Rousseau says, they are exceptions; and the great majority of people ought to focus their energies on improving their characters, rather than advancing the ideals of the Enlightenment in the arts and sciences.

b. Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

The Second Discourse, like the first, was a response to a question put forth by the academy of Dijon: "What is the origin of inequality among men; and is it authorized by the natural law?" Rousseau's response to this question, the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, is significantly different from the First Discourse for several reasons. First, in terms of the academy's response, the Second Discourse was not nearly as well received. It exceeded the desired length, it was four times the length of the first, and made very bold philosophical claims; unlike the First Discourse, it did not win the prize. However, as Rousseau was now a well-known and respected author, he was able to have it published independently. Secondly, if the First Discourse is indicative of Rousseau as a "counter-Enlightenment" thinker, the Second Discourse, by contrast, can rightly be considered to be representative of Enlightenment thought. This is primarily because Rousseau, like Hobbes, attacks the classical notion of human beings as naturally social. Finally, in terms of its influence, the Second Discourse is now much more widely read, and is more representative of Rousseau's general philosophical outlook. In the Confessions, Rousseau writes that he himself sees the Second Discourse as far superior to the first.

Part one is Rousseau's description of human beings in the pure state of nature, uncorrupted by civilization and the socialization process. And although this way of examining human nature is consistent with other modern thinkers, Rousseau's picture of "man in his natural state," is radically different. Hobbes describes each human in the state of nature as being in a constant state of war against all others; hence life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. But Rousseau argues that previous accounts such as Hobbes' have all failed to actually depict humans in the true state of nature. Instead, they have taken civilized human beings and simply removed laws, government, and technology. For humans to be in a constant state of war with one another, they would need to have complex thought processes involving notions of property, calculations about the future, immediate recognition of all other humans as potential threats, and possibly even minimal language skills. These faculties, according to Rousseau, are not natural, but rather, they develop historically. In contrast to Hobbes, Rousseau describes natural man as isolated, timid, peaceful, mute, and without the foresight to worry about what the future will bring.

Purely natural human beings are fundamentally different from the egoistic Hobbesian view in another sense as well. Rousseau acknowledges that self-preservation is one principle of motivation for human actions, but unlike Hobbes, it is not the only principle. If it were, Rousseau claims that humans would be nothing more than monsters. Therefore, Rousseau concludes that self-preservation, or more generally self-interest, is only one of two principles of the human soul. The second principle is pity; it is "an innate repugnance to see his fellow suffer." ( Second Discourse, Vol. II, p. 36). It may seem that Rousseau's depiction of natural human beings is one that makes them no different from other animals. However, Rousseau says that unlike all other creatures, humans are free agents. They have reason, although in the state of nature it is not yet developed. But it is this faculty that makes the long transition from the state of nature to the state of civilized society possible. He claims that if one examines any other species over the course of a thousand years, they will not have advanced significantly. Humans can develop when circumstances arise that trigger the use of reason.

Rousseau's praise of humans in the state of nature is perhaps one of the most misunderstood ideas in his philosophy. Although the human being is naturally good and the "noble savage" is free from the vices that plague humans in civil society, Rousseau is not simply saying that humans in nature are good and humans in civil society are bad. Furthermore, he is not advocating a return to the state of nature, though some commentators, even his contemporaries such as Voltaire, have attributed such a view to him. Human beings in the state of nature are amoral creatures, neither virtuous nor vicious. After humans leave the state of nature, they can enjoy a higher form of goodness, moral goodness, which Rousseau articulates most explicitly in the Social Contract.

Having described the pure state of nature in the first part of the Second Discourse, Rousseau's task in the second part is to explain the complex series of historical events that moved humans from this state to the state of present day civil society. Although they are not stated explicitly, Rousseau sees this development as occurring in a series of stages. From the pure state of nature, humans begin to organize into temporary groups for the purposes of specific tasks like hunting an animal. Very basic language in the form of grunts and gestures comes to be used in these groups. However, the groups last only as long as the task takes to be completed, and then they dissolve as quickly as they came together. The next stage involves more permanent social relationships including the traditional family, from which arises conjugal and paternal love. Basic conceptions of property and feelings of pride and competition develop in this stage as well. However, at this stage they are not developed to the point that they cause the pain and inequality that they do in present day society. If humans could have remained in this state, they would have been happy for the most part, primarily because the various tasks that they engaged in could all be done by each individual. The next stage in the historical development occurs when the arts of agriculture and metallurgy are discovered. Because these tasks required a division of labor, some people were better suited to certain types of physical labor, others to making tools, and still others to governing and organizing workers. Soon, there become distinct social classes and strict notions of property, creating conflict and ultimately a state of war not unlike the one that Hobbes describes. Those who have the most to lose call on the others to come together under a social contract for the protection of all. But Rousseau claims that the contract is specious, and that it was no more than a way for those in power to keep their power by convincing those with less that it was in their interest to accept the situation. And so, Rousseau says, "All ran to meet their chains thinking they secured their freedom, for although they had enough reason to feel the advantages of political establishment, they did not have enough experience to foresee its dangers." ( Second Discourse, Vol. II, p. 54).

The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality remains one of Rousseau's most famous works, and lays the foundation for much of his political thought as it is expressed in the Discourse on Political Economy and Social Contract. Ultimately, the work is based on the idea that by nature, humans are essentially peaceful, content, and equal. It is the socialization process that has produced inequality, competition, and the egoistic mentality.

c. Discourse on Political Economy

The work is perhaps most significant because it is here that Rousseau introduces the concept of the "general will," a major aspect of his political thought which is further developed in the Social Contract. There is debate among scholars about how exactly one ought to interpret this concept, but essentially, one can understand the general will in terms of an analogy. A political society is like a human body. A body is a unified entity though it has various parts that have particular functions. And just as the body has a will that looks after the well-being of the whole, a political state also has a will which looks to its general well-being. The major conflict in political philosophy occurs when the general will is at odds with one or more of the individual wills of its citizens.

With the conflict between the general and individual wills in mind, Rousseau articulates three maxims which supply the basis for a politically virtuous state: (1) Follow the general will in every action; (2) Ensure that every particular will is in accordance with the general will; and (3) Public needs must be satisfied. Citizens follow these maxims when there is a sense of equality among them, and when they develop a genuine respect for law. This again is in contrast to Hobbes, who says that laws are only followed when people fear punishment. That is, the state must make the penalty for breaking the law so severe that people do not see breaking the law to be of any advantage to them. Rousseau claims, instead, that when laws are in accordance with the general will, good citizens will respect and love both the state and their fellow citizens. Therefore, citizens will see the intrinsic value in the law, even in cases in which it may conflict with their individual wills.

4. The Social Contract

a. Background

The Social Contract is, like the Discourse on Political Economy, a work that is more philosophically constructive than either of the first two Discourses. Furthermore, the language used in the first and second Discourses is crafted in such a way as to make them appealing to the public, whereas the tone of the Social Contract is not nearly as eloquent and romantic. Another more obvious difference is that the Social Contract was not nearly as well-received; it was immediately banned by Paris authorities. And although the first two Discourses were, at the time of their publication, very popular, they are not philosophically systematic. The Social Contract, by contrast, is quite systematic and outlines how a government could exist in such a way that it protects the equality and character of its citizens. But although Rousseau's project is different in scope in the Social Contract than it was in the first two Discourses, it would be a mistake to say that there is no philosophical connection between them. For the earlier works discuss the problems in civil society as well as the historical progression that has led to them. The Discourse on the Sciences and Arts claims that society has become such that no emphasis is put on the importance of virtue and morality. The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality traces the history of human beings from the pure state of nature through the institution of a specious social contract that results in present day civil society. The Social Contract does not deny any of these criticisms. In fact, chapter one begins with one of Rousseau's most famous quotes, which echoes the claims of his earlier works: "Man was/is born free; and everywhere he is in chains." ( Social Contract, Vol. IV, p. 131). But unlike the first two Discourses, the Social Contract looks forward, and explores the potential for moving from the specious social contract to a legitimate one.

b. The General Will

The concept of the general will, first introduced in the Discourse on Political Economy, is further developed in the Social Contract although it remains ambiguous and difficult to interpret. The most pressing difficulty that arises is in the tension that seems to exist between liberalism and communitarianism. On one hand, Rousseau argues that following the general will allows for individual diversity and freedom. But at the same time, the general will also encourages the well-being of the whole, and therefore can conflict with the particular interests of individuals. This tension has led some to claim that Rousseau's political thought is hopelessly inconsistent, although others have attempted to resolve the tension in order to find some type of middle ground between the two positions. Despite these difficulties, however, there are some aspects of the general will that Rousseau clearly articulates. First, the general will is directly tied to Sovereignty: but not Sovereignty merely in the sense of whomever holds power. Simply having power, for Rousseau, is not sufficient for that power to be morally legitimate. True Sovereignty is directed always at the public good, and the general will, therefore, speaks always infallibly to the benefit of the people. Second, the object of the general will is always abstract, or for lack of a better term, general. It can set up rules, social classes, or even a monarchial government, but it can never specify the particular individuals who are subject to the rules, members of the classes, or the rulers in the government. This is in keeping with the idea that the general will speaks to the good of the society as a whole. It is not to be confused with the collection of individual wills which would put their own needs, or the needs of particular factions, above those of the general public. This leads to a related point. Rousseau argues that there is an important distinction to be made between the general will and the collection of individual wills: "There is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the general will. The latter looks only to the common interest; the former considers private interest and is only a sum of private wills. But take away from these same wills the pluses and minuses that cancel each other out, and the remaining sum of the differences is the general will." ( Social Contract, Vol. IV, p. 146). This point can be understood in an almost Rawlsian sense, namely that if the citizens were ignorant of the groups to which they would belong, they would inevitably make decisions that would be to the advantage of the society as a whole, and thus be in accordance with the general will.

c. Equality, Freedom, and Sovereignty

One problem that arises in Rousseau's political theory is that the Social Contract purports to be a legitimate state in one sense because it frees human beings from their chains. But if the state is to protect individual freedom, how can this be reconciled with the notion of the general will, which looks always to the welfare of the whole and not to the will of the individual? This criticism, although not unfounded, is also not devastating. To answer it, one must return to the concepts of Sovereignty and the general will. True Sovereignty, again, is not simply the will of those in power, but rather the general will. Sovereignty does have the proper authority override the particular will of an individual or even the collective will of a particular group of individuals. However, as the general will is infallible, it can only do so when intervening will be to the benefit of the society. To understand this, one must take note of Rousseau's emphasis on the equality and freedom of the citizens. Proper intervention on the part of the Sovereign is therefore best understood as that which secures the freedom and equality of citizens rather than that which limits them. Ultimately, the delicate balance between the supreme authority of the state and the rights of individual citizens is based on a social contract that protects society against factions and gross differences in wealth and privilege among its members.

a. Background

The Emile or On Education is essentially a work that details Rousseau's philosophy of education. It was originally published just several months after the Social Contract. Like the Social Contract, the Emile was immediately banned by Paris authorities, which prompted Rousseau to flee France. The major point of controversy in the Emile was not in his philosophy of education per se, however. Rather, it was the claims in one part of the book, the Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar in which Rousseau argues against traditional views of religion that led to the banning of the book. The Emile is unique in one sense because it is written as part novel and part philosophical treatise. Rousseau would use this same form in some of his later works as well. The book is written in first person, with the narrator as the tutor, and describes his education of a pupil, Emile, from birth to adulthood.

b. Education

The basic philosophy of education that Rousseau advocates in the Emile, much like his thought in the first two Discourses, is rooted in the notion that human beings are good by nature. The Emile is a large work, which is divided into five Books, and Book One opens with Rousseau's claim that the goal of education should be to cultivate our natural tendencies. This is not to be confused with Rousseau's praise of the pure state of nature in the Second Discourse. Rousseau is very clear that a return the state of nature once human beings have become civilized is not possible. Therefore, we should not seek to be noble savages in the literal sense, with no language, no social ties, and an underdeveloped faculty of reason. Rather, Rousseau says, someone who has been properly educated will be engaged in society, but relate to his or her fellow citizens in a natural way.

At first glance, this may seem paradoxical: If human beings are not social by nature, how can one properly speak of more or less natural ways of socializing with others? The best answer to this question requires an explanation of what Rousseau calls the two forms of self-love: amour-propre and amour de soi. Amour de soi is a natural form of self-love in that it does not depend on others. Rousseau claims that by our nature, each of us has this natural feeling of love toward ourselves. We naturally look after our own preservation and interests. By contrast, amour-propre is an unnatural self-love that is essentially relational. That is, it comes about in the ways in which human beings view themselves in comparison to other human beings. Without amour-propre, human beings would scarcely be able to move beyond the pure state of nature Rousseau describes in the Discourse on Inequality. Thus, amour-propre can contribute positively to human freedom and even virtue. Nevertheless, amour-propre is also extremely dangerous because it is so easily corruptible. Rousseau often describes the dangers of what commentators sometimes refer to as 'inflamed' amour-propre. In its corrupted form, amour-propre is the source of vice and misery, and results in human beings basing their own self worth on their feeling of superiority over others. While not developed in the pure state of nature, amour-propre is still a fundamental part of human nature. Therefore goal of Emile's natural education is in large part to keep him from falling into the corrupted form of this type of self-love.

Rousseau's philosophy of education, therefore, is not geared simply at particular techniques that best ensure that the pupil will absorb information and concepts. It is better understood as a way of ensuring that the pupil's character be developed in such a way as to have a healthy sense of self-worth and morality. This will allow the pupil to be virtuous even in the unnatural and imperfect society in which he lives. The character of Emile begins learning important moral lessons from his infancy, thorough childhood, and into early adulthood. His education relies on the tutor's constant supervision. The tutor must even manipulate the environment in order to teach sometimes difficult moral lessons about humility, chastity, and honesty.

c. Women, Marriage, and Family

As Emile's is a moral education, Rousseau discusses in great detail how the young pupil is to be brought up to regard women and sexuality. He introduces the character of Sophie, and explains how her education differs from Emile's. Hers is not as focused on theoretical matters, as men's minds are more suited to that type of thinking. Rousseau's view on the nature of the relationship between men and women is rooted in the notion that men are stronger and therefore more independent. They depend on women only because they desire them. By contrast, women both need and desire men. Sophie is educated in such a way that she will fill what Rousseau takes to be her natural role as a wife. She is to be submissive to Emile. And although Rousseau advocates these very specific gender roles, it would be a mistake to take the view that Rousseau regards men as simply superior to women. Women have particular talents that men do not; Rousseau says that women are cleverer than men, and that they excel more in matters of practical reason. These views are continually discussed among both feminist and Rousseau scholars.

d. The Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar

The Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar is part of the fourth Book of the Emile. In his discussion of how to properly educate a pupil about religious matters, the tutor recounts a tale of an Italian who thirty years before was exiled from his town. Disillusioned, the young man was aided by a priest who explained his own views of religion, nature, and science. Rousseau then writes in the first person from the perspective of this young man, and recounts the Vicar's speech.

The priest begins by explaining how, after a scandal in which he broke his vow of celibacy, he was arrested, suspended, and then dismissed. In his woeful state, the priest began to question all of his previously held ideas. Doubting everything, the priest attempts a Cartesian search for truth by doubting all things that he does not know with absolute certainty. But unlike Descartes, the Vicar is unable to come to any kind of clear and distinct ideas that could not be doubted. Instead, he follows what he calls the "Inner Light" which provides him with truths so intimate that he cannot help but accept them, even though they may be subject to philosophical difficulties. Among these truths, the Vicar finds that he exists as a free being with a free will which is distinct from his body that is not subject to physical, mechanical laws of motion. To the problem of how his immaterial will moves his physical body, the Vicar simply says "I cannot tell, but I perceive that it does so in myself; I will to do something and I do it; I will to move my body and it moves, but if an inanimate body, when at rest, should begin to move itself, the thing is incomprehensible and without precedent. The will is known to me in its action, not in its nature." ( Emile, p. 282). The discussion is particularly significant in that it marks the most comprehensive metaphysical account in Rousseau's thought.

The Profession of Faith also includes the controversial discussion of natural religion, which was in large part the reason why Emile was banned. The controversy of this doctrine is the fact that it is categorically opposed to orthodox Christian views, specifically the claim that Christianity is the one true religion. The Vicar claims instead that knowledge of God is found in the observation of the natural order and one's place in it. And so, any organized religion that correctly identifies God as the creator and preaches virtue and morality, is true in this sense. Therefore, the Vicar concludes, each citizen should dutifully practice the religion of his or her own country so long as it is in line with the religion, and thus morality, of nature.

6. Other Works

a. Julie or the New Heloise

Julie or the New Heloise remains one of Rousseau's popular works, though it is not a philosophical treatise, but rather a novel. The work tells the story of Julie d'Etange and St. Preux, who were one time lovers. Later, at the invitation of her husband, St. Preux unexpectedly comes back into Julie's life. Although not a work of philosophy per se, Julie or the New Heloise is still unmistakably Rousseau's. The major tenets of his thought are clearly evident; the struggle of the individual against societal norms, emotions versus reason, and the goodness of human nature are all prevalent themes.

b. Reveries of the Solitary Walker

c. Rousseau: Judge of Jean Jacques

7. Historical and Philosophical Influence

It is difficult to overestimate Rousseau's influence, both in the Western philosophical tradition, and historically. Perhaps his greatest directly philosophical influence is on the ethical thought of Immanuel Kant. This may seem puzzling at first glance. For Kant, the moral law is based on rationality, whereas in Rousseau, there is a constant theme of nature and even the emotional faculty of pity described in the Second Discourse. This theme in Rousseau's thought is not to be ignored, and it would be a mistake to understand Rousseau's ethics merely as a precursor to Kant; certainly Rousseau is unique and significant in his own respect. But despite these differences, the influence on Kant is undeniable. The Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar is one text in particular that illustrates this influence. The Vicar claims that the correct view of the universe is to see oneself not at the center of things, but rather on the circumference, with all people realizing that we have a common center. This same notion is expressed in the Rousseau's political theory, particularly in the concept of the general will. In Kant's ethics, one of the major themes is the claim that moral actions are those that can be universalized. Morality is something separate from individual happiness: a view that Rousseau undoubtedly expresses as well.

A second major influence is Rousseau's political thought. Not only is he one of the most important figures in the history of political philosophy, later influencing Karl Marx among others, but his works were also championed by the leaders of the French Revolution. And finally, his philosophy was largely instrumental in the late eighteenth century Romantic Naturalism movement in Europe thanks in large part to Julie or the New Heloise and the Reveries of the Solitary Walker.

Contemporary Rousseau scholarship continues to discuss many of the same issues that were debated in the eighteenth century. The tension in his political thought between individual liberty and totalitarianism continues to be an issue of controversy among scholars. Another aspect of Rousseau's philosophy that has proven to be influential is his view of the family, particularly as it pertains to the roles of men and women.

8. References and Further Reading

a. Works by Rousseau

Below is a list of Rousseau's major works in chronological order. The titles are given in the original French as well as the English translation. Following the title is the year of the work's first publication and, for some works, a brief description:

Lettre sur la musique francaise (Letter on French music), 1753.

Discours sur l'Économie politique (Discourse on Political Economy), 1755.
Sometimes called the "Third Discourse," this work originally appeared in the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert.

Lettre á d'Alembert sur les Spectacles (Letter to Alembert on the Theater), 1758.

Émile ou de l'Éducation (Émile or On Education), 1762.
Rousseau's major work on education. It also contains the Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar, which documents Rousseau's views on metaphysics, free will, and his controversial views on natural religion for which the work was banned by Parisian authorities.

Lettre á Christophe de Beaumont, Archévêque de Paris (Letter to Christopher de Beaumont, Archbishop of Paris), 1763.

Lettres écrites de la Montagne (Letters Written from the Mountain), 1764.

Dictionnaire de Musique (Dictionary of Music), 1767.

Émile et Sophie ou les Solitaires (Émile and Sophie or the Solitaries), 1780.
A short sequel to the Émile.

Considérations sur le gouverment de la Pologne (Considerations on the Government of Poland), 1782.

Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques, Dialogues (Rousseau judge of Jean-Jacques, Dialogues), First Dialogue 1780, Complete 1782.

Les Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire (Reveries of the Solitary Walker), 1782.

b. Works about Rousseau

Cooper, Laurence D. Rousseau and Nature: The Problem of the Good Life. Penn State UP, 1999. Cranston, Maurice. Jean-Jacques: The Early Life and Work of Jean-Jacques, 1712- 1754. University of Chicago Press, 1991.

Cranston, Maurice. The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1754-1762. University of Chicago Press, 1991.

Cranston, Maurice. The Solitary Self: Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Exile and Adversity. University of Chicago Press, 1997.

Dent, N.J.H. Rousseau. Blackwell, 1988.

Gourevitch, Victor. Rousseau: The 'Discourses' and Other Early Political Writings. Cambridge UP, 1997.

Gourevitch, Victor. Rousseau: The 'Social Contract' and Other Later Political Writings. Cambridge UP, 1997.

Melzer, Arthur. The Natural Goodness of Man: On the Systems of Rousseau's Thought. University of Chicago Press, 1990.

Neuhouser, Frederick. Rousseau's Theodicy of Self-Love: Evil, Rationality, and the Drive for Recognition. Oxford University Press, 2008.

O'Hagan, Timothy. Rousseau. Routledge, 1999.

Riley, Patrick, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau. Cambridge UP, 2001.

Reisert, Joseph. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: A Friend of Virtue. Cornell UP, 2003.

Rosenblatt, Helena. Rousseau and Geneva. Cambridge: Cabridge UP, 1997.

Starobinski, Jean. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Wokler, Robert. Rousseau. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995.

Wokler, Robert, ed. Rousseau and Liberty. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1995.

Author Information

James J. Delaney
Email: jdelaney@niagara.edu
Niagara University
U. S. A.

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau was one of the most influential thinkers during the Enlightenment in eighteenth century Europe. His first major philosophical work, A Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, was the winning response to an essay contest conducted by the Academy of Dijon in 1750.

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Voltaire installed himself permanently at Ferney in early 1759, and from this date until his death in 1778 he made the chateau his permanent home and capital, at least in the minds of his intellectual allies, of the emerging French Enlightenment.

During this period, Voltaire also adopted what would become his most famous and influential intellectual stance, announcing himself as a member of the “party of humanity” and devoting himself toward waging war against the twin hydras of fanaticism and superstition.

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François-Marie d'Arouet (1694-1778), better known by his pen name Voltaire, was a French writer and public activist who played a singular role in defining the eighteenth-century movement called the Enlightenment. At the center of his work was a new conception of philosophy and the philosopher that in several crucial respects influenced the modern concept of each. Yet in other ways Voltaire was not a philosopher at all in the modern sense of the term. He wrote as many plays, stories, and poems as patently philosophical tracts, and he in fact directed many of his critical writings against the philosophical pretensions of recognized philosophers such as Leibniz, Malebranche, and Descartes. He was, however, a vigorous defender of a conception of natural science that served in his mind as the antidote to vain and fruitless philosophical investigation. In clarifying this new distinction between science and philosophy, and especially in fighting vigorously for it in public campaigns directed against the perceived enemies of fanaticism and superstition, Voltaire pointed modern philosophy down several paths that it subsequently followed.

To capture Voltaire's unconventional place in the history of philosophy, this article will be structured in a particular way. First, a full account of Voltaire's life is offered, not merely as background context for his philosophical work, but as an argument about the way that his particular career produced his particular contributions to European philosophy. Second, a survey of Voltaire's philosophical views is offered so as to attach the legacy of what Voltaire did with the intellectual viewpoints that his activities reinforced.

Voltaire only began to identify himself with philosophy and the philosophe identity during middle age. His work Lettres philosophiques, published in 1734 when he was forty years old, was the key turning point in this transformation. Before this date, Voltaire's life in no way pointed him toward the philosophical destiny that he was later to assume. His early orientation toward literature and libertine sociability, however, shaped his philosophical identity in crucial ways.

François-Marie d'Arouet was born in 1694, the fourth of five children, to a well-to-do public official and his well bred aristocratic wife. In its fusion of traditional French aristocratic pedigree with the new wealth and power of royal bureaucratic administration, the d'Arouet family was representative of elite society in France during the reign of Louis XIV. The young François-Marie acquired from his parents the benefits of prosperity and political favor, and from the Jesuits at the prestigious Collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris he also acquired a first-class education. François-Marie also acquired an introduction to modern letters from his father who was active in the literary culture of the period both in Paris and at the royal court of Versailles. François senior appears to have enjoyed the company of men of letters, yet his frustration with his son's ambition to become a writer is notorious. From early in his youth, Voltaire aspired to emulate his idols Molière, Racine, and Corneille and become a playwright, yet Voltaire's father strenuously opposed the idea, hoping to install his son instead in a position of public authority. First as a law student, then as a lawyer's apprentice, and finally as a secretary to a French diplomat, Voltaire attempted to fulfill his father's wishes. But in each case, he ended up abandoning his posts, sometimes amidst scandal.

Escaping from the burdens of these public obligations, Voltaire would retreat into the libertine sociability of Paris. It was here in the 1720s, during the culturally vibrant period of the Regency government between the reigns of Louis XIV and XV (1715-1723), that Voltaire established one dimension of his identity. His wit and congeniality were legendary even as a youth, so he had few difficulties establishing himself as a popular figure in Regency literary circles. He also learned how to play the patronage game so important to those with writerly ambitions. Thanks, therefore, to some artfully composed writings, a couple of well-made contacts, more than a few bon mots, and a little successful investing, especially during John Law's Mississippi Bubble fiasco, Voltaire was able to establish himself as an independent man of letters in Paris. His literary debut occurred in 1718 with the publication of his Oedipe, a reworking of the ancient tragedy that evoked the French classicism of Racine and Corneille. The play was first performed at the home of the Duchesse du Maine at Sceaux, a sign of Voltaire's quick ascent to the very pinnacle of elite literary society. Its published title page also announced the new pen name that Voltaire would ever after deploy.

During the Regency, Voltaire circulated widely in elite circles such as those that congregated at Sceaux, but he also cultivated more illicit and libertine sociability as well. This pairing was not at all uncommon during this time, and Voltaire's intellectual work in the 1720s-a mix of poems and plays that shifted between playful libertinism and serious classicism seemingly without pause-illustrated perfectly the values of pleasure, honnêteté, and good taste that were the watchwords of this cultural milieu. Philosophy was also a part of this mix, and during the Regency the young Voltaire was especially shaped by his contacts with the English aristocrat, freethinker,and Jacobite Lord Bolingbroke. Bolingbroke lived in exile in France during the Regency period, and Voltaire was a frequent visitor to La Source, the Englishman's estate near Orléans. The chateau served as a reunion point for a wide range of intellectuals, and many believe that Voltaire was first introduced to natural philosophy generally, and to the work of Locke and the English Newtonians specifically, at Bolingbroke's estate. It was certainly true that these ideas, especially in their more deistic and libertine configurations, were at the heart of Bolingbroke's identity.

Yet even if Voltaire was introduced to English philosophy in this way, its influence on his thought was most shaped by his brief exile in England between 1726-29. The occasion for his departure was an affair of honor. A very powerful aristocrat, the Duc de Rohan, accused Voltaire of defamation, and in the face of this charge the untitled writer chose to save face and avoid more serious prosecution by leaving the country indefinitely. In the spring of 1726, therefore, Voltaire left Paris for England.

Voltaire did not restrict himself to Bolingbroke's circle alone, however. After Bolingbroke, his primary contact in England was a merchant by the name of Everard Fawkener. Fawkener introduced Voltaire to a side of London life entirely different from that offered by Bolingbroke's circle of Tory intellectuals. This included the Whig circles that Bolingbroke's group opposed. It also included figures such as Samuel Clarke and other self-proclaimed Newtonians. Voltaire did not meet Newton himself before Sir Isaac's death in March, 1727, but he did meet his sister-learning from her the famous myth of Newton's apple, which Voltaire would play a major role in making famous. Voltaire also came to know the other Newtonians in Clarke's circle, and since he became proficient enough with English to write letters and even fiction in the language, it is very likely that he immersed himself in their writings as well. Voltaire also visited Holland during these years, forming important contacts with Dutch journalists and publishers and meeting Willem's Gravesande and other Dutch Newtonian savants. Given his other activities, it is also likely that Voltaire frequented the coffeehouses of London even if no firm evidence survives confirming that he did. It would not be surprising, therefore, to learn that Voltaire attended the Newtonian public lectures of John Theophilus Desaguliers or those of one of his rivals. Whatever the precise conduits, all of his encounters in England made Voltaire into a very knowledgeable student of English natural philosophy.

When French officials granted Voltaire permission to re-enter Paris in 1729, he was devoid of pensions and banned from the royal court at Versailles. But he was also a different kind of writer and thinker. It is no doubt overly grandiose to say with Lord Morley that, "Voltaire left France a poet and returned to it a sage." It is also an exaggeration to say that he was transformed from a poet into a philosophe while in England. For one, these two sides of Voltaire's intellectual identity were forever intertwined, and he never experienced an absolute transformation from one into the other at any point in his life. But the English years did trigger a transformation in him.

After his return to France, Voltaire worked hard to restore his sources of financial and political support. The financial problems were the easiest to solve. In 1729, the French government staged a sort of lottery to help amortize some of the royal debt. A friend perceived an opportunity for investors in the structure of the government's offering, and at a dinner attended by Voltaire he formed a society to purchase shares. Voltaire participated, and in the fall of that year when the returns were posted he had made a fortune. Voltaire's inheritance from his father also became available to him at the same time, and from this date forward Voltaire never again struggled financially. This result was no insignificant development since Voltaire's financial independence effectively freed him from one dimension of the patronage system so necessary to aspiring writers and intellectuals in the period. In particular, while other writers were required to appeal to powerful financial patrons in order to secure the livelihood that made possible their intellectual careers, Voltaire was never again beholden to these imperatives.

The patronage structures of Old Regime France provided more than economic support to writers, however, and restoring the crédit upon which his reputation as a writer and thinker depended was far less simple. Gradually, however, through a combination of artfully written plays, poems, and essays and careful self-presentation in Parisian society, Voltaire began to regain his public stature. In the fall of 1732, when the next stage in his career began to unfold, Voltaire was residing at the royal court of Versailles, a sign that his re-establishment in French society was all but complete.

During this rehabilitation, Voltaire also formed a new relationship that was to prove profoundly influential in the subsequent decades. He became reacquainted with Emilie Le Tonnier de Breteuil,the daughter of one of his earliest patrons, who married in 1722 to become the Marquise du Châtelet. Emilie du Châtelet was twenty-nine years old in the spring of 1733 when Voltaire began his relationship with her. She was also a uniquely accomplished woman. Du Châtelet's father, the Baron de Breteuil, hosted a regular gathering of men of letters that included Voltaire, and his daughter, ten years younger than Voltaire, shared in these associations. Her father also ensured that Emilie received an education that was exceptional for girls at the time. She studied Greek and Latin and trained in mathematics, and when Voltaire reconnected with her in 1733 she was a very knowledgeable thinker in her own right even if her own intellectual career, which would include an original treatise in natural philosophy and a complete French translation of Newton's Principia Mathematica -still the only complete French translation ever published-had not yet begun. Her intellectual talents combined with her vivacious personality drew Voltaire to her, and although Du Châtelet was a titled aristocrat married to an important military officer, the couple was able to form a lasting partnership that did not interfere with Du Châtelet's marriage. This arrangement proved especially beneficial to Voltaire when scandal forced him to flee Paris and to establish himself permanently at the Du Châtelet family estate at Cirey. From 1734, when this arrangement began, to 1749, when Du Châtelet died during childbirth, Cirey was the home to each along with the site of an intense intellectual collaboration. It was during this period that both Voltaire and Du Châtelet became widely known philosophical figures, and the intellectual history of each before 1749 is most accurately described as the history of the couple's joint intellectual endeavors.

Had Voltaire been able to avoid the scandal triggered by the Lettres philosophiques, it is highly likely that he would have chosen to do so. Yet once it was thrust upon him, he adopted the identity of the philosophical exile and outlaw writer with conviction, using it to create a new identity for himself, one that was to have far reaching consequences for the history of Western philosophy. At first, Newtonian science served as the vehicle for this transformation. In the decades before 1734, a series of controversies had erupted, especially in France, about the character and legitimacy of Newtonian science, especially the theory of universal gravitation and the physics of gravitational attraction through empty space. Voltaire positioned his Lettres philosophiques as an intervention into these controversies, drafting a famous and widely cited letter that used an opposition between Newton and Descartes to frame a set of fundamental differences between English and French philosophy at the time. He also included other letters about Newtonian science in the work while linking (or so he claimed) the philosophies of Bacon, Locke, and Newton into an English philosophical complex that he championed as a remedy for the perceived errors and illusions perpetuated on the French by René Descartes and Nicolas Malebranche. Voltaire did not invent this framework, but he did use it to enflame a set of debates that were then raging, debates that placed him and a small group of young members of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris into apparent opposition to the older and more established members of this bastion of official French science. Once installed at Cirey, both Voltaire and Du Châtelet further exploited this apparent division by engaging in a campaign on behalf of Newtonianism, one that continually targeted an imagined monolith called French Academic Cartesianism as the enemy against which they in the name of Newtonianism were fighting.

The centerpiece of this campaign was Voltaire's Éléments de la Philosophie de Newton, which was first published in 1738 and then again in 1745 in a new and definitive edition that included a new section, first published in 1740, devoted to Newton's metaphysics. Voltaire offered this book as a clear, accurate, and accessible account of Newton's philosophy suitable for ignorant Frenchman (a group that he imagined to be large). But he also conceived of it as a machine de guerre directed against the Cartesian establishment, which he believed was holding France back from the modern light of scientific truth. Vociferous criticism of Voltaire and his work quickly erupted, with some critics emphasizing his rebellious and immoral proclivities while others focused on his precise scientific views. Voltaire collapsed both challenges into a singular vision of his enemy as "backward Cartesianism". As he fought fiercely to defend his positions, an unprecedented culture war erupted in France centered on the character and value of Newtonian natural philosophy. Du Châtelet contributed to this campaign by writing a celebratory review of Voltaire's Éléments in the Journal des savants, the most authoritative French learned periodical of the day. The couple also added to their scientific credibility by receiving separate honorable mentions in the 1738 Paris Academy prize contest on the nature of fire. Voltaire likewise worked tirelessly rebutting critics and advancing his positions in pamphlets and contributions to learned periodicals. By 1745, when the definitive edition of Voltaire's Éléments was published, the tides of thought were turning his way, and by 1750 the perception had become widespread that France had been converted from backward, erroneous Cartesianism to modern, Enlightened Newtonianism thanks to the heroic intellectual efforts of figures like Voltaire.

This apparent victory in the Newton Wars of the 1730s and 1740s allowed Voltaire's new philosophical identity to solidify. Especially crucial was the way that it allowed Voltaire's outlaw status, which he had never fully repudiated, to be rehabilitated in the public mind as a necessary and heroic defense of philosophical truth against the enemies of error and prejudice. From this perspective, Voltaire's critical stance could be reintegrated into traditional Old Regime society as a new kind of legitimate intellectual martyrdom. Since Voltaire also coupled his explicitly philosophical writings and polemics during the 1730s and 1740s with an equally extensive stream of plays, poems, stories, and narrative histories, many of which were orthogonal in both tone and content to the explicit campaigns of the Newton Wars, Voltaire was further able to reestablish his old identity as an Old Regime man of letters despite the scandals of these years. In 1745, Voltaire was named the Royal Historiographer of France, a title bestowed upon him as a result of his histories of Louis XIV and the Swedish King Charles II. This royal office also triggered the writing of arguably Voltaire's most widely read and influential book, at least in the eighteenth century, Essais sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations (1751), a pioneering work of universal history. The position also legitimated him as an officially sanctioned savant. In 1749, after the death of du Châtelet, Voltaire reinforced this impression by accepting an invitation to join the court of the young Frederick the Great in Prussia, a move that further assimilated him into the power structures of Old Regime society.

Had this assimilationist trajectory continued during the remainder of Voltaire's life, his legacy in the history of Western philosophy might not have been so great. Yet during the 1750s, a set of new developments pulled Voltaire back toward his more radical and controversial identity and allowed him to rekindle the critical philosophe persona that he had innovated during the Newton Wars. The first step in this direction involved a dispute with his onetime colleague and ally, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis. Maupertuis had preceded Voltaire as the first aggressive advocate for Newtonian science in France. When Voltaire was preparing his own Newtonian intervention in the Lettres philosophiques in 1732, he consulted with Maupertuis, who was by this date a pensioner in the French Royal Academy of Sciences. It was largely around Maupertuis that the young cohort of French academic Newtonians gathered during the Newton wars of 1730s and 40s, and with Voltaire fighting his own public campaigns on behalf of this same cause during the same period, the two men became the most visible faces of French Newtonianism even if they never really worked as a team in this effort. Like Voltaire, Maupertuis also shared a relationship with Emilie du Châtelet, one that included mathematical collaborations that far exceeded Voltaire's capacities. Maupertuis was also an occasional guest at Cirey, and a correspondent with both du Châtelet and Voltaire throughout these years. But in 1745 Maupertuis surprised all of French society by moving to Berlin to accept the directorship of Frederick the Great's newly reformed Berlin Academy of Sciences.

Maupertuis's thought at the time of his departure for Prussia was turning toward the metaphysics and rationalist epistemology of Leibniz as a solution to certain questions in natural philosophy. Du Châtelet also shared this tendency, producing in 1740 her Institutions de physiques, a systematic attempt to wed Newtonian mechanics with Leibnizian rationalism and metaphysics. Voltaire found this Leibnizian turn dyspeptic, and he began to craft an anti-Leibnizian discourse in the 1740s that became a bulwark of his brand of Newtonianism. This placed him in opposition to Du Châtelet, even if this intellectual rift in no way soured their relationship. Yet after she died in 1749, and Voltaire joined Maupertuis at Frederick the Great's court in Berlin, this anti-Leibnizianism became the centerpiece of a rift with Maupertuis. Voltaire's public satire of the President of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Berlin published in late 1752, which presented Maupertuis as a despotic philosophical buffoon, forced Frederick to make a choice. He sided with Maupertuis, ordering Voltaire to either retract his libelous text or leave Berlin. Voltaire chose the latter, falling once again into the role of scandalous rebel and exile as a result of his writings.

This event proved to be Voltaire's last official rupture with establishment authority. Rather than returning home to Paris and restoring his reputation, Voltaire instead settled in Geneva. When this austere Calvinist enclave proved completely unwelcoming, he took further steps toward independence by using his personal fortune to buy a chateau of his own in the hinterlands between France and Switzerland. Voltaire installed himself permanently at Ferney in early 1759, and from this date until his death in 1778 he made the chateau his permanent home and capital, at least in the minds of his intellectual allies, of the emerging French Enlightenment.

During this period, Voltaire also adopted what would become his most famous and influential intellectual stance, announcing himself as a member of the "party of humanity" and devoting himself toward waging war against the twin hydras of fanaticism and superstition. While the singular defense of Newtonian science had focused Voltaire's polemical energies in the 1730s and 1740s, after 1750 the program became the defense of philosophie tout court and the defeat of its perceived enemies within the ecclesiastical and aristo-monarchical establishment. In this way, Enlightenment philosophie became associated through Voltaire with the cultural and political program encapsulated in his famous motto, " Écrasez l'infâme! " ("Crush the infamy!"). This entanglement of philosophy with social criticism and reformist political action, a contingent historical outcome of Voltaire's particular intellectual career, would become his most lasting contribution to the history of philosophy.

The first cause to galvanize this new program was Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie. The first volume of this compendium of definitions appeared in 1751, and almost instantly the work became buried in the kind of scandal to which Voltaire had grown accustomed. Voltaire saw in the controversy a new call to action, and he joined forces with the project soon after its appearance, penning numerous articles that began to appear with volume 5 in 1755. Scandal continued to chase the Encyclopédie, however, and in 1759 the work's publication privilege was revoked in France, an act that did not kill the project but forced it into illicit production in Switzerland. During these scandals, Voltaire fought vigorously alongside the project's editors to defend the work, fusing the Encyclopédie's enemies, particularly the Parisian Jesuits who edited the monthly periodical the Journal de Trevoux, into a monolithic "infamy" devoted to eradicating truth and light from the world. This framing was recapitulated by the opponents of the Encyclopédie, who began to speak of the loose assemblage of authors who contributed articles to the work as a subversive coterie of philosophes devoted to undermining legitimate social and moral order.

As this polemic crystallized and grew in both energy and influence, Voltaire embraced its terms and made them his cause. He formed particularly close ties with d'Alembert, and with him began to generalize a broad program for Enlightenment centered on rallying the newly self-conscious philosophes (a term often used synonymously with the Encyclopédistes) toward political and intellectual change. In this program, the philosophes were not unified by any shared philosophy but through a commitment to the program of defending philosophie itself against its perceived enemies. They were also imagined as activists fighting to eradicate error and superstition from the world. The ongoing defense of the Encyclopédie was one rallying point, and soon the removal of the Jesuits-the great enemies of Enlightenment, the philosophes proclaimed-became a second unifying cause. This effort achieved victory in 1763, and soon the philosophes were attempting to infiltrate the academies and other institutions of knowledge in France. One climax in this effort was reached in 1774 when the Encyclopédiste and friend of Voltaire and the philosophes, Anne-Robert Jacques Turgot, was named Controller-General of France, the most powerful ministerial position in the kingdom, by the newly crowned King Louis XVI. Voltaire and his allies had paved the way for this victory through a barrage of writings throughout the 1760s and 1770s that presented philosophie like that espoused by Turgot as an agent of enlightened reform and its critics as prejudicial defenders of an ossified tradition.

Voltaire did bring out one explicitly philosophical book in support this campaign, his Dictionnaire philosophique of 1764-1770. This book republished his articles from the original Encyclopédie while adding new entries conceived in the spirit of the original work. Yet to fully understand the brand of philosophie that Voltaire made foundational to the Enlightenment, one needs to recognize that it just as often circulated in fictional stories, satires, poems, pamphlets, and other less obviously philosophical genres. Voltaire's most widely known text, for instance, Candide, ou l'Optimisme, first published in 1759, is a fictional story of a wandering traveler engaged in a set of farcical adventures. Yet contained in the text is a serious attack on Leibnizian philosophy, one that in many ways marks the culmination of Voltaire's decades long attack on this philosophy started during the Newton wars. Philosophie à la Voltaire also came in the form of political activism, such as his public defense of Jean Calas who, Voltaire argued, was a victim of a despotic state and an irrational and brutal judicial system. Voltaire often attached philosophical reflection to this political advocacy, such as when he facilitated a French translation of Cesare Beccaria's treatise on humanitarian justice and penal reform and then prefaced the work with his own essay on justice and religious toleration (Calas was a French protestant persecuted by a Catholic monarchy). Public philosophic campaigns such as these that channeled critical reason in a direct, oppositionalist way against the perceived injustices and absurdities of Old Regime life were the hallmark of philosophie as Voltaire understood the term.

Western philosophy was profoundly shaped by the conception of the philosophe and the program for Enlightenment philosophie that Voltaire came to personify. The model he offered of the philosophe as critical public citizen and advocate first and foremost, and as abstruse and systematic thinker only when absolutely necessary, was especially influential in the subsequent development of the European philosophy. Also influential was the example he offered of the philosopher measuring the value of any philosophy according by its ability to effect social change. In this respect, Karl Marx's famous thesis that philosophy should aspire to change the world, not merely interpret it, owes more than a little debt Voltaire. The link between Voltaire and Marx was also established through the French revolutionary tradition, which similarly adopted Voltaire as one of its founding heroes. Voltaire was the first person to be honored with re-burial in the newly created Pantheon of the Great Men of France that the new revolutionary government created in 1791. This act served as a tribute to the connections that the revolutionaries saw between Voltaire's philosophical program and the cause of revolutionary modernization as a whole. In a similar way, Voltaire remains today an iconic hero for everyone who sees a positive linkage between critical reason and political resistance in projects of progressive, modernizing reform.

Voltaire's philosophical legacy ultimately resides as much in how he practiced philosophy, and in the ends toward which he directed his philosophical activity, as in any specific doctrine or original idea. Yet the particular philosophical positions he took, and the way that he used his wider philosophical campaigns to champion certain understandings while disparaging others, did create a constellation appropriately called Voltaire's Enlightenment philosophy. True to Voltaire's character, this constellation is best described as a set of intellectual stances and orientations rather than as a set of doctrines or systematically defended positions. Nevertheless, others found in Voltaire both a model of the well-oriented philosophe and a set of particular philosophical positions appropriate to this stance. Each side of this equation played a key role in defining the Enlightenment philosophie that Voltaire came to personify.

Central to this complex is Voltaire's conception of liberty. Around this category, Voltaire's social activism and his relatively rare excursions into systematic philosophy also converged. In 1734, in the wake of the scandals triggered by the Lettres philosophiques, Voltaire wrote, but left unfinished at Cirey, a Traité de metaphysique that explored the question of human freedom in philosophical terms. The question was particularly central to European philosophical discussions at the time, and Voltaire's work explicitly referenced thinkers like Hobbes and Leibniz while wrestling with the questions of materialism, determinism, and providential purpose that were then central to the writings of the so-called deists, figures such as John Toland and Anthony Collins. The great debate between Samuel Clarke and Leibniz over the principles of Newtonian natural philosophy was also influential as Voltaire struggled to understand the nature of human existence and ethics within a cosmos governed by rational principles and impersonal laws.

Voltaire adopted a stance in this text somewhere between the strict determinism of rationalist materialists and the transcendent spiritualism and voluntarism of contemporary Christian natural theologians. For Voltaire, humans are not deterministic machines of matter and motion, and free will thus exists. But humans are also natural beings governed by inexorable natural laws, and his ethics anchored right action in a self that possessed the natural light of reason immanently. This stance distanced him from more radical deists like Toland, and he reinforced this position by also adopting an elitist understanding of the role of religion in society. For Voltaire, those equipped to understand their own reason could find the proper course of free action themselves. But since many were incapable of such self-knowledge and self-control, religion, he claimed, was a necessary guarantor of social order. This stance distanced Voltaire from the republican politics of Toland and other materialists, and Voltaire echoed these ideas in his political musings, where he remained throughout his life a liberal, reform-minded monarchist and a skeptic with respect to republican and democratic ideas.

Voltaire never actually said "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Yet the myth that associates this dictum with his name remains very powerful, and one still hears his legacy invoked through the redeclaration of this pronouncement that he never actually declared. Part of the deep cultural tie that joins Voltaire to this dictum is the fact that even while he did not write these precise words, they do capture, however imprecisely, the spirit of his philosophy of liberty. In his voluminous correspondence especially, and in the details of many of his more polemical public texts, one does find Voltaire articulating a view of intellectual and civil liberty that makes him an unquestioned forerunner of modern civil libertarianism. He never authored any single philosophical treatise on this topic, however, yet the memory of his life and philosophical campaigns was influential in advancing these ideas nevertheless. Voltaire's influence is palpably present, for example, in Kant's famous argument in his essay "What is Enlightenment?" that Enlightenment stems from the free and public use of critical reason, and from the liberty that allows such critical debate to proceed untrammeled. The absence of a singular text that anchors this linkage in Voltaire's collected works in no way removes the unmistakable presence of Voltaire's influence upon Kant's formulation.

Voltaire's notion of liberty also anchored his hedonistic morality, another key feature of Voltaire's Enlightenment philosophy. One vehicle for this philosophy was Voltaire's salacious poetry, a genre that both reflected in its eroticism and sexual innuendo the lived culture of libertinism that was an important feature of Voltaire's biography. But Voltaire also contributed to philosophical libertinism and hedonism through his celebration of moral freedom through sexual liberty. Voltaire's avowed hedonism became a central feature of his wider philosophical identity since his libertine writings and conduct were always invoked by those who wanted to indict him for being a reckless subversive devoted to undermining legitimate social order. Voltaire's refusal to defer to such charges, and his vigor in opposing them through a defense of the very libertinism that was used against him, also injected a positive philosophical program into these public struggles that was very influential. In particular, through his cultivation of a happily libertine persona, and his application of philosophical reason toward the moral defense of this identity, often through the widely accessible vehicles of poetry and witty prose, Voltaire became a leading force in the wider Enlightenment articulation of a morality grounded in the positive valuation of personal, and especially bodily, pleasure, and an ethics rooted in a hedonistic calculus of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. He also advanced this cause by sustaining an unending attack upon the repressive and, to his mind, anti-human demands of traditional Christian asceticism, especially priestly celibacy, and the moral codes of sexual restraint and bodily self-abnegation that were still central to the traditional moral teachings of the day.

The ineradicable good of personal and philosophical liberty is arguably the master theme in Voltaire's philosophy, and if it is, then two other themes are closely related to it. One is the importance of skepticism, and the second is the importance of empirical science as a solvent to dogmatism and the pernicious authority it engenders.

Voltaire's skepticism descended directly from the neo-Pyrrhonian revival of the Renaissance, and owes a debt in particular to Montaigne, whose essays wedded the stance of doubt with the positive construction of a self grounded in philosophical skepticism. Pierre Bayle's skepticism was equally influential, and what Voltaire shared with these forerunners, and what separated him from other strands of skepticism, such as the one manifest in Descartes, is the insistence upon the value of the skeptical position in its own right as a final and complete philosophical stance. Among the philosophical tendencies that Voltaire most deplored, in fact, were those that he associated most powerfully with Descartes who, he believed, began in skepticism but then left it behind in the name of some positive philosophical project designed to eradicate or resolve it. Such urges usually led to the production of what Voltaire liked to call "philosophical romances," which is to say systematic accounts that overcome doubt by appealing to the imagination and its need for coherent explanations. Such explanations, Voltaire argued, are fictions, not philosophy, and the philosopher needs to recognize that very often the most philosophical explanation of all is to offer no explanation at all.

Such skepticism often acted as bulwark for Voltaire's defense of liberty since he argued that no authority, no matter how sacred, should be immune to challenge by critical reason. Voltaire's views on religion as manifest in his private writings are complex, and based on the evidence of these texts it would be wrong to call Voltaire an atheist, or even an anti-Christian so long as one accepts a broad understanding of what Christianity can entail. But even if his personal religious views were subtle, Voltaire was unwavering in his hostility to church authority and the power of the clergy. For similar reasons, he also grew as he matured ever more hostile toward the sacred mysteries upon which monarchs and Old Regime aristocratic society based their authority. In these cases, Voltaire's skepticism was harnessed to his libertarian convictions through his continual effort to use critical reason as a solvent for these "superstitions" and the authority they anchored. The philosophical authority of romanciers such as Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibniz was similarly subjected to the same critique, and here one sees how the defense of skepticism and liberty, more than any deeply held opposition to religiosity per se, was often the most powerful motivator for Voltaire.

From this perspective, Voltaire might fruitfully be compared with Socrates, another founding figure in Western philosophy who made a refusal to declaim systematic philosophical positions a central feature of his philosophical identity. Socrates's repeated assertion that he knew nothing was echoed in Voltaire's insistence that the true philosopher is the one who dares not to know and then has the courage to admit his ignorance publicly. Voltaire was also, like Socrates, a public critic and controversialist who defined philosophy primarily in terms of its power to liberate individuals from domination at the hands of authoritarian dogmatism and irrational prejudice. Yet while Socrates championed rigorous philosophical dialectic as the agent of this emancipation, Voltaire saw this same dialectical rationalism at the heart of the dogmatism that he sought to overcome. Voltaire often used satire, mockery and wit to undermine the alleged rigor of philosophical dialectic, and while Socrates saw this kind of rhetorical word play as the very essence of the erroneous sophism that he sought to alleviate, Voltaire cultivated linguistic cleverness as a solvent to the false and deceptive dialectic that anchored traditional philosophy.

Against the acceptance of ignorance that rigorous skepticism often demanded, and against the false escape from it found in sophistical knowledge-or what Voltaire called imaginative philosophical romances-Voltaire offered a different solution than the rigorous dialectical reasoning of Socrates: namely, the power and value of careful empirical science. Here one sees the debt that Voltaire owed to the currents of Newtonianism that played such a strong role in launching his career. Voltaire's own critical discourse against imaginative philosophical romances originated, in fact, with English and Dutch Newtonians, many of whom were expatriate French Huguenots, who developed these tropes as rhetorical weapons in their battles with Leibniz and European Cartesians who challenged the innovations of Newtonian natural philosophy. In his Principia Mathematica (1687; 2 nd rev. edition 1713), Newton had offered a complete mathematical and empirical description of how celestial and terrestrial bodies behaved. Yet when asked to explain how bodies were able to act in the way that he mathematically and empirically demonstrated that they did, Newton famously replied "I feign no hypotheses." From the perspective of traditional natural philosophy, this was tantamount to hand waving since offering rigorous causal accounts of the nature of bodies in motion was the very essence of this branch of the sciences. Newton's major philosophical innovation rested, however, in challenging this very epistemological foundation, and the assertion and defense of Newton's position against its many critics, not least by Voltaire, became arguably the central dynamic of philosophical change in the first half of the eighteenth century.

While Newtonian epistemology admitted of many variations, at its core rested a new skepticism about the validity of apriori rationalist accounts of nature and a new assertion of brute empirical fact as a valid philosophical understanding in its own right. European Natural philosophers in the second half of the seventeenth century had thrown out the metaphysics and physics of Aristotle with its four part causality and teleological understanding of bodies, motion and the cosmic order. In its place, however, a new mechanical causality was introduced that attempted to explain the world in equally comprehensive terms through the mechanisms of an inert matter acting by direct contact and action alone. This approach lead to the vortical account of celestial mechanics, a view that held material bodies to be swimming in an ethereal sea whose action pushed and pulled objects in the manner we observe. What could not be observed, however, was the ethereal sea itself, or the other agents of this supposedly comprehensive mechanical cosmos. Yet rationality nevertheless dictated that such mechanisms must exist since without them philosophy would be returned to the occult causes of the Aristotelian natural tendencies and teleological principles. Figuring out what these point-contact mechanisms were and how they worked was, therefore, the charge of the new mechanical natural philosophy of the late seventeenth century. Figures such as Descartes, Huygens, and Leibniz established their scientific reputations through efforts to realize this goal.

Newton pointed natural philosophy in a new direction. He offered mathematical analysis anchored in inescapable empirical fact as the new foundation for a rigorous account of the cosmos. From this perspective, the great error of both Aristotelian and the new mechanical natural philosophy was its failure to adhere strictly enough to empirical facts. Vortical mechanics, for example, claimed that matter was moved by the action of an invisible agent, yet this, the Newtonians began to argue, was not to explain what is really happening but to imagine a fiction that gives us a speciously satisfactory rational explanation of it. Natural philosophy needs to resist the allure of such rational imaginings and to instead deal only with the empirically provable. Moreover, the Newtonians argued, if a set of irrefutable facts cannot be explained other then by accepting the brute facticity of their truth, this is not a failure of philosophical explanation so much as a devotion to appropriate rigor. Such epistemological battles became especially intense around Newton's theory of universal gravitation. Few questioned that Newton had demonstrated an irrefutable mathematical law whereby bodies appear to attract one another in relation to their masses and in inverse relation to the square of the distance between them. But was this rigorous mathematical and empirical description a philosophical account of bodies in motion? Critics such as Leibniz said no, since mathematical description was not the same thing as philosophical explanation, and Newton refused to offer an explanation of how and why gravity operated the way that it did. The Newtonians countered that phenomenal descriptions were scientifically adequate so long as they were grounded in empirical facts, and since no facts had yet been discerned that explained what gravity is or how it works, no scientific account of it was yet possible. They further insisted that it was enough that gravity did operate the way that Newton said it did, and that this was its own justification for accepting his theory. They further mocked those who insisted on dreaming up chimeras like the celestial vortices as explanations for phenomena when no empirical evidence existed to support of such theories.

The previous summary describes the general core of the Newtonian position in the intense philosophical contests of the first decades of the eighteenth century. It also describes Voltaire's own stance in these same battles. His contribution, therefore, was not centered on any innovation within these very familiar Newtonian themes; rather, it was his accomplishment to become a leading evangelist for this new Newtonian epistemology, and by consequence a major reason for its widespread dissemination and acceptance in France and throughout Europe. A comparison with David Hume's role in this same development might help to illuminate the distinct contributions of each. Both Hume and Voltaire began with the same skepticism about rationalist philosophy, and each embraced the Newtonian criterion that made empirical fact the only guarantor of truth in philosophy. Yet Hume's target remained traditional philosophy, and his contribution was to extend skepticism all the way to the point of denying the feasibility of transcendental philosophy itself. This argument would famously awake Kant's dogmatic slumbers and lead to the reconstitution of transcendental philosophy in new terms, but Voltaire had different fish to fry. His attachment was to the new Newtonian empirical scientists, and while he was never more than a dilettante scientist himself, his devotion to this form of natural inquiry made him in some respects the leading philosophical advocate and ideologist for the new empirico-scientific conception of philosophy that Newton initiated.

For Voltaire (and many other eighteenth-century Newtonians) the most important project was defending empirical science as an alternative to traditional natural philosophy. This involved sharing in Hume's critique of abstract rationalist systems, but it also involved the very different project of defending empirical induction and experimental reasoning as the new epistemology appropriate for a modern Enlightened philosophy. In particular, Voltaire fought vigorously against the rationalist epistemology that critics used to challenge Newtonian reasoning. His famous conclusion in Candide, for example, that optimism was a philosophical chimera produced when dialectical reason remains detached from brute empirical facts owed a great debt to his Newtonian convictions. His alternative offered in the same text of a life devoted to simple tasks with clear, tangible, and most importantly useful ends was also derived from the utilitarian discourse that Newtonians also used to justify their science. Voltaire's campaign on behalf of smallpox inoculation, which began with his letter on the topic in the Lettres philosophiques, was similarly grounded in an appeal to the facts of the case as an antidote to the fears generated by logical deductions from seemingly sound axiomatic principles. All of Voltaire's public campaigns, in fact, deployed empirical fact as the ultimate solvent for irrational prejudice and blind adherence to preexisting understandings. In this respect, his philosophy as manifest in each was deeply indebted to the epistemological convictions he gleaned from Newtonianism.

Voltaire also contributed directly to the new relationship between science and philosophy that the Newtonian revolution made central to Enlightenment modernity. Especially important was his critique of metaphysics and his argument that it be eliminated from any well-ordered science. At the center of the Newtonian innovations in natural philosophy was the argument that questions of body per se were either irrelevant to, or distracting from, a well focused natural science. Against Leibniz, for example, who insisted that all physics begin with an accurate and comprehensive conception of the nature of bodies as such, Newton argued that the character of bodies was irrelevant to physics since this science should restrict itself to a quantified description of empirical effects only and resist the urge to speculate about that which cannot be seen or measured. This removal of metaphysics from physics was central to the overall Newtonian stance toward science, but no one fought more vigorously for it, or did more to clarify the distinction and give it a public audience than Voltaire.

While Voltaire's attacks on Maupertuis crossed the line into ad hominem, at their core was a fierce defense of the way that metaphysical reasoning both occludes and deludes the work of the physical scientist. Moreover, to the extent that eighteenth-century Newtonianism provoked two major trends in later philosophy, first the reconstitution of transcendental philosophy à la Kant through his "Copernican Revolution" that relocated the remains of metaphysics in the a priori categories of reason, and second, the marginalization of metaphysics altogether through the celebration of philosophical positivism and the anti-speculative scientific method that anchored it, Voltaire should be seen as a major progenitor of the latter. By also attaching what many in the nineteenth century saw as Voltaire's proto-positivism to his celebrated campaigns to eradicate priestly and aristo-monarchical authority through the debunking of the "irrational superstitions" that appeared to anchor such authority, Voltaire's legacy also cemented the alleged linkage that joined positivist science on the one hand with secularizing disenchantment and dechristianization on the other. In this way, Voltaire should be seen as the initiator of a philosophical tradition that runs from him to Auguste Comte and Charles Darwin, and then on to Karl Popper and Richard Dawkins in the twentieth century.

Because of Voltaire's celebrity, efforts to collect and canonize his writings began immediately after his death, and still continue today. The result has been the production of three major collections of his writings including his vast correspondence, the last unfinished. Together these constitute the authoritative corpus of Voltaire's written work.

Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, edited by A. Beuchot. 72 vols. Paris: Lefevre, 1829-1840.

Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, edited by L.E.D. Moland and G. Bengesco. 52 vols. Paris: Garnier Frères, 1877-1885.

Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, edited by Theodore Besterman. 135 vols. (projected) Geneva, Banbury, and Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1968-.

Collections of Writings

The Works of Voltaire: A Contemporary Version, William F. Fleming (ed. and tr.), 21 vols., New York: E.R. Du Mont, 1901. [Complete edition available at the Online Library of Liberty]

The Portable Voltaire, Ben Ray Redman (ed.), New York: Penguin Books, 1977.

Selected Works of Voltaire, Joseph McCabe (ed.), London: Watts, 2007.

Shorter Writings of Voltaire, J.I. Rodale (ed.), New York: A.S. Barnes, 1960.

Voltaire in his Letters, Being a Selection of his Correspondence, S.G. Tallentyre (tr.), Honolulu, HI: University Press of the Pacific, 2004.

Voltaire on Religion: Selected Writings, Kenneth W. Applegate (ed.), New York: F. Ungar, 1974.

Voltaire: Selected Writings, Christopher Thacker (ed.), London: Dent, 1995.

Voltaire: Selections, Paul Edwards (ed.), New York: Macmillan, 1989.

Theater

Translations of Voltaire's major plays are found in: The Works of Voltaire: A Contemporary Version, William F. Fleming (ed. and tr.), New York: E.R. Du Mont, 1901. [Complete edition available at the Online Library of Liberty]

Seven Plays (Mérope (1737), Olympia (1761), Alzire (1734), Orestes (1749), Oedipus (1718), Zaire, Caesar), William Fleming (tr.), New York: Howard Fertig, 1988.

History

The Age of Louis XIV (1733) and other Selected Writings, J.H. Brumfitt (ed.), New York: Twayne, 1963.

The Age of Louis XIV (1733), Martyn P. Pollack (tr.), London and New York: Dutton, 1978.

History of Charles XII, King of Sweden (1727), Honolulu, HI: University Press of the Pacific, 2002.

History of Charles XII, King of Sweden (1727), Antonia White and Ragnhild Marie Hatton (eds.), New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1993.

The Philosophy of History (1764), New York: The Philosophical Library, 1965.

Essays, Letters, and Stories

The Complete Tales of Voltaire, William Walton (tr.), 3 vols., New York: Howard Fertig, 1990.

Vol. 1: The Huron (1771), The History of Jenni (1774), The One-eyed Street Porter, Cosi-sancta (1715), An Incident of Memory (1773), The Travels of Reason (1774), The Man with Forty Crowns (1768), Timon (1755), The King of Boutan (1761), and The City of Cashmere (1760).

Vol. 2: The Letters of Amabed (1769), The Blind Judges of Colors (1766), The Princess of Babylon (1768), The Ears of Lord Chesterfield and Chaplain Goudman (1775), Story of a Good Brahman (1759), An Indian Adventure (1764), and Zadig, or, Destiny (1757).

Vol. 3: Micromegas (1738), Candide, or Optimism (1758), The World as it Goes (1750), The White and the Black (1764), Jeannot and Colin (1764), The Travels of Scarmentado (1756), The White Bull (1772), Memnon (1750), Plato's Dream (1737), Bababec and the Fakirs (1750), and The Two Consoled Ones (1756).

The English Essays of 1727, David Williams and Richard Walker (eds.), Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1996.

Epistle of M. Voltaire to the King of Prussia (1738), Glasgow, 1967.

The History of the Travels of Scarmentado (1756), Glasgow: The College Press, 1969.

Micromégas and other Short Fictions (1738), Theo Cuffe and Haydn Mason (eds.), London and New York: Penguin Books, 2002.

The Princess of Babylon (1768), London: Signet Books, 1969.

The Virgin of Orleans, or Joan of Arc (1755), Howard Nelson (tr.), Denver: A. Swallow, 1965.

Voltaire. Essay on Milton (1727), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954.

Voltaire's Romances, New York: P. Eckler, 1986.

Zadig, or L'Ingénu (1757), London: Penguin Books, 1984.

Zadig, or the Book of Fate (1757), New York: Garland, 1974.

Zadig, or The Book of Fate an Oriental History (1757), Woodbridge, CT: Research Publications, 1982.

Politics

The Calas Affair: A Treatise on Tolerance (1762), Brian Masters (ed.), London: The Folio Society, 1994.

The Sermon of the Fifty (1759), J.A.R. Séguin (ed.), Jersey City, NJ: R. Paxton, 1963.

A Treatise on Toleration and Other Essays, Joseph McCabe (ed.), Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1994.

A Treatise on Tolerance and other Writings, edited by Brian Masters, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994

Voltaire. Political Writings, edited by David Williams, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994

Editions of Major Individual Works

The Elements of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy (1738; 2nd expanded edition, 1745)

Translated John Hanna. London: Cass, 1967.

Birmingham, AL: Gryphon Editions, 1991.

Philosophical Dictionary (1752)

Edited by Theodore Besterman. London: Penguin Books, 2002.

Translated by Peter Gay. New York: Basic Books, 1962.

Philosophical Dictionary: A Compendium, Wade Baskin (ed.), New York: Philosophical Library, 1961.

Philosophical Dictionary: Selections, Chicago: The Great Books Foundation, 1965.

Philosophical Letters (Letters on the English Nation, Letters on England) (1734)

John Leigh and Prudence L. Steiner (ed.), Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2007.

Leonard Tancock (ed.), London and New York: Penguin Books, 2003.

Ernest Dilworth (ed.), Mineola, NY: Dover, 2003.

Nicholas Cronk (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

F.A. Taylor (ed.), Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1946.

Harvard Classics, Vol. 34, Part 2. [Available online from Bartleby.com]

Voltaire's Letters on the Quakers (1727), Philadelphia: William H. Allen, 1953.

Candide, or Optimism (1758). Hundreds of English editions of this text have been published, so this list is restricted to the most important scholarly editions published since 1960.

C.H.R. Niven (ed.), London: Longman, 1980.

Candide and other Writings, Haskell M. Block (ed.), New York: Modern Library, 1985.

Richard Aldington, Ernest Dilworth, and others (eds.), New York: Modern Library, 1992.

Shane Weller (ed.), New York: Dover, 1993.

Candide: A Dual Language Book, New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1993.

Robert Martin Adams (ed.), New York: W.W. Norton, 1996.

Electronic Scholarly Publishing Project, 1998. [Available online at Electronic Scholarly Publishing Project]

Daniel Gordon (ed.), Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999.

Candide and Related Texts, David Wooton (ed.), Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000.

Lowell Bair (ed.), New York: Bantam Books, 2003.

Candide & Zadig, Lester G. Crocker (ed.), New York: Pocket Books, 2005.

Raffael Burton (ed.), New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.

Theo Cuffe (ed.), London and New York: Penguin Books, 2007.

Candide and other Stories, Roger Pearson (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Candide, Zadig, and Selected Stories, Donald Frame (tr. and ed.), New York: Signet Classic, 2009.

The scholarly literature on Voltaire is vast, and growing larger every day. The summary here, therefore, will be largely restricted to scholarly books, with only a few articles of singular import listed. The Voltaire Foundation's series Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century changed its name in 2013 to Oxford University Studies on Enlightenment. The original series published over 450 volumes, many related to Voltaire, and while the new title reflects a change toward a broader publishing agenda, it remains, along with Cahier Voltaire published by La Fondation Voltaire à Ferney, the best periodical source for new scholarship on Voltaire.

Aldridge, Alfred Owen, 1975, Voltaire and the Century of Light, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Badinter, Elizabeth, 1983, Émilie, Émilie, l'ambition féminine au XVIIIe siècle, Paris: Flammarion.

---, 1999-2002, Les Passions intellectuelles, 2 volumes, Paris: Fayard.

Barber, W.H., 1955, Leibniz in France from Arnauld to Voltaire: A Study in French Reactions to Leibnizianism 1670-1760, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Barrell, Rex A., 1988, Bolingbroke and France, Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Besterman, Theodore, 1969, Voltaire, New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World.

Bird, Stephen, 2000, Reinventing Voltaire: The Politics of Commemoration in Nineteenth-century France, Oxford: Oxford University Studies on Enlightenment.

Brooks, Richard A., 1964, Voltaire and Leibniz, Geneva: Droz.

Brown, Harcourt, 1947, Voltaire and the Royal Society of London, Toronto: University of Toronto Quarterly.

Brumfitt, J.H., 1970, Voltaire: historian, London: Oxford University Press.

---, 1973, The French Enlightenment, Cambridge: Schenkman Pub. Co.

Brunel, Lucien, 1967, Les Philosophes et l'académie française au dix-huitième siècle, Genève: Slatkine Reprints.

Brunet, Pierre, 1931, L'introduction des théories de Newton en France au XVIIIe siècle, Paris: A. Blanchard.

Collins, J. Churton, 1908, Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau in England, London: E. Nash.

Conlon, Pierre M., 1961, Voltaire's literary career from 1728 to 1750, Genève: Institut et Musée Voltaire.

Cottret, Bernard, 1992, Bolingbroke: exil et écriture au siècle des Lumières, Paris: Klincksieck.

Cronk, Nicolas, 2009, The Cambridge Companion to Voltaire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

---, 2014, Voltaire: a very short introduction, Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation.

Darnton, Robert, 1979, The Business of Enlightenment: The Publishing History of the Encyclopédie, 1775-1800, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

---, 1982, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Dickinson, H.T., 1970, Bolingbroke, London: Constable.

Dieckmann, Herbert, 1943, Le Philosophe: Texts and Interpretations, (Washington University Studies, New Series, Language and Literature, no. 18), St. Louis: Washington University Press.

Duchet, Michèle, 1971, Anthropologie et histoire au siècle des lumières Buffon, Voltaire, Rousseau, Helvetius, Diderot, Paris: F. Maspero.

Ehrman, Esther, 1986, Mme. du Châtelet: Scientist, Philosopher and Feminist of the Enlightenment, Leamington [Spa]: Berg.

Gandt, François de, 2001, Cirey dans la vie intellectuelle: la réception de Newton en France, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.

Gardiner Janik, Linda, 1982, "Searching for the Metaphysics of Science: The Structure and Composition of Mme. Du Châtelet's Institutions de physiques, 1737-1740", Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 201: 85-113.

Gay, Peter, 1954, The Party of Humanity: Essays in the French Enlightenment, New York: Knopf.

Gay, Peter, 1969, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (Volume 1: The Science of Freedom), New York: Knopf.

---, 1977, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (Volume 2: The Rise of Modern Paganism), New York: Knopf 1977.

---, 1988, Voltaire's Politics: The Poet as Realist, New Haven: Yale University Press.

Guerlac, Henry, 1981,Newton on the Continent, Ithaca.

Gurrado, Antonio, 2013, Voltaire cattolico, Torino: Lindau.

Hagengruber, Ruth (ed.), 2011, Emilie du Châtelet between Leibniz and Newton, Dordrecht: Springer.

Ḥadīd, Javādī, 2012, Voltaire et l'Islam, Ozoir la Ferriere : Albouraq.

Hellman, Lilian, 1980, Dorothy Parker, John La Touche, Richard Wilbur, and Leonard Bernstein, 1956-1957, Candide, An Operetta in Two Acts, New York: Jaini Publications.

Hutchison, Ross, 1991, Locke in France: 1688-1734, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.

Iltis, Carolyn, 1977, "Madame du Châtelet's metaphysics and mechanics", Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 8: 29-48.

Israel, Jonathan, 2000, The Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

---, 2006, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670-1752, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

---, 2009, A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

---, 2011, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750-1790, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

---, 2014, Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution from The Rights of Man to Robespierre, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jacob, Margaret, 1981, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons, and Republicans, London: Cornerstone Book Publishers.

Kramnick, Isaac, 1968, Bolingbroke and His Circle: The Politics of Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Lanson, Gustave, 1894, Histoire de la littérature française, Paris: Hachette.

Lanson, Gustave, 1906, Voltaire, Paris: Hachette.

Libby, Margaret Sherwood, 1935, The Attitude of Voltaire to Magic and the Sciences, New York: Columbia University Press, 1935.

Lilti, Antoine, 2005, Le monde des salons. Sociabilité et mondanité à Paris au XVIIIe siècle, Paris: Fayard.

Mason, Haydn Trevor, 1963, Pierre Bayle and Voltaire, London: Oxford University Press.

---, 1975, Voltaire, New York: St. Martin's.

Masseau, Didier, 1994, L'Invention de l'intellectual dans l'Europe du XVIIIe siècle, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Mattei, Silvia, 2010, Voltaire et les voyages de la raison, Paris: Harmattan.

Maurois, André, 1935, Voltaire, Paris: Gallimard.

Mauzi, Robert, 1960, L'idée du bonheur dans la litterature et la pensée francaises au XVIIIe siècle, Paris: A. Colin.

McKenna, Antony, 1994, Écraser l'infame, 1759-1770, Voltaire en son temps (Volume 4), René Pomeau (ed.), Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.

McMahon, Darrin M., 2001, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-enlightenment and the Making of Modernity, New York: Oxford University Press.

McNutt, Jennifer Powell, 2013, Calvin meets Voltaire: the clergy of Geneva in the age of enlightenment, 1685-1798, Burlington: Ashgate.

Melton, James Van Horn, 2001, The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Méricam-Bourdet, Myrtille, 2012, Voltaire et l'écriture de l'histoire: un enjeu politique, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.

Mervaud, Christiane, 1991, De la cour au jardin, 1750-1759, Voltaire en son temps (Volume 3), René Pomeau (ed.), Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.

Mitchell, Harvey, 2104, Voltaire's Jews and modern Jewish identity: rethinking the Enlightenment, London: Routledge.

Morize, André, 1909, L'Apologie du luxe au XVIIIe Siècle: "Le Mondain" et ses Sources, Paris: H. Didier.

Neiertz, Patrick, 2012, Voltaire et l'économie politique, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.

Northeast, Catherine M., 1991, The Parisian Jesuits and the Enlightenment, 1700-1762, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.

Orieux, Jean, 1966, Voltaire, ou la Royauté de l'esprit, Paris: Flammarion.

Palmer, Robert R., 1939, Catholics and Unbelievers in 18th Century France, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Pappas, John N., 1957, Berthier's Journal de Trevoux and the Philosophes (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, Volume 3), Geneva: Institut and Musée Voltaire.

---, 1962, Voltaire and d'Alembert, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Pearson, Roger, 1993, The Fables of Reason: A Study of Voltaire's "Contes philosophiques", Oxford: Clarendon Press.

---, 2005, Voltaire Almighty: A Life in Pursuit of Freedom, London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Perry, Norma, 1975, Sir Everard Fawkener, friend and correspondent of Voltaire, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.

Pettit, Alexander, 1997, Illusory Consensus: Bolingbroke and the Polemical Responses to Walpole, 1730-1737, Newark: University of Delaware Press.

Pomeau, René, 1969, La réligion de Voltaire, Paris: Nizet.

---, 1985, D'Arouet à Voltaire, 1694-1734, Voltaire en son temps (Volume 1), René Pomeau (ed.), Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.

---, 1994, On a voulu l'enterrer, 1770-1791, Voltaire en son temps (Volume 5), René Pomeau (ed.), Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.

Pomeau, René (ed)., 1985-1994, Voltaire en son temps, 5 vols., Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.

Popkin, Richard Henry, 1979, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza, Berkeley: University of California Press.

Proust, Jacques, 1962, Diderot et l'Encyclopédie, Paris: Slatkine.

Rasmussen, Dennis Carl, 2014, The pragmatic enlightenment: recovering the liberalism of Hume, Smith, Montesquieu, and Voltaire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rousseau, André Michel, 1976, L'Angleterre et Voltaire (1718-1789), Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.

Saigey, Émile, 1873, Les sciences au XVIIIe siècle: la physique de Voltaire, Paris: G. Baillière.

Schlereth, Thomas J., 1977, The cosmopolitan ideal in Enlightenment thought, its form and function in the ideas of Franklin, Hume, and Voltaire, 1694-1790, South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

Shank, J.B., 2008, The Newton Wars and the Beginning of the French Enlightenment, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Sharpe, Matthew, 2015, "On a Neglected Argument in French Philosophy: Sceptical Humanism in Montaigne, Voltaire and Camus", Critical Horizons: A Journal of Philosophy and Social Theory, 16(1): 1-26.

Spink, John Stephenson, 1960, French Free-thought from Gassendi to Voltaire, London: University of London, Athlone Press.

Terrall, Mary, 2002, The Man Who Flattened the Earth: Maupertuis and the Sciences in the Enlightenment, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Tlili, Mahbouba Saï, 2009, Voltaire et l'Islam Tunis: Arabesques.

Torrey, Norman L., 1930, Voltaire and the English Deists, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2nd edition, Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1967.

---,1938, The Spirit of Voltaire, New York: Russell and Russell, 2nd edition, 1968.

Undank, Jack, 1989, "Portrait of the Philosopher as Tramp", in A New History of French Literature, Dennis Hollier (ed.), Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989, pp. 421-428.

Vaillot, René, 1988, Avec madame Du Châtelet, 1734-1749, Voltaire en son temps (Volume 2), René Pomeau (ed.), Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.

Van Kley, Dale, 1975, The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits in France, 1757-1767, New Haven: Yale University Press.

Vercruysse, Jeroom, 1966, Voltaire et la Holland, Genève: Institut et Musée Voltaire.

Vernière, Paul, 1954, Spinoza et la pensée française avant la Révolution, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Wade, Ira Owen, 1938, The Clandestine Organization and Diffusion of Philosophic Ideas in France from 1700 to 1750, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

---, 1941, Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet: An Essay on the Intellectual Activity at Cirey, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

---, 1947, Studies on Voltaire with Some Unpublished Papers of Mme. du Châtelet, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

---, 1969, The Intellectual Devevelopment of Voltaire, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Zinsser, Judith, 2006, La Dame d'Esprit: A Biography of the Marquise du Châtelet, New York: Viking.

Zinsser, Judith and Hayes, Julie (eds.), 2006, Emilie du Châtelet: Rewriting Enlightenment Philosophy and Science, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
François-Marie d'Arouet (1694-1778), better known by his pen name Voltaire, was a French writer and public activist who played a singular role in defining the eighteenth-century movement called the Enlightenment. At the center of his work was a new conception of philosophy and the philosopher that in several crucial respects influenced the modern concept of each.

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Why the Enlightenment still matters today - Professor Justin Champion

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Jonathan Israel - Radical Enlightenment and the Making of the French Revolution (1750-1800)