From the outset of the Revolution, contemporaries wondered about its links with the intellectual evolution of the century that preceded it. The Revolution, daughter of the Enlightenment? Apparently, yes. The work of the Constituent Assembly often seems to echo the writings of philosophers:emphasis on the general will (Rousseau), limitation of executive power (Montesquieu), tolerance, reorganization of the Church (Voltaire), liberalization of trade and suppression of the corporations (the economists); the list is long…
Ancient Regime philosophers
However, the picture must be nuanced. The last generation of the Enlightenment, as shown by the examples of Louis-Sébastien Mercier or Condorcet, certainly often espoused the cause of the Revolution. However, the same is not true of the survivors of the heroic era. Several figures of philosophy known in the past for their radicalism strongly denounced the Revolution. Thus André Morellet, former contributor to the Encyclopédie and shock soldier in the fight against “l’Infâme” (fanaticism), or Abbé Raynal, who directed the publication of the Histoire des deux Indes , anti-colonialist and anti-clerical bestseller. In May 1791, Raynal shocked the Assembly by accusing it of having betrayed the spirit of the Enlightenment.
Living in an Old Regime which, apart from censorship and stays in the Bastille, was quite comfortable for them, the philosophers had no wish to put it down. Moreover, they could not imagine the contours of 1789, a phenomenon without precedent in history. They were nonetheless, and at the cost of crude anachronisms, presented as the tutelary figures of the new times. The pantheonization of Voltaire in 1791 thus saw the writer, who would nevertheless have cried out loud in front of the work of the constituents, elevated to the rank of prophet! According to Mounier, a witness to the debates in the Assembly, the philosophical writings had the merit of giving a prestigious varnish to the decrees voted by the deputies:"We only consulted them to discover arguments in favor of the theory that we had resolved to defend. »