The Heavenly City

In The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers, Carl Becker argues that the utopia envisioned by Enlightenment architects was, in fact, a mere refurbishment of a Christian structure that drew from ideas contained in great works such as Augustine of Hippo’s City of God [1]. It was the Christian worldview that Enlightenment philosophers sought to break from in their pursuit of a society based on reason, though, according to Becker, ended up recreating in a humanistic re-telling of the story of good, evil, and redemption.

The ‘age of enlightenment’ was considered a triumph of rationality over faith and reason over superstition; at least to its progenitors, the philosophes [2]. Becker argues that this was not quite the case, and that the eighteenth-century philosophers combined reason and faith in their pursuit of a new society: they believed almost religiously in the progress of humanity and the judgement of posterity upon their deeds, as well as the existence of a deity (not quite abandoned in their final considerations). To many ordinary people of the time who followed debates concerning the foundations of their civilisation, the undermining of a worldview that informed their understanding of life and provided them respite from the many hardships of the world must have been like a well-woven and reassuring rug being pulled from under them.

Those who envisioned this society - Voltaire, Locke, Hume, and Adam Smith among them - were not just stuffy academics, but ambitious men who sought to introduce their ideas to the broader population in efforts to create change. They pushed the boundaries of acceptable discourse with scepticism, but were constrained by a desire to be perceived as virtuous. One of their key concerns was an attempt to define natural religion (moral principles common to all) and natural law (a regular and constant order of the universe). For it was in nature, understood through scientific observation and reason, that they found God’s work. This was, of course, a quite different conception of God than that accepted at the time – one where God was revealed rather than inferred. But it raises an important issue: if God, and God’s work, is evident in nature and all things in nature arise from God’s will, what of the problem of evil? Is evil not also evident in nature? All things that man thinks and does are products of nature, as are the instincts and acts of other creatures. These are surely not all good. How can reason help reconcile the existence and goodness of God with the ruthless, brutal realities of nature? If nature is God’s work and God is good, then there is no evil in nature. If evil exists, nature is not all good. To accept nature as evidence of a God who is good was to lose the concepts of good and evil altogether; to judge good and evil on earth seemed to lead back to something resembling Christianity. This could hardly be the basis of a regenerated society. It seemed that reason had led the philosophers down a dead end; temporarily, at least.

The way forward was the idea of an imperfect natural world in which reason leads to human progress. An unfinished work. Understanding ‘man in general’ (an abstraction that removed all the messy traits of individual men) would provide the necessary information to discern which customs and institutions were out of place in the natural order. The philosophers turned to history to identify permanent and essential qualities common to all humanity; a kind of anchor to tie the new society to. Becker argues that ‘man in general’ ends up looking a lot like the Enlightenment philosophers, and that it was not answers about man in the facts of history they sought, but rather justification for conclusions about him they had already reached.

The worldview still required refinement to replace the existing order. Christianity itself had replaced the classical idea of a cyclical history - a pessimistic view of the realities of life on earth - with those of hope and justice that had sustained so many in their faith. Unlike the classical worldview adopted by Humanists during the Renaissance, it gave common men hope of a coming golden age in the life after this one; a redressing of wrongs and reward for faith and virtue. Without a heaven to look forward to or ancestors to look back on, the philosophes needed a plausible alternative. This, Becker says, was found in the future: posterity, rather than God, would judge them and help them realise their goals of progress and the perfectibility of man.

Are the ideas of the Enlightenment still relevant today? The new religious beliefs [3] that arose in France from the time of its 1789 revolution, centred around notions of liberty and equality, lost their potency after the heat of the battle to do away with their ancien regime. Collectivism built upon Enlightenment ideas of the laws of nature and science, though abandoned the democratic faith. Both systems of belief sparked and sustained revolutions and led to the current democratic era which might one day be seen as having created a permanent place for the citizen in the governance of his own affairs, or perhaps merely occupying time during an interregnum. The fate of modern beliefs ignited by the Enlightenment are as yet unknown, but it is clear that a similarly religious fervour continues to burn strong in the present.

References

Carl Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers, Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/heavenlycityofei0000unse/page/70/mode/2up

[1] The heavenly city for Augustine was one ruled by God; the ‘heavenly’ or ‘true’ Jerusalem is comprised of those who live according to God on earth. The ‘city of the devil’ was Babylon, which, in its arrogance, destroyed Jerusalem’s first temple. The Old Testament Book of Micah (4:1-3) talks of the establishment of God’s city on earth atop Mount Zion. The heavenly city of Jerusalem is also described in the New Testament Book of Revelation.

[2] The French word for Philosophers, referring specifically to 18th Century Enlightenment intellectuals.

[3] Including the ‘Cult of the Supreme Being’ of 1794 that replaced the ‘Cult of Reason’ - the first state atheistic religion that failed to catch on.