Building Without a Foundation. The Equation of Enlightenment with Skepticism in Post-revolutionary French Thought

Abstract

Most nineteenth century French philosophers had a view of the Enlightenment as inherently skeptical. The reason for this is to be found in the trauma provoked by the experience of the Terror. Indeed, they held modern philosophy responsible for the destruction of old beliefs; to them, it expressed a kind of aggressive nihilism, a negative dogmatism that was much more dangerous than religious fanaticism. Their equating of the Enlightenment with skepticism led the nineteenth century French philosophers to elaborate a new science of society that made it possible to understand how the social reality contains its own species of rationality.