Stenger, Gerhardt. Le Triomphe des lumières. Perrin, 2024

Abstract

Résumé: Published in 2024, this book is one among a series of current reappraisals concerning the Enlightenment (Antoine Lilti or Robert Darnton, for instance) to question the impact of the philosophers and authors of the Encyclopédie, their ideas of universalism and how much their novel ideas contributed to the advent of the 1789 French revolution. Gerhardt Stenger offers an elegant and lively portrait of the encyclopedists, their personal and financial situations, and their motives for their participating in the translation of Chambers. He addresses the questions of universalism (and perhaps tenets of decolonization) from the historical frame of the advent of the Enlightenment, as centered on the epic developments and battles of l’Encyclopédie. As well, through Diderot’s alliances, his mails to his mistress, his strategies, we gain an intimate portrait of the man and his emotions regarding his engagement in the encyclopedic project. Stenger’s book is at once intensely scholarly and eminently accessible, in fact a great teaching tool for graduates and undergraduate students alike. Rousseau’s interferences will be at once more shocking, and yet intelligent and reasonable. Stenger discusses carefully selected encyclopedic articles representative of nodal disputes, such as the respective and conception of “citizen” (Diderot versus Rousseau), leading to a citizenship of rights (human rights eventually) as well as duties. For sure you will also laugh at the depiction of Diderot and d’Alembert occasional disputes. Stenger tells us about this adventure in such a way that we perceive what life possibly entailed in terms of writing and publishing, the compulsory homage to religion and power, and as well, how ministers, playwriters, powerful encyclopedic allies and enemies shaped the volumes or simply protected and championed them or failed one way or the other.