French Enlightenment

In The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time, Will Durant singles out the French Enlightenment as the high-water mark of civilization: “I never cease admiring the French Enlightenment; all in all I consider it the peak of human history, greater even than Periclean Greece, or Augustan Rome, or Medicean Italy. Never had men thought so bravely, spoken so brilliantly, or lifted themselves to a greater height of culture and courtesy.” He frames its destructive-creative power through Louis XVI in his Temple prison, standing before the books of Voltaire and Rousseau and lamenting “these are the men that have destroyed France” — to which Durant answers that they destroyed one France but liberated another, “not to speak of freeing America through their disciples, Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson.” Voltaire, who appears on Durant’s list of the ten greatest minds, is the movement’s emblem in these notes (“I have no scepter, but I have a pen”).

Context: The French Enlightenment (Siècle des Lumières) was the 18th-century intellectual movement centered on reason, science, religious tolerance, and political liberty, led by figures such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Diderot. Its ideas helped catalyze both the French Revolution and the founding principles of the American republic.

Where this appears

• The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time — Will Durant names it the peak of human history, greater than Periclean Greece or Augustan Rome, and credits its thinkers (Voltaire, Rousseau) with both destroying and liberating France and freeing America.