HIST 390 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Pierre Bayle, Open Knowledge, Age Of Enlightenment
22 Apr 2019
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Tuesday, February 20, 2018
The Enlightenment II — The Encyclopédie
HIST390!
Prof’s note: McGill acquired a rare collection of Voltaire material, J. Patrick Lee
collection. Could be useful for future essays re: primary sources. !
The Encyclopédie
•Focused on collaboration, the commons, and open knowledge !
•Like an older version of Wikipedia !
•One of the goals was to make “secret knowledge” more public; a practice to make
knowledge public, but also an ideal !
•The most famous book(s) of the 18th century; 35 volumes, including plates !
•Main editors include d’Alembert and Diderot (both are outside of the real elite) !
•d’Alembert created a schema on human knowledge !
Pierre Bayle (1647-1706)
•Huguenot refugee in Rotterdam !
•Dictionaire historique and critique !
•Traditional historical, philosophical, and theological knowledge !
•Also a critique on historical questions and knowledge !
•Page layout as a philosophical tool: use of notes, notes to notes, and cross-
references !
•Ideas that were more controversial were buried in the footnotes = tactic to avoid
censorship !
From Bayle to Diderot
•Anglomania, again: Bacon, Locke, and Newton!
•Works of translation were going on; ongoing movement from Latin to French!
•This makes texts more accessible to the normal person!
•Against the ‘spirit of the system’ (esp. Cartesians)!
•Why are the new generation of French philosophers so excited by England? —
They’re unsatisfied with the French orthodoxy in science (and other areas) !
•There is a criticism of the ‘spirit of system,’ which was an attempt to fit everything
into one logical system !
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