ISLAM AND ARABS THROUGH THE EYES OF THE ENCYCLOPÉDIE: THE "OTHER" AS A CASE OF FRENCH CULTURAL SELF-CRITICISM

In: International journal of Middle East studies: IJMES, Volume 32, Issue 2, p. 197-217

Abstract

The 18th-century European Enlightenment championed rational philosophy and scientific methodology, rather than any form of traditional theology, as the way to understand the objective truth.1 In their quest for the fundamental truth, France's philosophes, the rational and anticlerical intellectuals of the Age of Reason, were forced to brave official censorship, persecution, and imprisonment as they disentangled themselves from their Christian heritage. Thus, the French Enlightenment was informed by a dualistic view of history—an ongoing contest between reason and faith. Although faith had gained ascendancy with Christianity's triumph over classical antiquity in the late 3rd and 4th centuries, according to the philosophes, many of whom served as key contributors to the Encyclopédie, religion and science had once again joined battle in the 18th century, this time with science and reason poised to overcome religious irrationality.2 In this context, the renowned philosophe Voltaire, in his highly controversial Dictionnaire Philosophique (1764), attacks Christian dogma, refutes the tenet of Christ's divine nature, and rejects the possibility of miracles as running contrary to all scientific evidence.3 Similarly, in Système de la Nature (1770), another philosophe, d'Holbach, deplores man's pursuit of the chimeras of religious revelation and refusal to engage in rational methods of inquiry.4 The arguments of Voltaire and d'Holbach are just two examples of the French Enlightenment tenet that knowledge can be based only on science and reason.