8

Rationalizing the World: Political Esotericism

No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth.

—THOMAS JEFFERSON to John Tyler

[Esotericism is] practiced not by the Ancients alone; for to declare the Truth, it is more in Use among the Moderns.

—JOHN TOLAND, Pantheisticon

We turn, finally, to the fourth and last form of esoteric writing, political esotericism, which stands apart from the other three as, among other things, a uniquely modern form. The three types of esotericism discussed thus far, while all obviously different, do not, for all that, exclude or stand opposed to one another. On the contrary, they clearly fit together: most premodern writers practiced all three. That is because, to a large extent, they are only three distinct consequences of a single underlying principle: the conflictual view of theory and praxis. If philosophical rationalism is in serious and inescapable tension with ordinary social life, then each must be shielded from the other—whence the twin necessity of defensive and protective esotericism. And on the same premise, the gifted individual’s conversion from the ordinary to the philosophic life—from one side of a fundamental opposition to the other—will involve a difficult rupture that needs to be prepared and eased by an artful pedagogical rhetoric.

Political esotericism is a case apart. Although it may seem to overlap with and strongly resemble the other three forms in a variety of ways, it is ultimately not only different from them but largely opposed to and defined against them. For it is an outgrowth of the opposite premise: the potential harmony of theory and praxis.

At first glance, of course, this new premise might be expected to produce the disappearance of esotericism and not the rise of some still new form of it. If reason and society are truly harmonious, then what need is there to hide anything? The answer turns on the crucial role played by the word “potential” in this premise. The early modern philosophers who first embraced this premise did not disagree with earlier thinkers that, within all present and hitherto existing societies—within “traditional society”—there was indeed a deep chasm between the world of philosophy, reason, and truth and that of politics, custom, and myth. Their break with earlier thought consisted not in denying the existence of this tragic rift, but in denying that it was natural or necessary: in a fundamentally new kind of society, it might be healed. If philosophy would first radically reform itself—embracing a less utopian, more realistic approach, a more scientific or exact method, a more activist stance toward the realm of politics, and a more conquering posture toward the realm of nature—then it could, in consequence, radically reform the political world, abolishing traditional society and refounding the political community on an essentially rational basis. In short, this new premise—the unity of theory and praxis—was originally embraced, not as a fact, and not merely as a possibility, but as a project, one that gave modern philosophy a wholly new orientation and purpose.

But ironically, this very project to create a rational society and, correlatively, an end to all social hostility toward and censorship of philosophy required at first a rigorous new esotericism—one that, in general, would aid philosophical writings in their new quest to become instruments of political power and, more specifically, would help them manage, in a safe and prudent manner, the gradual subversion of traditional society and its replacement with a philosophically grounded politics. Thus arose what I am calling “political esotericism,” which may be defined as esotericism in the service of the newly political goal of philosophy: to actualize the potential harmony of reason and social life through the progressive rationalization of the political world.

With this definition in mind, one can understand the surface resemblances and essential differences between political esotericism and the other three forms.¹ What political esotericism has in common with the pedagogical form, to begin with, is that both are outgrowths of the positive objectiveof philosophical publication. Whereas defensive and protective esotericism are responses to the unintended consequences, the negative by-products of writing—persecution and subversion—both political and pedagogical esotericism grow directly from the positive purpose of writing in the first place. But on the grounds of this similarity, one sees most clearly the difference.

The main positive purpose of most classical philosophical writings was philosophical. Without doubt, they also pursued practical aims, largely along the lines of what I have called “philosophical politics.” Nevertheless, their most fundamental purpose, I would argue, was philosophizing and philosophical education. But in the modern period, as we have just seen, the purpose of philosophical writing (and the whole understanding of the public role of the philosopher or intellectual) underwent a radical change. To a much greater extent, philosophical texts came to be written for (although not necessarily written to) society at large for the purpose of enlightening and transforming the political and religious world. Yet this historical shift in the main positive motive for philosophical publication—from pedagogy to politics—led not to a decline in esotericism, but only to a shift in kind. For the need to speak artfully is hardly less pressing in political matters than in pedagogical ones. Thus, philosophers’ positive motive for writing continued to compel them to write esoterically—only no longer as educators addressing the philosophic few, but as political actors addressing the political class or society in general. From the standpoint of the positive aim of philosophical writing, then, political esotericism may be described as the modern counterpart to and replacement for pedagogical esotericism (although it did not completely replace it).²

As a result of this difference in positive purpose, there arises a characteristic difference in esoteric form or technique: as compared with the other three modes, political esotericism tends to be more transparent or easily deciphered. For it aims at being understood not merely by the philosophic few but by more general readers. It seeks to produce political change and, what is more, general “enlightenment,” the gradual transformation of public consciousness. Unlike classical esotericism, which primarily aims at concealing philosophy (if sometimes behind a very public mask), it intends to be publicly provocative, even subversive, but in a measured, insinuating, and conspiratorial way.

But in being thus more open—as well as more frankly political and designedly subversive—it inevitably arouses a greater amount of suspicion and opposition. It follows that it must strongly resemble or overlap with defensive esotericism: it must be centrally concerned with the problem of persecution and the hostility of society to philosophy. Yet here too there is a crucial difference. Classical defensive esotericism—which assumes the naturalness and inevitability of society’s hostility—is essentially resigned to that hostility and seeks only to help the philosopher hide from it or tame it in some limited way. Political esotericism—premised on the harmony of philosophy and politics in a better world—seeks not merely to escape persecution but, over the long term, to abolish it.

Finally, political esotericism is strongly akin to protective esotericism in that both are centrally concerned with the welfare of society. But ultimately the former constitutes a reversal of the latter. For protective esotericism seeks to help society by insulating it from what it takes to be the inevitably corrosive effects of reason. Political esotericism has exactly the opposite purpose: to help society by inducing it—albeit, cautiously and gradually—to open itself up to reason and embrace political rationalization. Political esotericism seeks to promote precisely what protective esotericism exists to prevent: the widespread social influence of philosophical rationalism.

In the end, political esotericism ultimately reverses or overcomes even itself: it strives to abolish the whole need for esotericism. It thus helps to create the world and the mindset in which we now live—where the whole phenomenon of esotericism has slowly been outlived, forgotten, and, at last, insistently denied.

In simplest terms, political esotericism is philosophical dissimulation in the service of a political as distinguished from a philosophical or pedagogical project. Thus, its character can be fleshed out in two steps: by examining, first, how political activity leads to esoteric speech, and, then, how philosophy turned, in the modern period, to political activity.

THE ESOTERIC CHARACTER OF POLITICAL SPEECH

This final category of esotericism, involving as it does the political use of dissimulation, is in some respects the one most familiar and plausible to us, partly because it is characteristically modern, but especially because it is political. For although we are deeply resistant to the idea that a true philosopher would lie, we quite cheerfully affirm that most politicians are liars. Indeed, a simple google search for the precise phrase “all politicians lie” retrieves over twenty-thousand hits. “All philosophers lie” (at the present moment) retrieves only one. An op-ed piece in the Washington Postby Michael Kinsley begins with the matter-of-fact observation: “All successful politicians must have at least some talent for telling lies about what’s in their hearts and convincing people that it is the truth.” Or, in his more pointed formulation: “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.”³Similarly, a biography of I. F. Stone is entitled All Governments Lie, after a famous declaration of the renowned journalist.⁴ George Orwell, in his famous essay “Politics and the English Language,” explains: “Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to makes lies sound truthful.”⁵ Again, Hannah Arendt, in her essay “Truth and Politics,” flatly asserts:

No one has ever doubted that truth and politics are on rather bad terms with each other, and no one, as far as I know, has ever counted truthfulness among the political virtues. Lies have always been regarded as necessary and justifiable tools not only of the politician’s or the demagogue’s but also of the statesman’s trade.⁶

In short, everyone knows that the realm of politics is inseparable from spin, rhetoric, and propaganda. No one is so naive as to assume that the speech of political actors always represents their heartfelt beliefs. Their speech is always what we call “politic” and “diplomatic,” these very words expressing the strong inner connection between politics and artful speech.

Thus, when it comes to the political realm, virtually everyone adheres to an esoteric theory of communication—without ever calling it that. After hearing an important public address, we turn to the indispensable “political commentators,” who help us cut through the spin, read between the lines, and figure out what the speaker is really saying. He has used this expression because it is code for this view; he has made that concession in order to mollify that element of his constituency; he has been silent on this subject—so prominent in his earlier speeches—in order to give himself this new look, and so forth. During the 2008 presidential primary season, the New York Times website ran a regular feature entitled “Decoding the Candidates,” which carried this explanatory blurb: “You’ve heard what the presidential candidates are saying, but what exactly do they mean? And what are the real ideas beneath the buzz and spin?” Esoteric speech and esoteric interpretation of that speech are universal features of political life. This is an ugly fact, to be sure, but one that we tend to acknowledge, not to say exaggerate. (Indeed, it may be that our disgust at the pervasive dishonesty of the political sphere is partly at the root of our deep reluctance to acknowledge any form of dishonesty in the intellectual world.) Putting philosophers aside for the moment, then, let us think a bit about politicians and their need to “speak politically.”

What is the nature of political speech? It is not theoretical but practical. Its purpose is not the communication of truth for its own sake but rather persuasion and the production of some practical effect. Political speech serves not knowledge but action; and thus the measure of its success is not truth but efficacy. Often, to be sure, the most effective way of producing the desired action will be the truthful explication of its purpose and advantages. But this presupposes general agreement on the ultimate goals of action. Where this does not obtain—where interests or beliefs strongly conflict, as they most often do in politics—persuasive speech may require the use of something other than the truth.

To start with the most cynical case, sometimes the advantages sought by the political actor are primarily his own aggrandizement (or that of his class, sect, party, or clan), so he must lie in order to give his selfish ends the appearance of the common good. It is primarily with an eye to such cases, for example, that Machiavelli asserts that the ambitious prince will “know well how to color his nature, and to be a great pretender and dissembler; and men are so simple and so obedient to present necessities that he who deceives will always find someone who will let himself be deceived.”⁷

But there are also opposite cases where the political actor intends the common good but is faced with a political or religious establishment that does not. In such circumstances, it is his good intentions that he must conceal. He must find a way to communicate his salutary designs while hiding them from the powers that rule and oppress his society.

In still other cases, however, the problem may be with society itself. A well-intentioned political actor may find that society is divided among discordant parties or interest groups. In order to succeed, he must put together an uneasy coalition that may require him to “speak out of both sides of his mouth” so that each party can find in his statement what it wants. The classic account is Macaulay’s description of the famous settlement of 1689 in England through which a host of rival parties were brought to agree to the proposition that James II had legally forfeited his crown. Strictly speaking, the agreed-upon resolution was both ambiguous and contradictory. In its defense Macaulay explains:

Such words are to be considered, not as words, but as deeds. If they effect that which they are intended to effect, they are rational, though they may be contradictory. If they fail of attaining their end, they are absurd, though they carry demonstration with them. Logic admits of no compromise. The essence of politics is compromise. It is therefore not strange that some of the most important and most useful political instruments in the world should be among the most illogical compositions that ever were penned. . . . [The framers of the settlement] cared little whether their major [premise] agreed with their conclusion, if the major secured two hundred votes, and the conclusion two hundred more. In fact the one beauty of the resolution is its inconsistency. There was a phrase for every subdivision of the majority.⁸

Finally, the problem with society may run deeper than mere partisanship. A well-intentioned political actor or party may be obstructed by the ignorance or irrationality of people who do not understand abstract principles or see their own long-term good. To win their allegiance, it may be necessary to appeal to nonrational factors. Quoting Macaulay again:

Every political sect has its esoteric and its exoteric school, its abstract doctrines for the initiated, its visible symbols, its imposing forms, its mythological fables for the vulgar. It assists the devotion of those who are unable to raise themselves to the contemplation of pure truth by all the devices of Pagan or Papal superstition. It has its altars and its deified heroes, its relics and pilgrimages, its canonized martyrs and confessors, its festivals and its legendary miracles.⁹

The most extreme and thus clearest case of this general phenomenon is that of the great founder who seeks revolutionary changes that will lead his society far beyond its accustomed ways. Thus, the very novelty and magnitude of the public good he seeks to produce put it outside the understanding of most of those he would benefit. He will therefore resort to myths of some kind to persuade the people of what they are unable to grasp rationally. As Machiavelli puts it:

And truly there was never any orderer of extraordinary laws for a people who did not have recourse to God, because otherwise they would not have been accepted. For a prudent individual knows many goods that do not have in themselves evident reasons with which one can persuade others. Thus wise men who wish to take away this difficulty have recourse to God. So did Lycurgus; so did Solon; so did many others who have had the same end as they.

We have already seen the identical point made by Rousseau: the great founder of a nation, whose “sublime reason . . . rises above the grasp of common men,” must place his commandments “in the mouth of the immortals in order to convince by divine authority those who cannot be moved by human prudence.”¹⁰

For all of these reasons—some higher, some lower—those who seek to act within society are often constrained to speak “politically.” But while this is true of politicians, what has it to do with philosophers and philosophical speech?

PHILOSOPHY’S “POLITICAL TURN” IN THE MODERN PERIOD

Pure thought is an entirely private matter. But as soon as a philosopher publishes his thoughts, he has engaged in a public action—though not yet necessarily a political one. His act of publication may possibly result in harm to society or to himself, and to manage these twin dangers, he may need to practice protective and defensive esotericism. But to the extent that he does so simply by concealing his most dangerous or provocative ideas—by withdrawing them from the public sphere—he does not, and does not need to, engage in political action. He controls the situation simply by changing his own behavior, not by trying to change that of others.

But this purely self-restraining and apolitical esoteric strategy may not be the most effective in all circumstances. Sometimes, a thinker will judge that the best way to protect his society from subversion by philosophic ideas is to alter its beliefs somewhat, if he can, to make them relatively less fragile or less grossly in contradiction with the truth. Again, sometimes a philosopher may conclude that the most effective way to protect himself from persecution is not simply to hide himself away but to actively court the patronage of some element within society, while also doing what he can to strengthen the political power and influence of that element. Through these more active esoteric strategies, the philosopher becomes engaged in politics in some degree—in what I have called “philosophical politics”—and, like other political actors, he may then find himself constrained to “speak politically.” In this way, the practice of protective and defensive esotericism can shade into something that might also be termed “political esotericism.”

But, as suggested above, it is more useful to reserve the term “political esotericism” for a distinct and more radical phenomenon: philosophical writings that, under the influence of the new faith in the harmony of reason and society in a reformed world, have shifted from pedagogy to politics as their primary purpose. Moreover, the politics to which they have shifted is not of the ordinary kind but a revolutionary politics seeking the rational reconstruction of social life. Finally, this transformative political project is also unique because it seeks to accomplish its (secular) goals, to an unprecedented degree, by the force of philosophical writing as such, by books.

This crucial turn of philosophy to politics, motivated by the harmonistic view of theory and praxis, can be redescribed in more familiar terms. There is a consensus among scholars of almost all persuasions that, starting in the Renaissance, with the emergence of “humanism,” philosophers began to abandon their ivory towers, their Epicurean gardens, or their monasteries. They rejected the Olympian, withdrawn, or otherworldly stance of classical and Christian thought, the view that the contemplative life, being above practical affairs as well as powerless to fundamentally change them, must stand in calm aloofness from the world. They began to argue that theory can be a direct guide to practical life, if only it will abandon the fruitless utopianism of earlier thought. They started speaking less of the theoretical or contemplative ideal and more about matters of practical and bodily urgency, less about the rarified ends of the philosophic few and more about the common welfare of humanity, less about the joys of knowledge as an end in itself and more about knowledge as a means to political, economic, and technological progress. In Marx’s famous formula, they came to believe that the true task of philosophy was not to understand the world but to change it. Theory took on practical aims, philosophy became “engaged” and politicized, and philosophical treatises, while not completely abandoning their pedagogical mission, began more and more to take on the character of political pamphlets and “tracts for the times.”

Thus, Burke reports a novel phenomenon particularly visible in his time: the rise of “a new description of men. . . . I mean the political Men of Letters.”¹¹ Along with these new, activist philosophers also arose still another new description of men: what would now be called intellectuals. According to Condorcet:

Soon there was formed in Europe a class of men less occupied to discover or deepen the truth than to spread it. . . . [They] placed their glory in destroying popular errors rather than in extending the boundaries of human knowledge.¹²

And this new, multipartite “political turn” by theory produced a correlative novelty, the “theoretical turn” by politics: the well-known rise, in modern times, of ideological or doctrinal politics.

It is true, of course, that books like Plato’s Republic and Laws or Aristotle’s Politics and Ethics had—and were intended to have—a general political effect, as an offshoot of their primary, pedagogical mission. But they were not political tracts, not politically “engaged.” They did not take the form of promoting a particular party or endorsing some one single form of government as the only legitimate one. Rather, looking down from an Olympian height, they explored the multiform merits and demerits of all the various parties and regimes. They expressed general preferences, to be sure, but these were utopian and impractical. They gave no specific advice or commands ready for immediate application, proclaimed no legalistic doctrine, declared no universal principles. Instead, they endeavored to give their readers a general education in statesmanship, elevating, broadening, and above all moderating their political views.

And as the very last stage of this political moderation, they showed the ultimate superiority of the detached, theoretical life to the life of political action altogether. The Platonic dialogues and Aristotle’s writings begin from immersion in the most urgent and practical questions—“what is justice,” “what is courage”—but in a brilliant yet predictable dialectic they always work their way around to the same answer: philosophy! It would seem that they begin from politics less for political than for pedagogical reasons: because that is where most of their readers begin. Their initial engagement with politics—as, in other writings, their engagement with romantic love or the love of gain—proves to be only the entering step on a long dialectical ladder, the top rung of which is the contemplative life. Thus, even their most political books prove, in the end, to be transpolitical. The Republic is no more a serious blueprint for political reform than the Symposium is a love manual. Both books end up very far from where they begin.

In marked contrast stand Hobbes’s Leviathan, Locke’s Second Treatise and Rousseau’s Social Contract, which are not pedagogical but genuinely political books. They are works of natural constitutional law describing the specific form of government demanded by the universal principles of right or legitimacy. Such books are not designed to point to the contemplative life, which they do not so much as mention. On the contrary, they speak exclusively of politics—and do more than speak: they actively engage in politics. Publishing them is itself a political act, through which the authors seek to become participants in the world they are describing. Like Marx’s Communist Manifesto, these books are calls to action. They became—and were meant to become—powerful agents of political and cultural change. They transformed the world, and continue to do so, in ways that no premodern philosophical writing ever dreamed of doing.

Admittedly, it is difficult to find two modern thinkers who actually agree regarding the precise ends to be pursued through this new stance of political activism. Yet beneath all these noisy disagreements, there remains a broad, fundamental consensus about their shared “Enlightenment project”: to overturn traditional society—rooted in authority, custom, and revelation—and to replace it with a historically unprecedented kind of social organization, one more or less based on reason. Their common enemy was “the kingdom of darkness” (in Hobbes’s phrase): the medieval world of superstition and priestly power that also went hand in hand with political regimes that were by turns too weak and too despotic.¹³

The distinctiveness of these modern thinkers and their writings, then, is not adequately indicated simply by saying that they were more engaged in politics—which might seem truer of Cicero than of Hobbes. Crucial were two additional factors. First, as just mentioned, the politics in which they were engaged was not normal politics, not ordinary statesmanship (like Cicero’s), but a philosophically grounded “great politics” of revolutionary historical transformation.

Second, the daring pursuers of this project were precisely not (typically) men of political authority (like Cicero) or of military power, or even of wealth and position. They were philosophers and intellectuals. They undertook, that is, to fight this ambitious and dangerous battle with a wholly new form of power: that of ideas and books. This is something that Cicero never imagined. He was a philosopher who happened to engage in politics (or, to his detractors, a politician who happened to engage in philosophy). But the Enlightenment thinkers engaged in politics precisely in their capacity as philosophers. In other words, their new optimism about the possibility of historically unprecedented political transformation went hand in hand with a new optimism about what could be accomplished through a book (in the new age of printing) and through the coordinated efforts of philosophers and intellectuals newly united in the “republic of letters,” the “party of reason.” In the words of one scholar: the thinkers of this period developed “an awareness that cumulatively they were a force in the world, and this birth of a self-conscious sense of power among the literati proved to be one of the revolutionary events of modern times.”¹⁴ They discovered, as Burke would put it, that “[w]riters, especially when they act in a body, and with one direction, have great influence on the publick mind.”¹⁵ Their new politics, in sum, was not only revolutionary but ideological: they aspired to radically transform the world, not with the sword but with the pen.

It follows that, like ordinary politicians, they were under a great compulsion to “speak politically”—only far more so, since speaking was, for them, their whole mode of action. This is what gives rise to political esotericism in the strict sense, a historically unique phenomenon.

Philosophical writings now become finely crafted weapons in an ongoing war of ideas. In this capacity, they develop a new rhetoric: sometimes subversive and destructive, sometimes inspiring and constructive, but always artful and manipulative. In short, political esotericism, as it developed in the Renaissance and Enlightenment, is the forerunner of such distinctive modern phenomena as “ideology” and “propaganda.”

Political esotericism, then, arises as part of a fundamentally new stage in the relation of thought and action, philosophy and political life. In a sense, it is the stage familiar to us, the modern stage of ideologized politics and politicized philosophy. It is the stage of the modern intellectual, that new kind of truth lover who, as Condorcet describes, lives less for the discovery of truth than the spreading of it. For he follows a historically unique calling: to unify theory and praxis.

We belong, however, to the late period of this stage, when this unification has largely been accomplished and the powerful initial need for esotericism has overcome itself and been forgotten. We need to reacquaint ourselves, then, with the early, esoteric period of our own stage of history.

THE MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL CONSPIRACY: SOME EXTERNAL INDICATIONS

There are two kinds of secrecy. If one had to pick a single word that best conveyed the essential characteristic of premodern philosophical secrecy, it would be cloister—the effort to create a permanently hidden and protected garden of knowledge, available only to the few who understand. But for modern, political esotericism, the term would be conspiracy, which is initial concealment for the sake of future disclosure. Unlike a cloister, a conspiracy embraces secrecy not as the final end but as a momentary tactic. It hides something not in order to keep it hidden, but as a means for eventually bringing it more powerfully into the open. In a letter to Voltaire describing the kind of esoteric restraint that he and Diderot impose as editors of the Encyclopedia, d’Alembert uses the familiar French expression reculer pour mieux sauter: fall back the better to jump forward.¹⁶In the face of a world currently given over to prejudice and unreason, political esotericism serves a posture not of settled withdrawal (as in premodern esotericism) but of strategic withdrawal for the sake of future advance.

There is a great deal of historical evidence for this politically conspiratorial character of early modern philosophical writing. One of the clearest indications is the dramatic growth and importance in this period of a literary underground where subversive manuscripts were passed secretly from hand to hand, much like samizdat in the former Soviet Union. This phenomenon has been widely documented.¹⁷ According to Jonathan Israel:

The diffusion of forbidden philosophical literature in manuscript, for the most part in French, immeasurably furthered the spread of radical thought in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Europe. Clandestine philosophy circulating in manuscript was not, of course, in itself new. As a European cultural phenomenon, it reaches back at least to the era of Bodin [1530–96] and Giordano Bruno [1548–1600], and possibly earlier. Yet there was a decisive broadening and intensification of such activity from around 1680, after which it fulfilled a crucial function in the advance of forbidden ideas for over half a century.¹⁸

To be more specific, almost all of the major philosophical works produced in this period belonged to the “forbidden sector” of manuscripts and books. As Robert Darnton, who has made a lifelong study of this phenomenon, states in The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France, the literary underground was “enormous.”

In fact, it contained almost the entire Enlightenment and everything that Mornet was later to identify with the intellectual origins of the French Revolution. To French readers in the eighteenth century, illegal literature was virtually the same as modern literature.¹⁹

Similar observations can be found in other works such as Ira O. Wade’s seminal The Clandestine Organization and Diffusion of Philosophic Ideas in France, 1700–1750 and Miguel Benitez’s The Hidden Face of the Enlightenment: Research on the Clandestine Philosophical Manuscripts of the Classical Age.²⁰

Another phenomenon indicating the highly secretive character of modern philosophy is the widespread use of pseudonyms and other methods of maintaining anonymity. Speaking of the love of glory, Cicero famously remarked: “those very philosophers even in the books which they write about despising glory, put their own names on the title-page.”²¹ That was almost universally true in antiquity, but in a striking reversal, early modern writers, pressed by the danger of their subversive political projects, almost universally avoided putting their names on the title page. Descartes’s Discourse on Method, Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise, Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws and Persian Letters, as well as the major writings of Voltaire, Diderot, and Holbach—all were originally published anonymously.²² Voltaire, in particular, a master strategist in the Enlightenment culture wars, ceaselessly entreated his disciples and compatriots that “one must never give anything under one’s name.”²³ He openly favored a kind of intellectual guerrilla warfare. His motto was “strike and conceal your hand.”²⁴

Still another well-documented historical phenomenon that attests to the central importance of secretiveness and conspiracy in the diffusion of modern philosophical ideas is the surprising role played in this period by the enigmatic movement of Freemasonry. This fraternal organization, with its mysterious initiation rituals and secret doctrines, fills us today with considerable suspicion, not to say scorn. It represents the very opposite of everything the Enlightenment stood for, with its resolute campaign of demystification. Surely, whatever may be the case for plainer folk, philosophers do not join Masonic lodges. It therefore comes as a great shock to learn how many major figures of the Enlightenment period were personally involved in the Masonic movement. Although the evidence is sometimes imperfect given the secrecy surrounding membership, individuals strongly associated with the Masons include Newton, Toland, Burke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Helvétius, Condorcet, d’Alembert, Lessing, Mozart, Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin. Lessing even wrote a dialogue on the subject—Ernst and Falk: Dialogues for Freemasons—which explicitly links Freemasonry to philosophical esotericism.²⁵

To be sure, Freemasonry was a complex, even contradictory phenomenon that stood for different things in different places. But it does seem that many serious thinkers of this period nourished the hope to use this secretive movement as one further means to advance progressive ideas and more: as an organization that might in some degree imitate and counterbalance the institutional power of the church and the universities. And their hopes were by no means unreasonable. As Margaret Jacob and other scholars have shown, beginning in the eighteenth century, Freemasonry did become an important vehicle in certain places for the covert spread of Enlightenment ideas and especially for the development of social organizations and movements dedicated to the creation of a new order built around these ideas.²⁶ In the United States, it is well known, if underappreciated, that many of the Founders were Masons. Similarly, “on the Continent there were two social structures that left a decisive imprint on the Age of Enlightenment,” writes Reinhart Koselleck, “the Republic of Letters and the Masonic lodges.”²⁷

These three well-attested phenomena—the vast literary underground, the widespread use of pseudonyms and anonymity, and the important role of Freemasonry—all illuminate different aspects of the markedly clandestine character of early modern philosophy. It may strike us as contradictory that a movement cherishing enlightenment, openness, and intellectual freedom should proceed by means of concealment, deception, and cabals. But the creation of our open society, we need to remind ourselves, required a revolution—and revolutions require conspiratorial secrecy.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL CONSPIRATORS

With all this as introduction, we are in a better position to understand and take seriously some of the more specific descriptions to be found in the historical record of the originators of modern philosophy and their later followers. These descriptions—of such thinkers as Machiavelli, Bacon, Descartes, and Spinoza—point to and illustrate many of the features of political esotericism described above.

Let us begin not with the earliest but with the most surprising and illuminating case, with what might be called the flagship of the modern Enlightenment and its project of political rationalization: the great Encyclopedia. This famous work is what one thinks of when, recoiling from the above evidence, one still wants to insist that the Enlightenment stood for nothing if not the courageous unmasking of myth and falsehood and the resolute dedication to public honesty, openness, and the dissemination of truth. Thus, if one can find esotericism in the Encyclopedia of all places, it would seem that one no longer has a right to be surprised at finding it anywhere.

We have already seen that the Encyclopedia in fact makes explicit and approving reference to the practice of esotericism in over two dozen different articles, by many different authors, including one bearing the title “Exoteric and Esoteric.” There is also an article entitled “Mensonge officieux” (Unofficial or Salutary Lie), which champions the “wise maxim that the lie that procures good is worth more than the truth that causes harm.”²⁸ A similar conclusion is also defended in the immediately preceding article, “Mensonge” (Lie), by Louis de Jaucourt.

But there is more: according to explicit statements by both of its primary editors, d’Alembert and Diderot, the Encyclopedia not only speaks about esoteric writing and not only praises it, but also systematically engages in it. As d’Alembert remarks in the letter to Voltaire already quoted above:

No doubt we have some bad articles in theology and metaphysics, but with theologians as censors . . . I defy you to make them better. There are other articles, less open to the light, where all is repaired. Time will enable people to distinguish what we have thought from what we have said.²⁹

Precisely how this doubletalk is to work, Diderot explains more fully within the Encyclopedia itself, in his long article entitled “Encyclopedia,” a kind of unadvertised instruction manual for the proper use of the work as a whole. There he claims, surprisingly, that the single most important feature of the Encyclopedia’s composition is the renvois, the cross-references, the innocuous-seeming little “see xxx” appended to the articles. Cross-references, he explains, are useful in two opposite ways. Most obviously, they link articles to others on related topics, helping to connect ideas and form a larger system of thought. But sometimes they will be used to do the very reverse, employing one article to undermine another—just as d’Alembert suggests in his letter. Diderot explains:

When it is necessary, [the cross-references] will also produce a completely opposite effect: they will counter notions; they will bring principles into contrast; they will secretly attack, unsettle, overturn certain ridiculous opinions which one would not dare to insult openly. . . . There would be a great art and an infinite advantage in these latter cross-references. The entire work would receive from them an internal force and a secret utility, the silent effects of which would necessarily be perceptible over time. Every time, for example, that a national prejudice would merit some respect, its particular article ought to set it forth respectfully, and with its whole retinue of plausibility and charm; but it also ought to overturn this edifice of muck, disperse a vain pile of dust, by cross-referencing articles in which solid principles serve as the basis for the contrary truths. This means of undeceiving men operates very promptly on good minds, and it operates infallibly and without any detrimental consequence—secretly and without scandal—on all minds. It is the art of deducing tacitly the boldest consequences. If these confirming and refuting cross-references are planned well in advance, and prepared skillfully, they will give an encyclopedia the character which a good dictionary ought to possess: this character is that of changing the common manner of thinking.³⁰

Here in the Encyclopedia—the great symbol of enlightenment, the work most resolutely dedicated to the overturning of prejudice and the spread of truth—precisely here we see an explicit, open, unmistakable embrace of esotericism. But note that it is esotericism of the modern, political kind: conspiratorial secrecy, hiding ideas today not in order to keep them hidden but to enhance their future dissemination. The encyclopedists practiced “the art of deducing tacitly the boldest consequences,” firm in the conviction that, if not immediately, then over time this devious art will “operate infallibly,” not only on “good minds” but “all minds” so as to change “the common manner of thinking.”

There is good reason to believe that what is manifestly true of the Encyclopedia was also true of the earlier, founding figures of modern philosophy: because they sought to enlighten the world, they too needed to use this new form of esotericism. For example, Diderot, in his Encyclopediaarticle “Machiavellianism,” attributes to the famous Florentine an esoteric technique that will become a favorite among modern writers: slyly undermining a political or religious institution by defending it in an unconvincing way. He argues that The Prince, that most famous handbook for monarchs and tyrants, was secretly an effort to discredit absolute monarchy under the pretense of recommending and explaining it.

It is as if he said to his fellow citizens, read well this work. If you ever accept a master, he will be such as I paint him: here is the ferocious beast to whom you will abandon yourselves. . . . Chancellor Bacon was not fooled [by The Prince] when he said: this man teaches nothing to tyrants; they know only too well what they have to do, but he instructs the peoples about what they have to fear.³¹

This esoteric reading of Machiavelli is to be found not only in Diderot and Bacon but also in Spinoza and Rousseau. The former speculates that, in The Prince, Machiavelli’s true intention was “to show how cautious a free multitude should be of entrusting its welfare absolutely to one man.”³²And in the Social Contract, Rousseau states:

[B]eing attached to the Medici household, [Machiavelli] was forced, during the oppression of his homeland, to disguise his love of freedom. The choice of his execrable hero [Cesare Borgia] is in itself enough to make manifest his hidden intention.

His “hidden intention” was this: “While pretending to give lessons to kings, he gave great ones to the people. Machiavelli’s The Prince is the book of republicans.” But Machiavelli’s target was not only the throne but also the altar. Rousseau continues: “The court of Rome has severely forbidden this book. I can well believe it; it is the court that he most clearly depicts.”³³

Similarly, the account of Francis Bacon given by Antoine de La Salle, his eighteenth-century French translator, also speaks of an esoteric attack on throne and altar. Imagining what Bacon himself would have said to explain the true character and purpose of his writings if for one moment he had been free to speak openly, La Salle writes:

Speaking to a king who is a bigoted theologian, before tyrannical and suspicious priests, I will not be able to display my opinions fully; they would shock dominant prejudices too much. Often obliged to envelop myself in general, vague, and even obscure expressions, I will not be understood at first, but I will take care to pose the principles of truths that will, I dare say, have long term consequences, and sooner or later the consequences will be drawn. . . . . Thus without directly attacking throne and altar, which today support one another, both resting on the triple base of long-standing ignorance, terror, and habit and appearing unshakeable to me, all the while respecting them verbally, I will undermine both by my principles.³⁴

Even more striking is d’Alembert’s assertion, in his brief history of modern philosophy in the Preliminary Discourse for the Encyclopedia, that Descartes—whom we tend to read as a detached, apolitical thinker, like a contemporary philosophy professor—should rather be viewed as “a leader of conspirators.” D’Alembert praises Descartes, who had the courage to be the first to “rise against a despotic and arbitrary power and who, in preparing a resounding revolution, laid the foundations of a more just and happier government, which he himself was not able to see established.”³⁵The “despotic and arbitrary power” was the church (and its intellectual base in scholastic Aristotelianism), which, in 1633, had just arrested Galileo and compelled him to recant his Copernicanism or heliocentrism. Struck by this event, Descartes suppressed the publication of The World, his just-completed exposition of his own mechanistic and pro-Copernican physics. Instead, eight years later, he published his Meditations, a work ostensibly confined to metaphysics and theology. But in a letter to Marin Mersenne, he reveals:

there are many other things in them; and I tell you, between ourselves, that these six Meditations contain all the foundations of my physics. But that must not be spread abroad, if you please; for those who follow Aristotle will find it more difficult to approve them. I hope that [my readers] will accustom themselves insensibly to my principles, and will come to recognize their truth, before perceiving that they destroy those of Aristotle.³⁶

Speaking from the other side of the barricades, George Berkeley makes comparable claims about the conspiratorial role of Spinoza:

Spinoza [is] the great leader of our modern infidels, in whom are to be found many schemes and notions much admired and followed of late years:—such as undermining religion under the pretence of vindicating and explaining it.³⁷

Bayle conveys a similar idea in the definition he gives of a “Spinozist”: “One calls Spinozist all those who hardly have any religion, and who do not hide this fact very much.”³⁸ What is definitive in this definition is not that the Spinozists have little religion or that they hide this fact—which was common enough among premodern thinkers—but that they do not hide it very much. As political esotericists, the Spinozists sought to spread what they were hiding as widely as they dared in furtherance of a political agenda. This aspect of modern thought and writing—and its marked departure from premodern ways—is also indicated by Edmund Burke:

Boldness formerly was not the character of atheists as such. They were even of a character nearly the reverse; they were formerly like the old Epicureans, rather an unenterprising race. But of late they are grown active, designing, turbulent, and seditious. They are sworn enemies to kings, nobility, and priesthood.³⁹

Condorcet also gives a vivid description of how modern thinkers—here, from the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth—consciously deployed a cunning and multiform political esotericism to carry forward the philosophic cabal against throne and altar.

In England, Collins and Bolingbroke; in France Bayle, Fontenelle, Voltaire, Montesquieu and the schools formed by these celebrated men, fought on the side of reason, employing by turns all the arms that erudition, philosophy, wit, and literary talent can furnish to reason; using every tone, employing every form from humor to pathos, from the most learned and vast compilation to the novel or pamphlet of the day; covering the truth with a veil to spare eyes too weak, and leaving others the pleasure of divining it; sometimes skillfully caressing prejudices, the more effectively to attack them; almost never threatening them, and then never several at one time, nor ever one in its entirety; sometimes consoling the enemies of reason in seeming not to want more than a semi-tolerance in religion and a semi-liberty in politics; sparing despotism when it combated the absurdities of religion and religion when it rose against tyranny; attacking these two scourges in their principles, even when they seemed merely to oppose their more revolting or ridiculous abuses, and striking these deadly trees at their roots, when they seemed to limit themselves to pruning away a few stray branches; sometimes teaching the friends of liberty that superstition, which covers despotism with an impenetrable shield, is the first victim that they must burn, the first chain that they must break; sometimes, to the contrary, denouncing religion to the despots as the true enemy of their power, and frightening them with a picture of its hypocritical plots and its sanguinary furies; but always united in order to vindicate the independence of reason and the freedom of the press as the right and the salvation of the human race; rising up with indefatigable energy against all the crimes of fanaticism and of tyranny.⁴⁰

As this remarkable statement testifies—in perfect agreement with the preceding ones—the early modern philosophers saw themselves as fellow conspirators in a great war of ideas. And with this war in mind, they rethought, from a highly political and strategic point of view, all the old questions of rhetoric and literary form. Some found it useful to write philosophic treatises, others novels, pamphlets, dictionaries, plays, and encyclopedias. But virtually all found it necessary—in the very pursuit of popular enlightenment and freedom of speech—to employ a tactical esotericism. Being opposed in principle to virtually all existing authorities both political and religious, they were not strong enough—or reckless enough—to declare their true beliefs openly and all at once. They had to pick their fights carefully. They had to forge temporary alliances with one enemy to undermine the other. They needed to hide the full extent of their aims, speaking often of reform while secretly pursuing radical change. And they had to manage the truth, releasing it into the world in measured doses, so that it would be useful and not dangerous to themselves and others.

Some indication of how widespread esotericism was during the modern period can be gleaned from the letter—quoted once before—from Diderot to François Hemsterhuis concerning the latter’s somewhat clumsy use of the technique: “You are one example among many others where intolerance has constrained the truth and dressed philosophy in a clown suit. . . . I know only one modern author who spoke clearly and without detours; but he is hardly known.”⁴¹ The statement of Rousseau is also worth repeating. Notwithstanding his famous outspokenness and his romantic sanctification of sincerity, he explicitly affirms that his own philosophical project demanded artful caution and esoteric insinuation:

Having so many interests to contest, so many prejudices to conquer, and so many harsh things to state, in the very interest of my readers, I believed I ought to be careful of their pusillanimity in some way and let them perceive only gradually what I had to say to them. . . . Some precautions were thus at first necessary for me, and it is in order to be able to make everything understood that I did not wish to say everything. It was only gradually and always for few readers that I developed my ideas. It is not myself that I treated carefully, but the truth, so as to get it across more surely and make it more useful. I have often taken great pains to try to put into a sentence, a line, a word tossed off as if by chance the result of a long sequence of reflections. Often, most of my readers must have found my discourses badly connected and almost entirely rambling, for lack of perceiving the trunk of which I showed them only the branches. But that was enough for those who know how to understand, and I have never wanted to speak to the others.⁴²

This is a classic confession of political esotericism, above all in Rousseau’s assertion that he hid the truth as a means to “get it across more surely and make it more useful.”

In this connection, consider also a letter written in 1770 to a friend by the abbé Galiani, the Italian diplomat and political economist, on the subject of his principal work, Dialogues on the Grain Trade.

You tell me first, that after the reading of my book, you are hardly any further along concerning the heart of the question. How by the devil! You who are of Diderot’s sect and mine, do you not read the white [spaces] of works? Certainly, those who read only the black of a writing will not have seen anything decisive in my book; but you, read the white, read what I did not write and what is there nonetheless; and then you will find it.⁴³

Galiani is clearly surprised and indignant that his correspondent could be so witless as not to understand the necessity of reading him esoterically. He takes for granted that this is something that an intelligent person of the time should understand.

Helvétius affords still another example. Diderot, in his late essay Refutation of the work of Helvétius entitled Of Man, describes Helvétius’s esoteric caution. While Diderot is, as we have seen, certainly in favor of such restraint, he finds Helvétius’s caution excessive and cowardly.

Everywhere where the author speaks of religion he substitutes the word popery [papisme] for Christianity. Thanks to this pusillanimous circumspection, posterity, not knowing what his true sentiments were, will say: “What? This man who was so cruelly persecuted for his freedom of thought, believed in the trinity, Adam’s sin, and the incarnation!” For these dogmas are in all Christian sects. . . . It is thus that the fear one has of priests has ruined, ruins, and will ruin all works of philosophy . . . and has introduced into modern works a mixture of unbelief and superstition that disgusts.⁴⁴

In this account, Diderot corroborates the claim made by Condorcet in the long passage quoted above that one esoteric technique frequently used by modern writers is to put forward a daring, reformist agenda to conceal an even more radical agenda. Helvétius pretends to be an intrepid religious reformer who, accepting the central dogmas of Christianity, opposes only the corrupt institution of papal authority—when in fact he opposes Christianity as such. Indeed, according to Diderot, modern philosophical works are generally characterized by an esoteric mixture of unbelief and insincere “superstition.”

As a last illustration, let us consider the striking case of Fra Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623), the Italian statesman, Servite friar, close friend of Galileo, and one of the greatest historians of the early modern period. Once a major figure, known and read throughout Europe, Sarpi has since fallen into obscurity. During his lifetime and long after, there was a great deal of uncertainty regarding the principles or purposes underlying his actions and writings. At times, he seemed an orthodox Catholic, serving as the state theologian of the Republic of Venice and twice recommended for a bishopric. Yet in other respects, he appeared to be a Catholic reformer, part of the Counter-Reformation, as, for example, in his major writing, History of the Council of Trent, which is essentially an attack on papal absolutism. Yet there were also persistent rumors that he was a secret Protestant, rumors fed by the fact that, in various ways, he sought to aid the establishment of a Protestant church in Venice and even to encourage the Protestant powers to invade Italy.

The solution to the puzzle of Sarpi’s motives might have gone to the grave with him were it not for the fact that his secret diaries or notebooks, his Pensieri, somehow found their way into the Venetian archives where they were preserved, although they were not published in a complete edition until 1969. In these notebooks, one discovers that if Sarpi’s true beliefs and motives always seemed somehow hidden, that was no accident. He writes:

Never lightly let slip a word against common opinion, but keep “verba in tua potestate” [words in your power], to which end “minimum cum aliis loqui, plurimum secum” [speak as little as possible with others; as much as possible with oneself]; and if you can stay masked in this way with all, do not let anyone see your face.⁴⁵

His true face was eventually espied by Lord Acton, who seems to have been the only historian to have found and read the complete Pensieri in the Venetian archives prior to their publication a century later. In an essay on Sarpi written in 1867, Acton reports:

Judaism and Christianity, Catholicism and Protestantism, are forms of speculation which he tries to explain by human causes . . . studying them as phenomena with less interest than Schelling or Comte—without passion, but without approbation or any degree of assent. . . . It is now certain he despised the doctrines which he taught, and scoffed at the mysteries which it was his office to celebrate. Therefore, his writings must have been composed in order to injure, not to improve, the religion he professed to serve.⁴⁶

Acton’s judgment has been confirmed and elaborated by David Wootton, author of the definitive study of Sarpi and his Pensieri. The secret notebooks disclose, according to Wootton, that Sarpi was not only a nonbeliever, and not only a firm critic of the baneful political consequences of Christianity, but an adherent of the view—almost one hundred years before Bayle first made a public statement of it—that a well-ordered polity could be secular, that society could dispense altogether with religious support. This belief gave to Sarpi’s atheism and to his secrecy the telltale conspiratorial character of modern political esotericism. As Wootton puts it:

Like other unbelievers of his day Sarpi had to confine knowledge of his unbelief to a small circle of personal intimates, but unlike most of them Sarpi sought to employ his public avowal of faith not merely as a passive defense against persecution but also as a shield behind which he could advance the cause of irreligion.⁴⁷

His secrecy was not only defensive but conspiratorial.

From the Pensieri, Wootton is also able to reconstruct the basic strategy that Sarpi followed in seeking to further this cause. In that writing, Sarpi explores what Wootton calls a “theory of propaganda”: systematic reflections on how to go about weakening prevailing beliefs and introducing new ones. We have already seen the crucial first step: “do not let anyone see your face.” A frontal attack on prevailing errors along with a plain statement of the truth will rarely succeed, Sarpi maintains. Prejudices and superstitions are rooted in needs and weaknesses that cannot be cured overnight. Thus, a more oblique approach is preferable.

First, one should attack the fundamental principles that underlie prevailing views, without spelling out what would follow from these attacks. Slowly, over time, this will have its desired effect—a thought common to many of the thinkers quoted above.

Second, one can weaken prevailing errors by using the force of other, popular but countervailing errors. To illustrate this second point, Wootton instances the most puzzling aspect of Sarpi’s career, his strange but unmistakable campaign to increase the presence and power of Protestantism in Italy and Venice. From the Pensieri, it is perfectly clear that this did not stem from a genuine commitment to the Protestant faith. Rather, Wootton argues, it must be understood as a scheme “to see Catholic power counterbalanced by Protestant power.” Sarpi “became convinced of the need to employ the same weapons as the enemy, to fight religion with religion.”⁴⁸ Specifically:

The religious conflicts in France had led, after all, to the growth of the politique movement [which sought a more secular society to eliminate religious strife] and, it was generally held, to the spread of moral atheism. Might not religious conflict of this sort be a necessary precondition for the establishment of a secular society?⁴⁹

This indeed is the very argument most often advanced by present-day historians to explain the evolution of liberal or secular regimes in the West: the rise of religious conflict in the wake of the Reformation created the political necessity for a religiously neutral politics. But almost all historians regard this concatenation of events as an accidental one, unintended by the actors involved. It now appears, however, that Sarpi at least embraced this historical dynamic as a conscious strategy.

The case of Paolo Sarpi, then, is particularly revealing on a number of counts. Thanks to his Pensieri, we have a direct personal confession that not only acknowledges his practice of political esotericism, but also justifies this practice as an evident strategic necessity. What is more, with Sarpi, we are able to view some of the concrete content of that esotericism. Specifically, we see an illustration of the claim, made above by Condorcet, that modern philosophic writers were not merely reserved, but manipulative and conspiratorial, full of political calculation—for example, forging temporary alliances with one enemy to counter another. They not only hid their genuine beliefs and goals, but often gave intellectual support to existing movements or forces with which they disagreed as part of a long-term strategy for promoting their true aims.

There is much evidence, in sum, for the explicit claims of Toland, Diderot, and others that a vigorous esotericism was practiced by virtually all the early modern philosophers and that this esotericism was uniquely “political”—not only in its ultimate motives or ends, but in the conspiratorial and manipulative character of its means.

THE EARLY MODERN ATTITUDE TOWARD ESOTERICISM: INCREASING OPENNESS—AND HOSTILITY

Now that we have seen the basic details of political esotericism, it would be interesting as well as useful to follow the story at some greater length. This would make possible a fuller contrast with classical esotericism, further clarifying both. But also, in the unfolding story of political esotericism, we will find a convergence of the two basic topics of this book: the “existence question” concerning the historical reality of esotericism and the “reception question” concerning the denial of this reality in late modernity. In exploring the history of this new form of esotericism we will see that it necessarily brings with it fundamental changes in attitude toward the older forms and indeed toward esotericism as such, culminating in our own state of forgetting.

The first change in attitude toward esotericism that one detects in early modernity is a general increase in openness. Philosophers in this period not only continue to write and read esoterically but also now begin to write about esotericism with a new frequency and candor. There is the extensive treatment of the subject in the Encyclopedia, for example, as well as the treatise-length discussions in Toland’s and Warburton’s influential writings—and all of these appeared within a thirty-year period (1720–51).⁵⁰ To be sure, here and there in the classical and medieval worlds, there is a protracted discussion of it—in Maimonides, for example, and especially Clement of Alexandria. But in this modern period, esotericism now becomes a relatively sustained theme of public discussion. We need to ask what it is about political esotericism that should lead to this new openness.

But this first change also enables us to glimpse a second one. Peering through the window that this new, freer discussion opens up, one is able to discern a second, strangely countervailing shift in attitude: a more negative assessment of esotericism. This applies, initially, to premodern esotericism, both defensive and especially protective. But also, one detects in many of the practitioners of the new, political esotericism a considerable ambivalence toward their own esotericism. Thus, somehow the rise of political esotericism also contributed to the unique hostility toward all forms of esotericism that developed in later modernity.

When we put these two changes in attitude together, the issue that it remains for us to explore is this: how is it that the modern period embraces a sudden new public openness concerning esotericism and yet, shortly thereafter, it displays an increased hostility toward it as well, culminating, in our own time, with the angry denial that it has ever existed?

THE INCREASED OPENNESS REGARDING ESOTERICISM IN EARLY MODERNITY

Thus far we have focused more or less exclusively in this work on the question: what motives led philosophers to write esoterically? But the issue of openness falls under the heading of a different question: what motives have led them to write about esotericism, to openly discuss the phenomenon and not just quietly to practice it? So let us first explore these latter motives in a general way before turning to our specific question: why, in the early modern period, did these motives suddenly lead philosophers to a much greater openness about esotericism?

Why Write about Esotericism: Practical and Theoretical Motives

Not surprisingly, there are a number of different reasons for speaking about esotericism, but they all may be placed into the two broad categories of “practical” and “theoretical.” Esoteric writers who speak with some openness about the practice of esotericism do so for practical reasons when they hope thereby to make their own esoteric communication more practically effective, that is, more successful in the delicate esoteric effort to convey a teaching while also concealing it. By contrast, they speak openly for theoretical reasons when they emphasize the historical practice of esotericism in order to make a theoretical point about the history of philosophy. The practical motive is found, in one degree or another, at all times; whereas the theoretical motive seems to be unique to the modern period.

For examples of the practical motive, consider first Lucretius, who openly explains, in On the Nature of Things, that he has covered his true doctrine, so bitter at first tasting, with a sweet poetic surface; or consider Montesquieu, who declares in the front matter to The Persian Letters that his seemingly rambling, epistolary novel is bound together “by a chain that is secret and, in some manner, unknown.” Presumably, these authors engage in these “open discussions” of esotericism (very limited as they may be) motivated by the practical desire to alert intelligent readers that it is necessary here to read between the lines and to give these readers some very general hint about how to do so.⁵¹ They use such discussions, in other words, as one means to make needed adjustments—fine tuning—to achieve just the right level of concealment and disclosure in their writings.

In Maimonides, as is well known, one finds perhaps the most extensive and elaborate discussion by an author of his own esotericism. In the general introduction to the Guide of the Perplexed and the introduction to the third part, he proclaims loudly and in unmistakable terms that his book—as well as the Bible, which it is an effort to interpret—is a highly esoteric text. He also explains some of the reasons for this manner of writing and even goes so far as to give the reader some lessons on how to read esoterically—all without openly revealing, of course, the secret teaching itself.

Maimonides is perfectly—indeed painfully—aware that his great openness regarding esotericism is new and potentially harmful (because too revealing), and he endeavors to justify it by stating his motives. These turn out, again, to be what I am calling “practical”—indeed, essentially a more extreme version of the motive just seen in Lucretius and Montesquieu. He was faced by a crisis situation, he explains, in which the true esoteric teaching and manner of reading were in danger of being completely lost. The exile of the Jewish people and their subjection to alien ways and doctrines over many centuries had finally produced a condition in which “the knowledge of the matter has ceased to exist in the entire religious community, so that nothing great or small remains of it.”⁵² He believed that under these particular historical circumstances, it became a practical necessity to restore, through an unusually explicit discussion, the lost awareness of esotericism.⁵³

For a last example, consider the Nicomachean Ethics, where Aristotle, in his lengthy discussion of hedonism (previously quoted), not only reveals that certain earlier writers on the subject wrote esoterically but even openly discloses their secret. Without naming names, he asserts that some of the philosophers who argue that pleasure is altogether base do not really believe their claims but speak this way because

they suppose it to be better with a view to our life to declare that pleasure is among the base things, even if it is not. For the many, they suppose, tend toward it and are in fact enslaved to pleasure. Hence one ought to lead them toward its contrary, since in this way they might arrive at the middle.⁵⁴

Aristotle’s reason for engaging in this open, indeed unmasking, discussion seems clear: he believes that this particular esoteric strategy is counterproductive, and so he wants to discourage others from following it (as well, perhaps, as to justify his decision not to do so himself). As he goes on to explain, people who, in their writings, overstate their opposition to pleasure are soon refuted by their deeds; and this hypocrisy, once exposed, has the effect of discrediting in the public’s eyes all arguments, even the good ones, for moderating one’s pursuit of pleasure. In this case, then, the motive for discussing esotericism remains practical, but its aim is not to inform or educate readers about how to read, but to tell other writers about how to write.

But not all open discussions of esotericism have the purpose of conveying such practical advice to readers and writers. They can also have, as I have said, a theoretical purpose: to use the fact of this practice in order to prove some thesis regarding the history of philosophical thought. What this means we will see momentarily. But since it is a motive and form of argument that is confined to modernity, I will elaborate it in the course of returning to the question with which we began: why did a new openness regarding esotericism suddenly emerge in the early modern period? We will see that this historical shift derives from certain changes within both of these types of motives—theoretical and practical.

The New Openness: The Theoretical Motive Stemming from the Philosophical Turn to History

On the theoretical level, the change regarding esotericism derives from still another, larger change: the rise, in early modernity, of what may be called a philosophical interest in history. The theoretical motive for discussing the historical practice esotericism, I am arguing, is one aspect of this larger philosophical interest in history.

Just as philosophy in this period made a stark “political turn,” as argued above, so also and closely related, it made a “historical turn.” Consider the simple fact, for example, that with the exception of Xenophon, no major classical or medieval philosopher wrote a work of history. But many, indeed most, early modern philosophers did: Machiavelli, Bodin, Bacon, Hobbes, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Hume, and others. This new phenomenon of philosophical historiography has a number of causes and meanings, but very generally there seems to have been a new effort to derive or ground philosophical truth, not merely on abstract, theoretical argument, but also on the concrete evidence of history and (somewhat later) the immanent logic and trajectory of the historical process. The full-blown philosophies of history that emerged in Hegel, Marx, and other mid-nineteenth-century thinkers, as well as the “historicism” that emerged in the wake of their demise, are only the distant culmination of various tendencies already discernible in the earliest modern thinkers.⁵⁵

As Ernst Cassirer among others has argued, the historical turn of early modern philosophy emerged first and most profoundly in the context of the issue of reason vs. revelation.⁵⁶ It seems that, finding this central philosophical issue insoluble on the level of pure philosophy—of speculative metaphysics and theology—modern thinkers were driven to seek other ways to address it and turned to history with the hope that this realm of phenomena might, in one way or another, be brought to bear on the question. It is in this spirit, for example, that Spinoza took the enormously influential step of originating the historical criticism of the Bible. By situating the Holy Scriptures in historical time and context, disaggregating their various books and authors, and raising difficult questions of transmission, interpretation, and authenticity, this new turn to history did much to weaken the authority of biblical revelation and to strengthen the claims of reason.

History also moved to the center of the reason-revelation debate in a somewhat different way (more relevant to the issue of esotericism) through the central argument of Enlightenment Deism: the claim that unaided human reason is able, on its own, to derive the essential tenets of religion—a single and beneficent creator-God and an afterlife of divine rewards and punishments. Thus, according to the Deists, God made himself and his commandments sufficiently known to all human beings when he gave them reason. It follows that revelation is something demonstrably unnecessary, redundant, and so very unlikely to have its origin in divine action. Thus, its origin is to be traced, with far greater plausibility, to the actions of ambitious priests or legislators who invented it to gain power over the credulous masses, perverting in the process the pure and natural religion of reason and filling the world with irrational ceremonies, superstitions, mysteries, and the persecution and strife to which they inevitably give rise.

But the Deist thesis faces a crucial difficulty: how does one prove that the normal exercise of human reason does in fact point to this pure theism, how does one show that so-called natural religion is really natural? It is not sufficient to demonstrate that you can make rational-sounding arguments in support of God and the afterlife, for how can you be sure that in your methodology, your assumptions, your categories, and other aspects of your use of reason you have not been unconsciously guided by what you have actually come to know only through revelation? Steeped in almost two millennia of Christian civilization, how can you be sure of what you owe purely to “unaided human reason”? The difficulty is stated clearly by Bishop Warburton, the great opponent of Deism and defender of Christian revelation.

Having of late seen several excellent systems of Morals, delivered as the Principles of natural Religion, which disclaim, or at least do not own, the aid of Revelation, we are apt to think them, in good earnest, the discoveries of natural Reason; and so to regard the extent of [reason’s] powers as an objection to the necessity of any further light [revelation]. The objection is plausible; but sure, there must be some mistake at bottom; and the great difference in point of excellence, between these supposed productions of mere Reason, and those real ones of the most learned Ancients, will increase our suspicion. The truth is, these modern system-makers had aids, which as they do not acknowledge, so, I will believe, they did not perceive. These aids were the true principles of Religion, delivered by Revelation: principles so early imbibed, and so clearly and evidently deduced, that they are now mistaken to be amongst our first and most natural ideas: But those who have studied Antiquity know the matter to be far otherwise.⁵⁷

Warburton’s point is that to form a true assessment of the natural tendencies of human reason when unaided and uncorrected by revelation, it is necessary to turn to history to see what reason actually produced prior to the arrival of Christian revelation, especially in the age of classical rationalism, where reason reached its pre-Christian peak. Through this argument, a purely historical question—what did the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers believe—becomes central for the accurate philosophical evaluation of what human reason can and cannot do when unaided.

If we take up this historical question, then, the results seem initially to go against the Deists’ bold claims regarding reason and the existence of a universal religion of nature—just as Warburton suggests. For starters, the Greeks and Romans were polytheists who, it would seem, never managed to reason their way to the idea of a single and beneficent creator-God. What an extraordinary demonstration of the inadequacy and waywardness of human reason when not set on the right path by divine revelation! Even the greatest of the ancient philosophers endorsed this childish polytheism.

If, that is, you read them literally. But here is where the issue of esotericism enters the story. John Toland, perhaps the most influential and certainly the most prolific of the Deists, published his elaborately titled work Clidophorus, or, of the Exoteric and Esoteric Philosophy; that is, Of the External and Internal Doctrine of the Ancients: The one open and public, accommodated to popular prejudices and the Religions established by Law; the other private and secret, wherein, to the few capable and discrete, was taught the real Truth stripped of all disguises. Toland wrote this explicit and detailed treatise on esotericism in order to demonstrate that the history of human reason—which has now become a central philosophical issue—is not at all what it appears to be. Owing to fear of persecution, all the ancient philosophers embraced the prevailing polytheism on the surface of their writings, but beneath that surface, he implied, they rejected it in favor of a more monotheistic conception. The existence of a natural religion of reason, and thus the sufficiency of unaided human reason, can be vindicated only on the basis of a proper awareness of the practice of esoteric writing.

It is this argument that Bishop Warburton then attempts to refute in his attack on Toland and the other Deists—but not by denying the existence of esotericism, a phenomenon he takes to be beyond dispute. On the contrary, he proceeds to publish his own explicit and detailed treatise on esotericism, as part of his principle work, the Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated on the Principles of a Religious Deist. In this treatise, he contrives to turn the Deist argument against itself: the ancient philosophers, with their unaided human reason, did indeed secretly go beyond the primitive polytheism of the established religions. So much to their and reason’s credit. But they also secretly rejected all belief in an afterlife of divine rewards and punishments (the second essential element in the supposed natural religion). Thus, according to Warburton, when their full esoteric position is seen, it is clear that the ancient philosophers, the greatest representatives of unaided human reason, all rejected essential elements of the universal religion of reason posited by the Deists.

Yet the ancient philosophers, Warburton goes on to argue, wrote esoterically, concealing this universal rejection of the afterlife, not primarily from fear of persecution, as Toland had maintained, but rather from fear of harming society. For they all saw that belief in an afterlife of divine rewards and punishments was absolutely essential for the maintenance of human society. Thus, for Warburton, the historical institution of esotericism—this universally felt need to conceal the results of philosophical reason—constitutes a kind of official admission of bankruptcy, a standing acknowledgment that human reason, unaided, cannot provide human life (or, at least, human society) with its needed basis. Thus, revelation, so far from being unnecessary or harmful for humans, as the Deists contend, is rather the one thing needful.

This brief discussion is not meant as a comprehensive account of the quarrel between Toland and Warburton, still less of the larger Deist controversy. It seeks only to provide one example of the new, theoretical motive for discussing esotericism that emerged in early modernity and that led to the considerably greater openness on this subject that is our topic here.

To summarize this somewhat convoluted argument, starting in the Renaissance, modern philosophy embarked on a complex “historical turn.” One eventual consequence of this is that the historical record of the actual behavior and achievements of the human mind—especially the record of what unaided reason actually produced before the Christian era—becomes a crucial datum for the understanding of human reason, especially in its contest with revelation. But obviously, the more the historical record of human thinking becomes philosophically crucial, the more the open acknowledgment of esotericism—which is needed to avoid the systematic misreading and misconstruction of that record—also becomes philosophically crucial. The understanding of esotericism, that is, now becomes essential, not merely (as it always was before) for gaining access to the authentic beliefs and arguments of particular thinkers about particular issues, but also as part of a fundamentally new approach to understanding the character of human reason as such. It becomes part of the uniquely modern effort at what might be called “historical epistemology”: the effort to use the actual historical record of two thousand years of human thinking and writing as a clue to how reason works, as empirical evidence for what the unaided human mind can and cannot do. As a result, then, of philosophy’s turn to history, the phenomenon of esotericism acquires a new theoretical importance that it did not possess for earlier ages. And this, in turn, leads to a great increase in the open and thematic discussion of esotericism, as we have just seen in the notable examples of Toland and Warburton.⁵⁸

The New Openness: Three Practical Motives

But the new modern openness regarding esoteric writing also stemmed from another source: changes that occurred on the level of the first, practical motives for speaking about esotericism that we began by discussing. These motives involve the attempt to adjust the writing of esoteric works so that they will function better, so that they will be more likely to succeed in their particular communicative purpose.

Now, the new political esotericism that emerged in the modern period differed from earlier forms precisely in its primary communicative purpose: no longer the education of the philosophical few but the gradual enlightenment of the broad population. Given its wider audience, it no longer needed or desired to maintain such a high level of concealment as did earlier forms. Thus we see Diderot, for example, in the above-quoted passage from the Encyclopedia, openly proclaiming the esotericism of that work and even explaining the primary esoteric technique employed—the use of cross-references. Modern esotericism’s new political purpose is clearly better served if esoteric writing is more freely discussed, more of an open secret, so that a wider range of readers will know to go searching between the lines.

There is also a second way—still on the practical level—in which the new esotericism led to greater openness, indeed to spirited, public debate about its practices. Because of its uniquely political character, this esotericism sought not only to address a wider range of readers, but also to involve a larger body of writers—and in a coordinated way. Political esotericism was political not only in its goals but in its means: it was a collective activity. This new mode of writing was the undertaking not simply of individual philosophers, as in premodern esotericism, but of the clique of philosophers acting in concert—a philosophical cabal, a republic of letters, a party of reason, a “movement.”

But as the inevitable consequence of this new effort at coordinated action, every thinker’s practice of esotericism suddenly became the proper business—the legitimate subject of criticism—of every other thinker. As is well known, efforts to form a tightly unified party with a common course of action very often produce the very opposite result: an increase in conflict over what that common action should be. The danger is all the greater when the party is composed of philosophers and intellectuals. Thus, the uniquely political or collective character of the new esotericism naturally led to a great increase in open debate and public criticism among its practitioners.

This tendency to generate open debate—inherent within the new esotericism—was then further magnified by a third circumstance: there was so much to debate about, because the esotericism was so new. Political esotericism resulted, after all, from a great revolution in thought, concerning both what reforms society was capable of receiving and what political effects philosophy was capable of producing. It represented the momentous transition from the conflictual to the harmonist view of theory and praxis. So naturally there was a great deal that needed to be sorted out and debated. The whole purpose and strategy of esotericism was up for grabs in a way that it had not been in all previous ages. This too, then, produced a great increase in the open discussion of esotericism.

The Three Primary Debates over Esotericism

While a substantive and comprehensive account of these complex debates is well beyond the scope of this work, a few details will at least give us some inner sense of this important new stage in the history of esotericism.

What the particular issues were in this debate can be deduced, as it were, from the very definition of political esotericism. The latter is the effort to write in a style both cautious and subversive, gradually spreading philosophical ideas to the larger population, with the ultimate aim of establishing a new political order free of gross superstition and based more or less on rational foundations. The major elements of this description point to the three major issues around which the esotericism debates of the period primarily raged. First, what does “both cautious and subversive” mean in practice? What is the proper mix of boldness and prudence? Second, in seeking to spread enlightenment to “the larger population,” who exactly should be included and addressed: everyone or some more restricted subset of the population? Third and most fundamental, how complete could the elimination of religious superstition and the reliance on purely rational foundations ever be? How fully harmonized, that is, could reason and society ever become?

Regarding the first issue, daring vs. caution, the extreme position on the side of caution was famously represented by the French writer Fontenelle (1657–1757), who, though himself a great popularizer and often called the first of the philosophes, nevertheless declared in a Parisian salon one evening that if his hand were full of truths, he would not open it to release them to the public, because it is not worth the effort or risk. This simple statement struck a chord that reverberated through French society and literature for the better part of a century, triggering constant debate. But in the end, it seems to have represented for most, even for Fontenelle himself, not so much a settled rejection of the Enlightenment project as a forceful venting of the fears and frustrations that everyone must have felt in one degree or another in the face of an undertaking so full of dangers and setbacks.⁵⁹

Fontenelle’s declaration reappears, for example, in the extensive exchange of letters on this subject—one of the great documents of the esotericism debate—between d’Alembert and Frederick the Great of Prussia, the famous “enlightened despot.” In his most despairing moment, Frederick wrote emphasizing the unconquerable ignorance of the people and endorsing the statement of Fontenelle. D’Alembert replies:

It seems to me that one should not, like Fontenelle, keep one’s hand closed when one is sure of having the truth in it; it is only necessary to open with wisdom and caution the fingers of the hand one after another, and little by little the hand is opened entirely. . . . Philosophers who open the hand too abruptly are fools.⁶⁰

As a general statement, d’Alembert’s sober reply would seem to represent the almost unanimous consensus among early modern thinkers. Unsurprisingly, very few appear to have held consistently to the anti-enlightenment statement of Fontenelle. But even more clearly, there was no “Fontenelle” on the other side: no one who openly rejected the need for “wisdom and caution,” for esoteric restraint, in revealing the truth. (Perhaps Holbach came closest, as Diderot suggests.) Virtually everyone agreed that “philosophers who open the hand too abruptly are fools.” But this general agreement still left undetermined the particular question of what constituted, in each individual case, the right degree of caution and daring. And this question, a difficult judgment call, became a source of constant discussion and dispute.

The clearest example of an accusation of incaution, indeed of recklessness, comes from an earlier period: Erasmus’s reaction to Luther’s writings. While he supports the latter’s ends, the radical reform of Christianity, he is appalled by the incaution of Luther’s means. As he explains in a letter:

For seeing that truth of itself has a bitter taste for most people, and that it is of itself a subversive thing to uproot what has long been commonly accepted, it would have been wiser to soften a naturally painful subject by the courtesy of one’s handling than to pile one cause of hatred on another . . . A prudent steward will husband the truth—bring it out, I mean, when the business requires it and bring it out so much as is requisite and bring out for every man what is appropriate for him—[but] Luther in this torrent of pamphlets has poured it all out at once, making everything public.⁶¹

In a similar but less extreme example, Bayle rebukes Descartes, or rather his followers, for being too bold, with the result that they generated a lot of opposition that needlessly retarded the progress of their ideas. Bayle’s position here remains distinctly modern, since its ultimate end is the gradual public dissemination of Descartes’s ideas; but he argues that the proper means to this end involve sticking somewhat closer to the more concealed, ancient style of esotericism. Thus, in the article on Aristotle in his Historical Dictionary, in the context of describing why Aristotelianism has been so readily accepted by theologians, Bayle appends the following remark:

If all those who have embraced the philosophy of Monsieur Descartes had had this wise reserve, which makes one stop when one reaches a certain point; if they had known how to discern what must be said and what must not be said, they would not have caused such an outcry against the sect in general. The method of the ancient masters was founded on good reasons. They had dogmas for the general public and dogmas for the disciples initiated into the mysteries. At any rate, the application that one has tried to make of the principles of Monsieur Descartes to the dogmas of religion has brought great prejudice against his sect and has arrested its progress.⁶²

Writing after the Revolution, L.-S. Mercier expresses a similar criticism—with a similar longing for a more ancient and concealing esotericism—in his widely read Tableaux de Paris:

It might perhaps have been desirable if the idea of the double doctrine, which the ancient philosophers taught according to whether they believed they should reveal or not reveal their true ideas, fell into the heads of the first writers of the nation. They would not have exposed philosophy to the furious and offensive rantings of the fools, the ignorant, and the wicked; they would not have incurred the hatred and vengeance of the priests and sovereigns. . . . The public good, or what represents it, the public repose, sometimes demands that one hide certain truths. When they fall without preparation in the midst of a people, they cause an explosion that does not redound to the profit of the truth, and only irritates the numerous enemies of all enlightenment.⁶³

These examples notwithstanding, however, most of the time, the philosophes tended to find that each other’s writings erred on the side of too much caution and concealment. And perhaps inevitably, this particular shortcoming was blamed not simply on an error of judgment but on a failing of character—on cowardice. Voltaire, for instance, repeatedly attacks Fontenelle’s famous declaration by calling him a coward.⁶⁴ We have already quoted, in the previous section, from the Refutation of the work of Helvétius entitled Of Man, where Diderot expresses considerable disgust at Helvétius’s caution—which he labels “pusillanimous circumspection”—for attacking only “popery” when his true target was Christianity as such. But in an earlier work, Of Mind, we find Helvétius himself leveling the very same criticism at Montesquieu. He quotes approvingly from a letter of Lord Chesterfield:

It is a shame that Monsieur Montesquieu, held back, no doubt, by fear of the ministry, did not have the courage to say everything. One senses in general what he thinks on certain subjects; but he does not express himself clearly and strongly enough.⁶⁵

In light of these ongoing accusations, we are better able to understand a sentence of Rousseau’s that was quoted above. In the course of describing his own use of esoteric concealment, he hastens to add: “It is not myself that I treated carefully, but the truth, so as to get it across more surely and make it more useful.” He is defending himself here—preemptively—against the possible accusation of cowardice.

Indeed, while Rousseau was cautious enough to write esoterically, he made up for it through an action regarded at the time as recklessly bold: he put his name on the front page of all his writings. He bravely and ostentatiously broke with the practice of authorial anonymity (or pseudonymity) followed by virtually all the other philosophes and championed by Voltaire. This in fact was one major source of the considerable hostility toward Rousseau felt by all the others: his very title pages implicitly accused them of cowardice.⁶⁶

Again, the sober d’Alembert, who is constantly defending himself in his letters to Voltaire against the latter’s accusations that he has been too timid in his editing of the Encyclopedia,⁶⁷ in his Preliminary Discourse to that work himself accuses Francis Bacon of “having perhaps been too timid.” For, while Bacon boldly desired to overturn the whole scholastic system that had distorted all the sciences, “nonetheless, he seems to have shown a little too much caution or deference to the dominant taste of his century in his frequent use of the terms of the scholastics, sometimes even of scholastic principles.” Thus, although d’Alembert seems to regard the substance of Bacon’s thought as ultimately superior to Descartes’s, it is the latter whom he praises as a man of “great courage” and as the true “leader of conspirators” because he “dared at least to show intelligent minds how to throw off the yoke of scholasticism, of opinion, of authority.”⁶⁸

It has often been observed that the relations among philosophers during the Enlightenment were unusually rancorous. This was no mere accident of personality or national character (as Francophobes have urged) but an inevitable consequence of the rise of political esotericism and its concomitants: the desperate struggle to maintain a united philosophical front while also facing heightened danger arising from political activism. Under these new conditions, political courage became a crucial philosophical virtue, and for the first time in history contemplative men began routinely accusing each other of cowardice.

This first topic of debate that raged among the political esotericists—daring vs. caution—primarily concerned a matter of means or tactics. As we move now through the next two issues, however, the debate will become increasingly more fundamental.

The goal of the Enlightenment philosophers, as everyone knows, was the overturning of prejudice and superstition. When stated in this familiar and abstract way—as if these evils were self-subsistent entities—it was indeed a goal that everyone could share. But as soon as the goal was made concrete, disagreements arose: Precisely whose mind is going to be liberated from prejudice and superstition? Are the ignorant peasants, who make up the great majority of the population, to be included?

While concern for “humanity” was a constant trope on the lips of philosophers in this period, many and perhaps most of them actually expected that only a small part of the species could truly be liberated from prejudice and superstition. Voltaire is the clearest example:

I understand by “people” the populace which has only its hands to live by. I doubt that this order of citizens will ever have the time or capacity to educate itself; they would die of hunger before becoming philosophers. It seems to me essential that there be ignorant wretches. . . . It is not the day laborer who must be educated, it is the good bourgeois, it is the inhabitant of the cities, this enterprise is difficult and great enough.⁶⁹

Living prior to the industrial revolution and not envisioning the eventual eradication of dire poverty or the advent of universal education, Voltaire and many others did not think it possible that genuine enlightenment could ever extend to all classes of society. The poor will always be with us. But this seemingly economic argument is ultimately based on a psychological presupposition: the primary source of prejudice is in the human soul itself, in the illusions of the passions and the senses. That is why a very extensive and rigorous education is needed to root it out, an education that, requiring leisure, is unavailable to those without wealth.

This view was attacked, often bitterly, by the more radical thinkers like Rousseau, Diderot, Helvétius, and especially Holbach and Condorcet, on the basis of three claims. On the psychological level, the sources of prejudice are not internal (we are “naturally good” as Rousseau proclaimed), but primarily external, foisted upon us by our political and religious oppressors. On the philosophical level, the analytic method, which called for the breaking down of every question and idea into its elemental components (which, as such, would be easily understood), implied that rare intelligence or genius was not required for clear understanding. Method could replace genius. And on the epistemological level, the empiricist claim that we are all blank slates at birth implied that differences of intelligence, too, were externally caused. Thus, in Helvétius’s famous formula, “education can do everything.” From these claims it followed that prejudice and error might be eradicable for all in a new, nonoppressive social order that provided minimal education to everyone. But even these thinkers (with the exception of Holbach and Condorcet) were ultimately pessimistic about the chances of ever realizing this possibility, and in practice they too confined their enlightening efforts to the middle and upper classes.⁷⁰

This second issue points straight to the third. To what extent can the ultimate goal of the movement be the construction of a society built on purely rational foundations? If genuine enlightenment will remain the preserve of a small segment of the population, then, for this reason and others, won’t society continue to require political, moral, and religious beliefs that go beyond what reason can support? Won’t noble lies, pious frauds, respectable prejudices—and the ancient-style protective esotericism that supports them—remain necessary in some degree? In short, how complete could the promised harmonization of truth and politics, theory and praxis ever really become?

This issue, which concerns the central presupposition of the Enlightenment and of political esotericism, was vigorously debated in letters, treatises, and academic essay contests in the eighteenth century (although, remarkably, the debate is virtually absent from present scholarly accounts of the period). We are all aware, of course, that Rousseau criticized the whole Enlightenment project in his Discourse on the Sciences and Arts for its excessively broad dissemination of knowledge. He condemns the philosophic popularizers, who, lacking the proper degree of esoteric restraint,

have removed the difficulties that blocked access to the Temple of the Muses and that nature put there as a test of strength for those who might be tempted to learn. . . . [They] have indiscreetly broken down the door of the sciences and let into their sanctuary a populace unworthy of approaching it.⁷¹

But we tend to dismiss this early essay of Rousseau’s—his entry for the competition of the Academy of Dijon—as the idiosyncratic and perhaps insincere outburst of a young contrarian, an isolated incident without serious historical antecedent or consequence. But in addition to the fact that Rousseau’s essay was awarded the prize and indeed made him famous throughout Europe, it was preceded by the parallel and equally famous episode concerning Fontenelle. Together, these two incidents suggest that the precise relation between truth and society remained very much an open question, hotly debated even among the most enlightened elements of society at this time.

To get a sense of this debate, consider a quick list of relevant events occurring during a small slice of the eighteenth century. After Rousseau’s essay won the prize in 1750, it gave rise to a long series of critiques and refutations (including one by King Stanislaus of Poland) and corresponding replies by Rousseau, which stretched on for three years (and eight times as many pages as the original essay). Also, in 1751, the article on esotericism in the Encyclopedia was published. Then, in 1762, the Economic Society of Berne proposed its own essay contest on a related question: “Are there respectable prejudices that a good citizen should hesitate to combat publicly?” In 1763, Voltaire published the Treatise on Toleration, which included a chapter entitled “Whether It Is Useful to Maintain the People in Superstition.” A year later, his Philosophical Dictionary appeared, which contained many entries also bearing on this issue, especially the famous article “Fraud: Should Pious Frauds Be Practiced on the Common People?” This led, in 1765–66, to a long exchange of letters between Voltaire and Mme du Deffand debating this question. In 1769–70, there was a similar epistolary debate between d’Alembert and Frederick the Great of Prussia. In 1770, Holbach laid out a radical and impassioned analysis of the matter in his Essay on Prejudices. To this, Frederick replied, in the same year, in his Examination of the Essay on Prejudices. This, in turn, caused Diderot to step into the fray with his Letter on the Examination of the Essay on Prejudices. In 1776–77, Lessing wrote Ernst and Falk: Dialogues for Freemasons, his discussion of philosophical esotericism. In 1777, Samuel Formey—author of the Encyclopedia article on esotericism—published his Examination of the Question: Are All Truths Good to State? In 1780, yet another essay contest was proposed, this one by the Academy of Berlin (at the urging of Frederick, who had been spurred on by d’Alembert), on the question “Is It Useful to Deceive the People?” Such competitions played a very important role in the intellectual life of the eighteenth century; and this one was uniquely successful, drawing more participants than any previous contest. Roughly a third of the entries argued in the affirmative (in favor of deception), two-thirds in the negative. Condorcet composed an essay for this competition but ultimately published it separately under the title “Critical Reflections on This Question: Is It Useful to Men to Be Deceived?” Four years later, in 1784, Kant produced his famous essay What Is Enlightenment? touching on these same questions.

And all of this literary activity took place in the space of thirty-four years. That is what I am calling a new openness. In the long history of philosophical esotericism stretching back two millennia, there has never been (so far as we know) anything approaching this period of intense open discussion of the central question: the social utility of falsehood and truth.

As to the substance of this debate, the main issue, although certainly not the only one, was religion. On the radical side stood thinkers like Bayle, Diderot, Holbach, and Condorcet whose ultimate goal was a fully secular or atheist society and therefore (by their lights) a fully rational one. On the more moderate side were thinkers such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Frederick the Great, and even Helvétius who, arguing that all societies required some sort of religious support, sought to promote a very basic, deistic civil or moral religion.

To summarize, there were both theoretical and practical motives behind the rise of an extraordinary new openness and intense debate on the subject of esotericism in the eighteenth century. On the theoretical level, the modern “historical turn” meant that the history of philosophy itself now became a crucial datum within philosophical argumentation. In particular, the content and trajectory of past thought were seen as vital empirical evidence for what the human mind, unassisted by revelation, could and could not do. This in turn gave a new theoretical significance, unknown within premodern thought, to the phenomenon and history of esoteric writing, since only if the latter were correctly understood could the history of philosophy and therewith human reason be correctly understood. This naturally led to a great increase in open debate on the subject.

At the same time, on the practical level, the new esotericism, being political, necessarily led to greater openness, since it needed to address an audience far wider than that of classical esotericism. Moreover, it was also political in its means of action: it was (or sought to be) collectiveesotericism, a coordinated activity by the unified body of philosophers. The pursuit of this ever-elusive coordination necessitated much discussion and debate. Finally, the radical newness of the whole philosophico-political project added to the need for this debate. As political esotericists, modern philosophers needed to settle whom they were trying to enlighten, how completely they could hope to enlighten them, and how bold or cautious they ought to be in the pursuit of these and other ends.

Before concluding, one final observation on this topic needs to be made. There is a stunning contrast between this noisy eighteenth-century debate about esotericism and the almost total silence about this debate in contemporary scholarship on the Enlightenment. The best and almost the only discussion of it I have found is Lester Crocker’s “The Problem of Truth and Falsehood in the Age of Enlightenment” (1953), which begins with the following observation:

The new critical rationalism of the Age of Enlightenment conceived as its mission the task of freeing the world from a morass of falsehood. The errors and prejudices that the eighteenth century attacked, and its own explanation of things, have been intensively studied. But the controversy over the premise itself, that errors and prejudices should be destroyed, has been neglected. And yet on no question did the rationalists assemble greater concentration of interest.⁷²

When Roland Mortier produced a study of this same subject in 1969 under the title “Esotérisme et Lumières,” he had the same reaction. Sixteen years later, he could only refer back to Crocker’s article as “the only profound study that touches on this question.”⁷³

In this way, we are reminded once again of the curious obtuseness from which we suffer on this subject. Indeed, it is amazing that a phenomenon that had been debated so openly and intensely could fade from awareness so quickly and completely even among scholars dedicated to that precise period.

This reminder is also timely. In turning now to the second change of attitude that accompanied the rise of political esotericism—a growing hostility to the whole phenomenon—we will also find some of the distant roots of our present blindness.

THE INCREASING AMBIVALENCE AND HOSTILITY TOWARD ESOTERICISM IN MODERNITY

The new political esotericism brought with it, not only heightened openness and debate, but also an increasing level of disapproval or hostility towards esotericism. At first this hostility was simply directed toward the esotericism of the past, both defensive and especially protective. But eventually the adherents of the new, political form also came to feel uneasy regarding their own esoteric practices.

The Rejection of the Old Esotericism

The first half of this change—the turn against the older forms—is easy to understand. After all, the new esotericism is based on the opposite, harmonist premise regarding theory and praxis. Thus, hostility to protective esotericism is the very essence of political esotericism: precisely what the former existed to protect—the irrational traditions and myths of society—the latter arose to undermine and replace. Conversely, the very thing the former endeavored to prevent—the transformation of society through the corrosive power of rationalism—the latter existed to promote.

This new hostility to protective esotericism is on display, for example, in the following statement of Diderot’s from his article “Divination” in the Encyclopedia.

But if the universality of a prejudice [i.e., the practice of divination in the ancient world] can prevent the timid philosopher from defying it, it cannot prevent him from finding it ridiculous; and if he were courageous enough to sacrifice his repose and expose his life in order to disabuse his fellow citizens regarding a system of errors which makes them miserable and wicked, he would only be the more estimable, at least in the eyes of posterity which judges the opinions of past times without partiality. Does it not today consider the books that Cicero wrote on the nature of the gods and on divination as his best writings, even though they must naturally have brought down upon him, from the pagan priests, the injurious titles of impiety, and from those moderate men who hold that one must respect popular prejudices, the epithets of “dangerous and turbulent spirit”? From which it follows that in whatever time and among whatever people it may be, virtue and truth alone merit our respect. Is there not today, in the middle of the eighteenth century, in Paris, still a great deal of courage and merit to casting underfoot the extravagances of paganism? It was under Nero that it was beautiful to denounce Jupiter and that is what the first heroes of Christianity dared to do, and what they would not have done if they had been among these cramped geniuses and these pusillanimous souls that keep truth captive whenever there is some danger in declaring it.⁷⁴

Clearly, Diderot is attacking the practice of protective esotericism that holds that “one must respect popular prejudices” and “keep truth captive” when it might subvert prevailing beliefs. Wherever one is, “truth alone merit[s] our respect.” There are many similar statements to be found in the Encyclopedia—in the articles “Polytheism” and “Greeks,” for example—that criticize the Greek and Roman philosophers for not having been more open in their opposition to the prejudices and superstitions of their day. Let me try to spell out more systematically the argument implicit in Diderot’s somewhat disjointed statement.

The basic claim of ancient protective esotericism is that when philosophers discover the falseness of the basic myths and prejudices of their society, they should keep that discovery mostly to themselves for the good of society. For certain beliefs are essential for the good order of society, above all the religious and superstitious ideas that ground reverence and obedience to the laws. To be sure, these beliefs will also involve superstitions that are irrational, cruel, or offensive. When possible, philosophers may help to selectively trim away the worst of these. But their essential posture will be one of silence and accommodation rather than crusading reform, because it is dangerous to overturn long-standing traditions that are deeply rooted in society. Furthermore, since many of these beliefs stem from the strong superstitious tendencies of the people, they cannot easily be eradicated, and when they are, they are soon replaced by new beliefs, often equally bad or worse. Protective esotericism, then, constitutes the wisest and most socially responsible public posture on the part of the philosophers.

To this, the practitioners of the new political esotericism make essentially the following reply. Society does not in fact require religious support (according to the more radical early moderns) or at least the support of anything more than a minimalist, deistic religion, purged of all the traditional accretions of fable, superstition, and ritual. And while it is agreed that one must proceed very cautiously and gradually in overturning deeply rooted beliefs, it is definitely possible to do so and without great fear of ending up with beliefs that are still worse, because the people are not incurably superstitious. The people are taught their superstitions by the priests and rulers, who invent them as a means for control and oppression. And if the people are also seen to display some spontaneous inclinations to superstition, that too is largely a consequence of this oppression. So the beliefs and myths that are said to be necessary for the good of society are not. They are necessary only for the good of society’s exploiters. Thus, the existence of prejudice and illusion is a condition that both can be changed and must be changed—by opening the fingers of one’s hand slowly one by one.

This reasoning culminates in a complete revaluation of protective esotericism. So far from being the wisest policy, it is based on a fundamental mistake regarding society’s need for religious support. And so far from being the most socially responsible or public-spirited practice, it gives powerful if unwitting aid to society’s oppressors. The philosophers retire to their gardens and abandon the world to its madness. And worse, by their silence or exoteric support, they lend the weight of their authority to that madness, thus stunting progress and reform. In short, protectiveesotericism just protected prejudice—when it should have fought against it. Thus, it prolonged the age of superstition and helped to keep the world ignorant and enslaved.

The source of protective esotericism, on this telling, is a mistake concerning society’s needs—but is it simply an intellectual mistake? In the passage above, Diderot speaks of “the timid philosopher,” “cramped geniuses,” and “pusillanimous souls,” implying that a lack of courage or at least the retiring inclination to live a contemplative life disinclines the philosopher to see the opportunities available for social reform. And this “timidity” he seems to trace in turn to an insufficient love of glory. The philosopher would not only see the opportunities for social progress but find the courage to seize them if only he fully valued the admiration that this would win for him in the eyes of posterity. In other words, not only a revised understanding of society, but a revised understanding of philosophy—a critique of the purely contemplative ideal—is an important element in the new critique of protective esotericism.⁷⁵ Such was the character and basis of the attack by the early modern philosophers on the old form of esotericism.

The Self-Loathing of the New Esotericism

But powerful as it was, this attack led modern philosophers not to the wholesale rejection of esotericism as such but rather, as we have seen, to the development of a new, political form, necessary for their new project of enlightenment. And this new esotericism became very widely and vigorously practiced.

Yet, for all that, the new esotericism never became, like the premodern forms, a stable phenomenon with an untroubled conscience. In many thinkers of this period one detects an ambivalence bordering on distaste toward their own esoteric practice. This ambivalence is no accident, but results from the fact that political esotericism is in inherent tension with itself. The fundamental basis and goal of the new esotericism is the eventual harmony of politics and truth, social order and freedom of thought. Thus, it is embraced for the precise purpose of creating a world in which it will no longer be necessary. It is merely a means, a necessary evil. But more, it is a means that works by (temporarily) violating the end that it seeks. It is a conspiracy to create openness. A lie designed to end all lying. Political esotericists censor themselves out of a longing for freedom of thought and speech. How could they not chafe at the employment of such means? If they do not hate these means, how could they love the ends for which they use them? Disliking this new esotericism is the very motive for adopting it.

In comparison with this anguished self-contradiction, premodern esotericism—defensive, protective, and pedagogical—comes to light as remarkably self-consistent, stable, and harmonious. All three of the classical philosopher’s fundamental aims—defending himself, protecting society, and educating the potential philosophers—are served by the same policy of concealing his thought. Thus, for example, the great “cowardice problem” that so plagues early modern philosophers scarcely arises, because if a thinker is unusually cautious and concealed, he cannot be accused of timidly selling out the cause of society, since that same policy of caution is also seen as the most socially beneficial (although it might hinder his would-be students and disciples).

Again, the premodern esotericists give no sign of resenting the esoteric restraint they need to exercise. They see it as something to be proud of. No particular disgrace or humiliation attaches to the cautious behavior needed to mollify the censors (except under extreme circumstances) because this same caution would be exercised for other reasons, even in the absence of censorship. Nor do they think that proper censorship is itself an unreasonable thing: they do not live in outrage at a world without free speech. In sum, esoteric restraint is in no way associated, in their eyes, either with the vice of cowardice or with the humiliation of yielding to brute force. Quite the opposite, it strikes them as a genuine virtue of character, indeed the great classical virtue: moderation. Esotericism is precisely the virtue of moderation in the sphere of speech: to be a “safe speaker,” to keep a civil tongue that stays within the narrow limits of what is best for all concerned. The wise are properly men of few words.

Many of the modern, political esotericists, by contrast, tended to very much resent the need for esoteric restraint, even as they acknowledged the temporary (but protracted) necessity for it. It was a policy not a virtue—and a policy premised on the view that the concealment of truth was ultimately a great misfortune for all concerned. Thus John Toland, in his treatise on esotericism, acknowledges and describes the necessity for esoteric restraint in a world without free speech—but, as we have seen, he also rails against it:

To what sneaking equivocations, to what wretched shifts and subterfuges, are men of excellent endowments forced to have recourse . . . merely to escape disgrace or starving?⁷⁶

Similarly, Diderot, to quote once again his letter to Hemsterhuis, frankly confesses his use of esotericism, but still betrays real bitterness in describing how “intolerance has constrained the truth and dressed philosophy in a clown suit, so that posterity, struck by their contradictions, of which they don’t know the cause, will not know how to discern their true sentiments.”⁷⁷ And therefore he declares elsewhere: “I love a philosophy clear, clean and frank, such as in the System of Nature and even more in Good Sense [by Holbach].”⁷⁸

One other aspect of the modern discomfort with esotericism is also indicated here when Diderot complains that posterity will misread present esoteric authors and not know how to “discern their true sentiments.” In a letter to Mme d’Epinay, the abbé Galiani expresses a related concern about the common practice of publishing books pseudonymically by attributing them to deceased authors.

I do not like very much that the practice of attributing new works to the dead is spreading; that will be furiously puzzling to posterity. At least there ought to be a secret archive that restores works to their true authors when the latter pass away in their turn.⁷⁹

The point of these latter objections is this. We have seen in the long passage of Diderot’s quoted above that, in his view, what pushes the modern philosopher beyond the ancient posture of contemplative withdrawal and inspirits him to risk his life to rid the world of prejudice is primarily the love of glory. But if that is the case, then the modern philosopher must chafe at the necessity to remain concealed. He wishes to be fully seen and understood, especially by posterity. So once again, we find a dislike of political esotericism on the part of its very practitioners—a dislike that grows inevitably out of the tension existing between this practice and the motives for employing it.

In sum, the new political esotericism, by its very definition and inner logic, gives rise to two fundamental shifts in philosophic attitudes toward esotericism: an increase in openness—and in hostility. The latter, in turn, takes two forms: a hostility to protective esotericism for protecting what it should have subverted, and a hostility to political esotericism itself for embracing dissimulation and self-censorship for the sake of truthfulness and free speech.

OUR RESISTANCE AND BLINDNESS TO ESOTERICISM

The later modern abandonment of the practice of esotericism in all its forms is a direct consequence of political esotericism’s new double hostility, which first sweeps away the classical forms and then, in a final act of self-overcoming, sweeps itself away too.

But the primary issue of interest to us is not that people eventually stopped practicing esotericism, which is easy enough to understand, but that after a certain point they stopped believing that anyone else had ever practiced it either. This is the strange forgetting that we have been laboring to understand.

In each of the previous chapters, we have explored how the various principles and commitments of our world—our humanistic, harmonistic, enlightening, scientific, egalitarian, homogeneous, liberal, authenticity-loving, progress-oriented world—have generated a combination of wishful and anachronistic thinking that powerfully undermines in our eyes the whole plausibility of esoteric behavior. The present chapter furthers the discussion in two ways.

First, regarding political esotericism, we have seen that, on the one hand, it is perhaps the easiest of the four forms to understand and credit and, furthermore, that its own inner logic led it to an unusual degree of public openness. Nevertheless, we still find it hard to believe that philosophers in any number ever engaged in it—and for the same reason that its practitioners themselves eventually came to feel uneasy about it: it is internally contradictory. It employs secrecy to promote openness. Thus, we find it incredible that the Encyclopedia, for example, could have been written esoterically. To us, the idea of “Enlightenment esotericism” seems a plain contradiction in terms. What we have forgotten here or not sufficiently appreciated is that during this period philosophy, having hurled itself into the realm of political action, was indeed forced to accept the contradictions between ends and means that commonly afflict that realm.

At the same time, the plausibility of the classical forms of esotericism was also undermined by the long-term success of political esotericism. As the Enlightenment experiment moved forward, overturning old prejudices and superstitions, and (in most places) without dire consequences or social collapse, the whole premise of protective esotericism—that a healthy society absolutely requires prejudices and illusions—came to seem less and less plausible. The slow march of progress—the improvement of the world through the public dissemination of truth—slowly buried the conflictual perspective, until people forgot that it had ever been there. It came to seem that classical rationalism was always nothing but a nascent form of eighteenth-century rationalism—harmonist, enlightening, and progressive. The Enlightenment image of the philosopher—the public-spirited rationalist bringing light to the world—came to seem the only one. And therefore esotericism was never anything but the practice of mystics and astrologers.