“Maybe we should have listened to them.”
“For some, the new catchphrase was back to nature. But ‘nature’ to the Enlightenment philosophers meant almost the same as ‘reason,’ since human reason was a gift of nature rather than of religion or of ‘civilization.’ It was observed that the so-called primitive peoples were frequently both healthier and happier than Europeans, and this, it was said, was because they had not been ‘civilized.’ Rousseau proposed the catchphrase, ‘We should return to nature.’ For nature is good, and man is ‘by nature’ good; it is civilization which ruins him. Rousseau also believed that the child should be allowed to remain in its ‘naturally’ innocent state as long as possible. It would not be wrong to say that the idea of the intrinsic value of childhood dates from the Enlightenment. Previously, childhood had been considered merely a preparation for adult life. But we are all human beings—and we live our life on this earth, even when we are children.”
“I should think so!”
“Religion, they thought, had to be made natural.”
“What exactly did they mean by that?”
“They meant that religion also had to be brought into harmony with ‘natural’ reason. There were many who fought for what one could call a natural religion, and that is the sixth point on the list. At the time there were a lot of confirmed materialists who did not believe in a God, and who professed to atheism. But most of the Enlightenment philosophers thought it was irrational to imagine a world without God. The world was far too rational for that. Newton held the same view, for example. It was also considered rational to believe in the immortality of the soul. Just as for Descartes, whether or not man has an immortal soul was held to be more a question of reason than of faith.”
“That I find very strange. To me, it’s a typical case of what you believe, not of what you know.”
“That’s because you don’t live in the eighteenth century. According to the Enlightenment philosophers, what religion needed was to be stripped of all the irrational dogmas or doctrines that had got attached to the simple teachings of Jesus during the course of ecclesiastical history.”
“I see.”
“Many people consequently professed to what is known as Deism.”
“What is that?”
“By Deism we mean a belief that God created the world ages and ages ago, but has not revealed himself to the world since. Thus God is reduced to the ‘Supreme Being’ who only reveals himself to mankind through nature and natural laws, never in any ‘supernatural’ way. We find a similar ‘philosophical God’ in the writings of Aristotle. For him, God was the ‘formal cause’ or ‘first mover.’”
“So now there’s only one point left, human rights.”
“And yet this is perhaps the most important. On the whole, you could say that the French Enlightenment was more practical than the English philosophy.”
“You mean they lived according to their philosophy?”
“Yes, very much so. The French Enlightenment philosophers did not content themselves with theoretical views on man’s place in society. They fought actively for what they called the ‘natural rights’ of the citizen. At first, this took the form of a campaign against censorship—for the freedom of the press. But also in matters of religion, morals, and politics, the individual’s right to freedom of thought and utterance had to be secured. They also fought for the abolition of slavery and for a more humane treatment of criminals.”
“I think I agree with most of that.”
“The principle of the ‘inviolability of the individual’ culminated in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen adopted by the French National Assembly in 1789. This Declaration of Human Rights was the basis for our own Norwegian Constitution of 1814.”
“But a lot of people still have to fight for these rights.”
“Yes, unhappily. But the Enlightenment philosophers wanted to establish certain rights that everybody was entitled to simply by being born. That was what they meant by natural rights.
“We still speak of a ‘natural right’ which can often be in conflict with the laws of the land. And we constantly find individuals, or even whole nations, that claim this ‘natural right’ when they rebel against anarchy, servitude, and oppression.”
“What about women’s rights?”
“The French Revolution in 1787 established a number of rights for all ‘citizens.’ But a citizen was nearly always considered to be a man. Yet it was the French Revolution that gave us the first inklings of feminism.”
“It was about time!”
“As early as 1787 the Enlightenment philosopher Condorcet published a treatise on the rights of women. He held that women had the same ‘natural rights’ as men. During the Revolution of 1789, women were extremely active in the fight against the old feudal regime. For example, it was women who led the demonstrations that forced the king away from his palace at Versailles. Women’s groups were formed in Paris. In addition to the demand for the same political rights as men, they also demanded changes in the marriage laws and in women’s social conditions.”
“Did they get equal rights?”
“No. Just as on so many subsequent occasions, the question of women’s rights was exploited in the heat of the struggle, but as soon as things fell into place in a new regime, the old male-dominated society was reintroduced.”
“Typical!”
“One of those who fought hardest for the rights of women during the French Revolution was Olympe de Gouges. In 1791—two years after the revolution—she published a declaration on the rights of women. The declaration on the rights of the citizen had not included any article on women’s natural rights. Olympe de Gouges now demanded all the same rights for women as for men.”
“What happened?”
“She was beheaded in 1793. And all political activity for women was banned.”
“How shameful!”
“It was not until the nineteenth century that feminism really got under way, not only in France but also in the rest of Europe. Little by little this struggle began to bear fruit. But in Norway, for example, women did not get the right to vote until 1913. And women in many parts of the world still have a lot to fight for.”
“They can count on my support.”
Alberto sat looking across at the lake. After a minute or two he said:
“That was more or less what I wanted to say about the Enlightenment.”
“What do you mean by more or less?”
“I have the feeling there won’t be any more.”
But as he said this, something began to happen in the middle of the lake. Something was bubbling up from the depths. A huge and hideous creature rose from the surface.
“A sea serpent!” cried Sophie.
The dark monster coiled itself back and forth a few times and then disappeared back into the depths. The water was as still as before.
Alberto had turned away.
“Now we’ll go inside,” he said.
They went into the little hut.
Sophie stood looking at the two pictures of Berkeley and Bjerkely. She pointed to the picture of Bjerkely and said:
“I think Hilde lives somewhere inside that picture.”
An embroidered sampler now hung between the two pictures. It read: LIBERTY, EQUALITY, AND FRATERNITY
Sophie turned to Alberto: “Did you hang that there?”
He just shook his head with a disconsolate expression.
Then Sophie discovered a small envelope on the mantelpiece. “To Hilde and Sophie,” it said. Sophie knew at once who it was from, but it was a new turn of events that he had begun to count on her.
She opened the letter and read aloud:
Dear both of you,
Sophie’s philosophy teacher ought to have underlined the significance of the French Enlightenment for the ideals and principles the UN is founded on. Two hundred years ago, the slogan “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” helped unite the people of France. Today the same words sho
uld unite the whole world. It is more important now than ever before to be one big Family of Man. Our descendants are our own children and grandchildren. What kind of world are they inheriting from us?
Hilde’s mother was calling from downstairs that the mystery was starting in ten minutes and that she had put the pizza in the oven. Hilde was quite exhausted after all she had read. She had been up since six o’clock this morning.
She decided to spend the rest of the evening celebrating her birthday with her mother. But first she had to look something up in her encyclopedia.
Gouges…no. De Gouges? No again. Olympe de Gouges? Still a blank. This encyclopedia had not written one single word about the woman who was beheaded for her political commitment. Wasn’t that scandalous!
She was surely not just someone her father had thought up?
Hilde ran downstairs to get a bigger encyclopedia.
“I just have to look something up,” she said to her astounded mother.
She took the FORV to GP volume of the big family encyclopedia and ran up to her room again.
Gouges…there she was!
Gouges, Marie Olympe (1748–1793), Fr. author, played a prominent role during the French Revolution with numerous brochures on social questions and several plays. One of the few during the Revolution who campaigned for human rights to apply to women. In 1791 published “Declaration on the Rights of Women.” Beheaded in 1793 for daring to defend Louis XVI and oppose Robespierre. (Lit: L. Lacour, “Les Origines du féminisme contemporain,” 1900)
Kant
…the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me…
It was close to midnight before Major Albert Knag called home to wish Hilde a happy birthday. Hilde’s mother answered the telephone.
“It’s for you, Hilde.”
“Hello?”
“It’s Dad.”
“Are you crazy? It’s nearly midnight!”
“I just wanted to say Happy Birthday…”
“You’ve been doing that all day.”
“…but I didn’t want to call before the day was over.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t you get my present?”
“Yes, I did. Thank you very much.”
“I can’t wait to hear what you think of it.”
“It’s terrific. I have hardly eaten all day, it’s so exciting.”
“I have to know how far you’ve gotten.”
“They just went inside the major’s cabin because you started teasing them with a sea serpent.”
“The Enlightenment.”
“And Olympe de Gouges.”
“So I didn’t get it completely wrong.”
“Wrong in what way?”
“I think there’s one more birthday greeting to come. But that one is set to music.”
“I’d better read a little more before I go to sleep.”
“You haven’t given up, then?”
“I’ve learned more in this one day than ever before. I can hardly believe that it’s less than twenty-four hours since Sophie got home from school and found the first envelope.”
“It’s strange how little time it takes to read.”
“But I can’t help feeling sorry for her.”
“For Mom?”
“No, for Sophie, of course.”
“Why?”
“The poor girl is totally confused.”
“But she’s only…”
“You were going to say she’s only made up.”
“Yes, something like that.”
“I think Sophie and Alberto really exist.”
“We’ll talk more about it when I get home.”
“Okay.”
“Have a nice day.”
“What?”
“I mean good night.”
“Good night.”
When Hilde went to bed half an hour later it was still so light that she could see the garden and the little bay. It never got really dark at this time of the year.
She played with the idea that she was inside a picture hanging on the wall of the little cabin in the woods. She wondered if one could look out of the picture into what surrounded it.
Before she fell asleep, she read a few more pages in the big ring binder.
Sophie put the letter from Hilde’s father back on the mantel.
“What he says about the UN is not unimportant,” said Alberto, “but I don’t like him interfering in my presentation.”
“I don’t think you should worry too much about that.”
“Nevertheless, from now on I intend to ignore all extraordinary phenomena such as sea serpents and the like. Let’s sit here by the window while I tell you about Kant.”
Sophie noticed a pair of glasses lying on a small table between two armchairs. She also noticed that the lenses were red.
Maybe they were strong sunglasses…
“It’s almost two o’clock,” she said. “I have to be home before five. Mom has probably made plans for my birthday.”
“That gives us three hours.”
“Let’s start.”
“Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in the East Prussian town of Königsberg, the son of a master saddler. He lived there practically all his life until he died at the age of eighty. His family was deeply pious, and his own religious conviction formed a significant background to his philosophy. Like Berkeley, he felt it was essential to preserve the foundations of Christian belief.”
“I’ve heard enough about Berkeley, thanks.”
“Kant was the first of the philosophers we have heard about so far to have taught philosophy at a university. He was a professor of philosophy.”
“Professor?”
“There are two kinds of philosophers. One is a person who seeks his own answers to philosophical questions. The other is someone who is an expert on the history of philosophy but does not necessarily construct his own philosophy.”
“And Kant was that kind?”
“Kant was both. If he had simply been a brilliant professor and an expert on the ideas of other philosophers, he would never have carved a place for himself in the history of philosophy. But it is important to note that Kant had a solid grounding in the philosophic tradition of the past. He was familiar both with the rationalism of Descartes and Spinoza and the empiricism of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume.”
“I asked you not to mention Berkeley again.”
“Remember that the rationalists believed that the basis for all human knowledge lay in the mind. And that the empiricists believed all knowledge of the world proceeded from the senses. Moreover, Hume had pointed out that there are clear limits regarding which conclusions we could reach through our sense perceptions.”
“And who did Kant agree with?”
“He thought both views were partly right, but he thought both were partly wrong, too. The question everybody was concerned with was what we can know about the world. This philosophical project had been preoccupying all philosophers since Descartes.
“Two main possibilities were drawn up: either the world is exactly as we perceive it, or it is the way it appears to our reason.”
“And what did Kant think?”
“Kant thought that both ‘sensing’ and ‘reason’ come into play in our conception of the world. But he thought the rationalists went too far in their claims as to how much reason can contribute, and he also thought the empiricists placed too much emphasis on sensory experience.”
“If you don’t give me an example soon, it will all be just a bunch of words.”
“In his point of departure Kant agrees with Hume and the empiricists that all our knowledge of the world comes from our sensations. But—and here Kant stretches his hand out to the rationalists—in our reason there are also decisive factors that determine how we perceive the world around us. In other words, there are certain conditions in the human mind that are contributive to our conception of the world.”
“You call that an example?”
“Let us rather do a lit
tle experiment. Could you bring those glasses from the table over there? Thank you. Now put them on.”
Sophie put the glasses on. Everything around her became red. The pale colors became pink and the dark colors became crimson.
“What do you see?”
“I see exactly the same as before, except that it’s all red.”
“That’s because the glasses limit the way you perceive reality. Everything you see is part of the world around you, but how you see it is determined by the glasses you are wearing. So you cannot say the world is red even though you conceive it as being so.”
“No, naturally.”
“If you now took a walk in the woods, or home to Captain’s Bend, you would see everything the way you normally do. But whatever you saw, it would all be red.”
“As long as I didn’t take the glasses off, yes.”
“And that, Sophie, is precisely what Kant meant when he said that there are certain conditions governing the mind’s operation which influence the way we experience the world.”
“What kind of conditions?”
“Whatever we see will first and foremost be perceived as phenomena in time and space. Kant called ‘time’ and ‘space’ our two ‘forms of intuition.’ And he emphasized that these two ‘forms’ in our own mind precede every experience. In other words, we can know before we experience things that we will perceive them as phenomena in time and space. For we are not able to take off the ‘glasses’ of reason.”
“So he thought that perceiving things in time and space was innate?”
“Yes, in a way. What we see may depend on whether we are raised in India or Greenland, but wherever we are, we experience the world as a series of processes in time and space. This is something we can say beforehand.”
“But aren’t time and space things that exist beyond ourselves?”
“No. Kant’s idea was that time and space belong to the human condition. Time and space are first and foremost modes of perception and not attributes of the physical world.”
“That was a whole new way of looking at things.”
“For the mind of man is not just ‘passive wax’ which simply receives sensations from outside. The mind leaves its imprint on the way we apprehend the world. You could compare it with what happens when you pour water into a glass pitcher. The water adapts itself to the pitcher’s form. In the same way our perceptions adapt themselves to our ‘forms of intuition.’”
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