The Impact of the Encyclopédie: From Censorship to Revolution

The Encyclopédie, published in France between 1751 and 1772, had a profound and lasting impact on the development of French intellectual life, on the political events that led to the French Revolution, and on the subsequent history of modern thought. This article examines the various dimensions of this impact, including the cultural, the political, and the intellectual.

The Cultural Impact

The Encyclopédie was one of the great publishing events of the eighteenth century, and it had a profound impact on French cultural life. The work made the new philosophy accessible to a wide audience, and it helped to create a public for the ideas of the Enlightenment.

The work was, in many respects, a model of what the Enlightenment could be. It was a collaborative project, drawing on the contributions of the most advanced scientists, engineers, and craftsmen of France. It was comprehensive, attempting to summarize all human knowledge in a single reference work. And it was politically engaged, subjecting the established institutions of the Old Regime to a systematic critical examination.

The Encyclopédie also had a significant impact on the development of French literature. The work was a model of clear, accessible prose, and it helped to establish the French language as the international language of the Enlightenment. The work’s success in establishing the French language as the language of European intellectual life was one of the most important cultural consequences of the project.

The Political Impact

The Encyclopédie had a profound political impact, especially on the development of the French Revolution. The work subjected the established institutions of the Old Regime — the monarchy, the aristocracy, the church, the legal system — to a systematic critical examination, and it provided a comprehensive statement of the principles of the new philosophy.

The political vocabulary of the Revolution — liberty, equality, the rights of man, the sovereignty of the people — was, in important respects, the vocabulary of the Encyclopédie. The revolutionary leaders, especially in the early years of the Revolution, often cited the Encyclopédie as a source of their political principles, and the various political projects of the revolutionary period drew on the framework established by the Encyclopédie.

The Encyclopédie was also an important source of the anti-clericalism that was a major feature of the French Revolution. The work subjected the Catholic Church to a sustained critical examination, and it provided much of the intellectual ammunition for the revolutionary attack on the church. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790), the confiscation of church property, and the eventual establishment of the Cult of the Supreme Being were all, descendants of the Encyclopédie’s critique of the church.

The Intellectual Impact

The Encyclopédie had a profound intellectual impact, both on the development of the various academic disciplines and on the development of modern thought more generally.

The work was an important factor in the development of the modern encyclopedia as a form. The various encyclopedias that appeared in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries — the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Conversations-Lexikon, the Enciclopedia italiana — were all, descendants of the Encyclopédie, and they all drew on the model established by Diderot and d’Alembert.

The work was also an important factor in the development of the modern social sciences. The articles on economics, on politics, on society, and on the various other subjects that we now associate with the social sciences were among the most innovative parts of the work, and they helped to establish the framework for the development of these disciplines in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Encyclopédie was also an important factor in the development of the modern conception of the role of the intellectual in public life. The work demonstrated the possibility of a collective intellectual enterprise that could both advance the frontiers of knowledge and contribute to the public discussion of the great issues of the day. The modern conception of the intellectual as a public figure, with a responsibility to engage with the political and social questions of the time, is a direct descendant of the Encyclopédie’s example.

The International Impact

The Encyclopédie had a significant impact on the international development of the Enlightenment. The work was translated into several languages, and the various pirated editions and adaptations of the work had a still wider impact. The Encyclopédie was a major force in the spread of the French Enlightenment to other countries, and it helped to establish the French language as the international language of intellectual life in the eighteenth century.

The work was particularly influential in the German-speaking lands, where the Encyclopédie was a major source of the German Aufklärung. The German translations and adaptations of the work, including the various attempts by German publishers to produce German-language versions of the Encyclopédie, were an important factor in the development of the German Enlightenment.

The work was also influential in the Americas. The American revolutionaries, including Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, were familiar with the Encyclopédie, and the political principles that the work developed were an important source of the American political tradition.

The Lasting Significance

The Encyclopédie was one of the most important and most influential publications of the eighteenth century, and it has had a lasting impact on the development of modern thought. The work was a major force in the development of the French Enlightenment, and it was an important source of the political principles that informed the American and French revolutions.

Further Reading

• Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (1982)
• Darrin McMahon, Enlightenment Contested (2006)
• Daniel Roche, The Enlightenment in the West (2010)