Customer Reviews

The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (The Storrs Lectures Series)

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Carl Becker's work is a classic in the field whether or not one agrees with his thesis. He contends that the French Enlightenment thinkers tried unsuccessfully to distance themselves from the religious mileaux from which they came. Looking back from a vantage point nearly 150 years later, it is clear that while their ideas were advanced, the "utopia" they sought to establish was closer to the thinkers of the Reformation period 300 years earlier than to thinkers of the latter 19th and early 20th centuries. Any serious student of this period should at least scan this author's work as all subsequent scholarship has had to stake a stand for or against his position - thus to understand scholarship in the past 20 years - read this book.

I was prompted to write this review to give some balance to what a previous review stated. I encountered this book, for the first time, as an undergraduate in a history course. I was forever grateful to the professor for requiring its reading, and grateful to the author for his insightful and important work. I think this book should be mandatory reading in any history course emcompassing the period, and any course that looks to understand the genesis of the ideologies that permeate our period. I think the previous reviewer was very incorrect in her understanding of the issues and facts brought out by the book. I think the professor was serving his class, and profession, well by requiring the book. The book gives indispensable insights into the mind, and characters of the period. The thinking of that period still heavily influences contemporary American, European, and now global, political and social thought. Most readers will be very gratified having read the book, to see where their own thinking has been influenced and formed. The book is both scholarly and readable. There are great insights made that should not me be missed.

I certainly agree with the favorable review above. Having read Becker's work at Vanderbilt during my undergraduate years, I pulled it out the other day and traveled its pages with my underlining of 40 years ago. It is still the best work I have ever read that points to the fundamental thinkers that changed the world by sparking the 18th century revolutionary notion of the devine rights of mankind, the notion of societial freedom as the basis for productive and moral living and the notion, which is ultimately correct, that governments are evil at their very core and, as such, should be minimially powered and minimally intrusive upon citizens. The work outlines the philosophic roots of the thinking of the founders of the United States of America and the since evolved thinking of the governments of England and France. It was by these viens of thinking that the notions of representative government by election of the populace, inalienable rights, the notion of "human rights" and "civil rights" themselves were born. I am at a loss to understand how any right thinking individual could see the work as otherwise motivated--however many in our world, communities, and especially in our academic ivory towers of today have lost reason and faith in simple truth in favor of caretaker world societies and rank sensualism and materialism. They run from the notion that our rights have origin in a heavenly charter that comes from a supreme being. It is that frightened character that we so often see today snarling out of bitter university perpetuants who see life and society as unjust and unfair because their "genius" is not appreciated and awarded laurels by the whole of our society. We had these bitter little minds in schools that I attended 50 years ago, and they are still with us--and flourishing. Think for yourself--read this book. It will give you insight that you may not find elsewhere. ----JCH

Some of the reviewers here characterize this work as shallow, rambling, self-contradictory, and the product of a lost soul. Nothing could be further from the truth. Carl Becker's essay is a wonderful addition to the historical analysis of our culture, our changing perspectives in it, and of our evolving mindsets. I believe it should be required reading of any college student, if only to broaden their horizons and step outside the parochial and into the universal.

I am convinced of the books thesis "the underlying preconceptions of eighteenth century thought were still...essentially the same as those of the thirteenth century." However, I do not find this thesis fulfilled throughout the three lectures collected in this text. 1) The so-called "heavenly city" of St. Augustine (from where the title of the book is derived) is never quoted, 2) St Thomas who is quoted once, is used as a convenient metonym for all that is representative of 13th century scholastic philosophy. However, even this allusion to St. Thomas,the author cautions us that his writings appear to the modern "us" as "non-sensical rigmaroles" and his arguments are "unintelligible" which we can never "meet its arguments on their own ground."(11 )Beckers assumption is that each period of time follows the a climate of opinion "I am limited to the preconceptions of my age", which Becker carefully defines our own through the use of entropic physics. 3) What follows from this, is a typical early 20th century, historian craft elitism in such statements as "no serious scholar would now postulate the existence of God....No respectable historian any longer harbor ulterior motives...of a transcendent interpretation....would straightaway lose his reputation...."

How does one prove the thesis that "philosophes have a debt to medieval thought without being aware of it."(30) when the latter period is "unintelligible" and history is always "an imaginative reconstruction of vanished events...." Another 13th century scholastic philosopher who Becker forgets, Dun Scotus once argued "how can we define the relationship between terms if one of the relata is unknown?"

Maybe this book deserves to be read alongside Gilson and other apologists for Aquinas and Medieval Scholasticism of the 1930s and 40s, although, even this honor, is probably unmerited since Medieval Scholasticism is absent from the entire text. Rather, we receive an unhistorical work filled with artful analogies and resemblances between the general medieval world view and the enlightenment world view. His argument in general follows this formula: General Christian ritual, belief, X (without any sources referenced), was substituted with Y in the 18th-century. So, "posterity is for philosopher what the other world is for the religious." "For the worship of God, Diderot has substituted posterity." "for the love of god, they substituted love of humanity" "celestial heaven...to be rebuilt on earth" etc

I think my cynical side, agrees with another reviewer here, that this work fails as "proper' history, with its internal contradictions and superficial cursory comparisons between the two ages. Clearly, the judgement of posterity for a work such as this, is "let us laugh at him."(40)

Carl Becker once unknown to me became the bane of an entire class of students as we explored in horrifying depth how Becker writes about the 18th and 19th centuries. In this book you are subjected to a historian who tries to catalogue philosophy and the philosophers of the 18th century in a poor blend of factual history and intepreted philosophy. The book is laced with so much cynicism that it becomes hard to scry which sections Becker stands behind and which he pokes fun at. After the unfortunate ordeal of reading this book you will see that Becker had a loss of faith at some point in his life and feels that everything around him is now meaningless, therefore he turns to the past to seek new meaning and redemption of his now useless life. What we find instead is a convoluted text which seems to be hailed as wonderful by religious zealots for its admonishments of science, philosophy, and history as empty in the grand scheme of the world. He contradicts himself so often that only after you pore over his text can you even decide what he supports. My opinion: skip the book and bash your head into the wall. You will get about as much satisfaction.