Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment

by Franco Venturi

In this detailed study of the republican tradition in the development of the Enlightenment, the central problem of utopia and reform is crystallized in a discussion of the right to punish. Describing the political situation in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the author shows how the old republics in Italy, Poland and Holland stagnated and were unable to survive in the age of absolutism. The Philosophes discussed the ideal of republicanism against this background. They were particularly influenced by the political and religious radicalism of John Toland, which had survived the English Restoration and was then reaching Europe. Professor Venturi traces the debate on the penal laws and the attempt to relate utopian ideas of society to the practical problem of dealing with man in society, which culminated in the assertion by many Philosophes that an unjust social system necessitated harsh penal laws, thereby rejecting the possibility of reform.

Genres: History

166 pages, Hardcover

First published January 2, 1971

Reviews

[Varad · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a series of five lectures Venturi delivered at Cambridge in 1968 or 1969. The overarching subject, as the title indicates, is the relationship between utopia and reform in Enlightenment political thought. That is, the question of whether the goal should be to reform society or to remake it wholesale.

One of the interesting things about the book is Venturi's focus on republican thought just at the beginning of its ascendance to a pride of place in the historiography of European intellectual history. He's wrote well before Skinner and Pocock's books came to define that tradition, but you can see it here in incipient form. One thing he insists on is that republicanism as thinkers in the eighteenth century understood it was based on the recent history of the Italian and Dutch republics, not the ancient republics which would be adopted to give a heritage to "classical" republicanism.

By taking "the impact of the republican tradition on the development of the Enlightenment" (17) as his key, Venturi gives the Enlightenment a political cast it hasn't always had. In this he follows Peter Gay's Voltaire's Politics, a book he cites with approval. The stereotype of the Enlightenment was that its leading figures had no experience of politics and theorized from a position of fundamental ignorance and naivety; hence the utopian, unreal quality of their proposals. Gay went a long way towards exploding that stereotype and Venturi helps to clear away some of the rubble. The Enlightenment was always a political movement, led by political men with political aims. It had a decidedly practical strain, and its leaders were committed to dealing with problems in the here and now.

Hence their concern with issues like the fate of republics, the nature of government, the practicalities of reform, and the like. Venturi focuses on one specific issue, "the right to punish," that is, criminal, judicial, and penal reform. Championed by Beccaria and others in the 1760s, this cause became a symbol of the Enlightenment's reforming impulses.

Venturi's book is a little one. Under 140 pages, it is by no means a comprehensive account of the Enlightenment; it is not even a comprehensive account of the main issues Venturi tackles. It is, instead, suggestive. What it suggests is that the Enlightenment's thinkers were serious about the problems of the societies in which they lived, and were serious about reforming them as best they could. They weren't always successful, but they didn't shirk from confronting them, contrary to what has often been said about them. That they weren't successful should not surprise us. After all, it was not an enlightened age, but merely an age of enlightenment. An age of reform, not an age of utopia.


Posted April 3, 2015

[pal:) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Libretto piccolo ma tosto! Franco Venturi scrive facendomi sentire un po' ignorate per la quantità di cose/persone che cita e che non ho mai sentito nominare, ma affronta temi che si sono rivelati interessanti

[Willy Marz Thiessam · Rating 5 out of 5]

"It is rather the history of political ideas, the relationship between the forces of social enthusiasm..to the forces of the burgeoning utopias of a human society... Thus, it involves, on the one hand, a discussion of principle and on the other, a consideration of concrete problems."

This is Venturi in a nutshell. Here, in this work on the Enlightenment and democracy, we see a brilliant execution of Venturi's genius. He gives us the most complete context of the development of ideas to problems and developments to completion.

In no sense do we find Venturi looking to a history that is narrow. We do not find a history that makes today explicable from the concatenation of events that led to this moment. Instead, he is interested and the expert in, finding how ideas and concrete problems interplay with each other. The problems exist, and we have ideas on how to fix the problems. But situations are complex, and every interpretation presents a dilemma in fulfilling the ideal.

Venturi shows in "Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment" how ideals by the great philosophes were created in context to specific problems being faced by monarchies and still existing democracies. This is not a Right-Left analysis but one where a systemic standoff existed between competing necessities in thinking and survival.

There is much to love here, and much to find frustrating. Venturi is the king of detail, as those who have read his work on Russia, "The Roots of Revolution" will agree. This book as like all his others will drive you mad with exactness, but as long as you realize he throws it out there to show the broad lay of the land you should be fine. The details are not there to be memorized, often the details are unimportant, and Venturi presents this information merely to demonstrate exactly that.