The age of Enlightenment is certainly one of the most exciting periods in the history of sciences and philosophy (see, for example, the classic studies of Hazard 1935, 1946; Gay 1966, 1969).
This is especially true in France where the number of first- rank philosophers and scientists, the so-called “philosophes”, is astonishing - from Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) to Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat de Condorcet (17431794), including Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657-1757), Charles-Louis de Secondat de Montesquieu (1689-1755), Franςois-Marie Arouet (Voltaire) (1694-1778), Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Denis Diderot (1713-1784), Claude-Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771), Etienne Bonnot de Condillac (1715-1780), Jean Le Rond d’Alembert (1717-1783), Paul Henri Thiry d’Holbach (1723-1789) and Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794), to mention only some of the most celebrated among them.
The age extends from the second half of the seventeenth century right up to the French Revolution, which epitomises its climax. Building on the development of modern sciences started in the early seventeenth century, it brought progressively a radical change in all the fields of knowledge and thought. Not surprisingly, this intellectual groundswell also provoked numerous reactions, both during and after the period, which formed the various Anti- or CounterEnlightenment traditions still active today (see, for example, Monod 1916; Masseau 2000; McMahon 2001; Sternhell 2006 [2009]).A European movement of ideas, the Enlightenment naturally presented a great diversity of writings and opinions, accentuated by the different national contexts, and gave rise to sometimes diverging interpretations - the more recent debates dealing with the distinction between a “radical” and a “moderate” Enlightenment (see Jacob 1981 [2006]; Israel 2001, 2006, 2010, and some related discussion - for example, Fmssel 2009; Bove et al. 2007; Lilti 2009; Miklaszewska and Tomaszewska 2014). In spite of this, during this period, authors broadly shared some fundamental values of autonomy and freedom, universality and toleration, experimentation and the “reign of reason”, perfectibility - all that is supposed to aim at the happiness of humankind and to found modernity.
The Encyclopedic, ou Dictionnaire raisonne des sciences, des arts et des metiers, edited by Diderot and d’Alembert from 1751 to 1772, is considered the flagship of this period, the best testimony of a revolution in thought and attitudes. There, in the entry “Philosophe”, the “philosophe” is depicted as firmly having his feet on the ground, acting for the benefit of all human beings:Ourphilosophe does not believe... to be in exile in this world;... he wishes to enjoy as a wise aconome the gifts that nature offers him... For him, civil society is like an earthy divinity: he praises it, honours it with integrity, with exact attention to his duties and with a sincere desire to be a member neither worthless nor a cause of embarrassment.
Towards the end of the period, the spirit of Enlightenment was well defined by Immanuel Kant in his celebrated answer to a question asked by the Berlinische Monatsschrift: “Was ist Aufklarung?” - what is Enlightenment?
Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! “Have courage to use your own reason!” - that is the motto of enlightenment. (Kant 1784 [1963]: 3)
The economic field was not left aside, from the second half of the reign of Louis XIV to the Revolution. It even progressively became a central topic in politics, with unwavering fight in favour of laissez-faire - first at the end of the seventeenth century, with Pierre Le Pesant de Boisguilbert (1646-1714), and then in the second half of the eighteenth, with the main figures of Franςois Quesnay (1694 1774), Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727-1781) and Condorcet. It entailed also many lively controversies over taxes, public expenditure, foreign trade, or over money and banking from the collapse of John Law’s (1671-1729) system to Richard Cantillon (c.1680-1734) and the circle of J.C.M.
Vincent de Gournay (1712-1759). The number of publications of books and pamphlets on economic matters increased dramatically during the second half of the eighteenth century (There 1998) - the Encyclopedie also included contributions in the field by Quesnay, Turgot, Franςois Veron de Forbonnais (1722-1800), and so on - and authors became aware to deal with a new field of knowledge. In 1755, for example, on the occasion of the death of Montesquieu who had devoted some books of his celebrated treatise De l’esprit des lois (1748) to economic subjects, the mathematician, physicist and philosopher Maupertuis made his eulogy at the Royal Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Stressing Montesquieu’s interest in the “principles of the system of wealth”, he remarked that this system lacked an appropriate name: “this science is so novel among us... that it still has no name” (Moreau de Maupertuis 1755 [1768]: 416). In 1763, Quesnay and Victor Riqueti de Mirabeau (1715-1789) in France, and Pietro Verri (1728-1797) in Italy, spoke of “economic science”, in the modern meaning of the phrase, to designate the new field. In 1767, Jean-Joseph-Louis Graslin (1728-1790) - an enemy of the Physiocrats - quoted Maupertuis’s remark and declared that “the science of political economy... has just been born among us” (Graslin 1767 [1911]: 1). One year later, Pierre-Samuel Dupont (later known as Dupont de Nemours) (1739-1817) published De l’origine et desprogres d’une science nouvelle (Dupont 1768).This is not to say that the developments in economic thought were homogenous. Among the wealth of the literature of the time, it is however possible to distinguish two main currents of thought: “commerce politique” and “philosophie economique”. (For more precise developments, see the other entries of this Handbook, mentioned in the “See also” section at the end of the present text.)
The first consists in a French adaptation of the English “science of trade” and is illustrated by such different authors as Jean-Franςois Melon (1675-1738), Nicolas Dutot (also spelled Du Tot, 1684-1741), Montesquieu, or the members of the circle of Vincent de Gournay (see, for example, Murphy 1986, 1998; Skornicki 2006; Charles et al.
2011), the main figure of which was Veron de Forbonnais. The second (see, for example, Faccarello 1986 [1999], 1998, 2006, 2009; Steiner 1998; Charles and There 2008, 2011; Faccarello and Steiner, 2008a, 2012) includes those who fought in favour of the “liberte du commerce”, from Boisguilbert and the foundation of “laissez-faire” at the end of the seventeenth century, to the developments of Quesnay, Turgot and Condorcet - to whom some independent authors such as Graslin can be added. Both currents of thought aimed at a deep change in French politics and proposed new political philosophies centred on economic policies for a prosperous economy, mainly in the context, first of the great economic difficulties during the reign of Louis XIV and the Regence, and then of a mounting rivalry with Great Britain, the Seven Years War (1756-63) and the loss by France of some parts of its overseas empire - with, permanently, the structural question of the financing of the state and the huge public debt.