Sources Periodicals
IV. How Anticlerical Satire Contributed to the Process of Enlightenment
pulpit in the background of the satire declares that ‘tis all Blasphemy’ while his congregation repeats ‘Yes its Blasphemy.’
Beyond this immediate context, however, the print also takes part in a larger cultural context. For it is also part of a growing tendency in the anticlerical satire of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, namely a tendency to stage admirable acts of counter- conduct and invent courageous heroes of oppo-sition. Such enactments and inventions were almost always intended to inspire and encourage its audience. When anticlerical satirists depicted opponents of the clergy as fearless heroes fighting for their rights, it was also an attempt to make the audience take these heroes as models for their own conduct. In other words, the anticlerical satirists tried to make the European sheep dare to think independently and go their own ways.
IV. How Anticlerical Satire Contributed to the Process of
courage to use it without being led by another. The motto of the Enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding.52
With the double reference to ‘courage’ in his definition of enlightenment, Kant stressed that the process of enlightenment was not primarily inhibited by people’s lack of understanding (in the sense of rationality or intellect) but by their lack of courage to use their understanding without being led by another – for example, by one of the pastors who, over millennia, had taught them that the only way to salvation was to be led by them and that rejecting their lead-ership was tantamount to damnation. By means of this doctrine, the church had, over millennia, discouraged the Europeans from using their own under-standing. As a consequence, Kant could note at the end of the eighteenth cen-tury that most of his contemporaries did not dare to use their understanding without being led by another – and especially not in matters of religion.53 Due to this lack of courage to think for oneself and govern oneself that Kant did not regard his own age as ‘an enlightened age’ but only ‘an age of enlightenment.’54 According to him, enlightenment was indeed an ongoing process but it was also an uncompleted process since the majority of the population did not yet have the courage to think and act independently and thus to emerge from their self- incurred tutelage.
However, as we have seen, the anticlerical satire of Kant’s time and espe-cially of the century following his essay on enlightenment from 1784, aimed at mobilizing exactly the kind of courage, which, according to Kant, was nec-essary for the process of enlightenment to proceed and succeed. Taking the
52 Immanuel Kant, ‘Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?’ in Horst Brandt (ed.), Was ist Aufklärung: Ausgewählte kleine Schriften, Hamburg 1999 [1784], p. 20: ‘Aufklärung ist der Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbstverschuldeten Unmündigkeit. Unmündigkeit ist das Unvermögen, sich seines Verstandes ohne Leitung eines anderen zu bedienen. Selbstverschuldet ist diese Unmündigkeit, wenn die Ursache derselben nicht am Mangel des Verstandes, sondern der Entschließung und des Mutes liegt, sich seiner ohne Leitung eines anderen zu bedienen. Sapere aude!
Habe Mut, dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen! ist also der Wahlspruch der Aufklärung.’
53 Kant 1999, p. 26: ‘Dass die Menschen, wie die Sachen jetzt stehen, im ganzen genommen, schon imstande wären oder darin auch nur gesetzt werden könnten, in Religionsdingen sich ihres eigenen Verstandes ohne Leitung eines anderes sicher und gut zu bedienen, daran fehlt noch sehr viel.’
54 Kant 1999, p. 26: ‘Wenn denn nun gefragt wird: Leben wir jetzt in einem aufgeklärten Zeitalter? so ist die Antwort: Nein, aber wohl in einem Zeitalter der Aufklärung.’
extraordinary circulation of anticlerical satire in modern Europe into account, it is therefore not unlikely that it contributed quite significantly to the process of enlightenment in Europe in the Kantian sense. When works of anticlerical satire became virtually omnipresent during the nineteenth century, and when an increasing number of them purported that it was possible to break out of the role as a compliant Christian sheep, it could hardly avoid inspiring some of them to emerge from their internalized sheep- ness, or, as Kant would say, from their self- incurred tutelage.
If the pastoral power of the Christian church has shaped the Europeans over millennia, as Foucault has claimed, then one might argue that the anticlerical satire of modern Europe has reshaped the very same Europeans. On the one hand, it has contributed to a gradual devaluation of traditional Christian virtues such as humility, submission, and obedience toward authorities. On the other hand, it has helped embolden Europeans to make use of their own understanding and to demand a higher degree of independence and self- determination. Admittedly, the impact of a single satire, even of a highly influential satire like Molière’s Tartuffe, may have been as weak as a drop of water on a stone, but when one drop after another has fallen on the same stone for centuries there will eventually be a hole in it. In a similar manner, the extraordinary amount of works of anticlerical satire that flooded Europe, especially in the nineteenth century, was probably a decisive factor in its cultural impact.
Contrary to the prevailing notion of the Enlightenment as The Age of Reason, as Thomas Paine called it, the way in which anticlerical satire contributed to the process of enlightenment seems to have been less through rational argu-mentation than through emotional appeal and affective mobilization. When anticlerical satires depicted clerical leaders as hypocritical or imposturous, they evidently tried to evoke feelings of indignation or contempt toward them. And when they depicted acts of counter- conduct and opposition to ecclesiastical authorities as the admirable deeds of valiant heroes, they tried to mobilize the pluck or courage needed to follow their example. In both instances, anticler-ical satire appealed to particular emotions or passions as they were typanticler-ically called in Kant’s time. Courage was also regarded as a passion, which means that the main hindrance of the progress of enlightenment, according to Kant, was neither a lack of reason (Vernunft) nor a lack of understanding (Verstand) but a lack of a particular passion, namely courage.55 What was really needed,
55 Building on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Hobbes, Rousseau and many others described courage as a ‘passion’ that was opposed to another ‘passion,’ namely fear. Thomas
according to Kant, was a kind of affective reconfiguration of the Europeans – a reconfiguration that would make them less prone to be timid and submissive (like little sheep) and more prone to be courageous and resolute (like mature citizens). And this was exactly the kind of affective reconfiguration the anti-clerical satire of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century endeavored to bring about.
Where does it leave us today? On the one hand, we certainly cannot catalogue the Kantian enlightenment as a completed and accomplished project today. On the other hand, it would also be absurd to dismiss it as a complete and utter failure. We cannot deny that, by all accounts, an increasing number of Europeans distanced themselves from the traditional Christian virtues of humility, submission, and obedience in the course of the eighteenth and nine-teenth centuries. As time went by, more and more Europeans did apparently manage to mobilize the courage to stand up and demand a higher degree of lib-erty, independence, and self- determination. If anything, the many revolutions and new constitutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries testify to this.
The turbulent period from the outbreak of the French revolution in 1789 to the many European revolutions in 1848, resulting in a series of new constitu-tions, may also suggest that the extraordinary production and dissemination of anticlerical satire in Europe in this period did not only have a formative influ-ence on the modern European individuals but also on the modern European societies. For when people change, the societies they form will eventually change as well. When the inhabitants of the old European monarchies grad-ually became less prone to behave like timid, subservient subjects and more prone to behave like courageous, demanding citizens, it could hardly avoid clashing with the authoritarianism of the old regimes and pave the way for new ways of organizing European societies. Hence, the satirical subversion of cler-ical authority may very well have had an impact on modern Europe that has hitherto been grossly underestimated.
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