faith.”
“That I find very strange. To me, it’s a typical case of what you believe,
not of what you know.”
“That’s because you don’t live in the eighteenth century. According to
the Enlightenment philosophers, what religion needed was to be stripped of all
the irrational dogmas or doctrines that had got attached to the simple
teachings of Jesus during the course of ecclesiastical history.”
“I see.”
“Many people consequently professed to what is known as Deism.”
“What is that?”
“By Deism we mean a belief that God created the world ages and ages
ago, but has not revealed himself to the world since. Thus God is reduced to
the ‘Supreme Being’ who only reveals himself to mankind through nature and
natural laws, never in any ‘supernatural’ way. We find a similar ‘philosophical
God’ in the writings of Aristotle. For him, God was the ‘formal cause’ or ‘first
mover.’ “
“So now there’s only one point left, human rights.”
“And yet this is perhaps the most important. On the whole, you could say
that the French Enlightenment was more practical than the English
philosophy.”
“You mean they lived according to their philosophy?”
“Yes, very much so. The French Enlightenment philosophers did not
content themselves with theoretical views on man’s place in society. They
fought actively for what they called the ‘natural rights’ of the citizen. At first,
this took the form of a campaign against censorship—for the freedom of the
press. But also in matters of religion, morals, and politics, the individual’s right
to freedom of thought and utterance had to be secured. They also fought for
the abolition of slavery and for a more humane treatment of criminals.”
“I think I agree with most of that.”
“The principle of the ‘inviolability of the individual’ culminated in the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen adopted by the French National
Assembly in 178V. This Declaration of Human Rights was the basis for our
own Norwegian Constitution of 1814.”
“But a lot of people still have to fight for these rights.”
“Yes, unhappily. But the Enlightenment philosophers wanted to establish
certain rights that everybody was entitled to simply by being born. That was
what they meant by natural rights.
“We still speak of a ‘natural right’ which can often be in conflict with the
laws of the land. And we constantly find individuals, or even whole nations,
that claim this ‘natural right’ when they rebel against anarchy, servitude, and
oppression.”
“What about women’s rights?”
“The French Revolution in 1787 established a number of rights for all
‘citizens.’ But a citizen was nearly always considered to be a man. Yet it was
the French Revolution that gave us the first inklings of feminism.”
“It was about time!”
“As early as 1787 the Enlightenment philosopher Condorcet published a
treatise on the rights of women. He held that women had the same ‘natural
rights’ as men. During the Revolution of 1789, women were extremely active
in the fight against the old feudal regime. For example, it was women who led