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Most educated and culture-minded Europeans have heard of Voltaire and Rousseau. You may know that they are two prominent Enlightenment philosophers from France. You may know that Voltaire believed in tolerance and that he disliked the Catholic Church. You may know that Rousseau was a little more original in his thinking, but that through his few but impactful works he had an almost immeasurable influence on the thinking of posterity.
How many educated and history-minded Europeans today can name some of Voltaire’s and Rousseau’s ideological opponents? How many know any of the intellectuals who worked within the church and at the universities during the 18th century and who opposed the Enlightenment?
To be able to name some of Voltaire’s and Rousseau’s intellectual opponents, you probably have to be a specialist in the French 18th century. Voltaire and Rousseau remain in our collective memory, but not their opponents. They were swept away by history. They faded from memory as they disappeared from the world and entered their personal silence. Yet they were the ones who sat in the privileged positions. They were the ones as bishops in the church and professors at the Sorbonne.
History does not always remember the men of power. Sometimes it rather evokes those writers and thinkers who stood out from the crowd and who distinguished themselves by acquiring powerful opponents in the intellectual elites.
Cultural and literary historians often work with perspectives. They divide history into eras and try to determine when one era transitions into another. One example is how in French literary history people speak of French literary “classicism” and then refer to a fairly short period between 1660 and 1680 when a group of writers – Molière, La Fontaine, Racine and others – produced a few remarkably prominent works in which common themes and a common aesthetic can be discerned.
Some scholars have wanted to poke holes in this picture by pointing out that most writers who were active in France during these years did not at all share aesthetics and ideology with the limited group of writers who were allowed to define the era. And then the question arises whether our writing of history always tends to falsify and simplify.
And this perhaps also applies to the French 18th century and the Enlightenment literature that we see today as so typical of the period. Did all authors really write Enlightenment literature? Were there not other movements? Was there not a large collective of authors who wrote in accordance with ideals other than Voltaire and Rousseau?
These types of questions are interesting to take with us when we try to consider our own time. We have lived 25 years of a new millennium. How will future historians describe our time? Which names among the writers and thinkers of our time will live on? Which names from the early 21st century will educated people recognize in 300 years?
I came to think of all this when I read an article by Rebecka Kärde in the Swedish daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter about the role of “star thinkers” in contemporary public life. The article is part of a series of articles in which various journalists and critics discuss intellectual stars who could in some way be seen as representative of our time. The idea behind the series of articles is that in the past, prominent and well-known intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Bertrand Russell, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan and Pierre Bourdieu had. But today? Are there any thinkers who enjoy some form of public status and who may one day have the honor of defining our era?
Rebecka Kärde makes some interesting reflections in her article. Among other things, she writes that the desire to idealize a small number of men who would somehow constitute the top of the intellectual corps has decreased. Perhaps because universities today are more characterized by women than was the case before. Kärde puts it this way: “The 20th century patriarchal deification of some intellectuals has, for better or worse, been replaced by an opaquer system. It is hardly the case that hierarchies have been flattened. But they have become harder to see, more prone to rapid change of form.”
The hierarchies are not as clear. There have been many more universities and educational institutions. More subjects have been academicized, and perhaps the power of the so-called patriarchy over our thoughts has waned.
Kärde nevertheless mentions a few names that she, as a humanist and literary scholar, sees as possible aspirants to the role of star intellectuals of our time: “Literary theorist Sianne Ngai, art historian Georges Didi-Huberman, philosopher Markus Gabriel or long-established talents such as Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Martha Nussbaum and Judith Butler.” But she still admits that none of these names are Derrida or Foucault.
And what do you say, dear reader? Have you read any of these thinkers? Have you taken part in Martha Nussbaum’s theories on political feminism or animal rights? Have you read any of Judith Butler’s works on gender, feminism and sexuality? You may have done so if you studied social sciences or humanities at an ordinary European university. These are undeniably names that have significance. They have helped to define the left-wing intellectualism of our time. So there is no question that they are significant. But do they constitute intellectual authorities for the wider public? Are they comparable to a Voltaire or a Rousseau who did not work at any university at all but wrote for an educated public that was tired of the pedantry and irrelevance of universities.
And if we go back to what we said earlier about history and perspective, it has often been the case that the intellectuals who introduce something new and odd, who deviate from the dictates of power and institutions, have been seen by posterity as the most significant. From that perspective, it is hardly a Martha Nussbaum or Judith Butler who posterity will regard as the most significant public intellectual of our time. Rather, it is someone else entirely.
There are videos of Judith Butler on YouTube with more than one and a half million views. That’s impressive for a university professor. Jordan Peterson has videos with 70 million views. 70 million. That’s even more impressive. Jordan Peterson is also interesting in that he has used the new tool that the internet and especially YouTube offers more than any other public intellectual. He was still active at the University of Toronto when he broke through in the late 2010s, but in 2020 he chose to leave the traditional university world to focus on the internet and lecture tours. Traditional intellectuals – cultural journalists, university researchers – have not hesitated to express their condescension towards Jordan Peterson. Above all, because he has chosen to convey his thinking in the form of self-help books. But it is of course also about his ideological profile. He is a sworn opponent of Marxism, woke thinking and modern feminism. He has become a figurehead for the new right, and he allows himself to think creatively using intellectual sources from different eras. So he is superficial, seductive, and mostly interested in promoting himself, it has been said.
It would be interesting to compare what today’s academics say about Jordan Peterson with what 18th-century academics said about Voltaire. It would not be surprising if the parallels were obvious.
It is rare for establishment thinkers to go down in history. That was not the case in the 18th century, and it probably is not the case today either. And perhaps it will be the case that just as ordinary people today can hardly name some of Voltaire’s and Rousseau’s opponents, future Westerners will be able to name any of the intellectuals who today despise Jordan Peterson. Most likely, they will say instead that Jordan Peterson was the thinker who, from about 2015 onwards, showed the way to the entire West for a new way of thinking. That the old establishment resisted is no stranger than that Voltaire had to flee to England when he displeased the French king, or that he was allowed to publish his books in Holland. But these are books that people still read. Voltaire’s opponents are gone forever.