Portrait of the philosopher as charlatan

Abstract

In the first session of this lecture series, we took as our starting point Condorcet's accusations against charlatans. The latter, impostors and demagogues, used false knowledge to mislead the people, while philosophers strove to enlighten them. Yet the confrontation between philosophers and charlatans is less clear-cut than the promises of this inaugural scene. This year's theme has led us to consider the porosity of boundaries and the vagueness surrounding the accusation of charlatanism. This final session proposes a complete reversal, showing that the "philosophes", especially Voltaire and the Encyclopedists, were in turn accused of charlatanism by their opponents. Their use of fiction, their style, their publication strategies, their proselytizing and, last but not least, their celebrity earned them a reputation as the new charlatans.

The "charlatanism" thus became a ubiquitous polemical accusation at the end of the 18^th century, aimed at disqualifying opponents and rejecting them as trustworthy interlocutors. In reality, criticism is always aimed at the same neuralgic point: addressing the public, the choice to leave the closed confines of the Republic of Letters to address a wider readership, whether to enlighten it or protect it from the spread of new ideas. The figure of the "charlatan" reveals a contradiction inherent in intellectual and literary modernity: even as the "public" is promoted as a new source of intellectual and political legitimacy, it is seen by all as credulous and manipulable.

Bibliography

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