Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
The rational integrity of Bacon's imaginary history was purchased by its
conformity to established theological principles. Since these principles had
constituted the cultural ethos of Europeans for centuries, they could not
easily be thrown off by either author or audience. For the same reason, the
most direct route toward revolution for one such as Condorcet was a path
of symbolic accommodation such as one finds in narrative displacement.
Rather than surrendering the assumption that history had a preordained
meaning and purpose that science could discover, Condorcet follows Bacon's
lead by supposing that time is governed by an overarching purpose, though
one now identified more completely with nature as detected through reason
and experience alone. Louis de Bonald, a prominent reactionary against the
excesses of the Enlightenment and French Revolution, had sensed this even
at the time of its first appearance, dubbing it the “apocalypse of the new
gospel.”
1
As one whose mind was still firmly planted in a more traditional
theological view of history, Bonald was especially attuned to the biblical pat-
terns that had passed into the
Esquisse
.
In more recent times, Carl Becker
has claimed that similar religious markers continued to dot the whole land-
scape of Enlightenment thought. Enlightenment thinkers, no less than “the
medieval scholastics, held fast to a revealed body of knowledge, and they
were unwilling or unable to learn anything from history which could not,
by some ingenious trick played on the dead, be reconciled with their faith.”
2
Despite their forceful opposition to the Christian tradition, to abandon
its historical assumptions was not in their interest and likewise beyond
the reach even of their secular imagining. Thus while Condorcet formally
rejected religion, its symbolic patterns nevertheless provided his narrative
form. Once having displaced God into nature, he was bound to produce a
view of history that was analogous to the older religious one.
In advancing this interpretation of Condorcet's visionary text, this
chapter will unfold in four stages. It will begin with a brief discussion of
the historical and ideological setting in which his
Esquisse
was composed.
The second section will step back momentarily from this subject in order
to more fully outline the rhetorical features of displacement. As applied
here, Frye's theory will be used to explain how certain explicitly metaphys-
ical notions that were evident in Bacon's self-conscious appropriation of
the Christian narrative could make their way undetected into Condorcet's
account of the rise of scientific rationality. Frye's theory was developed in
an effort to explain the mythical residues that are always detectible in secu-
lar literature. In extending his insights into the realm of historical writing,
I draw upon Hayden White's important insights into the “narrativity” of
