A Philosopher’s Triumphant Return to Paris

On March 30, 1778, an extraordinary scene unfolded at the Théâtre Français in Paris that would mark both the zenith of Enlightenment rationalism and the beginning of its cultural transformation. The 84-year-old Voltaire, returning to Paris after three decades of exile imposed by Louis XV for his “impious irreverence,” received a hero’s welcome that surpassed even military triumphs. As he entered the theater to witness a performance of his final play Irène, the audience erupted in a standing ovation that lasted twenty minutes—an unprecedented display of public adoration for a living thinker.

The spectacle reached its climax when actors crowned a bust of Voltaire with laurels on stage, while the lead actress recited verses proclaiming his immortality “in the name of the French nation.” British historian John Morley later observed that no victorious military commander had ever received such overwhelming public acclaim. This theatrical apotheosis represented the culmination of a months-long triumphal procession across France, during which Voltaire had wryly remarked to customs officials at Paris’s gates: “I am the only contraband here”—a pointed reference to how successive monarchs had treated his dangerous ideas.

The Enlightenment at High Tide

Voltaire’s 1778 reception symbolized the apparent triumph of Enlightenment values among Europe’s educated elites. In his 1789 biography of Voltaire, the Marquis de Condorcet catalogued the progress achieved during the philosopher’s lifetime (1694-1778): improved public health through smallpox inoculation and sanitation reforms, declining clerical power, growing press freedoms, reduced religious intolerance across Europe, the retreat of serfdom, legal reforms, and less frequent warfare. To Condorcet and his contemporaries, these advances demonstrated reason’s growing dominion over superstition and tradition.

The cultural institutions of the Enlightenment—salons, lending libraries, reading societies, and journals—had created a public sphere theoretically neutral between rationalist and religious content. Yet as the 1778-1779 surge in religious book publishing (comprising two-thirds of reprinted works) following French censorship relaxations revealed, emotional spirituality never disappeared. Pietism, Methodism, and other fervent Christian movements thrived alongside Voltairean skepticism, creating an undercurrent of what would later emerge as Romanticism.

The First Cracks in Reason’s Edifice

Three pivotal moments foreshadowed the coming Romantic reaction against Enlightenment rationalism:

1. Rousseau’s Epiphany (1749): While walking to Vincennes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau experienced a sudden revelation upon reading about the Dijon Academy’s essay competition questioning whether arts and sciences improved morals. In his Confessions, Rousseau described this as a Damascus-road conversion where he realized civilization itself—not ignorance—corrupted humanity. His resulting Discourse on the Arts and Sciences launched a radical critique of Enlightenment values, arguing that science sprang from vice (astronomy from superstition, mathematics from greed) and predicting humanity would eventually beg God to restore primitive innocence.

2. Horace Walpole’s Gothic Vision (1764): After dreaming of a giant armored hand in a medieval castle, Walpole wrote The Castle of Otranto, founding the Gothic literary genre. Initially claiming it was a rediscovered 16th-century manuscript, Walpole later admitted creating this fusion of “ancient and modern romance” to revive “old errors and superstitions” threatened by Enlightenment rationality. His Strawberry Hill estate became the prototype for Gothic Revival architecture.

3. Goethe’s Aesthetic Conversion (1770): The young Goethe’s encounter with Strasbourg Cathedral overturned his Enlightenment-trained disdain for Gothic architecture. In his essay On German Architecture, he celebrated the cathedral’s “characteristic” organic irregularity as embodying true Germanic art that grew naturally from its cultural soil rather than following classical rules. This epiphany, combined with his collaboration with Johann Gottfried Herder, seeded the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) movement that prized emotion, subjectivity, and national character over universal reason.

The Romantic Revolution Takes Form

These disparate currents coalesced into Romanticism—a comprehensive worldview opposing Enlightenment values at every turn: emotion versus reason, faith versus skepticism, intuition versus logic, subjectivity versus objectivity. Romantic thinkers accused the Enlightenment of dissecting the world until it became meaningless fragments. As Johann Heinrich Merck complained, rationalism had reduced religion to a “colorless, lusterless skeleton” in a jar that no one wanted.

Key Romantic principles emerged:

– The Primacy of Artistic Genius: Caspar David Friedrich declared artists must paint “what he sees inside himself,” while Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg) envisioned art as a “secret church” offering refuge from worldly suffering.

– Nature as Organic Unity: Rejecting Newton’s mechanical universe, Romantics saw nature as a living organism best understood through feeling rather than analysis. William Blake famously contrasted “the tree of life” (art) with “the tree of death” (science).

– The Revaluation of the Irrational: Goya’s The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters and the Romantic cult of night (from Novalis’ Hymns to the Night to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde) celebrated what reason could not illuminate.

The Sacredization of Art and the Artist

The changing status of artists between Mozart’s 1791 burial (in an unmarked grave with few mourners) and Beethoven’s 1827 funeral (a massive public event with eulogies comparing him to a secular god) reveals art’s transformation into a quasi-religious realm. Key developments included:

– Aesthetic Autonomy: Karl Philipp Moritz argued in 1787 that art’s lack of utilitarian purpose made it self-justifying. Johann Heinrich Meyer insisted art must be “free and independent” from patron demands.

– The Artist as Prophet: Beethoven’s funeral oration by Franz Grillparzer mentioned no deity, instead proclaiming art itself as “the consoling angel” guiding humanity. This reflected the German aesthetic tradition descending from Protestant theology through figures like Lessing and Winckelmann.

– Music’s Ascendancy: As the most direct emotional medium, music became Romanticism’s supreme art form. Handel’s 1784 commemoration—attended by royalty and commoners alike—demonstrated music’s new role in expressing national identity, a pattern repeated across Europe.

Legacy: Reason’s Children and Their Discontents

The tension between Enlightenment rationalism and Romantic emotionalism continues shaping modern culture. While the 18th century’s scientific and political revolutions stemmed from Enlightenment thought, our conceptions of artistic genius, national identity, and nature’s spiritual value remain deeply indebted to Romantic reactions against that same tradition. From environmentalism to identity politics, from our reverence for artists to our suspicion of pure rationality, we still navigate the currents set in motion by Voltaire’s apotheosis and the creative revolts it inspired.

The ultimate irony lies in how Romanticism—born from rejecting Enlightenment universalism—helped democratize art by making individual expression sacred. As Schiller argued in his Letters on Aesthetic Education, true political freedom had to pass through the gateway of cultural transformation. In this sense, the Romantics completed rather than negated the Enlightenment’s emancipatory project, ensuring that reason would never wholly eclipse the human heart’s mysterious depths.