Tartuffe and the Enlightenment

In this unit, we’re reading texts from the Enlightenment, a historical period in which reason is prized over any other value. In reading Tartuffe, we’re looking not simply for its literary qualities—its poetic beauties or its allusions to other literary works—but also for the ways in which it displays and engages with the thoughts of its time.

One of the names given to this period is The Age of Reason, a phrase which expresses one of the era’s central concerns. Great strides have been made in the sciences in this era—Newton has discovered that the universe operates according to reasonable, predictable laws, and other scientists are following his lead in discovering the laws of nature in many different areas. What develops out of these discoveries is a view of reality as reasonable, logical, and rational; the mysteries of the universe can be fathomed by the human mind.

One of the conceptions of reality that’s prevalent during this time is that the universe is like an enormous, intricate clock. Like a clock, the universe is intricately constructed; it is also mathematically precise and well-organized, predictable. Most importantly, it’s understandable. Human beings can study the inner workings of the universe, and they can comprehend everything that exists. Previous conceptions of reality took for granted that there were some truths that humanity simply cannot comprehend. What’s remarkable about the Enlightenment is it proclaims that humanity can know everything: there’s no facet of reality that the human mind cannot penetrate and encompass.

Notice that this says as much about how people think about humanity as it does about how they think about the universe. The most important human quality for Enlightenment thinkers is reason, and they have little tolerance for the suggestion that other qualities may be equally important. Humanity is defined by its ability to reason. Every human being, whatever their circumstances or cultural background, is united by reason, and everybody in the world will reach the same conclusions to every problem, provided they abandon local prejudices and superstitions and surrender to the unavoidable logic of sweet reason. The concept of common sense is important to this era. It would be hard to make the case in our time that the element that all the different groups of people have in common is sense, is rational thought. But that’s one of the basic beliefs of the era we’re studying—everybody is rational, deep down, and the majority of people will make the right, reasonable choice most of the time.

In Tartuffe, the character who stands as a nearly perfect representative of Enlightenment thought is Cleante. In his discussion with Orgon about his devotion to Tartuffe, Cleante says, “Have you lost your common sense?” (Norton 321) and later in the same act, notes:

Ah, Brother, man’s a strangely fashioned creature
Who seldom is content to follow Nature,
But recklessly pursues his inclination
Beyond the narrow bounds of moderation,
And often, by transgressing Reason’s laws,
Perverts a lofty aim or noble cause.

Here, in six lines, we find the highest ideals of the Enlightenment thinker: Reason and its laws, Nature (which is, of course, reasonable), and moderation. One of the potential difficulties in reading literature from the Enlightenment is that we don’t tend to associate Nature with rationality and moderation. In our minds, a person who followed Nature would probably be anything but moderate and rational, would instead soon suffer the consequences of immoderate living. For Enlightenment thinkers, though, Nature was as rational as a mathematical equation. The universe operated according to good, moderate, immutable laws—it ran like clockwork—and the highest ideal for humanity would be to adhere to Nature’s reasonable, moderate laws.

This has consequences in many areas of the culture, including religion. One interesting development during the era is the creation of Deism, an attempt at Natural Religion. Traditionally, orthodox Christianity has acknowledged two forms of inspiration: the Book of Nature and the Book of Scripture. The Bible makes very clear that God reveals himself through his creation—by looking at the world around us, we can know something about the character of the creator: the apostle Paul says in the first chapters of Romans that even those who have not heard the gospel are without excuse. And God also reveals himself, of course, through the Book of Scripture, his revealed word.

For Enlightenment thinkers, however, the Book of Scripture becomes rather problematic. It’s old and traditional, it’s not scientific, and it’s encrusted with all sorts of accounts of miracles and other things that the rational mind believes couldn’t really have happened. Rather than putting their trust in the writings of uneducated, unscientific, superstitious men, the advocates of Natural Religion believed in deriving their conception of God solely from the Book of Nature. Simply by looking at the world around us, we can know all we need to know of God. Nature is good, rational, logical, and so we know that its creator is good, rational, logical. Nature teaches us to be kind and decent toward others; it even, according to the Deists, teaches us that there is some form of life after death. Why rely on ancient, illogical institutions and creeds when all we need to know of God can be found in Nature?

These precepts lead to some interesting ideas about God and religion. The concept of God that’s prevalent during this time is sometimes referred to as “the watchmaker God.” People tend to think of God solely in his role as creator: like a watchmaker constructing a watch, God has made the universe, which is a marvel of precision and order and perfection, and set it running. Once the universe is running, however, there’s no need for God to be involved in the day to day details. In the Deist’s mind, there’s no need for God to loom over the mundane running of the universe any more than the watchmaker needs to loom over the watch to make sure that it runs correctly. The watchmaker moves on to other projects; so, presumably, has God. There’s no need for humanity to worry that God will see their bad deeds and send down a bolt of lightning to strike them dead: lightning exists as part of the clockwork of the universe, and there’s no need for God to intervene. He’s moved on, and I doubt that any of the Deists really gave much thought as to what he’d moved on to.

One more consequence of Natural Religion is the attempt to reconstruct traditional faith to reflect contemporary ideas. Thomas Jefferson, for example, rewrote the gospels, taking out all references to miracles or the supernatural. I certainly wouldn’t say that Cleante goes that far in his presentation of what religion ought to be, but it might be possible to argue that he shares some common ideas with the Deists.

For discussion:

- Is Cleante the sole voice of reason in the play? How would you divide up the cast in terms of rationality versus irrationality?

- How well does Cleante and any other voice of reason fare in the play? How many people do the rational cast members convert to their way of thinking?

- The character of Tartuffe doesn’t appear onstage until Act III. What’s Moliere up to, keeping the title character off-stage until the play is almost half over?

- What connection is there between the main plot (the disruption of Orgon’s family by the invasion of Tartuffe?) and the subplot involving Marianne and Valere (Act II, scenes 3 and 4)? What does Marianne’s quarrel with Valere contribute to the play as a whole?