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It’s always pointed out, indicated,
in an elitist way, an intellectualist way of Lights.
And, in fact, this truth,
at least this Diderotian stream,
tried to retake and radicalize Bacon’s project.
Bacon has
an idea of democratization of knowledge, which is not particular of PSTU
or PSOL, so it’s an interesting thing.
He says:
to make an absolutely perfect circle, to draw a perfect circle,
it is necessary that the individual is a genius, and that he has fantastic body virtuosity.
But if you have the compass,
the perfect circle is made by millions of people.
So, the perfect circle, instead of being the summit, is the base for continuing.
This is a very interesting democratization and, he says, the method
of Philosophy and in Science is precisely the compass,
the organon, the instrument
to help establishing a minimum degree for most of mankind.
And afterwards, those which are the most daring, the deepest,
proceed with the project of improvement of knowledge and arts.
So, in this direction,
the thought of Lights, especially the Diderot line,
is democratic in a different way to Rousseau’s.
Because, for Rousseau, given his identification
with the degradation of humanity with technique, with painting,
with art in general and with politics,
he refuses to take this human production
as something good.
And Diderot’s perspective is precisely the opposite.
So, if you want Democracy,
if you want a Republic,
you need the population not to be guided
half a dozen intellectuals,
or half a dozen priests or half a dozen statesmen.
You need the population to take its destine into their hands.
In the plan of University for Russia,
he mentions the case of the Reformation.
And the Reformation enable reading for peasants.
At the moment it enabled reading, it has also enabled rudimental arithmetic.
At the moment the peasants had rudimental arithmetic,
they became hated by the Junkers,
because they bought cheap land, cheap products, etc.
Once the peasants could calculate, that was too much.
So, he says, you need to extend that.
You need to create some kind of catechism of civic values for people.
And it’s from this inspiration that comes the idea
of propagating this as much as possible.
You see, it’s different from the idea of publishing.
It’s not publishing cheap.
It’s not making a little magazine that is released
in the newsstand mistakenly explaining Physics or Chemistry. No.
It’s to amplify as much as possible
people’s capability of acquiring knowledge, dominating it.
Knowledge that,
in the plan of University, he says, there is no specialized University.
If we gave the task of creating a University to a mathematician,
he would make everything towards Math, if we gave the task to a priest,
everything would be towards Theology.
If we gave it to a lawyer, it would face Law.
No. The University is a place where all human actions should be
investigated and worked through.
So, if you have this idea, he says,
the calculation o probabilities indicates that it is easier to find
a genius in one hundred cottages than in one palace.