Panthéon, Paris
description: The philosophy of the Enlightenment is nothing if not versatile. This can be readily observed in the contemporary world, with every side of any political fight claiming that “rights” and “reason” lend support to their arguments. This modern pervasiveness of Enlightenment thinking is perhaps a testament to its versatility, since no system of philosophy would be accepted by almost everybody if it couldn’t be adapted to serve a wide variety of ideologies. There is little better evidence for this fact than the popularity of Neoclassical architecture in pre-Revolutionary France. Despite the fact that we in the modern day often associate the Enlightenment with the birth of democratic ideals, notions of innate equality, and other necessarily anti-monarchical notions, many absolutist monarchs, noblemen, and other necessarily pro-monarchy people were very much enamored with Enlightenment thought. Voltaire famously believed that the best leader was an “ideal monarch,” and Catherine the Great of Russia, who corresponded with Voltaire in her youth, was famous for being “enlightened” (though she banned many of his books in her later life) (Britannica, Catherine the Great). Likewise, these leaders and their supporters were fans of the same Enlightenment-inspired Neoclassical architecture which would come in later years to be associated with radical democracies. Thus, there exists in Paris a building called the Panthéon, a Neoclassical structure built in the run-up to the French Revolution by the governments of Louis XV and Louis XVI. Neoclassical architecture was well-liked during the Enlightenment for several reasons, including but not limited to nostalgia for the work of the Renaissance and a renewed interest in the Classical world, but the primary draw was that the perfect proportions and geometric regularity of Neoclassical structures seemed to be expressions of pure reason, that highest of Enlightenment virtues, in the physical world. The Paris Panthéon, like other Neoclassi…
creator: Photograph: Camille Gevaudon Architect: Jacques-Germain Soufflot
source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Panthéon,_Paris_25_March_2012.jpg https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pantheon-building-Paris-France https://www.britannica.com/biography/Catherine-the-Great https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tempietto
date: Built starting 1757
contributor: Brendan Glenn
rights: Creative Commons 3.0; free re-use