f7d9395c_atings_and_reviews___Gwern_net__Review
[Title] The Dark Side of the Enlightenment: Wizards, Alchemists, and Spiritual Seekers in the Age of Reason [Author] John V. Fleming [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2013 [Read] 2013/08/09 [Review] 
The title might lead one to believe that Fleming is trying to show an inherent duality to science and the Enlightenment in general - its reliance on irrational methods or its oppression or inherent contradictions, say, perhaps an updated (and more factual) Foucault. But while it’s a clever play on words, The Dark Side of the Enlightenment boils down to some short biographies of minor figures in Europe: the obscure English faith healer Valentine Greatrakes, the French Jansenists, the Rosicrucians, the Freemasons, Cagliostro, and Julie de Kruedener. If one looks for any sort of demonstration of a duality to the Enlightenment, one will be disappointed, as all the examples seem amply explained by simply pointing out that alchemists and religious types and fraudsters have always existed, and the case studies simply show that the Enlightenment did not sweep them away instantaneously, lock stock and barrel; one is surprised to note Fleming’s lack of emphasis on the more famous examples of the coexistence of religion & science, like Isaac Newton. Perhaps this is to ascribe a failure at goals that Fleming never aimed at, but regardless none of the sections are particularly compelling: while the Rosicrucian and Freemason sections seem like reasonable overviews of their subjects for people who don’t know anything about the topic, Greatrakes and Kruedener left me completely bored and wondering why Fleming considered them interesting enough to write a good chunk of a book on them summarizing other people’s books on them, and the Cagliostro section seems rather apologetic (although I have only seen passing references to Cagliostro before and know little about him). Fleming’s medievalist traits show in his resentment for the low modern opinion of the Dark Ages, which is a little amusing, and his predilection for using very old and obscure books as sources. But this is the cause of the best aspect of this book: Fleming’s genuine appreciation that even in the Enlightenment, a great many people thought very differently than we do today, centuries later in a completely transformed age, and his attempt to lay out the forgotten background and bring home the difference in consciousness. For example, Fleming points out the absurdity of claiming that Milton either subconsciously or consciously wrote Paradise Lost with the Devil as admirable, given the intense religious convictions of that age and Milton’s own strong beliefs, and he does a credible job of conveying how so many Europeans and Catholics could seriously and factually believe that Napoleon Bonaparte was the literal Anti-Christ foretold by John in Revelations who would usher in the end of the world and sketching the gematria-based arguments Christian occultists concocted to ‘prove’ this. Getting in the “mind” of past ages is always hard, and I appreciate any author who gives me a little insight, even if much of the rest of his book left me feeling like I was wasting my time.
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