Was this philosophy finding truth that guided policy, or was it making up rhetorical arguments in a power struggle on behalf of the rising middle class and its policy?
In absence of criteria of non empirical truth that are independent of the very non empirical truths they are criteria for I tend to believe the latter.
In addition to this inherent weakness philosophical arguments are not for the masses anyways. Not even philosophers usually agree what they mean or entail. How could those idea(l)s have guided the revolution as more than just superficial self justification?
Remember that the enemies of the French Revolution had their philosophers too, they just lost.
Historical events usually have very mundane reasons, class struggles, geopolitics etc. Ideas may play a part too. But I believe not in the sense that they are the horses in front of the cart.
To me, the idea that ideas don't play a major role in world history and politics seems odd. There's nothing more fundamentally human than trying to understand the world around you and wanting to shape it in a certain way. Of course material conditions are important; the French Revolution wouldn't have happened had the state not gone bankrupt. But it also wouldn't have happened in that way without Enlightenment ideas. Very basic principles of the revolution, some of which were kept by Napoleon and in subsequent generations and still live on today were formulated by those enlightenment thinkers. Just consider the declaration of human rights.
I’m saying that the enlightenment ideas happened because the uprising middle class needed justifications in their power struggle. Not that the ideas formed a middle class that then acted upon them.
I agree with you that humans need ideas to tell a story of themselves. And that story better paint them as good! But that story is usually not the driving force.
So I fail to see progress as I don’t see a criterion to measure progress (in general. Aristoteles‘ logic is a tool. Here I see how to compare it to FOL and judge which is better or worse for specific use cases).
As for human rights: do I agree with them? Yes! Can I justify them? No! Do I know where to exactly draw the lines when two rights collide? No! Is it important to justify them in a philosophical way? I doubt.
