Assessing the big wigs

Kant started it. In 1784, the German philosopher wrote an essay titled What Is Enlightenment? and over two centuries later, academics from all over the world are thronging the corridors of UCD, asking the same question. The 10th International Congress on the Enlightenment is an intellectual smorgasbord; it's the largest gathering of 18th-century scholars to take place anywhere, with a programme that reflects the spirit of that brilliant, inquisitive age. Organised by Prof Andrew Carpenter of UCD and the Eighteenth Century Ireland Society on behalf of the International Society of Eighteenth Century Studies, it is an inter-disciplinary event, spanning literature, philosophy, political and cultural history, music, theatre studies, women's studies, history of art, sociology and the history of science. The inclusion of sessions on pornography, eroticism, sexual deviance and genitalia indicates the diversity of interests.

While it is open to members of the public at a daily rate of £25, it is primarily an opportunity for academics to talk to each other. "We hope to stimulate all kinds of connections and cross-currents between delegates," says Dr Carpenter. "Email communication will never replace the fruitful face-to-face meetings between specialists that will take place at a conference like this."

Forget the Renaissance, Romanticism, Antiquity, it's the 18th century that's in vogue these days. Eighteenth-century studies are exploding, partly because of the development of inter-disciplinary approaches to the humanities and the galloping application of critical theory to all historical periods; partly because of the accessibility, in English, of the key 18th-century texts on the Internet, but mainly because of the sheer vigour and diversity of 18th-century life and the excitement of the speculative thought of the period, which still resonates today. With its emphasis on linear progress through reason, and on universality, "the Enlightenment project" is regarded by philosophers and theorists as a defining period in the birth of modernity, to which we must constantly return either as critics or as supporters.

A packed round-table discussion on Monday morning, chaired by Dr David Denby of DCU, on Enlightenment in Contemporary Debate, marked out the terrain and attempted some definitions. There have been many influential critics of the Enlightenment ideals in this century, notably the thinkers associated with the Frankfurt school such as Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse. They have emphasised the limits of rationality and the dangers of taking it to extremes, have questioned whether Western rationality can claim to be universal and have made "connections between the dreams of the Enlightenment and the nightmares of our own century", as Dr James Schmidt from Boston University put it. In other words, the roots of this century's totalitarianism and even the Holocaust can be found in the Enlightenment. Dr Luke Gibbons of DCU highlighted the areas of experience excluded by the Enlightenment, particularly "the body in pain". "What has the Enlightenment to say to the losers of history, to the victims of progress, to the process of post-colonialism?" he asked.

This theme will be taken up tomorrow in a round-table session on The Enlightenment and its Discontents, chaired by Dr Dermot Moran of UCD. Echoing a number of Monday's speakers, he emphasises the existence of many different Enlightenments and the difficulty of speaking about a unitary "Enlightenment project". "Enlightenment can be viewed as a stage that different societies went through at different times," he says. "We tend to think of it in its French and German versions, but of course there was the Scottish Enlightenment and a Jewish Enlightenment. You could say that we're currently at the end of Enlightenment."

Inevitably in Dublin, sessions on Jonathan Swift feature heavily on the programme. Swiftian scholarship tends to be a somewhat hermetically sealed zone, as some of Monday's papers demonstrated, so it was interesting to hear Dr A.C. Elias emphasising the trouble Swift took in the 1730s to ensure that his work was as comprehensible as possible to what he called "middling readers". During this decade Swift annotated some of Pope's satires, fleshing out references and "demonstrating his concern for his broad and middlebrow readers in Ireland". "Academics have a lot to learn from this," Dr Elias commented, "Swift can teach us about making good literature accessible to readers beyond the confines of academia."

There weren't many "middling readers" in evidence at the congress, however: the debates were scholarly and allusive. Questions of definition recurred, particularly in a fascinating round-table session on the subject of Psychiatric Depression and Great Depressives of the Enlightenment, chaired by Prof Roy Porter. He was proud to preside over the first appearance of the topic on a conference programme and said that it was fitting that this occurred in Dublin, birthplace of Laurence Sterne, "who put depression and madness on the map", and where Swift's "home for fools and mad" was established.

As the aptly named Prof George Rousseau of Leicester University pointed out, no history of depression has yet been written, as there are few pre-1800 records of it, so "the discourse of depression is new". He warned against the anachronistic application of the term "depression" to the 18th century, and favoured the term "melancholia". In the 18th century, symptoms which we would now describe as indicative of depression were associated exclusively with women, while madness - "more strong, noble and energetic" - was a male province. Gradually, with the growth of the Enlightenment's cults of sensibility, a new male depression emerged. "The feminisation of the 18th century gave rise to an increase in depression/melancholia," according to Dr Rousseau.

There were no noticeable yawns as Roger Schmidt from the US discussed the relationship between sleep deprivation and depression. Currently researching a history of sleep (1658-1800), he had no hesitation in connecting the increase in sleep deprivation with the collapse of the Renaissance/humanist tradition. There was a documented increase in daytime drowsiness in 18th-century London, which he attributed to widespread insomnia and the beginning of the caffeine culture. In addition, the explosion in print culture meant that people were reading in bed.

"The consumption of literature and the consumption of caffeine were mutually dependent." Dr Johnson consumed 30-40 cups of tea per day, apparently, while Voltaire kept his brain alert by a daily intake of 50 cups of coffee. "The contraction of sleep time had a profound effect on people's sense of well-being," Dr Schmidt concluded and, for the first time all day, there was a distinct feeling that even a "middling reader" could have told him that.

The Tenth International Congress on the Enlightenment continues at UCD until Saturday. For information, tel: 01-2853759.

An exhibition, Fair Liberty Was All His Cry - Jonathan Swift and his Age, opens tomorrow at the National Library Of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin 2.