Casanova and Enlightenment

Book excerpt: Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798) was born the son of a moderately poor acting family at a time when the stage carried enormous social stigma. Yet in his own lifetime he achieved celebrity across Europe, rubbing shoulders with numerous of the eighteenth century’s greatest men and women, from Frederick the Great to Catherine the Great, from Voltaire to Albrecht von Haller, from Pope Benedict XIV to Pope Clement XIII. It was a fame that had little to do with his romantic exploits. This was to come later, following upon the posthumous publication of his magnificent History of My Life. An adventurer and a man of learning, his was an extraordinary career whose story was intertwined with the story of eighteenth-century Europe. Casanova’s Life and Times, the first book of this two-volume project, concentrates on what it was like to live in the eighteenth century. This second book, Casanova & Enlightenment, now turns to Casanova’s intellectual development within the context of the Enlightenment, proposing a re-evaluation of his status as a philosopher.