In 1749 l'Academie de Dijon advertised an essay competition, the idea essentially this: now that we are Enlightened, how are we doing morally?

It is instructive that the question was published and broadly received, but such was the temper of 1749. Diderot and his young friend Rousseau jumped at the opportunity to get in a blow. Rousseau's entry, pointing to the corrupting effects of Enlightenment culture, won the prize. He was quickly elevated to popular status, and was perceived to be something of an emancipator by the citizen weary of authoritarian enlightenment ideals. He became a celebrated champion of something better which I would call populist enlightenment, in which the citizen participated far more in the moment to moment forces of life and society.

Rousseau's winning essay A Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences is an interesting read. He attacks the culture that had developed around the intellectual reformists which had become stiff, wholly prescribed and lifeless. Theirs was an amalgamation of rigorous Louis XIV etiquette and the mathematical grammar of abstract philosophy; Rousseau and Diderot had lived within those suffocating confines long enough, and had seen that the system offered little for their fellow citizens.

The grave immorality of the culture, Rousseau wrote, was weakness. The contrivances, concessions and calculated impotence of the society was nothing less than a perpetual slavery to the reigning class. Men's souls were being sold in exchange for amusements and conformity. Real strength and life and Liberty would need to be found by some other means.