Terminology What is Enlightenment

What is the Enlightenment?

Enlightenment is a term applied to the mainstream of thought in 17th and 18th-century Europe and America.

The Dictionary definition is:

Enlightenment: 1 : the act or means of enlightening : the state of being enlightened
2 capitalized : a philosophic movement of the 18th century marked by a rejection of traditional social, religious, and political ideas and an emphasis on rationalism -- used with the
3 Buddhism : a final blessed state marked by the absence of desire or suffering. MWO
'Enlightenment' contrasts with the darkness of irrationality and superstition that supposedly characterized the Middle Ages, but it is not easy to define in a general way.

Immanuel Kant, one of the last, as well as the greatest, of Enlightenment thinkers, said that enlightenment is the 'emergence of man from his self-imposed infancy.'

Infancy is the inability to use one's reason without the guidance of another. Infancy is self-imposed, when it depends on a deficiency, not of reason, but of the resolve and courage to use it without external guidance.

Thus the watchword of Enlightenment is: Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own reason! (but only rationally, excluding emotion, spirit, natural impulses, everything that is not part of logic)

Background Causes

The Renaissance of the 14th through the 16th Centuries

The rise of Absolute States

The Reformation and Counter Reformation

Immediate Causes

The scientific and intellectual developments, mostly of the 17th cent.

—the discoveries of Isaac Newton in mathematics, physics and astronomy

—the rationalism of Réné Descartes (1596–1650),

—the empiricism of Francis Bacon (1561–1626)

and John Locke (1632–1704)

—the skepticism of Pierre Bayle (1647–1706)

—the pantheism of Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677) , and

the belief in natural law and universal order and the confidence in human reason spread to influence all of 18th-century educated Western European society.

Currents of Enlightenment thought were many and varied, but certain ideas were and dominant:

1. Reason is humanity's central capacity, and it enables us not only to think, but to act, correctly.

2. Humans are by nature rational and good. (Kant endorsed the Christian view of a 'radical evil' in human nature, but held that it must be possible to overcome it.)

3. Both an individual and humanity as a whole can progress to perfection.

4. All men (including, on the view of many, women) are equal in respect of their rationality, and should thus be granted equality before the law and individual liberty.

5. Beliefs are to be accepted only on the basis of reason, not on the authority of priests, sacred texts, or tradition. Thus Enlightenment thinkers tended to a purely natural or rational deism, shorn of supernatural and miraculous elements and designed primarily to support an enlightened moral code.

6. The Enlightenment devalues local 'prejudices' and customs, which owe their development to historical peculiarities rather than to the exercise of reason. What matters to the Enlightenment is not whether one is French or English, but that one is an individual, united with humanity by the (potential for) rationality one shares with them.

8. In general, the Enlightenment plays down the non-rational aspects of human nature. Works of art, for example, should be regular and instructive, the product of taste rather than genius. Education should impart knowledge rather than mould feelings or develop character.

The major champions of these concepts were the philosophes'

Diderot (1713–1784),

d’Alembert (1717-83) ,

Quesnay (1694-1774),

Montesquieu (1689–1755) ,

Voltaire (1694–1778),

Rousseau (1712–1778) ,

Turgot (1727–1781),

and others), who popularized and promoted the new ideas for the general reading public the 28 volume Encyclopédie

These proponents of the Enlightenment shared certain basic attitudes:

With supreme faith in rationality (and excluding emotion, spirit, intuition — virtually all human faculties), they sought to discover and to act upon universally valid principles governing humanity, nature, and society.

They attacked spiritual authority, dogmatism, intolerance, censorship, and economic and social restraints.

They endorsed a rational and scientific approach to religious, social, political, and economic issues promoted a secular view of the world and a general sense of progress and perfectibility.

A cornerstone of Enlightenment thought was the idea that there is only one truth. It is true in all times and all places for all people. Furthermore, all true questions have one, and only one answer. Along with this is the idea that two propositions cannot both be true and also contradict one another.

They considered the state the proper and rational instrument of progress. The extreme rationalism and skepticism of the age led naturally to deism; the same qualities played a part in bringing the later reaction of romanticism.

Enlightenment : An International System of Thought

France

Centered in Paris, the movement gained international character at cosmopolitan salons. Masonic lodges played an important role in disseminating the new ideas throughout Europe. Foremost in France among proponents of the Enlightenment were baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755), Voltaire (1694–1778), and comte de Buffon (1707–1788); Baron Turgot (1727–1781) and other physiocrats. Many opposed the extreme materialism of Julien de La Mettrie, baron d’ Holbach (1723–1789), and Claude Helvétius.

Unique for the Enlightenment was Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), who reacted against the extreme rationalism and advanced ideas that greatly influenced romanticism.

England

In England the coffeehouses and the newly flourishing press stimulated social and political criticism, such as the urbane commentary of Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele. Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope were influential Tory satirists.

Thomas Hobbes' (1588-1679) Leviathan and De Cive (McMaster University) are seminal works in political science that promote support of Monarchy with practical reasons rather than with abstract logic. Hobbes is, thus, a founder of the British philosophical school of Utilitarianism and a progenitor of American Pragmatism (see William James and John Dewey). Hobbes’ support for the Monarchy resulted in his disfavor after the demise of Charles I (1600-executed in 1649, right), but he regained popularity during the Restoration of Charles II. Hobbes’ political theory is based, among other assumptions, upon an understanding of human beings as gaining knowledge solely through the senses. He is, thus, usually considered to be the first of a long line of British Empiricist psychologists, whose powerful influence extends to the present day.

John Locke's (1632–1704) theories of learning by sense perception were further developed by

David Hume (1711–1776). The philosophical view of human rationality as being in harmony

with the universe created a hospitable climate for the laissez-faire economics of Adam Smith

and for the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham.

Historical writing gained secular detachment in the work of Edward Gibbon .

USA

From America, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson , and

Benjamin Franklin exerted vast international influence.

"Germany" (Holy Roman Empire and parts of the Hapsburg Empire)

In Germany the universities became centers of the Enlightenment (Ger. Aufklärung).

Moses Mendelssohn set forth a doctrine of rational progress;

G. E. Lessing advanced a natural religion of morality;

Johann Herder developed a philosophy of cultural nationalism. The supreme importance of

the individual formed the basis of the ethics of Immanuel Kant.

Italian City States

Italian representatives of the age included Cesare Beccaria and Giambattista Vico.

Enlightened Despots

Some philosophers at first proposed that their theories be implemented by “enlightened despots”—rulers who would impose reform by authoritarian means.

Czar Peter I of Russia anticipated the trend,

and Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II was the prototype of the enlightened despot;

others were Frederick II of Prussia,

Catherine II (the Great) of Russia,

and Charles III of Spain .

The proponents of the Enlightenment have often been held responsible for the French Revolution. The Age of Enlightenment was the most important factor in the emergence of the modern world.

Bibliography

See

E. Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (tr. 1951, repr. 1955);

T. W. Adorno and M. Horkheimer, Dialectic of the Enlightenment, tr. J. Cumming (New York, 1972).

P. J. Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, 2 vols. (London, 1973).

P. J. Gay, The Party of Humanity: Studies in the French Enlightenment (London, 1964).

P. Hazard, The European Mind: The Critical Years, 1690–1715 (tr. 1953, repr. 1963)

and European Thought in the Eighteenth Century (tr. 1954, repr. 1963);

F. E. Manuel, The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods (1959, repr. 1967);

A. Cobban, ed., Europe in the Age of the Enlightenment (1969);

L. G. Crocker, ed., The Age of Enlightenment (1969);

N. Hampson, The Enlightenment (1970);

F. Venturi, Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment (1971);

J. Engell, The Creative Imagination: Enlightenment to Romanticism (1981);

W. E. Rex, The Attraction of the Contrary: Essays on the Literature of the French Enlightenment (1987).

'Enlightenment', and its equivalents in other European languages, denotes an intellectual movement which began in England in the seventeenth century (Locke and the deists), and developed in France in the eighteenth century (Bayle, Voltaire, Diderot, and other Encyclopaedists) and also (especially under the impetus of the rationalist philosophy of Christian Wolff) in Germany (Mendelssohn, Lessing). But virtually every European country, and every sphere of life and thought, was affected by it. The age in which the movement predominated is known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason.

The Enlightenment is in one sense 'unhistorical', holding that all men are at all times (and in all places) fundamentally the same in nature and that differences between them that have arisen over history are superficial and dispensable. But it nevertheless had a considerable influence on historiography. In his Essai sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations, Voltaire (who coined the phrase 'philosophie de l'histoire') presents the standard Enlightenment view: history is man's progressive struggle for rational culture. The Encyclopaedist Montesquieu anticipated post-Enlightenment developments by attempting to explain the laws of a nation in terms of its natural and historical circumstances.

From its beginnings, but especially from the late eighteenth century on, the Enlightenment was subjected to powerful criticism. Its suggestion that medieval philosophers accepted their beliefs on authority alone will not withstand a reading of their works. Its wholesale rejection of traditional beliefs and institutions is vulnerable to Burke's (and, with regard to language, J. L. Austin's) response that the accumulated wisdom of past generations is more likely to be correct than the ideas of an individual philosopher. Its demand that an individual should subject all his beliefs to criticism, and accept nothing on authority (a claim still endorsed in J. S. Mill's On Liberty), is thwarted by the gulf between any given individual's meagre first-hand experience and the range of knowledge now available to him. Its depreciation of the non-rational aspects of man and of the differences between cultures, in favor of a narrowly defined rationality, met with criticism from later thinkers, the best of whom (such as Hegel) attempted to combine the individualist rationalism of the Enlightenment with the requirements of a cohesive, stable community. But some opponents of the Enlightenment, such as Nietzsche, rejected its doctrines over a wide front, its egalitarianism and belief in progress, as well as the primacy of reason.

Many of these criticisms have force and are the subject of continuing debate. But the benefits of the Enlightenment to, for example, historiography, cannot be denied. Even its critics have little choice but to pay the Enlightenment the compliment of turning its own weapons against it: the limits of reason can be discerned only by reason itself.

If it is clear enough when the Age of Enlightenment began, it is less clear when, or whether, it ended. In one sense, it seems to end with the French Revolution, which was in part the result of the Enlightenment and which, despite its apparent defeat, established the Enlightenment ideals of popular sovereignty, equality before the law, and liberalism. It thereby identified the whole people with the nation, and reinforced nationalism, something less agreeable to most enlightened tastes. In 1947 Adorno and Horkheimer argued that the very reason which the Enlightenment used as a weapon against myth, religion, and illusion has, in modern technocratic societies, turned against itself and become self-destructive. But in fairness to the Enlightenment, it should be added that, if this is so, reason's self-destruction relies on the co-operation of pre-Enlightenment values. M.J.I.