Age of Enlightenment
The
Age of Enlightenment refers to either the
eighteenth century in
European philosophy, or the longer period including the seventeenth century and the
Age of Reason. It more specifically denotes a historical intellectual movement,
The Enlightenment, which advocated
rationality as a means to establishing an authoritative system of
aesthetics,
ethics, and
logic. The intellectual leaders of this movement regarded themselves as a courageous elite with the purpose of leading the world into
progress and out of the long period of doubtful
tradition, irrationality, superstition, and tyranny, which they imputed to the
Dark Ages. This movement also inspired the framework for the
American and
French Revolutions, the
Latin American independence movement, and the
Polish Constitution of May 3, and it also engendered the rise of what would later be called
liberalism and the beginnings of
socialism. It is matched by the high
baroque and classical eras in music, and the
neo-classical period in the arts, and receives contemporary attention as being one of the central models for many movements in the
modern period.
Another important movement in eighteenth century philosophy, closely related to it, focused on belief and piety. Some of its proponents attempted to rationally demonstrate the existence of a supreme being. Piety and belief in this period were integral to the exploration of
natural philosophy and
ethics, in addition to
political theories of the age. However, prominent Enlightenment philosophers such as
Voltaire,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and
David Hume questioned and attacked the existing institutions of both
Church and
State.
The eighteenth century also saw a continued rise of
empirical philosophical ideas, and their application to
political economy,
government and sciences such as
physics,
chemistry and
biology.
According to scholarly opinion , the Enlightenment was preceded by the
Age of Reason (if thought of as a short period) or by the
Renaissance and the
Reformation (if thought of as a long period). It was followed by
Romanticism.
The boundaries of the Enlightenment cover much of the seventeenth century as well, though others term the previous era "
The Age of Reason." For the present purposes, these two eras are
split; however, it is equally acceptable to think of them conjoined as one long period.
Europe was ravaged by religious wars. When the political situation stabilized after the
Peace of Westphalia and at the end of the
English Civil War, there was an upheaval which overturned the notions of mysticism and faith in individual revelation as the primary source of knowledge and wisdom—perceived to have been a driving force for instability. Instead, (according to those that split the two periods), the Age of Reason sought to establish axiomatic philosophy and absolutism as the foundations for knowledge and stability. Epistemology, in the writings of
Michel de Montaigne and
René Descartes, was based on extreme skepticism, and inquiry into the nature of "knowledge." This goal in the Age of Reason, which was built on self-evident axioms, reached its height with
Baruch (Benedictus de) Spinoza's Ethics, which expounded a pantheistic view of the universe where God and Nature were one. This idea became central to the Enlightenment from Newton through to Jefferson.The Enlightenment was, in many ways, influenced by the ideas of
Pascal,
Leibniz,
Galileo and other philosophers of the previous period. For instance, E. Cassirer has asserted that Leibniz's treatise On Wisdom ". . . identified the central concept of the Enlightenment and sketched its theoretical programme" (Cassirer 1979: 121â€"123). There was a wave of change across European thinking at this time, which is also exemplified by the
natural philosophy of
Sir Isaac Newton. The ideas of Newton, which combined the mathematics of
axiomatic proof with the mechanics of physical observation, resulted in a coherent system of verifiable predictions and set the tone for much of what would follow in the century after the publication of his
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.As with most periods, the individuals present within the Enlightenment were more aware of their differences than their similarities; within the period there were schools of thought, which saw themselves as widely divergent, even as later perspective has come to consider them similar.
One key conflict is on the role of theology - during the previous period, there had been the splintering of the Catholic Church, not, as with previous schisms, largely along political control of the papacy, but along doctrinal lines between Roman Catholic and
Protestant theologies. Consequently, theology itself became a source of partisan debate, with different schools attempting to create rationales for their viewpoints, which then, in turn, became generally used. Thus philosophers such as
Spinoza searched for a metaphysics of ethics. This trend would influence
pietism and eventually
transcendental searches such as those by
Immanuel Kant.
Religion was linked to another feature which produced a great deal of Enlightenment thought, namely the rise of the
Nation-state. In medieval and Renaissance periods, the state was restricted by the need to work through a host of intermediaries. This system existed because of poor communication, where localism thrived in return for loyalty to some central organization. With the improvements in transportation, organization, navigation and finally the influx of gold and silver from trade and conquest, the state began to assume more and more authority and power. The response against this was a series of theories on the purpose of, and limits of state power. The Enlightenment saw both the cementing of
absolutism and counter-reaction of limitation advocated by a string of philosophers from
John Locke forward, who influenced both
Voltaire and
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Enlightenment ideas influenced organisations seeking to affect state and social development, such as the
Freemasons and
Illuminati. And they ultimately had a profound effect on the actions of politically active individuals worldwide.
Within the period of the Enlightenment, these issues began to be explored in the question of what constituted the proper relationship of the citizen to the monarch or the state. The idea that
society is a contract between individual and some larger entity, whether society or state, continued to grow throughout this period. A series of philosophers, including
Rousseau,
Montesquieu,
Hume and ultimately
Jefferson advocated this idea. Furthermore, thinkers of this age advocated the idea that nationality had a basis beyond mere preference. Philosophers such as
Johann Gottfried von Herder reasserted the idea from Greek antiquity that
language had a decisive influence on cognition and thought, and that the meaning of a particular book or text was open to deeper exploration based on deeper connections, an idea now called
hermeneutics. The original focus of his scholarship was to delve into the meaning in the
Bible and in order to gain a deeper understanding of it. These two concepts - of the contractual nature between the state and the citizen, and the reality of the nation beyond that contract, had a decisive influence in the development of
liberalism,
democracy and constitutional government which followed.
At the same time, the integration of
algebraic thinking, acquired from the Islamic world over the previous two centuries, and
geometric thinking which had dominated Western mathematics and philosophy since at least
Eudoxus, precipitated a scientific and mathematical revolution. Sir Isaac Newton's greatest claim to prominence came from a systematic application of algebra to geometry, and synthesizing a workable
calculus which was applicable to scientific problems. The Enlightenment was a time when the solar system was truly discovered: with the accurate calculation of orbits, such as
Halley's comet, the discovery of the first planet since antiquity,
Uranus by
William Herschel, and the calculation of the mass of the Sun using Newton's theory of universal gravitation. The effect that this series of discoveries had on both pragmatic commerce and philosophy was momentous. The excitement of creating a new and orderly vision of the world, as well as the need for a philosophy of science which could encompass the new discoveries would show its fundamental influence in both religious and secular ideas. If Newton could order the cosmos with natural philosophy, so, many argued, could political philosophy order the body politic.
Within the Enlightenment there were two main theories contending to be the basis of that ordering: divine right and natural law. It might seem that divine right would yield absolutist ideas, and that natural law would lead to theories of liberty. The writing of
Jacques-Benigne Bossuet (1627-1704) set the paradigm for the divine right: that the universe was ordered by a reasonable God, and therefore his representative on earth had the powers of that God. The orderliness of the cosmos was seen as proof of God; therefore it was a proof of the power of monarchy. Natural law, began, not as a reaction against divinity, but instead, as an abstraction: God did not rule arbitrarily, but through natural laws that he enacted on earth.
Thomas Hobbes, though an absolutist in government, drew this argument in
Leviathan. Once the concept of natural law was invoked, however, it took on a life of its own. If natural law could be used to bolster the position of the monarchy, it could also be used to assert the rights of subjects of that monarch, that if there were natural laws, then there were
natural rights associated with them, just as there are rights under man-made laws.
What both theories had in common, however, was the need for an orderly and comprehensible function of government. The "Enlightened Despotism" of, for example,
Catherine the Great of Russia and
Frederick the Great of Prussia (a state within The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation), is not based on mystical appeals to authority, but on the pragmatic invocation of state power as necessary to hold back chaotic and anarchic warfare and rebellion. Frederick the Great was raised by his French governess, importing the Enlightenment to "Germany." Regularization and standardization were seen as good things because they allowed the state to reach its power outwards over the entirety of its domain and because they liberated people from being entangled in endless local custom. Additionally, they expanded the sphere of economic and social activity.
Thus rationalization, standardization and the search for fundamental unities occupied much of the Enlightenment and its arguments over proper methodology and nature of understanding. The culminating efforts of the Enlightenment: for example the economics of
Adam Smith, the physical chemistry of
Antoine Lavoisier, the idea of evolution pursued by Goethe, the declaration by Jefferson of inalienable rights, in the end overshadowed the idea of divine right and direct alteration of the world by the hand of God. It was also the basis for overthrowing the idea of a completely rational and comprehensible universe, and led, in turn, to the metaphysics of Hegel and the search for the emotional truth of
Romanticism.
The Enlightenment occupies a central role in the justification for the movement known as
modernism. The neo-classicizing trend in modernism came to see itself as being a period of rationality which was overturning foolishly established traditions, and therefore analogized itself to the Encyclopediasts and other philosophes. A variety of 20th century movements, including
liberalism and
neo-classicism traced their intellectual heritage back to the Enlightenment, and away from the purported emotionalism of the 19th century. Geometric order, rigor and reductionism were seen as virtues of the Enlightenment. The modern movement points to
reductionism and
rationality as crucial aspects of Enlightenment thinking of which it is the inheritor, as opposed to irrationality and emotionalism. In this view, the Enlightenment represents the basis for modern ideas of
liberalism against
superstition and
intolerance. Influential philosophers who have held this view are
Jürgen Habermas and
Isaiah Berlin.
This view asserts that the Enlightenment was the point where Europe broke through what historian Peter Gay calls "the sacred circle," where previous dogma circumscribed thinking. The Enlightenment is held, in this view, to be the source of critical ideas, such as the centrality of
freedom,
democracy and
reason as being the primary values of a society. This view argues that the establishment of a contractual basis of rights would lead to the market mechanism and
capitalism, the
scientific method, religious and racial
tolerance, and the organization of states into self-governing republics through democratic means. In this view, the tendency of the
philosophes in particular to apply rationality to every problem is considered to be the essential change. From this point on, thinkers and writers were held to be free to pursue the truth in whatever form, without the threat of sanction for violating established ideas.
With the end of the
Second World War and the rise of
post-modernity, these same features came to be regarded as liabilities - excessive specialization, failure to heed traditional wisdom or provide for unintended consequences, and the romanticization of Enlightenment figures - such as the
Founding Fathers of the United States, prompted a backlash against both Science and Enlightenment based dogma in general. Philosophers such as
Michel Foucault are often understood as arguing that the age of reason had to construct a vision of unreason as being demonic and subhuman, and therefore evil and befouling, whence by analogy to argue that rationalism in the modern period is, likewise, a construction. In their book,
Dialectic of Enlightenment,
Max Horkheimer and
Theodor Adorno wrote a penetrating critique of what they perceived as the contradictions of Enlightenment thought: Enlightenment was seen as being at once liberatory and, through the domination of
instrumental rationality tending towards totalitarianism.
Alternatively, the Enlightenment was used as a powerful symbol to argue for the supremacy of rationalism and rationalization, and therefore any attack on it is connected to despotism and madness, for example in the writings of
Gertrude Himmelfarb.
*
Francisco Suárez*
Juan de Mariana*
John Milton*
John Locke*
Polish brethren*
Louis XIV*
Henry VIII*
René Descartes*
Blaise Pascal*
Thomas Hobbes*
Francis Bacon*
Nicolaus Copernicus*
Galileo Galilei*
Algebra*
Analytic Geometry*
French Encyclopédistes |
Voltaire |
Leibniz |
Jean-Jacques Rousseau |
Condorcet |
Helvétius |
Fontenelle |
Olympe de Gouges |
Ignacy Krasicki |
Francois Quesney |
Benedict Spinoza |
Cesare Beccaria |
Adam Smith |
Isaac Newton |
John Wilkes |
Antoine Lavoisier |
G.L. Buffon |
Mikhail Lomonosov |
Mikhailo Shcherbatov |
Ekaterina Dashkova |
Montesquieu |
*
Jean le Rond d'Alembert (1717-1783)
French. Mathematician and physicist, one of the editors of
Encyclopédie*
Thomas Abbt (1738-1766)
German. Promoted what would later be called
Nationalism in
Vom Tode für's Vaterland (On dying for one's nation).
*
Pierre Bayle (1647-1706)
French. Literary critic known for
Nouvelles de la république des lettres and
Dictionnaire historique et critique.
*
James Burnett Lord Monboddo Scottish. Philosopher,
jurist and contributor to
linguistic evolution.
*
James Boswell (1740-1795)
Scottish. Biographer of
Samuel Johnson, helped established the norms for writing
Biography in general.
*
Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
Irish. Parliamentarian and political philosopher, best known for pragmatism, considered important to both
liberal and
conservative thinking.
*
Denis Diderot (1713-1784)
French. Founder of the
Encyclopédie, speculated on
free will and attachment to material objects, contributed to the theory of literature.
*
Ignacy Krasicki (1735-1801)
Polish. Outstanding poet of the Polish Enlightenment, hailed by contemporaries as "the Prince of Poets." After the election of
Stanisław August Poniatowski as king of
Poland in 1764, Krasicki became the new King's confidant and chaplain. He participated in the King's famous "Thursday dinners" and co-founded the Monitor, the preeminent periodical of the Polish Enlightenment, sponsored by the King. Consecrated Bishop of Warmia in 1766, Krasicki thereby also became an ex-officio Senator of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
*
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
American. Statesman, scientist, political philosopher, pragmatic deist, author. As a philosopher known for his writings on nationality, economic matters, aphorisms published in
Poor Richard's Alamanac and polemics in favor of American Independence. Involved with writing the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of 1787.
*
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
English. Historian best known for his
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
*
Johann Gottfried von Herder German. Theologian and Linguist. Proposed that language determines thought, introduced concepts of ethnic study and nationalism, influential on later Romantic thinkers. Early supporter of democracy and republican
self rule.
*
David Hume Scottish. Historian, philosopher and economist. Best known for his
empiricism and
skepticism, advanced doctrines of
naturalism and material causes. Influenced Kant and Adam Smith.
*
Immanuel Kant German. Philosopher and physicist. Established critical philosophy on a systematic basis, proposed a material theory for the origin of the solar system, wrote on ethics and morals. Influenced by Hume and Isaac Newton. Important figure in German Idealism, and important to the work of
Fichte and
Hegel.
*
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
American Statesman, political philosopher, educator. As a philosopher best known for the
United States Declaration of Independence (1776) and his interpretation of the
United States Constitution (1787) which he pursued as president. Argued for natural rights as the basis of all states, argued that violation of these rights negates the contract which bind a people to their rulers and that therefore there is an inherent "Right to Revolution."
*
Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830)
German who founded the Order of the Illuminati.
*
Hugo Kołłątaj (1750-1812)
Polish. He was active in the Commission for National Education and the Society for Elementary Textbooks, and reformed the Kraków Academy, of which he was rector in 1783-1786. An organizer of the townspeople's movement, in 1789 he edited a memorial from the cities. He co-authored the Polish
Constitution of May 3, 1791, and founded the Assembly of Friends of the Government Constitution to assist in the document's implementation. In 1791-1792 he served as Crown Vice Chancellor. In 1794 he took part in the
Kościuszko Uprising, co-authoring its Uprising Act (March 24, 1794) and
Proclamation of Połaniec (May 7, 1794), heading the Supreme National Council's Treasury Department, and backing the Uprising's left, Jacobin wing.
*
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781)
German Dramatist, critic, political philosopher. Created theatre in the German language, began reappraisal of Shakespeare to being a central figure, and the importance of classical dramatic norms as being crucial to good dramatic writing, theorized that the center of political and cultural life is the middle class.
*
John Locke (1632-1704)
English Philosopher. Important empricist who expanded and extended the work of Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes. Seminal thinker in the realm of the relationship between the state and the individual, the contractual basis of the state and the rule of law. Argued for personal liberty with respect to
property.
*
Leandro Fernández de MoratÃn (1760-1828)
Spanish. Dramatist and translator, support of
republicanism and free thinking. Transitional figure to Romanticism.
*
Montesquieu (1689-1755)
French political thinker. He is famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers, taken for granted in modern discussions of government and implemented in many constitutions all over the world.
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Nikolay Novikov (1744-1818)
Russian. Philanthropist and journalist who sought to raise the culture of Russian readers and publicly argued with the Empress.
*
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
English. Pamphleteer, Deist, and polemicist, most famous for
Common Sense attacking England's domination of the colonies in America.
*
Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos. Main figure of the Spanish Enlightment. Preminent stateman.
*
New Age Transcendology*
Dictionary of the History of Ideas: The Enlightenment
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Dictionary of the History of Ideas: The
Counter-Enlightenment*
Introduction to the Enlightenment*
The greatest works of Enlightenment Literature*
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Jonathan Hill,
Faith in the Age of Reason, Lion/Intervarsity Press 2004
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Ernst Cassirer,
The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, Princeton University Press 1979
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Mark Hulluing Autocritique of Enlightenment: Rousseau and the Philosophes 1994
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Gay, Peter.
The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996
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Redkop, Benjamin,
The Enlightenment and Community, 1999
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Melamed, Yitzhak Y,
Salomon Maimon and the Rise of Spinozism in German Idealism, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 42, Issue 1
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Porter, Roy The Enlightenment 1999
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Jacob, Margaret Enlightenment: A Brief History with Documents 2000
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Thomas Munck Enlightenment: A Comparative Social History, 1721-1794*
Arthur Herman How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of how Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It 2001
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Stuart Brown ed.,
British Philosophy in the Age of Enlightenment 2002
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Alan Charles Kors, ed.
Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment. 4 volumes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003
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Buchan, James Crowded with Genius: The Scottish Enlightenment: Edinburgh's Moment of the Mind 2003
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Louis Dupre The Enlightenment & the Intellctural Foundations of Modern Culture 2004
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Himmelfarb, Gertrude The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments, 2004
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Stephen Eric Bronner Interpreting the Enlightenment: Metaphysics, Critique, and Politics, 2004
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Stephen Eric Bronner The Great Divide: The Enlightenment and its Critics*
Henry F. May The Enlightenment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976)
