(Redirected from The Age of Enlightenment)
The 'Age of Enlightenment' (; ) was an eighteenth century movement in
European and
American philosophy, or the longer period including the
Age of Reason. The term can more narrowly refer to the intellectual movement of ''The Enlightenment'', which advocated
reason as the primary basis of authority. Developing in
France,
Britain and
Germany, its sphere of influence also included
Austria,
Italy, the
Netherlands,
Poland,
Russia,
Scandinavia,
Spain and, in fact, the whole of
Europe. Many of the United States'
Founding Fathers were also heavily influenced by Enlightenment-era ideas, particularly in the religious sphere (
deism) and, in parallel with
classical liberalism, in the political sphere (which had a major influence on its
Bill of Rights, in parallel with the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen).
The era is generally agreed to have ended around the year 1800 and the beginning of the
Napoleonic Wars (1804–15).
History
The Enlightenment is often closely linked with the
Scientific Revolution, for both movements emphasized
reason,
science, and
rationality, while the former also sought their application in comprehension of divine or natural law. Inspired by the revolution of knowledge commenced by
Galileo and
Newton, and in a climate of increasing disaffection with repressive rule, Enlightenment thinkers believed that systematic thinking might be applied to all areas of human activity, carried into the
governmental sphere in their explorations of the
individual,
society and the
state. Its leaders believed they could lead their states to
progress after a long period of
tradition,
irrationality,
superstition, and
tyranny which they imputed to the
Middle Ages. The movement helped create the intellectual framework for the
American and
French Revolutions,
Poland's
Constitution of May 3, 1791, the
Latin American independence movement, the
Greek national independence movement and the later
Balkan independence movements against the
Ottoman Empire, and led to the rise of
classical liberalism,
democracy, and
capitalism.
The Enlightenment is matched with the high
baroque and classical eras in
music, and the
neo-classical period in the arts. It receives modern attention as a central model for many movements in the modern period.
Another important movement in 18th century philosophy, closely related to it, focused on belief and piety. Some of its proponents, such as
George Berkeley, attempted to demonstrate rationally 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
Thomas Paine,
Voltaire,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and
David Hume questioned and attacked the existing institutions of both
Church and
State. The 19th century also saw a continued rise of
empiricist ideas and their application to
political economy,
government and sciences such as
physics,
chemistry and
biology.
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 acceptable to think of them joined as one long period.
Europe had been ravaged by religious wars; when peace in the political situation had been restored, after the
Peace of Westphalia and the
English Civil War, an intellectual upheaval overturned the accepted belief that mysticism and revelation are the primary sources of knowledge and wisdom—which was blamed for fomenting political instability. Instead (according to those that split the two periods), the Age of Reason sought to establish axiomatic philosophy and
absolutism as 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." The goal of a philosophy based 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 then became central to the Enlightenment from Newton through to Jefferson.
The ideas of
Pascal,
Leibniz,
Galileo and other philosophers of the previous period also contributed to and greatly influenced the Enlightenment; for instance, according to E. Cassirer, Leibniz’s treatise On Wisdom "... identified the central concept of the Enlightenment and sketched its theoretical programme" (Cassirer 1979: 121–23). There was a wave of change across European thinking, exemplified by Newton's
natural philosophy, which combined mathematics of
axiomatic proof with mechanics of physical observation, a coherent system of verifiable predictions, which set the tone for what followed Newton's ''
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica'' in the century after.
The Age of Enlightenment is also prominent in the history of Judaism, perhaps because of its conjunction with increased social acceptance of Jews in some western European states, especially those who were not orthodox or who converted to the officially sanctioned version of Christianity.
Conflicts
As with theology, philosophy became a source of partisan debate, with different schools attempting to develop rationales for their viewpoints. Philosophers such as
Spinoza searched for a
metaphysics of ethics, which influenced
pietism and the
transcendental philosophy of philosophers such as
Immanuel Kant.
Religion was linked to another concept which inspired a great amount of Enlightenment thought, namely the rise of the
Nation-state. In the 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. Following improvements in transportation, organization, navigation and finally the influx of gold and silver from trade and conquest, however, the state assumed more authority and power. Intellectuals responded with a series of theories on the purpose and limit of state power. Throughout The Enlightenment,
absolutism was therefore cemented. A string of philosophers (amongst them
John Locke) reacted by advocating limitations on legitimate state power, influencing both
Voltaire and
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The influence of these Enlightenment ideas extended to organizations seeking to affect state and social development and ultimately had a profound effect on the actions of politically active individuals worldwide.
Within the period of the Enlightenment, the question of what was the proper relationship of the citizen to the state continued to be explored. The idea that
society is a contract between individual and some larger entity, whether society or state, was developed philosophically by a series of thinkers, including
Rousseau,
Montesquieu and
Jefferson. Other thinkers, heralding
romanticism, advocated the idea that nationality had a basis beyond mere preference. Philosophers such as
Johann Gottfried von Herder expounded the idea 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 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. These series of discoveries had a momentous effect on both pragmatic commerce and philosophy. The excitement engendered by 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, greatly influenced 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, two main theories contended to be the basis of that ordering:
divine right and
natural law. The writings 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 on 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. 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 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, was not based on mystical appeals to authority, but on the pragmatic invocation of state power as necessary in order to hold back the anarchy of warfare and rebellion. 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 include, amongst other things, the economics of
Adam Smith, the physical chemistry of
Antoine Lavoisier, the idea of evolution pursued by
Johann Wolfgang Goethe and the declaration by Jefferson of inalienable rights. Development in the philosophy of the Enlightenment 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
Romanticism.
Influence
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 a period of rationality which overturned established traditions, analogously to the Encyclopaediasts and other Enlightenment philosophers. 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 Enlightenment virtues. The modern movement points to
reductionism and
rationality as crucial aspects of Enlightenment thinking, of which it is the heir, 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 include
Jürgen Habermas and
Isaiah Berlin.
This view asserts that the Enlightenment was the point when Europe broke through what historian
Peter Gay calls "the sacred circle," whose dogma had circumscribed thinking. The Enlightenment is held to be the source of critical ideas, such as the centrality of
freedom,
democracy and
reason as primary values of 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
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 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 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.
Yet other leading intellectuals, such as
Noam Chomsky, see a natural evolution, using the term loosely, from early Enlightenment thinking to other forms of social analysis, specifically from The Enlightenment to
liberalism,
anarchism and
socialism. The relationship between these different schools of thought, Chomsky and others point out , can be seen in the works of
von Humboldt,
Kropotkin,
Bakunin and
Marx, among others.
Important figures
★
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1672) Dutch philosopher who is considered laying the groundwork for the 18th century Enlightenment.
★
Balthasar Bekker (1634–1698) ''Dutch'', a key figure in the Early Enlightenment. In his book De Philosophia Cartesiana (1668) Bekker argued that theology and philosophy each had their separate terrain and that Nature can no more be explained from Scripture than can theological truth be deduced from Nature.
★
Robert Hooke (1635–1703) ''English'', probably the leading experimenter of his age, Curator of Experiments for the Royal Society. Performed the work which quantified such concepts as
Boyle's Law and the inverse-square nature of gravitation, father of the science of
microscopy.
★
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''.
★
G.L. Buffon (1707–1788) ''French''. Author of ''L'Histoire Naturelle'' who considered
Natural Selection and the similarities between humans and apes.
★
James Burnett Lord Monboddo ''Scottish''. Philosopher,
jurist, pre-
evolutionary thinker and contributor to
linguistic evolution. See
Scottish Enlightenment
★
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.
★
Marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794) ''French''. Philosopher, mathematician, and early political scientist who devised the concept of a Condorcet method.
★
Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789) ''French''. Author,
encyclopaedist and Europe's first outspoken
atheist. Roused much controversy over his criticism of religion as a whole in his work ''
The System of Nature''.
★
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''. Leading poet of the
Polish Enlightenment, hailed by contemporaries as "the Prince of Poets." After the 1764 election of
Stanisław August Poniatowski as
King of Poland, 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. On
Warmia's 1772 annexation by
Frederick the Great's
Prussia in the
First Partition of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Krasicki became a subject of the Prussian King and a habitué at the Prussian court. In 1795 Krasicki became
Archbishop of Gniezno and thus
Primate of Poland. He is remembered especially for his ''
Fables and Parables''.
★
Benito Jerónimo Feijóo e Montenegro (1676–1764) was the most prominent promoter of the critical empiricist attitude at the dawn of the Spanish Enlightenment. See also
MartÃn Sarmiento.
★
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 favour 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
scientific scepticism, advanced doctrines of
naturalism and material causes. Influenced Kant and Adam Smith.
★
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) ''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, deist. 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 1783–86. An organizer of the townspeople's movement, in 1789 he edited a memorial from the cities. He co-authored the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth's
Constitution of May 3, 1791, and founded the Assembly of Friends of the Government Constitution to assist in the document's implementation. In 1791–92 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 centre of political and cultural life is the middle class.
★
John Locke (1632–1704) ''English'' Philosopher. Important empiricist 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.
★
Nikolay Novikov (1744–1818) ''Russian''. Philanthropist and journalist who sought to raise the culture of Russian readers and publicly argued with the Empress. See
Russian Enlightenment for other prominent figures.
★
Thomas Paine (1737–1809) ''English/American''. Pamphleteer, Deist, and polemicist, most famous for ''
Common Sense'' attacking England's domination of the colonies in America. The pamphlet was key in fomenting the
American Revolution. Also wrote ''
The Age of Reason'' which remains one of the most persuasive critiques of the Bible ever written.
★
Francois Quesney (1694–1774) ''French'' economist of the Physiocratic school. He also practiced surgery.
★
Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos. Main figure of the Spanish Enlightenment. Preeminent statesman.
★
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) Natural philosopher and theologian whose search for the operation of the soul in the body led him to construct a detailed metaphysical model for spiritual-natural causation.
★
French Encyclopédistes
★
Voltaire (1694–1778) French Enlightenment writer,
essayist,
deist and
philosopher
★
Sebastião de Melo, Marquis of Pombal (1699-1782) Portuguese statesman notable for his swift and competent leadership in the aftermath of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. He also implemented sweeping economic policies to regulate commercial activity and standardize quality throughout the country. The term Pombaline is used to describe not only his tenure, but also the architectural style which formed after the great earthquake.
★
Leibniz
★
Lord Monboddo
★
Jean-Jacques Rousseau Political philosopher that wrote the
Social Contract.
★
Helvétius
★
Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
★
Olympe de Gouges
★
Cesare Beccaria
★
Adam Smith (1723–1790) Economist who wrote the
Wealth of Nations
★
Isaac Newton
★
John Wilkes
★
Antoine Lavoisier
★
Mikhail Lomonosov
★
Mikhailo Shcherbatov
★
Ekaterina Dashkova
★
Mary Wollstonecraft
See also
★
Natural philosophy
★
Humanism
★
Secularism
★
Infidels
★
Higher criticism
★
Deism
★
Robert Boyle
★
John Ruskin
★
Counter-Enlightenment
★
Intellectualism
★
Anti-intellectualism
★
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
★
The Select Society
★
Christianity
Further reading
★
Henry F. May ''The Enlightenment in America'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976)
★
Ernst Cassirer, ''The Philosophy of the Enlightenment,'' Princeton University Press 1979
★ R.H Campbell and AS Skinner, (Eds.) The Origins and Nature of the Scottish Enlightenment, Edinburgh, 1982
★
Mark Hulluing ''Autocritique of Enlightenment: Rousseau and the Philosophes'' 1994
★
Gay Peter. ''The Enlightenment: An Interpretation''. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996
★
Michel Foucault,
What is enlightenment?
★
Redkop, Benjamin, ''The Enlightenment and Community'', 1999
★
Melamed, Yitzhak Y, ''Salomon Maimon and the Rise of Spinozism in German Idealism'', Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 42, Issue 1
★
Porter, Roy ''The Enlightenment'' 1999
★
Jacob, Margaret ''Enlightenment: A Brief History with Documents'' 2000
★
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
★
Stuart Brown ed., ''British Philosophy in the Age of Enlightenment'' 2002
★
Alan Charles Kors, ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment''. 4 volumes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003
★
Buchan, James ''Crowded with Genius: The Scottish Enlightenment: Edinburgh's Moment of the Mind'' 2003
★
Bernard Dieterle,
Manfred Engel (ed.), ''The Dream and the Enlightenment / Le Rêve et les Lumières.'' Paris: Honoré Champion 2003, ISBN 2-7453-0672-3.
★
Louis Dupre ''The Enlightenment & the Intellctural Foundations of Modern Culture'' 2004
★
Himmelfarb, Gertrude ''The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments'', 2004
★
Stephen Eric Bronner ''Interpreting the Enlightenment: Metaphysics, Critique, and Politics'', 2004
★
Jonathan Hill, ''Faith in the Age of Reason,'' Lion/Intervarsity Press 2004
★
Stephen Eric Bronner '' The Great Divide: The Enlightenment and its Critics''
★ The
London Philosophy Study Guide offers many suggestions on what to read, depending on the student's familiarity with the subject:
Modern Philosophy
External links
★
''Dictionary of the History of Ideas'': The Enlightenment
★
''Dictionary of the History of Ideas'': The
Counter-Enlightenment
★
Introduction to the Enlightenment
★
The greatest works of Enlightenment Literature
★
'L'esprit des Lumières a encore beaucoup à faire dans le monde d'aujourd'hui' by Tzvetan Todorov
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