Age of Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment refers to the 18th century in European philosophy, and is often thought of as part of a larger period which includes the Age of Reason.

Short history of Enlightenment philosophy

According to historians, the boundaries of the Enlightenment cover much of the 17th 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.

Related Topics:
The Age of Reason - Split

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Throughout the 1500s and half of the 1600s, 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 Benedictus de Spinoza 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.

Related Topics:
1500s - 1600s - Peace of Westphalia - English Civil War - Michel de Montaigne - René Descartes - Benedictus de Spinoza

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Enlightenment was, in many ways, influenced by the ideas of Pascal, Leibniz, Galileo and other philosophers of the previous period. There was a wave of change across European thinking, which is exemplified by the natural philosophy of Sir Isaac Newton, a mathematical genius and brilliant physicist. The ideas of Newton, which combined his ability to fuse axiomatic proof with physical observation into a coherent system of verifiable predictions, set the tone for much of what would follow in the century after the publication of his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

Related Topics:
Pascal - Leibniz - Galileo - Natural philosophy - Sir Isaac Newton - Axiom - Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But Newton was not alone in the "systematic revolution" in thinking; he was merely the most visible and famous example. The idea of uniform laws for natural phenomena mirrored the greater systematization in a variety of studies. If the previous era was the age of reasoning from first principles, the Enlightenment saw itself as looking into the mind of God by studying creation and deducing the basic truths of the world. This view may seem over-reaching to some in the present present-day, where the belief that human beings apprehend a truth that is more provisional, but in that era it was a powerful notion, which turned on its head the previous basic notions of the sources of legitimacy.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

For those that divide the "Age of Reason" from the "Enlightenment," the precipitating figure of Newton offers a specific example of the importance of the difference, because he took empirically observed and codified facts, such as Kepler's planetary motion, and the "opticks" which had explained lenses, and began to create an underlying theory of how they functioned. This shift united the pure empiricism of Renaissance figures as Sir Francis Bacon with the axiomatic approach of Descartes. The belief in a comprehensible world, under an orderly Christian God, provided much of the impetus for philosophical inquiry. On the one hand, religious philosophy focused on the importance of piety, and the majesty and mystery of God's ultimate nature; on the other hand, ideas such as Deism stressed that the world was accessible to the faculty of human reason, and that the "laws" which governed its behavior were understandable. The notion of a "clockwork god" or "god the watchmaker" became prevalent, as many in the time period saw new and increasingly sophisticated machines that kept order as a powerful metaphor for a seemingly orderly universe.

Related Topics:
Francis Bacon - Deism

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Central to this philosophical tradition was the belief in objective truth independent of the observer, expressible in rigorous human terms. The quest for the expression of this truth would lead to a series of philosophical works which alternately advanced the scepticist position that it is impossible to know reality in the realm of experience, and the idealist position that the mind was capable of encompassing a reality which lies outside of its direct experience. The relationship between being and perception would be explored by George Berkeley and David Hume, and would eventually be the problem that occupied much of Kant's philosophy.

Related Topics:
Scepticist - Idealist - George Berkeley - David Hume - Kant

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The focus on law, involving the separation of rules from the particulars of behavior or experience, was essential to the rise of a philosophy which had a much stronger concept of the individual; according to this concept, his rights were based on ideals other than ancient traditions, or tenures, and instead reflected the intrinsic quality of a person as defined by the philosophers of the age. John Locke wrote his Two Treatises on Government to argue that property was not a family right by tenure, but an individual right brought on by mixing labour with the object in question, and securing it from other use. This focus on process and procedure would be honoured, at times, in the breach, as England's own "Star Chamber" court would attest to. However, once the concept established that there were natural rights, as there were natural laws, it became the basis for the exploration of what we would now call economics, and political philosophy.

Related Topics:
John Locke - Star Chamber - Economics - Political philosophy

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In his famous 1784 essay "What Is Enlightenment?," Immanuel Kant defined it as follows:

Related Topics:
1784 - What Is Enlightenment? - Immanuel Kant

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:"Enlightenment is man's leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if its cause is not lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one's intelligence without being guided by another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own intelligence!"

Related Topics:
Intelligence - Motto - Sapere aude

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Enlightenment began then, from the belief in a rational, orderly and comprehensible universe - then proceeded, in stages, to form a rational and orderly organization of knowledge and the state, such as what is found in the idea of Deism. This began from the assertion that law governed both heavenly and human affairs, and that law invested the king with his power, rather than the king's power giving force to law. The conception of law as a relationship between individuals, rather than families, came to the fore, and with it the increasing focus on individual liberty as a fundamental right of man, given by "Nature and Nature's God," which, in the ideal state, would encompass as many people as possible. Thus The Enlightenment extolled the ideals of liberty, property and rationality which are still recognizable as the basis for most political philosophies even in the present era; that is, of a free individual being mostly free within the dominion of the state whose role is to provide stability to those natural laws.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The "long" Enlightenment is seen as beginning the Renaissance drive for humanism and empiricism. It was built on the growing natural philosophy that espoused the application of algebra to the study of nature, and the discoveries brought about by the invention of the microscope and the telescope. There was also an increasingly complex philosophy of the role of the state and its relationship to the individual. The turbulence of religious wars had brought about a desire for balance, order, and unity.

Related Topics:
Renaissance - Humanism - Empiricism - Microscope - Telescope - State

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Two good examples which help illustrate why many historians split the Age of Reason from the Enlightenment are the works of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Hobbes, whose ideas are a product of the age of reason, systematically pursues and categorizes human emotion, and argues for the need of a rigid system to hold back the chaos of nature in his work Leviathan. While John Locke is clearly an intellectual descendant of Hobbes, for him the state of nature is the source of all rights and unity, and the state's role is to protect, and not to hold back, the state of nature. This fundamental shift, from a rather chaotic and dark view of nature, to a fundamentally orderly view, is an important aspect of the Enlightenment.

Related Topics:
Thomas Hobbes - John Locke - Leviathan

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A second wave of Enlightenment thinking began in France with the Encyclopédists. The premise of their enterprise was that there is a moral architecture to knowledge. Mixing personal comment with the attempt to codify knowledge, Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert sought liberation for the mind in the ability to grasp knowledge.

Related Topics:
Encyclopédists - Denis Diderot - Jean le Rond d'Alembert

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Enlightenment was suffused with two competing strains. One was characterised by an intense spirituality, and faith in religion and the church. In opposition to this, there was a growing streak of anti-clericalism which mocked the perceived distance between the supposed ideals of the church, and the practice of priests. For Voltaire "Écrasez l'infâme!" would be a battle cry for the ideal of a triumphant, rational society.

Related Topics:
Anti-clericalism - Voltaire

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

By the mid-century, what was regarded by many as the pinnacle of purely Enlightenment thinking was being reached with Voltaire - whose combination of wit, insight, and anger made him the most hailed man of letters since Erasmus. Born Francois Marie Arouet in 1694, he was exiled to England between 1726 and 1729, and there he studied Locke, Newton, and the English Monarchy. Voltaire's ethos was that "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities" - that if people believed in what is unreasonable, they will do what is unreasonable.

Related Topics:
Voltaire - Man of letters - Erasmus

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This point is, perhaps, the central point of contention over the Enlightenment: whether the construction of reason and credibility creates, inherently, as many problems as it deals with. From the perspective of many crucial figures of the Enlightenment, credible reports, viewed through the lens of reason annealed knowledge, empirical observation, and knowledge should be compiled into a source which stood as the authoritative one. The opposing view, which was held with increasing force by the Romantic movement and its adherents, is that this process is inherently corrupted by social convention, and bars truth which is unique, individual and immanent from being expressed.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Enlightenment balanced then, on the call for "natural" freedom which was good, without a "license" which would, in their view, degenerate. Thus the Age of Enlightenment sought reform of the Monarchy by laws which were in the best interest of its subjects, and the "enlightened" ordering of society. The idea of enlightened ordering was reflected in the sciences by, for example, Carolus Linnaeus' categorization of biology.

Related Topics:
Carolus Linnaeus - Biology

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In mid-century Germany, the idea of philosophy as a critical discipline began with the work of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Johann Gottfried Herder. Both argued that formal unities that underlie language and structure hold deeper meaning than a surface reading, and that philosophy could be a tool for improving the virtue, political and personal, of the individual. This strain of thinking would influence Kant's critiques, as well as subsequent philosophers seeking an apparatus to examine works, beliefs and social organization, and it is particularly notable in the history of later German philosophy.

Related Topics:
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing - Johann Gottfried Herder

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

These ideas became volatile when it reached the point where the idea that natural freedom was more self-ordering than hierarchy, since hierarchy was the social reality. As that social reality repeatedly disappointed the fundamentally optimistic ideal that reform could end disasters, there became a progressively more strident naturalism which would, eventually, lead to the Romantic movement.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Thinkers of the last wave of the Enlightenment - Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant as well as Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson and the young Johann Wolfgang von Goethe adopted the increasingly used biological metaphor of self-organization and evolutionary forces. This represented the impending end of the Enlightenment: which believed that nature, while basically good, was not basically self-ordering - see Voltaire's Candide for an example of why not. Instead, it had to be ordered with reasoning and maturity. The impending Romantic view saw the universe as self-ordering, and that chaos was, in a real sense, the result of excesses of rational impositions on an organic world.

Related Topics:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Immanuel Kant - Adam Smith - Thomas Jefferson - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Candide

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This boundary would produce political results: with increasing force in the 1750s there would be attempts in England, Austria, Prussia, Poland and France to "rationalize" the Monarchical system and its laws. When this failed to end wars, there was an increasing drive for revolution or dramatic alteration. The Enlightenment idea of rationality as a guiding force for government found its way to the heart of the American Declaration of Independence, and the Jacobin program of the French Revolution, as well as the American Constitution of 1787 and the Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791.

Related Topics:
1750s - Declaration of Independence - French Revolution - American Constitution - Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The French Revolution, in particular, represented the Enlightenment philosophy through a violent and messianic lens, particularly during the brief period of Jacobin dictatorship. The desire for rationality in government led to the attempt to end the Catholic Church, and indeed Christianity in France, in addition to changing the calendar, clock, measuring system, monetary system and legal system into something orderly and rational. It also took the ideals of social and economic equality further than any other major state to that time.

Related Topics:
Jacobin - Catholic Church - Christianity - Calendar

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But with Napoleon the Enlightenment and its style breathed its last, and longest breath. Napoleon reorganized France into departments, and funded a host of projects. One example of the Enlightenment at work in Revolutionary and Imperial France was the metric system. In a uniform system of weights and measures, based on axiomatic units - the radius of the earth, the weight and thermodynamic properties of water - prices would float based on measurable quantities, rather than price being fixed. It was thought that this would liberate industry from the tyranny of old production laws, and hence from Medieval structure.

Related Topics:
Napoleon - Department - Imperial France - Metric system - Medieval

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~