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Enlightenment
When and where did the Enlightenment take place?
Historians place the Enlightenment inEurope (with a strong emphasis onFrance) during the late 17th and the 18th centuries, or, more comprehensively, between theGlorious Revolution in 1688 and theFrench Revolution of 1789. It represents a phase in the intellectual history of Europe and also programs of reform, inspired by a belief in the possibility of a better world, that outlined specific targets for criticism and programs of action.
What led to the Enlightenment?
The roots of the Enlightenment can be found in the humanism of theRenaissance, with its emphasis on the study of Classical literature. The ProtestantReformation, with its antipathy toward received religious dogma, was another precursor. Perhaps the most important sources of what became the Enlightenment were the complementary rational and empirical methods of discovering truth that were introduced by the scientific revolution.
Who were some of the major figures of the Enlightenment?
Some of the most important writers of the Enlightenment were thePhilosophes of France, especiallyVoltaire and the political philosopherMontesquieu. Other important Philosophes were the compilers of theEncyclopédie, includingDenis Diderot,Jean-Jacques Rousseau, andCondorcet. Outside France, the Scottish philosophers and economistsDavid Hume andAdam Smith, the English philosopherJeremy Bentham,Immanuel Kant of Germany, and the American statesmanThomas Jefferson were notable Enlightenment thinkers.
What were the most important ideas of the Enlightenment?
It was thought during the Enlightenment that human reasoning could discover truths about the world, religion, and politics and could be used to improve the lives of humankind. Skepticism about received wisdom was another important idea; everything was to be subjected to testing and rational analysis. Religious tolerance and the idea that individuals should be free from coercion in their personal lives and consciences were also Enlightenment ideas.
What were some results of the Enlightenment?
TheFrench Revolution and theAmerican Revolution were almost direct results of Enlightenment thinking. The idea that society is a social contract between the government and the governed stemmed from the Enlightenment as well. Widespread education for children and the founding of universities and libraries also came about as a result. However, there was a countermovement that followed the Enlightenment in the late 18th and mid-19th centuries—Romanticism.
Enlightenment, a Europeanintellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries in which ideas concerning God, reason, nature, and humanity were synthesized into a worldview that gained wide assent in the West and that instigated revolutionary developments inart,philosophy, and politics. Central to Enlightenment thought were the use and celebration ofreason, the power by which humans understand the universe and improve their own condition. The goals of rational humanity were considered to be knowledge, freedom, and happiness.
A brief treatment of the Enlightenment follows. For full treatment,seeEurope, history of: The Enlightenment.
The age of reason: human understanding of the universe
The powers and uses of reason had first been explored by thephilosophers ofancient Greece. The Romans adopted and preserved much of Greekculture, notably including the ideas of a rational natural order andnatural law. Amid the turmoil of empire, however, a new concern arose for personalsalvation, and the way was paved for the triumph of theChristian religion. Christian thinkers gradually found uses for their Greco-Roman heritage. The system of thought known asScholasticism, culminating in the work ofThomas Aquinas, resurrected reason as a tool of understanding. In Thomas’s presentation, Aristotle provided the method for obtaining that truth which was ascertainable by reason alone; since Christian revelation contained a higher truth, Thomas placed the natural law evident to reason subordinate to, but not in conflict with, eternal law and divine law.
The intellectual and political edifice ofChristianity, seemingly impregnable in theMiddle Ages, fell in turn to the assaults made on it byhumanism, theRenaissance, and theProtestantReformation. Humanism bred the experimentalscience ofFrancis Bacon,Nicolaus Copernicus, andGalileo and the mathematical investigations ofRené Descartes,Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, andIsaac Newton. The Renaissance rediscovered much of Classical culture and revived the notion of humans as creative beings, and the Reformation, more directly but in the long run no less effectively, challenged themonolithic authority of theRoman Catholic Church. ForMartin Luther, as for Bacon or Descartes, the way to truth lay in the application of human reason. Both the Renaissance and the Reformation were less movements for intellectual liberty than changes of authority, but, since they appealed to different authorities, they contributed to the breakdown of thecommunity of thought. Received authority, whether ofPtolemy in the sciences or of the church in matters of the spirit, was to be subject to the probings of unfettered minds.
- French:
- siècle des Lumières (literally “century of the Enlightened”)
- German:
- Aufklärung
- Date:
- c. 1601 -c. 1800
- Location:
- Europe
The successful application of reason to any question depended on its correct application—on the development of amethodology of reasoning that would serve as its own guarantee of validity. Such amethodology was most spectacularly achieved in thesciences andmathematics, where the logics ofinduction anddeduction made possible the creation of a sweeping newcosmology. The formative influence for the Enlightenment was not so much content as method. The great geniuses of the 17th century confirmed and amplified the concept of a world of calculable regularity, but, more importantly, they seemingly proved that rigorous mathematical reasoning offered the means, independent of God’s revelation, of establishing truth. The success ofNewton, in particular, in capturing in a few mathematical equations the laws that govern the motions of theplanets, gave greatimpetus to a growing faith in the human capacity to attain knowledge. At the same time, the idea of the universe as a mechanism governed by a few simple—and discoverable—laws had a subversive effect on the concepts of a personal God and individual salvation that were central to Christianity.
