ASSIGNMENT - ENLIGHTENMENT PHILOSOPHY
MANJU P
LCL051511
ENLIGHTENMENT PHILOSOPHY
NEOCLASSICISM
Neoclassicism points
to a tendency in art and literature enduring from the early seventeenth century
until around 1750. Neoclassicism comprised a coming back to the classical
models, literary styles, and values of ancient Greek and Roman authors. In
this, the neoclassicists to some extent were the heirs of the Renaissance
humanists.
Many medieval
and Renaissance writers, like Dante, Milton, Spenser, Ariosto, and More, had
peopled their writings with fantastic and mythical beings.
Sidney
and some others had even proposed, in an idealizing Neo-Platonist strain, that
the task of the poet was to create an ideal world that is superior to the world
of nature. The neoclassicist who reacted against this idealistic tendency in
Renaissance poetics, was considered as heirs to other tendency in Renaissance poetics,
which was Aristotelian.
Two major
concepts central to neoclassical literary theory and practice which were intimately
related were imitation and nature. In one sense, imitation – of the external
world and of human action – was a reaffirmation of the ideals of objectivity
and impersonality, as opposed to the increasingly sophisticated individualism
and exploration of subjectivity found in Renaissance writers. Another integral
notion was imitation of classical models, especially Homer and Vergil. And
these two aspects of imitation were identified by Pope. This identification was
mostly based on concept of nature and this concept
also referred to human nature: to what was central, timeless, and universal in
human experience.
The
neoclassicists cannot be considered as the slavish imitators of the
classicists. The neoclassicists took an effort to develop and refine
Aristotle’s explanation of the emotions evoked by tragedy in audience, and an
important part of their attempt to imitate nature consisted in portraying the
human passions. The neoclassicists viewed literature as subject to a system of
rules, and literary composition as a rational process, subject to the faculty
of judgement. Neoclassicism is a
reaction contrary to the optimistic, spirited, and enthusiastic Renaissance
view of man as a being essentially good and possessed of an infinite potential
for spiritual and intellectual growth. Neoclassical theorists, by contrast
viewed man as an imperfect being, naturally sinful, whose potential was
limited. These people replaced the Renaissance emphasis on the imagination, on
invention and experimentation, and on mysticism with an emphasis on order and
reason, on restraint, on common sense, and on religious, political, economic
and philosophical conservatism. Some of the major critics of the neoclassical age are Corneille, Nicolas
Boileau-Despreaux in France, Dryden, Pope, Aphra Ben and Johnson in England.
FRENCH NEOCLASSICISM
Neoclassical
literary criticism took root in France then its influence spread to other parts
of Europe, especially England. Jean Chapelain
was the one who introduced the ideas of the Italian Aristotelian commentators
Castelvetro and Scaliger into France. During the reign of Louis XIV the French
court was a center of patronage for many poets and dramatists. After the
religious wars of the sixteenth century, the political conditions of relative
peace, prosperity, and national unity together with the growth of educated
elites in the clergy and court aristocracy, proved ripe for the emergence of
the French Academy in 1635. The objective of the Academy, headed by Cardinal
Richelieu, was partly to standardize language through the creation of a
dictionary and grammar, as well as work on rhetoric and poetics, in pursuit of
what Hugh M. Davidson has called the “rhetorical ideal,” an eloquence perceived
as vital to the development of civil
Society. The
results were the emergence of a rhetorical context for the speculations of the
various French theorists and the relatively uniform and systematic nature of
French neoclassical theory. The major figures of French neoclassicism were
Corneille, Racine, Moliere, and La Fontaine and the prominent theorists were
Dominique Bouhours, Rene Rapin, and Nicolas Boileau.
·
PIERRE CORNEILLE (1606-1684)
Corneille was one of the leading French tragedian of the
mid-seventeenth century, that is an age when France was becoming the center of
fashion and culture in Europe. Corneille
was considered by most critics to be the father of French tragedy, although six
of his first eight plays were comedies. He was born in Normandy town of Rouen,
France and was basically a playwright.
The most important text of his literary criticism, Trois Discours sur
le poème dramatique (Three Discourses on Dramatic Poetry,
1660), was produced in response to the controversies he had kindled, to explain
and justify his own dramatic practice. These controversies had their origin in
his famous play, Le Cid, which appeared in 1637. The play had great
popularity with audiences and also was attacked bycritics as well as by French
literary and political establishment. The attack was primarily based on the
play’s failure to observe the rules of classical theater as laid down by
Aristotle and Horace. Most critics claimed that his play violated the classical
unities – of action, time, and place – as well as the Aristotelian precepts of
probability and necessity; and in doing so, they argued, it undermined the
morally didactic function of drama. Corneille countered these charges by
writing further plays exhibiting his mastery of classical conventions and by
producing his Three Discourses. His text of Discourses advocates his concern to revise classical precepts to
modern requirements of the stage and to provide a broader and more liberal
interpretation of those precepts. In his third Discourse, entitled “Of
the Three Unities of Action, Time, and Place,” Corneille makes an effort to
explain the rationale behind his plays. Corneille views the problems of dramatic theory from the practical point
of view of a playwright, and this leads him to take a more liberal attitude
than other critics.
Therefore
Corneille aspires to “make ancient rules agree with modern pleasures”. His text
is an example of ancient authority tempered not only by examples of the
subversion of that authority by ancient writers themselves, but also above all
by an appeal to experience and theatrical practice.
·
NICOLAS BOILEAU-DESPREAUX (1636–1711)
Boileau was a
French poet, satirist, and critic. He had an influence not only on French letters
but also on English and German poets and critics. His L’Art Poétique (The
Art of Poetry), was first published in 1674 and it was translated into
English by John Dryden. Boileau’s text includes a formal statement of the
principles of French classicism and perhaps the most direct expression of
neoclassical ideals anywhere. Like Pope’s Essay on Criticism, Boileau’s Art
of Poetry represents some of the great intellectual and political changes
that were have started to sweep over Europe. And like Pope’s Essay,
Boileau’s text is written in the form of a poem, in the tradition of Horace’s Ars
poetica, and it provides advice to the poet in various genres such as
tragedy, comedy, epic, and ode, as well as summaries of various aspects of
literary history. The principle of reason is at the heart of Boileau’s text, it
receives an emphasis well beyond that in Horace’s text and even greater than
that in Pope’s text. Boileau is skillful in depicting the widely varied
complications of the reliance on reason. Like Horace, Boileau gives a great
deal of emphasis on pleasing the reader, he reminds the poet that he is not
writing for present glory but for “immortal fame”.
NEOCLASSICISM IN ENGLAND
The main streams
of English neoclassical criticism were inspired by the French example. French influence
in England was aggravated by the Restoration of 1660, whereby Charles II,
exiled in France after the English Civil War, returned with his court to
England .As mentioned that the
France of Louis XIV had embarked upon a neoclassical program of national proportions,
neoclassical criticism in England was not very systematic.. Many saw the
adoption of neoclassical ideals as necessary to give rise to a stable and
ordered political state. Dryden and others denounced the servility and
enslavement of French critics to the royal court. John Dennis, recognized that
literature must change with varying religion and culture, and they even
glorified Milton above the ancients. The classical norms being adapted to
developments in England underwent some shifts in meaning. And from history we
comes to know that Dryden and Johnson were the exponents of neoclassicism in
England, attempting to mediate between the merits of ancients and moderns. In
general, the critics ranging from Jonson to Dryden effectively advanced the
notion of a viable English literary tradition.
·
JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700)
John Dryden
occupies an influential place in English critical history. Samuel Johnson
addresses him as “the father of English criticism,” and declared of his Essay
of Dramatic Poesy (1668) that “modern English prose begins here.” Dryden’s
critical work was very lengthy, treating of various genres such as epic,
tragedy, comedy and dramatic theory, satire, the relative virtues of ancient
and modern writers, as well as the nature of poetry and translation. Dryden was
also a gifted poet, dramatist, and translator. His poetic output reflects his
shifting religious and political allegiances. Dryden's judgments are considered
solid and sensible. According to him "a man should have a reasonable,
philosophical, and in some measure mathematical head to be a complete and
excellent poet, and besides this should have experience in all sorts of humours and manners of men; should be
thoroughly skilled in conversation and should have a great knowledge of mankind
in general." Dryden’s Essay of Dramatic Poesy is written as a
debate on drama conducted by four speakers, Eugenius, Crites, Lisideius, and
Neander. These personae have conventionally been identified with four of
Dryden’s contemporaries - Eugenius (meaning “well-born”) may be Charles
Sackville, who was Lord Buckhurst, a patron of Dryden and a poet himself,
Crites (Greek for “judge” or “critic”) perhaps represents Sir Robert Howard,
Dryden’s brother-in-law, Lisideius refers to Sir Charles Sedley, and Neander
(“new man”) is Dryden himself. In a note to the reader prefacing the Essay,
Dryden suggests that the prime objective of his text is “to vindicate the
honour of our English writers, from the censure of those who unjustly prefer
the French”. Yet the scope of the Essay extends far beyond these two
topics, effectively ranging over a number of crucial debates concerning the
nature and composition of drama. He is a leader in the distinguished line of
England's poet-critics that begins with Sidney and includes
Johnson, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, Arnold, and Eliot.
· ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744)
Alexander Pope’s
anonymously published An Essay on Criticism in 1711, is perhaps the
clearest statement of neoclassical principles in any language. In its broad
outlines, it presents a worldview which synthesizes elements of a Roman
Catholic outlook with classical aesthetic principles and with deism. Pope was
born in London in 1688, the year of the Glorious Revolution, when the Catholic
King James II was deposed in favor of Protestant William III and Mary II. Pope’s An Essay on Criticism follows
the tradition of Horace’s Ars
Poetica. An
Essay on Criticism according
to him was an endeavor to identify and refine his own positions as a poet and
critic. He defines
classical values in terms of “nature” and “wit”. According to him “Nature” and
“wit” both are necessary for poetry and criticism. The work explains the standard rules that govern
poetry by which a critic passes judgment. He discusses the laws to which a
critic should maintain while critiquing poetry, and points out that critics
serve a significant function in assisting poets with their works, as opposed to
the practice of attacking them.
· APHRA BEHN (1640-1689)
Aphra Behn was a
pioneer in many respects. She was a woman who was obliged to support herself as
a writer because of the circumstances of her family and her husband’s death
infact the first woman to do so. She is considered as one of the founders of
the English novel. Her experience as a female playwright exposed her to the
excessive restrictions faced by a woman in this profession, resulting in her
highly unorthodox and contentious views about drama. In A Room of One's Own, (1929), Virginia Woolf writes that, "AIl
women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn,... for it
was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.” Behn is regarded as
the first Englishwoman to earn a living as a writer. As such, she became the
model for the commercial woman writer operating outside, the narrow circle of
mainstream propriety while trying to gain a place within it. In her critical
writing, she explains the obstacles faced by a woman striving to earn a living
in profession dominated by men. She describes her isolation from the society
that would underwrite and support her plays, as well as the different standards
applied to her as a woman. Perhaps because of her sex, her literary criticism embodies the everyday difficulties
faced by practicing dramatists than do the writings of any literary critic of the
time.
· SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709-1784)
Samuel Johnson was an essayist and
literary historian who was a major figure in 18th century England. He is mainly
remembered for his two-volume Dictionary of the English Language (1755),
Lives of the English Poets (1783) and his eight-volume edition of
Shakespeare (1765). He wrote drama and a fictional work as well as numerous
essays in periodicals. An integral dimension of Johnson’s literary output and
personality was his literary criticism, which was to have a huge impact on
English letters. His critical insights were witty, sharp, provocative,
sometimes radical, and always grounded on his enormous range of reading. Johnson
followed the path of Plato, Aristotle, and others in viewing reason as the pathway
to truth, it is important that what is opposed to reason here is not passion or
emotion but imagination elevated to the status of a mental faculty or
disposition. His classical commitment to reason, probability, and truth was
complemented by his equally classical insistence on the moral function of
literature.
For modern
readers, Johnson's style and point of view may require some getting accustomed
to. But as Mathew Arnold concluded in “Johnson's
Lives”(1878) in a formulation still
pertinent today: “The more we study Johnson, the higher will be our esteem for
the power of his mind, the width of his interests, the largeness of his
knowledge, the freshness, fearlessness, and strength of his judgments.”
ENLIGHTENMENT
Enlightenment
was a movement that took shape in the 17th and 18th
centuries in Europe and America giving rise to the “age of reason” not only for Western civilization, but
for humanity as a whole. It was thus one of the first movements to pursue a
global vision by increasing the entrepreneurial, self-relying and free world
citizen or cosmopolitan as the basic ideal to aspire to in order to create
wealth, peace and liberty for the largest possible number of people and to
overcome religious disputes.
In the
seventeenth century, the Scientific Revolution had offered a new model for how
problems could be solved through rational thought and experimentation, rather
than on the authority of religion or the ancients.The Scientific Revolution had
in fact begun in the mid-16th century with Copernicus. New theory of the sun as
the center of the universe, replacing Ptolemy’s earth-centered model, accepted
since antiquity. This revolution ended up in the seventeenth century with the
publication of Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia
in 1687, in which a thoroughly mechanical universe was explained through
universal laws of motion. In fact the French philosopher, mathematician and
scientist René Descartes had seen man’s ability to reason as the very proof of
his existence, declaring Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am), in his
Discourse on Method in 1637. Descartes rejected all forms of intellectual
authority except the conclusions of his own thought, which he then used to
prove the existence of God. Newton, like Descartes, presented
a vision of the universe whose most basic workings could be calculated and
understood rationally, but which was also the work of a Creator. No
Enlightenment thinkers were uniform in their outlooks, but in generally they
saw themselves as initiating an era of humanitarian, intellectual, and social
progress, underlain by the increasing ability of human reason to subjugate
analytically both the external world of nature and the human self.
The Enlightenment produced numerous books,
essays, inventions, scientific discoveries, laws, wars and revolutions. The most famous
definition of Enlightenment is that of German philosopher Immanuel Kant
(1724–1804): “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed
immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without
guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not
in lack of reason, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own
understanding!’— that is the motto of enlightenment”.
Enlightenment thinkers believed that the development of science
and industry announced a new age of egalitarianism and progress for humankind.
More goods were being produced for less amount of money, people were traveling
more, and the chances for the upwardly mobile to actually change their station
in life were incomparably improving. Some of the prominent political Enlightenment figures were Montesquieu, Voltaire, David Hume, Edward Gibbon, Thomas
Hobbes and Rousseau. In Europe, Voltaire and Rousseau were the torch bearers of
enlightenment literature and philosophy.
· JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704)
John Locke is one of the most famous philosophers and
political theorists of the 17th century. He is considered as the
founder of the school of thought known as British Empiricism, and he made
foundational contributions to modern theories of limited, liberal government. Locke’s
philosophy has been surviving and widespread in its influence. The implications
of Locke’s empiricism are still prevalent: many ideological forces still
encourage man to look at the world as an assemblage of particular facts,
yielding sensations which his mind then process in arriving at abstract ideas
and general truths. Locke’s primary aim is to show how closely language is
connected with the process of thought and therefore to urge the need to use
language in the most precise way so as to avoid unnecessary confusion in our
concepts. In his philosophy of language, as in his general advocacy of
empiricism, Locke fluctuates uneasily between a view of the human mind
constructing the world with which it engages, and the mind “receiving” this
world from without.
In politics, Locke is best known as the exponent of limited
government. He uses theory of natural rights to argue that governments have
responsibilities to their citizens, have only limited powers over their
citizens, and can ultimately be overthrown by citizens under certain
circumstances. He also brought out powerful arguments in favor of religious
toleration.
· JOSEPH ADDISON (1672-1719)
Although Joseph
Addison is known as an essayist, and indeed he contributed much to the
development of the essay form, which, like the literary form of the letter,
flourished in the eighteenth century, he is also known a poet and a dramatist. He
is the best co-author with Richard Steele of an influential series of
periodical essays, published in The
Tatler and The Spectator . The
views of Addison and Steele express an interesting combination of neoclassical
values with dispositions that, in their more sustained treatment by later
writers, will be articulated into elements of a Romantic vision of the world
and the
human self. Addison
was an important cultural and literary figure especially for middle class
readers. He always wished to bring philosophical, political, and literary
discussion within the reach of the middle classes. He was a good politician as
well as a writer, holding positions of undersecretary of state, lord
lieutenant, and then chief secretary for Ireland, as well as being a member of
the Whig or Liberal Party from 1708 until his death.
· GIAMBATTISTA VICO (1668-1744)
The Italian
philosopher Vico brought out in his writings a historical view of the progress
of human thought, language, and culture that assumes the evolutionary
perspectives of Hegel, Marx, and others. He is noted for his intuitions into
the origins and development of language and culture. Vico was educated in
rhetoric and medieval philosophy, and had great interests, extending from
philology and poetry to sociology, theology, and law. In his early life he was connected
with a group of radical intellectuals who reacted against the central tenets of
medieval philosophy and whose vision expressed the rationalist and empiricist
values of the Enlightenment, being based on the works of such people as Galileo
Galilei, Francis Bacon, and Descartes. His major work was his Scienza Nuova (New
Science), published in 1725, with subsequent editions in 1730 and 1744.
Vico explains that the objective of his New Science is to study “the
common nature of nations in the light of divine providence.” He points out that the “world of civil
society” – which encompasses human social, political, and legal institutions –
“has certainly been made by men, and that its principles are therefore to be
found within the modifications of our own human mind”. His thought reflects his
relation with the early stages of Enlightenment thinking: providence and human
agency are brought into an uneasy equivalence; human agency is now admitted
into the scheme, making for a precarious balance between human and divine
operations. Vico had made so many speeches on humanistic education. Vico attributes
two important historical functions to poetry, or “poetic wisdom” - on it was founded the religious and civil
institutions of the first peoples, and it provided the embryonic basis for all
further learning.
· DAVID HUME (1711- 1776)
David Hume was a
Scottish philosopher and one of the prominent figures of the
Enlightenment. As Locke and Berkeley
believed, Hume was an empiricist and believed that our knowledge
derives from experience, and he pushed the empiricism of his predecessors toward
a controversial skepticism as regards our knowledge of the external world, our
subjective identities, and our religious beliefs. But he moved beyond them toward
a position of
Radical skepticism,
denying the possibility of certain knowledge and maintaining that
the mind itself
is a bundle of sensations. Indeed, Hume reached the conclusion that
we cannot derive
and prove a theory of reality at all; we can only
experience
and must base
our beliefs upon it. Hume is skeptical, but he is also intellectually inquisitive,
clear in his prose; and convincing and complicated in his thought; he is
sometimes confusing and contradictory, but never obscure, in argument. His
major philosophical works were
A Treatise of
Human Nature (1739–1740),
reproduced in a more accessible version in An Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding (1748), and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of
Morals (1751). His works are generally regarded as the manifesto of
Enlightenment.
· MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT (1759-1797)
Mary Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the first feminist
writers of the modern times. She was a radical thinker whose central notions were
framed by the debates and issues that arose directly out of the French Revolution
of 1789. Wollstonecraft has rightly been characterized as an Enlightenment
thinker, propounding arguments in favor of reason, against hereditary privilege
and the entire inequitable apparatus of feudalism. Her famous work Vindication
of the Rights of Man was
actually a reply to Burke’s Reflections
on the Revolution in France. She
is best known for her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).
She through her works proposed the equality of women with men. Unlike other middle-class women, whose husbands, fathers; wealth, or
connections veiled their legal powerlessness; Mary Wollstonecraft clearly saw
the damage caused by sexual inequality. She was socialized for but she never
experienced a life of respectable dependency.
CONCLUSION
Enlightenment
therefore was a philosophical movement that influenced Europe during the 18th
century. The neoclassical period gave way to the era of enlightenment. The
Enlightenment philosophers gave importance to reason, individualism and liberty
and believed that truth can be realized through experimentation. The age of
enlightenment is also known as the ‘age of reasoning’. The concept of
enlightenment changed from philosopher to philosopher. No Enlightenment
thinkers followed a uniform pattern. Thus the age of reason gave way to the 19th
century Romanticism.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
· Habib, M. A. R. A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present.
New Delhi: Blackwell.2006.Print
· Legouis, Emile. History of English Literature. New Delhi: Macmillan Publishers India Ltd.1981. Print.
· Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of
Literary Terms. Wadsworth: Cengage, 2012. Print
· Nayar K Pramod. A Short History of English
Literature. New Delhi:
Cambridge University Press, 2009. Print.
· Narayanan, M.S. English Literary Criticism and
Theory; An Introduction History. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2008.
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