ASSIGNMENT 3 PREPARED
BY: SHEHIN TV
ENLIGHTENMENT
PHILOSOPHY
INTRODUCTION
The
Enlightenment, known in French as the ‘’Siècle des Lumières’’ (Century of
Enlightenment), and in German as the ‘’Aufklärung’’, was a philosophical
movement which dominated the world of ideas in Europe in the 18th century. The
main goals of Enlightenment thinkers were liberty, progress, reason, tolerance,
and ending the abuses of the church and state. The People of Enlightenment
believed the almightiness of human knowledge and defied the tradition
and the pre-established thoughts of the past. This is the period in which
the humans became preoccupied in the human Reason and rationality. Philosophers
and Scientists committed the fallacy of argumentum ad ignorantiam. Anything
which cannot be understood by rational knowledge and the current status of
sciences was reckoned meaningless or
superstitious. Philosophy became very popular among the intellectuals and
people read philosophical opera. Enabled by the Scientific Revolution, which had begun as early
as 1500, the Enlightenment represented about as big of a departure as possible
from the Middle Ages—the period in European history lasting from roughly the
fifth century to the fifteenth. The millennium of the Middle Ages had been
marked by unwavering religious devotion and unfathomable cruelty. Rarely before
or after did the Church have as much power as it did during those thousand
years. With the Holy Roman Empire as a foundation, missions such as the
Crusades and Inquisition were conducted in part to find and persecute heretics,
often with torture and death. Although standard at the time, such harsh
injustices would eventually offend and scare Europeans into change. Science,
though encouraged in the late Middle Ages as a
form of piety and appreciation of God’s bounties, was frequently
considered as heresy, and those who tried to explain miracles and other matters
of religion faced harsh prosecution. Society was highly hierarchical, with
serfdom a rampant practice. There were no mandates regarding personal liberties
or rights, and many Europeans feared religion—either at the hands of an
unmerciful God or at the hands of the sometimes rash Church itself.
French
historians traditionally place the Enlightenment between 1715, the year that Louis XIV
died, and 1789, the beginning of the French Revolution.
Some recent historians begin the period in the 1620s, with the start of the scientific
revolution. The Philosophes, the French term for the
philosophers of the period, widely circulated their ideas through meetings at
scientific academies, Masonic lodges,
literary salons and coffee houses, and through printed books and pamphlets. The
ideas of the Enlightenment undermined the authority of the monarchy and the
church, and prepared the way for the revolutions of the 18th and 19th
centuries. A variety of 19th-century movements, including liberalism
and neo-classicism,
attribute their intellectual heritage to the Enlightenment.
PHILOSOPHY
In the mid-18th century, Paris
became the center of an explosion of philosophic and scientific activity
challenging traditional doctrines and philosophies. The philosophic movement
was led by Voltaire
and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who stood for a
society based upon reason rather than faith and Catholic doctrine, for a new
civil order based on natural law, and for science based on experiments and
observation. The political philosopher Montesquieu
introduced the idea of a separation of powers in a government, a
concept which was enthusiastically adopted by the authors of the United
States Constitution. While the Philosophes of the French Enlightenment
were not revolutionaries, and many were members of the nobility, their ideas
played an important part in undermining the validity of the Old Regime and
shaping the French Revolution.
According to Jonathan Israel,
there were two distinct lines of Enlightenment thought: Firstly the radical
enlightenment, largely inspired by the one-substance philosophy of Spinoza, which
in its political form adhered to: "democracy; racial and sexual equality;
individual liberty of lifestyle; full freedom of thought, expression, and the
press; eradication of religious authority from the legislative process and
education; and full separation of church and state". Secondly the moderate
enlightenment, which in a number of different philosophical systems, like
those in the writings of Descartes, John Locke,
Isaac
Newton or Christian Wolff, expressed some
support for critical review and renewal of the old modes of thought, but in
other parts sought reform and accommodation with the old systems of power and
faith. Both lines of thought were opposed by the conservative
Counter-Enlightenment, encompassing those thinkers who held on to the
traditional belief-based systems of thought.
Francis Hutcheson, a moral
philosopher, described the utilitarian
and consequentialist principle that virtue is that which
provides, in his words, "the greatest happiness for the greatest
numbers". Much of what is incorporated in the scientific
method (the nature of knowledge, evidence, experience, and causation) and
some modern attitudes towards the relationship between science and religion
were developed by his protégés David Hume
and Adam
Smith. Hume became a major figure in the skeptical philosophical and empiricist
traditions of philosophy.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) tried
to balance rationalism and religious belief, individual freedom and
political authority, as well as map out a view of the public sphere through
private and public reason. Kant's work continued to shape German thought, and
indeed all of European philosophy, well into the 20th century. Mary Wollstonecraft was one of England's
earliest feminist
philosophers. She argued for a society based on reason, and that women, as well
as men, should be treated as rational and sensible beings. She is best known
for her work A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman (1791).
SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
A gradual
evolution of thought and approaches to the study of the universe that took
place from approximately 1500 to 1700 and paved the way for the Enlightenment. Coming from
humble beginnings with basic observations, the Scientific Revolution grew to a
fever pitch when scientists such as Galileo
Galilei,René Descartes, and Johannes
Kepler entered the scene and
essentially rewrote history, refuting Church doctrines, explaining religious
“miracles,” and setting the world straight on all sorts of scientific
principles. The result was not only new human knowledge but also a new
perspective on the acquisition of knowledge, such as the scientific method.
POLITICS
The Enlightenment has long been
hailed as the foundation of modern Western political and intellectual culture.
The Enlightenment brought political modernization to the West, in terms of
introducing democratic values and institutions and the creation of modern,
liberal democracies.
Theories of government
John Locke, one of the most
influential Enlightenment thinkers, based his governance philosophy in social contract theory, a subject that
permeated Enlightenment political thought. The English philosopher Thomas
Hobbes ushered in this new debate with his work Leviathan in 1651. Hobbes also developed
some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought: the right of the individual;
the natural equality of all men; the artificial character of the political
order (which led to the later distinction between civil
society and the state); the view that all legitimate political power must
be "representative" and based on the consent of the people; and a
liberal interpretation of law which leaves people free to do whatever the law
does not explicitly forbid.
Both
Locke and Rousseau developed social contract theories in Two Treatises of
Government and Discourse on Inequality, respectively. While
quite different works, Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau agreed that a social contract,
in which the government’s authority lies in the consent of the governed, is
necessary for man to live in civil society. Locke defines the state of nature
as a condition in which humans are rational and follow natural law; in which
all men are born equal and with the right to life, liberty and property.
However, when one citizen breaks the Law of Nature, both the transgressor and
the victim enter into a state of war, from which it is virtually impossible to
break free. Therefore, Locke said that individuals enter into civil society to
protect their natural rights via an “unbiased judge” or common authority, such
as courts, to appeal to. Contrastingly, Rousseau's conception relies on the
supposition that "civil man" is corrupted, while "natural
man" has no want he cannot fulfill himself. Natural man is only taken out
of the state of nature when the inequality associated with private property is
established. Rousseau said that people join into civil society via the social
contract to
achieve unity while preserving individual freedom. This is embodied in the
sovereignty of the general
will,
the moral and collective legislative body constituted by citizens.
The French Revolution
The Enlightenment has been
frequently associated to the French Revolution of 1789. One view of the
political changes that happened during the Enlightenment is that the "consent of the governed" philosophy as
stated by Locke in Two Treatises of Government
(1689) represented a paradigm shift from the old governance paradigm under
feudalism known as the "divine right of kings". In this view,
the revolutions of the late 1700s and early 1800s were caused by the fact that
this governance paradigm shift often could not be resolved peacefully, and
therefore violent revolution was the result. Clearly a governance philosophy
where the king was never wrong was in direct conflict with one whereby citizens
by natural law had to consent to the acts and rulings of their government.
Alexis de Tocqueville described
the French Revolution as the inevitable result of the radical opposition
created in the 18th century between the monarchy and the men of letters of the
Enlightenment. These men of letters constituted a sort of "substitute
aristocracy that was both all-powerful and without real power". This
illusory power came from the rise of "public opinion", born when
absolutist centralization removed the nobility and the bourgeoisie from the
political sphere. The "literary politics" that resulted promoted a
discourse of equality and was hence in fundamental opposition to the
monarchical rule.
RELIGION
A number of novel ideas about religion developed with the Enlightenment, including Deism and talk of atheism. Deism, according to Thomas Paine, is the simple belief in God the creator, with no reference to the Bible or any other divine source. Instead, the Deist depends solely on personal reason to guide his creed, which was eminently agreeable to many thinkers of the time. Atheism was much discussed, but there were few votaries to it. Wilson and Reill note that, "In fact, very few enlightened intellectuals, even when they were vocal critics of Christianity, were true atheists. Rather, they were critics of orthodox belief, wedded rather to skepticism, deism, vitalism, or perhaps pantheism."Some followed Pierre Bayle and argued that atheists could indeed be moral men. Many others like Voltaire held that without belief in a God who punishes evil, the moral order of society was undermined. That is, since atheists gave themselves to no Supreme Authority and no law, and had no fear of eternal consequences, they were far more likely to disrupt society. Bayle (1647–1706) observed that in his day, "prudent persons will always maintain an appearance of [religion].". He believed that even atheists could hold concepts of honor and go beyond their own self-interest to create and interact in society. Locke said that if there were no God and no divine law, the result would be moral anarchy: every individual “could have no law but his own will, no end but himself. He would be a god to himself, and the satisfaction of his own will the sole measure and end of all his actions”.
Separation of church
and state
The "Radical
Enlightenment" promoted the concept of separating church and state, an
idea that often credited to English philosopher John Locke
(1632–1704). According to his principle of the social
contract, Locke said that the government lacked authority in the realm of
individual conscience, as this was something rational people could not cede to
the government for it or others to control. For Locke, this created a natural
right in the liberty of conscience, which he said must therefore remain
protected from any government authority.
These views on religious
tolerance and the importance of individual conscience, along with the social
contract, became particularly influential in the American colonies and the
drafting of the United States Constitution. Thomas
Jefferson called for a "wall of separation between church and state"
at the federal level. He previously had supported successful efforts to
disestablish the Church of England in Virginia, and authored the Virginia Statute for Religious
Freedom. Jefferson's political ideals were greatly influenced by the
writings of John Locke, Francis
Bacon, and Isaac Newton whom he considered the three greatest men
that ever lived.
Deism
Deism is the form of religion most associated
with the Enlightenment. According to deism, we can know by the natural light of
reason that the universe is created and governed by a supreme intelligence;
however, although this supreme being has a plan for creation from the
beginning, the being does not interfere with creation; the deist typically
rejects miracles and reliance on special revelation as a source of religious
doctrine and belief, in favor of the natural light of reason. Thus, a deist
typically rejects the divinity of Christ, as repugnant to reason; the deist
typically demotes the figure of Jesus from agent of miraculous redemption to
extraordinary moral teacher. Deism is the form of religion fitted to the new
discoveries in natural science, according to which the cosmos displays an
intricate machine-like order; the deists suppose that the supposition of God is
necessary as the source or author of this order. Though not a deist himself,
Isaac Newton inadvertently encourages deism in his Opticks (1704) by
arguing that we must infer from the order and beauty in the world to the
existence of an intelligent supreme being as the cause of this order and
beauty. Samuel Clarke, perhaps the most important proponent and
popularizer of Newtonian philosophy in the early eighteenth century, supplies
some of the more developed arguments for the position that the correct exercise
of unaided human reason leads inevitably to the well-grounded belief in God. He
argues that the Newtonian physical system implies the existence of a
transcendent cause, the creator God. In his first set of Boyle lectures, A
Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God (1705), Clarke presents
the metaphysical or “argument a priori” for God's existence. This
argument concludes from the rationalist principle that whatever exists must
have a sufficient reason or cause of its existence to the existence of a
transcendent, necessary being who stands as the cause of the chain of natural
causes and effects. Clarke also supports the empirical argument from design,
the argument that concludes from the evidence of order in nature to the
existence of an intelligent author of that order. In his second set of Boyle
lectures, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural
Religion (1706), Clarke argues as well that the moral order revealed to us
by our natural reason requires the existence of a divine legislator and an
afterlife, in which the supreme being rewards virtue and punishes vice. In his
Boyle lectures, Clarke argues directly against the deist philosophy and
maintains that what he regards as the one true religion, Christianity, is known
as such on the basis of miracles and special revelation; still, Clarke's
arguments on the topic of natural religion are some of the best and most
widely-known arguments in the period for the general deist position that
natural philosophy in a broad sense grounds central doctrines of a universal
religion.
Enlightenment deism first arises
in England. In On the Reasonableness of Christianity (1695), Locke
aims to establish the compatibility of reason and the teachings of
Christianity. Though Locke himself is (like Newton, like Clarke) not a deist,
the major English deists who follow are influenced by Locke's work. Voltaire
carries deism across the channel to France and advocates for it there over his
long literary career. Toward the end-stage, the farcical stage, of the French
revolution, Robespierre institutes a form of deism, the so-called “Cult of the
Supreme Being”, as the official religion of the French state. Deism plays a
role in the founding of the American republic as well. Many of the founding
fathers (Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Paine) author statements or tracts that
are sympathetic to deism; and their deistic sympathies influence the place
given (or not given) to religion in the new American state that they found.
NATIONAL
VARIATIONS
The Enlightenment took hold in
most European countries, often with a specific local emphasis. For example, in
France it became associated with anti-government and anti-Church radicalism
while in Germany it reached deep into the middle classes and where it expressed
a spiritualistic and nationalistic tone without threatening governments or
established churches. Government responses varied widely. In France, the
government was hostile, and the philosophes fought against its
censorship, sometimes being imprisoned or hounded into exile. The British
government for the most part ignored the Enlightenment's leaders in England and
Scotland, although it did give Isaac Newton a knighthood and a very lucrative
government office.
In the Scottish Enlightenment, Scotland's major
cities created an intellectual infrastructure of mutually supporting
institutions such as universities, reading societies, libraries, periodicals,
museums and masonic lodges. The Scottish network was "predominantly
liberal Calvinist,
In Italy, parts of society also
dramatically changed during the Enlightenment, with rulers such as Leopold II of Tuscany abolishing the death
penalty in Tuscany. The significant reduction in the Church's power led to a
period of great thought and invention, with scientists such as Alessandro
Volta and Luigi Galvani making new discoveries and greatly
contributing to science.
In Russia, the government began
to actively encourage the proliferation of arts and sciences in the mid-18th
century. This era produced the first Russian university, library, theatre,
public museum, and independent press. Like other enlightened despots, Catherine the Great
played a key role in fostering the arts, sciences, and education. She used her
own interpretation of Enlightenment ideals, assisted by notable international
experts such as Voltaire (by correspondence) and, in residence, world class
scientists such as Leonhard Euler and Peter Simon Pallas. The national Enlightenment
differed from its Western European counterpart in that it promoted further modernization
of all aspects of Russian life and was concerned with attacking the institution
of serfdom in Russia. The Russian enlightenment
centered on the individual instead of societal enlightenment and encouraged the
living of an enlightened life.
THE BEAUTIFUL: AESTHETICS IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT
Modern systematic philosophical
aesthetics not only first emerges in the context of the Enlightenment, but also
flowers brilliantly there. As Ernst Cassirer notes, the eighteenth century not
only thinks of itself as the “century of philosophy”, but also as “the age of
criticism,” where criticism is centrally (though not only) art and literary
criticism Philosophical aesthetics
flourishes in the period because of its strong affinities with the tendencies
of the age. Alexander Baumgarten, the German philosopher in the school of
Christian Wolff, founds systematic aesthetics in the period, in part through
giving it its name. “Aesthetics” is derived from the Greek word for “senses”,
because for Baumgarten a science of the beautiful would be a science of the
sensible, a science of sensible cognition. The Enlightenment in general
re-discovers the value of the senses, not only in cognition, but in human lives
in general, and so, given the intimate connection between beauty and human
sensibility, the Enlightenment is naturally particularly interested in
aesthetics. Also, the Enlightenment includes a general recovery and affirmation
of the value of pleasure in human lives, against the past of Christian asceticism,
and the flourishing of the arts, of the criticism of the arts and of the
philosophical theorizing about beauty, promotes and is promoted by this
recovery and affirmation. The Enlightenment also enthusiastically embraces the
discovery and disclosure of rational order in nature, as manifest most clearly
in the development of the new science. It seems to many theorists in the
Enlightenment that the faculty of taste, the faculty by which we discern
beauty, reveals to us some part of this order, a distinctive harmony, unities
amidst variety. Thus, in the phenomenon of aesthetic pleasure, human
sensibility discloses to us rational order, thus binding together two
enthusiasms of the Enlightenment.
FRENCH CLASSICISM AND GERMAN RATIONALISM
In the early Enlightenment,
especially in France, the emphasis is upon the discernment of an objective
rational order, rather than upon the subject's sensual aesthetic pleasure.
Though Descartes' philosophical system does not include a theory of taste or of
beauty, his mathematical model of the physical universe inspires the aesthetics
of French classicism. French classicism begins from the classical maxim that
the beautiful is the true. Nicolas Boileau writes in his influential didactic
poem, The Art of Poetry (1674), in which he lays down rules for good
versification within different genres, that “Nothing is beautiful but the true,
the true alone is lovable.” In the period the true is conceived of as an
objective rational order. According to the classical conception of art that dominates
in the period, art imitates nature, though not nature as given in
disordered experience, but the ideal nature, the ideal in which we can
discern and enjoy “unity in multiplicity.” In French classicism, aesthetics is
very much under the influence of, and indeed modeled on, systematic, rigorous
theoretical science of nature. Just as in Descartes' model of science, where
knowledge of all particulars depends on prior knowledge of the principle from
which the particulars are deduced, so also in the aesthetics of French
classicism, the demand is for systematization under a single, universal
principle. The subjection of artistic phenomena to universal rules and
principles, the quest for system is expressed, for example, in the title of
Charles Batteaux's main work, The Fine Arts Reduced to a Single Principle
(1746), as well as in Boileau's rules for good versification.
In Germany in the eighteenth
century, Christian Wolff's systematic rationalist metaphysics forms the basis
for much of the reflection on aesthetics, though sometimes as a set of
doctrines to be argued against. For Wolff, the classical dictum that beauty is
truth holds good;beauty is truth perceived
through the feeling of pleasure. Wolff understands beauty to consist in the
perfection in things, which he understands in turn to consist in a harmony or
order of a manifold. We judge something beautiful through a feeling of pleasure
when we sense in it this harmony or perfection. Beauty is, for Wolff, the
sensitive cognition of perfection. Thus, for Wolff, beauty corresponds to
objective features of the world, but judgments of beauty are relative to us
also, insofar as they are based on the human faculty of sensibility.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Literature
- Bacon, F.,
1620. The New Organon (Novum Organum), ed. by Lisa Jardine and
Michael Silverthorne, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
- Batteaux,
C., 1746. Les beaux arts réduit à un même principe (The Fine
Arts Reduced to a Single Principle). Paris: Chez Durand.
- Bayle, P.,
1697 (2nd ed. 1702). Historical and Critical Dictionary, tr. by
R. Popkin, Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1965.
- Boileau,
N., 1674. The Art of Poetry, tr. by William Soames, revised by J.
Dryden, London: Printed by R. Bentley and S. Magnes, 1683.
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