Assignment on Enlightenment

"Dare to know! have courage to use your own Reason".

This is a statement made by Immanuel Cant in his esssay What is 

Enlightenment.

European politics, philosophy, science etc were reoriented during the 18th century as a part of the movement called the "Age of Reason" or Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinkers throughout the world questioned the traditional authority and embraced the possibilities of rational change. An appreciable number of books, essays, laws, wars and revolutions were produced during this period. American and French revolutions were inspired from Enlightenment ideals. Subsequently Enlightenment gave way to the 19th century Romanticism.

The age of neoclassicism is between early 17th century and 1750s. Neoclassicism marked a return to classical models, literary styles and values of ancient Greek and Roman authors. But at the same time there were writers who vehemently reacted against the sylistic excess, superflous ornamentation, lavishness of Gothic and Baroque styles etc.  Two central concepts of the neoclassical literary theory and practice were imitation and nature and these two are intimately related. In Renaissance writers increasingly sofisticated individualism and exploration of subjectivity can be seen. Opposed to this the notion of imitation of the external world and of human nature was a reaffirmation of the ideals of impersonality and objectivity. But at the same time, imitation of classical models especially Homer and Virgil was integral to this notion. The relation of neoclassicism with recent science and the things that consequently emerge as some of the core values of enlightenment are really paradoxical. There were neoclassical thoughts which were rooted in conservative ideals also. 

The neoclassicists saw literature as bound up by a system of rules and literary composition as a rational process subject to the faculty of judgement.To a certain extent Neoclassicism represented a reaction against the optimistic, exuberant, and enthusiastic Renaissance view of man as a being fundamentally good and possessed of an infinite potential for spiritual and intellectual growth. Neoclassical theorists, by contrast, saw man as an imperfect being, inherently sinful, whose potential was limited. They 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. They maintained that man himself was the most appropriate subject of art, and saw art itself as essentially pragmatic — as valuable because it was somehow useful — and as something which was properly intellectual rather than emotional. Hence their emphasis on proper subject matter; and hence their attempts to subordinate details to an overall design, to employ in their work concepts like symmetry, proportion, unity, harmony, and grace, which would facilitate the process of delighting, instructing, educating, and correcting the social animal which they believed man to be. Their favorite prose literary forms were the essay, the letter, the satire, the parody, the burlesque, and the moral fable; in poetry, the favorite verse form was the rhymed couplet, which reached its greatest sophistication in heroic couplet of Pope; while the theatre saw the development of the heroic drama, the melodrama, the sentimental comedy, and the comedy of manners. The fading away of Neoclassicism may have appeared to represent the last flicker of the Enlightenment, but artistic movements never really die: many of the primary aesthetic tenets of Neoclassicism, in fact have reappeared in the twentieth century — in, for example, the poetry and criticism of T. S. Eliot — as manifestations of a reaction against Romanticism itself: Eliot saw Neo-classicism as emphasising poetic form and conscious craftsmanship, and Romanticism as a poetics of personal emotion and "inspiration," and pointedly preferred the former.

MAJOR PHILOSOPHERS OF ENLIGHTENMENT AGE

The important precursors of the 17th century Enlightenment are the Englishmen Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes, the Frenchman Renee Descartes and it also includes the natural philosophers like Galileo, Kepler and Leibiniz of  the scientific revolution. The rise of this movement is considered to be from 16th century England. Newton's Principia Mathematica and John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding are the major works introducLocke was of the opinion that knowledge should be gained through accumulated experience rather than outside truth.  The Historical and intellectual developments has far reaching effects on literary criticism. John Locke was the the most important person who formulated one of the most significant of these theories. Many scholars argued that the scientific and observational dimention of Locke's empiricism affected the writing of poetry there by stimulating a novel preoccupation with different levels of meanings and the "doctrine of particularity", advocated by writers such as joseph Warton and Hugh Blair.

A direct connection between Enlightenment philosohy and literary criticism occurs through the various 18th century philosophies of language.  

John Locke 

John locke's philosophy is something what gained wide influence. he is the person who laid the foundations of classical British empiricism , and his thoughts are bounded by tolerance, moderation and common sence. In general, Locke's attatchments were with Puritans. The implications of Locke's empiricism are still alive. Locke's Literary theories are essentially thought provoking since they anticipate in a higher extent the modern literary - critical thinking about language. Locke's primary endeavour was to understand how language is connected with the process of thought. 

JOSEPH ADDISON

  Though he was a poet and dramatist, he was best known as an essayist and he contributed much to the essay form. It was his ambition to get philosophical, political and literary discussions within the reach of the middle class. Most of his essays were journalistic in the sense  that they addressed a wide section of topics, ranging from codes of conduct, fashions in dress, marriage conventions to political propaganda.An interesting combination of neoclassical values can be found in the expression of Addison and Steele. Their insistence on classical values might be seen as a venture to cultivate the moral, religious and literary sensibilities of this class.

GIAMBATTISTA VICO

Giambattista Vico is an Italian Philosopher. In His writings he expressed a historical view of the progress of human thought, language, and culture. This particular thought anticipates the evolutionary perspectives of Hegel, Marx others. His major work was Scienza Nuova which was first published in 1725. He got his education in rhetoric and medieval philosophy.

The French Revolution of 1789 was the culmination of the High Enlightenment vision of throwing out the old authorities to remake society along rational lines, but it devolved into bloody terror that showed the limits of its own ideas and led, a decade later, to the rise of Napoleon. Still, its goal of egalitarianism attracted the admiration of the early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and inspired both the Haitian war of independence and the radical racial inclusivism of Paraguay’s first post-independence government.

Enlightened rationality gave way to the wildness of Romanticism, but 19th-century Liberalism and Classicism—not to mention 20th-century Modernism—all owe a heavy debt to the thinkers of the Enlightenment.