What Was Enlightenment?

Like a lamp shining in a dark room, the philosophy of Enlightenment was supposed to open the eyes of the world's poor and free them from unjust rule. Excited writers and poets believed the spirit of Enlightenment could lift the world from an age of darkness and ignorance into a world of science, rationality and equality. The Enlightenment spread throughout the European continent and even helped inspire the American Revolution. Of all the countries, France most eagerly embraced the ideas of this new philosophy, but what started as a movement for reason, rationality and brotherhood turned into hysteria and slaughter during the French Revolution. The Enlightenment grew popular throughout Europe during the 18th century. To its supporters, the Enlightenment was much more than a philosophy; it was a way of thinking that stemmed from faith in human reason and progress. Enlightenment thought was the culmination of many scientific advances such as Isaac Newton's laws of gravity and writings from Europe's most famous thinkers. These supporters believed that humankind was coming out of ages of darkness and superstition. They foresaw a future where all people were educated and free and liberty reigned as the supreme law of the land. The third and final period of the Enlightenment, hailed for its advances in the social sciences, would actually manifest itself out of the earlier embraced concepts of the earlier period. Enlightened thinkers believed that through reason humanity could advance into a new and wonderful world. These thinkers lived in many different countries and came from many different backgrounds. The most famous Enlightenment thinker was a Frenchman with the very long name of Jean Francois-Marie Arouet to which he later added Voltaire. This writer,

playwright, poet and scientist was very popular, a friend to kings and queens all across Europe. Voltaire often used humor and ridicule to criticize those he did not agree with, and was the most admired and feared writer of the 18th century. Voltaire's main enemy was the church, which he believed was corrupt and stifled the freedom of thought. Many other great thinkers, writers and scientists preached the ideas of the Enlightenment. These philosophers included Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin who brought Enlightenment ideals into the American Revolution. Across the ocean, many Europeans watched as America fought against what it considered the unjust rule of Britain. When the Americans won the war, they set up a government based upon Enlightenment ideas. Instead of a monarchy1 the Americans created a government where leaders were chosen by the people. To many Europeans living under the rule of a king or queen, the American Revolution served as an example of the success of Enlightenment thought. Nowhere was this message better received than in France. France in the late 1770s was not a very happy place to be. Most of the French people lived in deep poverty and had very little say in their government. France's king, Louis XVI, had problems of his own. The country was deeply in debt (partly from helping the Americans in the Revolutionary War). Louis tried to fix this problem by increasing taxes. While this may have seemed like a good idea, most of the wealthiest people were not forced to pay taxes. Instead, the burden feel to the poor who already struggled to feed their families.

A monarchy is defined as supreme power or sovereignty held by a single person.

Louis was not a bad person, but he was a bad king. He did very little to help the suffering of his people. Beneath the king and queen was a small upper class of extremely wealthy nobles. They had very little purpose and spent their time living in luxury while the average citizens suffered great poverty. Thomas Jefferson, who once served as an American ambassador to France, described the state of the French people when he commented, "out of a population of twenty millions of people supposed to be in Francethere are nineteen millions more wretched, more accursed in every circumstance of human existence, than the most conspicuously wretched individual of the whole United States." It was in these circumstances that the Enlightenment thrived. The American Revolution proved to people in France that the philosophy of Enlightenment could create an ideal government, and the philosophy became very popular among all classes of the French people. Using Enlightenment theories, they began to loudly criticize their government and ruling class. Eventually, this discontent would spawn the French Revolution. The French Revolution was caused by many factors including: mass suffering and starvation, unbearable taxes, a careless and extravagant upper class and a weak king. The Enlightenment philosophy gave the suffering people of France something to believe in. It spoke of justice, freedom and reason when they had none. More than anything, the Enlightenment sparked a massive awakening that would lead to the cry of liberty, equality and fraternity. Like King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and thousands of other French citizens, the Age of Enlightenment died at the hands of the guillotine.2 What began as a philosophy of reason and
2

The guillotine was a device for beheading a person by means of a heavy blade that is dropped between two posts serving as guide.

justice ended in waves of blood and terror. Other kings and queens of Europe, fearful for their lives, quickly censored Enlightenment ideas and writings, and the philosophy soon faded into history. Although the Age of Enlightenment came to an end, its ideas continue to influence current culture. Encouragement of scientific achievement, reason and progress is as true today as it was all those years ago. Perhaps most importantly, the fight for equality and justice continues to this day the world over. The eighteenth century was a century of mind-boggling change; when Europeans entered the nineteenth century, they lived in a world that barely resembled the beginning of the eighteenth century. In the one hundred years in between, European thought became overwhelmingly mechanistic as the natural philosophy of Isaac Newton was applied to individual, social, political, and economic life. The century saw the development of the full values of the European Enlightenment, including deism, religious tolerance, and political and economic theories that would dramatically change the face of European society. Europe itself changed from a household economy to an industrial economy. This change, perhaps one of the most violent transitions in human history, permanently altered the face of European society and the family. Finally, the century ended in revolution. The ideas of the philosophers were translated into new governments--one in France and one in America--that shook the old order down to its very roots. On continental Europe, the monarchy slowly developed into more absolutist forms following the theories of Bossuet and applying the enlightened ideas of the philosophe movement, which argued that a monarch's job is to see to the rights and welfare of the governed. States that had been only loosely centralized, such as Austria and Russia, became powerfully centralized states, while states such as Prussia and France further tightened the centralized

control of the monarch. This centralized; absolutist power of the monarch was used to provoke profound reforms in the structure of justice, government and economic life. Government was slowly turned over to the hands of a civil bureaucracy, and serfs and peasants saw their economic liberties greatly expanded. The century saw the decline of monarchical power in England. At the beginning of the century, power was divided between the monarch and the Parliament, but Parliament refused to engage in any of the reforms going on in the rest of Europe. Because these reforms were associated with absolute monarchies, the English refused to participate in any kind of national legislation. Instead the English government was run on "interest"; coalitions were built in Parliament by making promises to varying groups. These promises were knit together into powerful factions whose primary job was simply to deliver on the promises. Needless to say, parliamentary politics was corrupt. This came to a head in the latter part of the century when George III began to assert his own prerogatives and replaced parliament ministers with his own. This crisis, the "battle over prerogative," eventually was won by Parliament at the end of the century. This was the last gasp of monarchical power in England; from this point on, the nation was, for the most part, run by Parliament. Finally, a new European nation was established in America. This nation was forged in a revolution and built almost entirely upon Enlightenment ideas. Practically speaking, the final legacy of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century would be the establishment of a fully functioning Enlightenment government based, theoretically at least, on secular values and the notions of right and equality.

Adam Smith (1723-1790) is one of the most important theorists of the eighteenth century period. His book, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), was the first book to systematically theorize capitalism and stands as the book that pretty much invented economics in the Western world. Smith has one and only one concern in the book: to explain how nations as a collective grow wealthier. While other eighteenth century thinkers were concerned about improvements in knowledge and society, Smith believed that human progress largely consisted in the steady improvement of human life through the increasing wealth of a nation as a whole. The Wealth of Nations is a systematic attempt to explain the processes whereby the collective wealth of a nation grows. Smith identifies several characteristics of growing economies. The first and foremost is division of labor. The revolution in labor in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in which productive tasks were divided among a number of workers each doing a single task, produced a revolution in production in which output was increased dramatically. Smith's foundational argument is that all meaning and value in human life is to be found in productive labor. This not only resulted in more wealth for the nation, but greater meaning and value for human life. Second, all monopolies and regulations stifle productive labor. Human beings work for their own profit; regulations and monopolies do away with the profit incentive and so discourage human productivity. In place of these regulations, Smith proposed a natural system of economics, in which each individual in a society is free to choose how to expend their productive labor and their capital. This economic liberty was called laissez faire,3 Smith argued that, if individuals were allowed to pursue their own selfish aims, then the wealth of the nation as a whole would

The theory or system of government that upholds the autonomous character of the economic order, believing that government should intervene as little as possible in the direction of economic affairs.

increase. This selfishness, though, would not result in social injustice; behind this natural economic liberty lay an "invisible hand"4 which guided people into right action. Third, the material world was an infinite store of resources that could be exploited for the benefit of humankind. It was incumbent on humans to approach material resources, not as scarce, but as infinitely abundant. The idea that the world is an infinite storehouse of resources open to human exploit is such a common aspect of our lives that it's hard to realize that it's a modern idea that can be dated back to Smith's book. Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) wrote a monumental history of Rome, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which was published between 1776 and 1788. You can still find people dutifully reading this book as a classic of history. However, the book is important for articulating political and social ideas of the Enlightenment in relationship to history. Gibbon argued that Rome fell for two reasons. First, Rome was overwhelmed by barbarians. Second, Rome declined when it adopted Christianity, which he called "servile and pusillanimous" and a religion which "debased" the Roman mind and soul. The Romans replaced scientific rationalism with a "vile" religion; this, above all, made Rome vulnerable to internal strife and external forces. In Germany, the most prominent thinker influenced by the Enlightenment was Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781). The movement never gained much ground in Germany and the Papal States, for censorship was very tight and religious authorities, particularly in Protestant states, were extremely intolerant of new ideas. Lessing primarily argued for religious tolerance; his most famous work is Nathan The Wise, written in 1779. In it, he argued for religious tolerance of the Jews and, even further, that human excellence was in no way related to religious

The unseen force or mechanism that guides individuals to unwittingly benefit society through the pursuit of their private interests.

affiliation. He carried this argument even further in his work, On the Education of the Human Race in 1780. This is the classic work of the history of human progress; Lessing argues that all world religions, including Christianity, are steps in the intellectual, social, and spiritual progress of humanity. The ultimate goal of this progress is the point at which humanity abandons religion entirely in favor of pure reason. Since the philosophes of all countries believed that human beings and human society was perfectible, the philosophers were energetic activists and agitators, sometimes incurring great personal risk for their beliefs and actions. They believed that human society could be perfected a bit at a time. It should not be overlooked, however, that the most effective agitators using the ideas of the philosophe movement were the American revolutionaries in the latter quarter of the century. The foundation and formation of the American Republic was, by and large, the product of putting Enlightenment ideas into practice at great personal risk. Immanuel Kant, aspiring to make Philosophy purely scientific for the first time, Kant is considered as the second most important philosopher of all times, after Aristotle. Being the father of German Enlightenment (Aufklarung) in his essay "Was ist Aufklarung?", Kant is characterized by an autonomous thought, freed from the dictations of exterior political power. Despite the use of an almost incomprehensible language, his exceptional ideas had been the conjunctive ring between the Rationalism5 and the Empiricism6, both philosophical traditions of the 18th century. They also had an astounding effect on the movement of Romanticism and

the philosophy of German Idealism of the 19th century. Finally, Kant's work inspired a lot of

The doctrine that reason alone is a source of knowledge and is independent of experience.
The doctrine that all knowledge is derived from sense experience.

philosophers of the 20th century. In 1749, Kant published his work "Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces" aiming to solve the differences between Cartesian and Leibnizian theories of physical forces. Although his work was a failure, Kant revealed the powers of a brilliant philosopher. In 1755, he published anonymously his theory for the creation of the planetary system and for the existence of galaxies beyond our own galaxy. After several smaller publications on the subjects of Physics and Metaphysics, Kant presented his dynamic philosophy on three fundamental pieces of work: "Criticism of clean Reason" (Kritik der reinenVernunft, 1781), "Criticism of practical Reason" (Kritik der praksischenVernunft, 1788) and "Criticism of critical Force" (Kritik der Urteilskraft, 1790). The critical Philosophy of Kant encompassed the epistemology7 of Transcendental Idealism8 and the moral philosophy of the autonomy of explanation. These two interrelated cornerstones placed the active human subject in the centre of the world of Knowledge and Ethics. In regards to Knowledge, Kant believed that the arrangement of the world as the science perceives it cannot be simply considered the accidental accumulation of perceptions. On the contrary, it should be the result of a combined function based on rules. This combined function comprises of conceptual unification and integration that is realized through varying categories of comprehension that exist in human perceptions over time according to human experience. In regards to Ethics, Kant supported that the source of theory of virtue and ethics is only found in the good will and not on external factors of the human nature, neither in God. The Kantian ideas shaped or influenced the argument and analysis of the later Philosophers. The completeness of

The Study of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge.

The Kantian doctrine that reality consists not of appearances, but of some other order of being whose existence can be inferred from the nature of human reason

Kant and his philosophy fired direct and permanent conflicts. Nevertheless, believing that the mind alone contributes exclusively to the knowledge and that ethics have their roots in human freedom, and acting autonomously and according to moral principles, Kant has reshaped Philosophy into a scientific art. The Counter enlightenment So great was the success of the enlightenment that in the second half of the eighteenth century it is hard to find anyone who does not share its horizons and its prejudices. Reaction to the Enlightenments confidence in reason came not only from orthodox religion, but from Godintoxicated visionaries like Hamann and Blake who no doubt, have had a lasting influence. No one was fiercer in his opposition to the prevailing cult of reason than William Blake (17571827). Blake was as enthusiastic about the French Revolution as he was anguished about the Industrial Revolution. He denounced the dark, satanic mills and the human misery suffered by the huddled masses of industrial workers, in 1789 he published his (Marriage of Heaven and Hell,) an intense handbook of anti-rational wisdom. In this book Blake reacted viciously against the Enlightenment treatment of imagination. Blake writes, They mock inspiration and vision. Inspiration and vision was then, and now is, and I hope will always remain, my element, my eternal dwelling placeMere enthusiasm is the all in all! Bacons philosophy has Ruind England and destroyed art and science. In the apocalyptic language of Blakes visions, He diagnosed a society fatally mechanized, a society whose materialist9 and determinist10 ideas reduced man to no more than a machine.

A person who is markedly more concerned with material things than with spiritual, intellectual, or cultural values. This is the doctrine that all events, including human choices and decisions, have sufficient causes.

10

Georg Hamann Hamann, the Magus of the North, attacked every cherished tenet of Enlightenment creed. He felt himself to be like a David who had to stand against the Enlightenment Goliath. As such he is a true pioneer of anti-rationalism11, and was highly revered by his constituents. Hamann writes, I look on the best demonstration in philosophy as the sensible girl looks on a love letter-with pleasure but suspicion. Whereas Blake was angry at the way in which the Enlightenment had downgraded imagination, Hamann thought that it had made itself ridiculous by overlooking the role of language. Hamann discusses, All idle talk about reason is mere windNot only the entire capacity to think rests on language, but language is also the centre of the misunderstanding of reason with itself. Hamann also writes, I am close to suspecting that the whole of our philosophy consists more of language than of reason, and the misunderstandings of countless words, the personification of arbitrary abstractions have generated an entire world of problems which it is vain to try to solve as it was to invent them. We would see this sentiment echoed throughout Germany as language continues to grow strength as the primary ingredient in Nationalism.12 Sturm and Drang Despite the encouragement of Frederick II of Prussia, the Enlightenment failed to make much headway in the patchwork of German-speaking principalities. When it arrived, it was ushered in by a group of angry young men who created a fashion for protest and emotional
11

This is best defined as the opposite of rationalistic thought. The practice of devotion and loyalty to one's own nation; patriotism.

12

intensity and turbulence. Known today as Sturm Und Drang (storm and stress) named after a play by Frederich Klinger, it was known at the time as the Geniezeit(Age of Genius). Innagurated by Hamanns SokratischeDenkwurdigkeiten(1759) The movement flourished briefly in the 1770s. I am torn asunder by passions which would overwhelm anyone elseevery moment I should like to fling humanity and all that lives and breathes to the chaos to devour, and to hurl myself after them.

The great novel of the storm and stress movement was The Sorrows of Young Werther,1774) by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe. The melancholy, suicidal hero, Werther literally swept much of Europe off its feet. Goethe writes, I withdraw within myself, and there I find a whole world, albeit a world of forebodings and shadowy fragments, rather than clear-cut images. The novel and the movement as a whole were profoundly influenced by Rousseau. The young men of the Sturm Und Drang despised the rationalism of the Enlightenment philosophes and chose to adopt Rousseaus moralism13 and his religion of nature. As they grew older, the leading representatives of the movement became the giants of Weimar Classicism14. A younger generation of writers would become the German Romantics.

13

Rousseaus moralism based largely on the actions of the individual, especially undue emphasis, on morality.

14

Weimar Classicism (German Weimarer Klassik) is a cultural and literary movement of Europe. Followers attempted to establish a new humanism by synthesizing Romantic, classical and Enlightenment ideas. The movement, from 1772 until 1805, involved Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Johann Gottfried Herder, Friedrich Schiller and Christoph Martin Wieland, and often concentrated on Goethe and Schiller during the period 17881805.

So what does all of this mean? We have three distinct areas all going through three separate aspects of what some consider being enlightened thought. Some would use it as motivation towards revolution, some would use it as a justification to further religious beliefs, and yet others would use it as ideals to forge a nation. So then the question arises, what was the enlightenment? was it a series of individuals making breakthrough discoveries in human thought and reason? Or was it merely a progression of unrestricted thought? The answer is complicated and at times ambiguous; we can make the case for the French that it was a romantic movement used as a backdrop for change in a despot like society. For the English it was a way to balance the power of the sovereign with the will of a nation state. Germany however would be different; For the German progressive philosophic mind the enlightenment merely comes as a toll in which to measure society. Reason would hail through the entire enlightenment as the justification of different ideals. Romanticism and human emotion would be brought strongly to the forefront of everyday thought, and all of the sudden human thought becomes less empirical15 and increasingly self-oriented. We can see evidence of this in Goethes book, (The Sorrows of Young Werther.) Goethe didn't like it much, though, but did concede that every young man has a time in his life when he feels as though Werther were written exclusively for him .As a postscript, there are a few interesting moments which reveal details of life in Goethe's Weimar. Werther seems to be a wealthy young man with plenty of leisure time and servants and no shortage of money. He easily obtains a position at an embassy, but then he befriends a Count and arrives at the Count's home for lunch one day when the entire aristocracy seems to be visiting. The aristocrats object to the presence of someone of his lowly social station, so he is asked to

15

Empirical thinking is defined as, being derived from or guided by an experience or an experiment.

leave. I hope that somewhere a sociologist has written a dissertation on what this reveals about class structure in pre-unification Germany. The emotional sentiment tied to Werther allows humans to finally weigh the state of human emotion, desire, and human want against systems of the norm. It is in this justification of the self along with the function of reason that we see such a huge emphasis placed on morality. Germany was able to forge these ideals of a like-minded people into a nationalist sentiment. The German ideal is finally uncovered and would be used to forge together a strong nation state and would be representative of the entire culture. Enlightened? Dalembert best sums this thought up with, The enlightenment in its entirety can definitely be viewed as an increase in ordered, systemized thought coupled with doubt and If one looks at all closely at the middle of our own century, the events that occupy us, our customs, our achievements and even our topics of conversation, it is difficult not to see that a very remarkable change in several respects has come into our ideas; a change which, by its rapidity, seems to us to foreshadow another still greater. Time alone will tell the aim, the nature and limits of this revolution, whose inconveniences and advantages our posterity will recognize better than we can. In terms of the intellectual history of the West, what usually distinguishes one age from another is the reflection and inspiration that it provides for succeeding ages. The Enlightenment is no exception -- what it represents for the 20th century has been the idea of a systematic study of the problems of Nature, Man and Society. After all, what we today call the social sciences, were developed in the 18th century. As history has shown us, the label Renaissance is the

expression that was given to an age by those thinkers who lived through it. The Renaissance then, was not background -- it was the lived experience of scholars, artists and other elites. And it was not a simple experience of which we speak -- it was the experience of breaking free from the confines of the medieval synthesis and in this respect, a Patriarch, or a Machiavelli or an Erasmus, or yes, even a Luther, were more than aware of their special destiny. They were individuals who were making their own history -- they were creating an identity. So special did these thinkers believe their insights to be that they had the intellectual gall to name their own age -- "like a golden age" as Ficino put it. Like the Renaissance, the Enlightenment falls into the same predicament. It is abundantly clear that the 18th century gave itself a name: Italian -- illuminati; French -- lumiere; German -- ufklarung; and in English -Enlightenment. In 1784,b Immanual Kant (1724-1804) published a brief essay in the Berlinische Monatsschrift, the official mouthpiece of the German Enlightenment. Kant's essay was called, Was ist ufklarung? Kant began the essay in the following way: Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's mind without another's guidance. Sapere Aude! Dare to Know! Have the courage to use your own understanding is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment For Kant, enlightenment signified knowledge, specifically self-knowledge. Knowledge implied an understanding of human nature as well as the uses to which that knowledge can be put. The 18th century witnessed an outpouring of human knowledge in almost every field of human endeavor. Knowledge would, it was hoped, conquer fear, superstition, enthusiasm and

prejudice and in the case of Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), death itself. Heady optimism to be sure. But even the careful Kant, a man for whom the city of Knigsberg is said to have kept time by his daily walks, did not let this optimism go to his head. Kant asked: "Are we now living in an enlightened age?" His answer was an emphatic "No!" But, he was careful to add, "we live in an age of enlightenment." So, even as the period drew to a close, soon to be swept up in the French Revolution and Romantic anti-Enlightenment ideas, even Kant knew an immense amount of work was necessary. What was needed was criticism and what was criticized was the whole social and political system of the West -- collectively, the ancient regime. The old order -- things as they are -- was characterized by a semi-feudal economy, a division of the population into orders and estates, religious intolerance, enthusiasm, fanaticism and superstition, royal absolutism and government corruption. With this in mind, some general comments are in order. Insofar as the thinkers of the Enlightenment can be said to have had a common goal, that goal was specifically social reform. They saw themselves as the social engineers of a New Europe. Their plans for social reform were a reflection of the world of abundance in which they lived. Western Europe was advancing away from an agrarian economy; trade and commerce were growing, especially among the British, French and Dutch and the Industrial Revolution seemed imminent. With wealth, thinkers began to turn from a Europe of want, depravity and need to a Europe characterized by abundance -- and with abundance, new possibilities were about to become reality. More time was devoted to the pleasures of life, and with that social progress. As a result, a new optimism pervaded the age. This optimism had the ultimate effect of changing man's opinions about human history. Instead of viewing human history as the story of the steady decline from the Garden of Eden, men now began to view life as full of promise and

hope. In characteristic 18th century language, the dawn of the New Jerusalem seemed to be just around the corner. However, this would be a Jerusalem of this world, not postponed until some life after death. The French economist and statesman, Jacques Turgot (1727-1781) put it this way, We see societies establishing themselves, nations forming themselves, which in turn dominate over other nations or become subject to them. Empires rise and fall; laws, forms of government, one succeeding another; the arts, the sciences, are discovered and are cultivated; sometimes retarded and sometimes accelerated in their progress, they pass from one region to another. Self-interest, ambition, vainglory, perpetually change the scene of the world, inundate the earth with blood. Yet in the midst of their ravages manners are gradually softened, the human mind takes enlightenment, separate nations draw nearer to each other, commerce and policy connect at last all parts of the globe, and the total mass of the human race, by the alternations of calm and agitation, of good conditions and of bad, marches always, although slowly, towards still higher perfection. . . And then there was the English chemist and Presbyterian minister, Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), who in a letter to Edmund Burke (1729-1797) wrote, How glorious, then, is the prospect, the reverse of all the past, which is now opening upon us, and upon the world. Government, we may now expect to see, not only in theory and in books but in actual practice, calculated for the general good, and taking no more upon it than the general good requires, leaving all men the enjoyment of as many of their natural rights as possible, and no more interfering with matters of religion, with men's notions concerning God, and a future state, than with philosophy, or medicine. And John Adams (1735-1826), second president of the United States once remarked that, The arts and sciences, in general, during the three or four last centuries, have had a regular course of progressive improvement. The inventions in mechanic

arts, the discoveries in natural philosophy, navigation and commerce, and the advancement of civilization and humanity, have occasioned changes in the condition of the world and the human character which would have astonished the most refined nations of antiquity. A continuation of similar exertions is everyday rendering Europe more and more like one community, or single family. The Enlightenment saw no problem with knowledge. That is, there was no problem of how knowledge of the world is possible. One had to only open their eyes -- knowledge was all around -- NATURE! Nature is reasonable -- Nature can be understood. Nature is rational. Man is part of nature; therefore, man can be understood. Without a doubt Nature and Reason became the most heavily used and abused words in the 18th century vocabulary. If it can be said that the aim of the Enlightenment was social reform, how was social reform to be achieved? The answer was more than clear -- by man. By the 18th century, man believed himself to be master of Nature, no longer its victim. The first question, then, was what is man? No doubt this was a difficult question to answer. The 18th century came to no consensus over this question. What the Enlightenment thinkers did agree upon was that theology held no answers. Man was not a sinful creature who could only be saved by self-denial while patiently awaiting death and ultimately salvation. The Enlightenment attacked history. It attacked its past. It attacked its childhood. It attacked Christianity. Christianity was not in accordance with Human Reason. How does Reason explain miracles? Christianity was not reasonable. Was Christianity necessary? As information about the natives of Pacific Islands was brought back to Europe, it was soon realized that even savages who had never heard of the Pope, the Inquisition, Notre Dame, Jesus and

transubstantiation16, still had a morality, still had definitive concepts of right and wrong, good and evil. What this realization accomplished was nothing less than doubt and skepticism about the universal nature of Christianity. It is possible for society to exist and in fact thrive without religious supervision -however, not necessarily without religion. For proof, the Enlightenment turned to that civilization whose greatness was not built upon religious supervision -- that civilization was republican Rome. No Enlightenment thinker from Charles de Secondat Montesquieu (16891755) to Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) could neglect the legacy of Rome during its republican days. Thinkers as diverse as Locke, Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), Kant, Jefferson, Adam Smith (1723-1790) and Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) all made their appeals to the Genius Populi Romani. The Enlightenment did look to its past as it was at the same time trying to forge its new identity by abandoning its past. While foregoing a discussion of the kind of identity crisis this was sure to produce, note that the Enlightenment did not revere classical Greece. Nor did they have much good to say about Rome under the Empire. Instead, their vision was of republican Rome -- it lived in their minds as an ideal of the past. Republican Rome served as the model of the new United States of America -- not a democracy but a democratic republic. And when the French decided to embark upon their Revolution at the end of the 18th century, their ideals, in both reality and imagery, were manifest in the Roman Republic. The philosophes were indeed cosmopolitan. Voltaire (1694-1778), Denis Diderot (17131784) and the Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794) were great French philosophes. From Great Britain came Adam Smith (1723-1790), David Hume (1711-1776) and Edward Gibbon (173716

Transubstantiation is used here as, the changing of the elements of the bread and wine, when they are consecrated in the Eucharist, into the body and blood of Christ

1794). Germany contributed Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) and Kant (1724-1804) and from Italy came GiambattistaVico (1688-1744) and CesareBeccaria (c.1735-1794). And the Americans contributed the genius of Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Thomas Jefferson (17431826) and James Madison (1751-1836). All these men were inundated with Enlightenment ideas -- all of them were philosophes. Taken as a whole, the philosophes set no national boundaries to Reason -- they believed themselves to be part of a vast international movement. The philosophe's passion for criticism has led historians to charge them with a passion for destruction. The philosophes would have found such a charge incomprehensible. However, the philosophes were destructive because they thought that one must first clear the ground before one could rebuild. The world that the Church had shaped had become enfeebled by fanaticism, superstition and prejudice -- what else could one do with l'infme but to eradicate it? Criticism had a positive function as well -- it allowed the philosophes to concentrate their energies. "All that men have once been," wrote the historian Edward Gibbon, "all that genius has created, all that reason has weighed, all that labor has gathered up-all this is the business of criticism. Intellectual precision, ingenuity, penetration, are all necessary to exercise it properly." The philosophes enjoyed the knowledge that criticism tended to reveal. They enjoyed this knowledge for its own sake. But they also sought knowledge for its utility. It was for this reason that they set about to establish the sciences of man. The Age of Criticism was also was also an Age of Philosophy, and by philosophy, the philosophes meant an activity that would change the world for the better. They believed that there was something better -- that moral and intellectual perfection was an attainable goal. And it was left to Kant to synthesize 2000 years of philosophic thought -- under the direct influence of Hume and Rousseau -- to work out his own complex critical philosophy.

The internal history of the Enlightenment is a history of radicalization and the spreading of ideas to new quarters. This diffusion and diversity is especially evident in the field of political thought. The philosophes were, for the most part, practical men. They were practical enough to realize that political programs in one country were perhaps unrealistic when applied to another country. Their relativism in political matters was indeed extensive. They were not utopians. They did not devise political programs for all Europe, for all time. Their relativism was produced by their own historical experience. In general, the Enlightenment taught the individual how to take control of their own life. In the east, it mainly sought ways of lightening the burdens of most people through benevolent and efficient intervention from above. The charge of utopianism, often cast in a derogatory fashion in the face of the philosopher, would have been justified only if they had thought in some other way. No doubt, the philosophes were men of hope. The age lent itself to hope. And of course, in their own professional lives as writers, they saw their status improve; their income increases and their freedom grow. At the same time, the philosophe ridiculed superstition, deplored fanaticism and enthusiasm, extolled the virtues of humanitarianism and deeply respected science. The point is this -- the philosophes were in no way alienated from their culture. This is true no matter where we might find them. They shared many of the preoccupations of their own culture and enjoyed the unwitting support of many otherwise respectable people. It is for this reason that the name "Enlightenment" stands ultimately for something broader than merely a great movement in intellectual thought. The word Enlightenment is more appropriately, perhaps, the name for an age. Works Cited

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