Age of Enlightenment

Part of "School of Athens" by Raphael (Raffaelo Sanzio, 1483-1520)
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The Age of Enlightenment or The Enlightenment is a term used to describe a phase in Western philosophy and cultural life centered upon the eighteenth century, in which Reason was advocated as the primary source and basis of authority. Developing in Germany, France, Britain, the Netherlands, and Italy, the movement spread through much of Europe, including Russia and Scandinavia. The signatories of the American Declaration of Independence, the United States Bill of Rights and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen were motivated by "Enlightenment" principles (although the English Bill of Rights predates the era).

The intellectual and philosophical developments of that age (and their impact in moral and social reform) aspired towards governmental consolidation, centralization and primacy of the nation-state, and greater rights for common people. There was also a strong attempt to supplant the authority of aristocracy and established churches in social and political life: forces that were viewed as reactionary, oppressive and superstitious.

The term came into use in English during the mid-nineteenth century,[1] with particular reference to French philosophy, as the equivalent of a term then in use by German writers, Zeitalter der Aufklärung, signifying generally the philosophical outlook of the eighteenth century.

The terminology Enlightenment or Age of Enlightenment does not represent a single movement or school of thought, for these philosophies were often mutually contradictory or divergent. The Enlightenment was less a set of ideas than it was a set of attitudes. At its core was a critical questioning of traditional institutions, customs, and morals. Some classifications of this period also include the late 17th century, which is typically known as the Age of Reason or Age of Rationalism.[2]

There is no consensus on when to date the start of the age of Enlightenment, and some scholars simply use the beginning of the eighteenth century or the middle of the seventeenth century as a default date.[3] If taken back to the mid-1600's, the Enlightenment would trace its origins to Descartes' Discourse on the Method, published in 1637. At the other end, many scholars use the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars (1804–15) as a convenient point in time with which to date the end of the Enlightenment.[4] Still others describe the Enlightenment beginning in Britain's Glorious Revolution of 1688 and ending in the French Revolution of 1789. However, others also claim the Enlightenment ended with the death of Voltaire in 1778.

Contents

Influence

The Enlightenment occupies a central role in the justification for the movement known as modernism. The neo-classicizing trend in modernism came to see itself as a period of rationality which overturned established traditions, analogously to the Encyclopaediasts and other Enlightenment philosophers. A variety of 20th century movements, including liberalism and neo-classicism, traced their intellectual heritage back to the Enlightenment, and away from the purported emotionalism of the 19th century. Geometric order, rigor and reductionism were seen as Enlightenment virtues. The modern movement points to reductionism and rationality as crucial aspects of Enlightenment thinking, of which it is the heir, as opposed to irrationality and emotionalism. In this view, the Enlightenment represents the basis for modern ideas of liberalism against superstition and intolerance. Influential philosophers who have held this view include Jürgen Habermas and Isaiah Berlin.

This view asserts that the Enlightenment was the point when Europe broke through what historian Peter Gay calls "the sacred circle,"[5] whose dogma had circumscribed thinking. The Enlightenment is held to be the source of critical ideas, such as the centrality of freedom, democracy and reason as primary values of society. This view argues that the establishment of a contractual basis of rights would lead to the market mechanism and capitalism, the scientific method, religious tolerance, and the organization of states into self-governing republics through democratic means. In this view, the tendency of the philosophes in particular to apply rationality to every problem is considered the essential change. From this point on, thinkers and writers were held to be free to pursue the truth in whatever form, without the threat of sanction for violating established ideas. However, the Romanticism movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century had argued that the Enlightenment had elevated reason to the unwarranted status of a new authority.

With the end of the Second World War and the rise of post-modernity, these same features came to be regarded as liabilities - excessive specialization, failure to heed traditional wisdom or provide for unintended consequences, and the romanticization of Enlightenment figures - such as the Founding Fathers of the United States, prompted a backlash against both Science and Enlightenment based dogma in general. Philosophers such as Michel Foucault are often understood as arguing that the Age of Reason had to construct a vision of unreason as being demonic and subhuman, and therefore evil and befouling, whence by analogy to argue that rationalism in the modern period is, likewise, a construction. In their book, Dialectic of Enlightenment, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno wrote a critique of what they perceived as the contradictions of Enlightenment thought: Enlightenment was seen as being at once liberatory and (through the domination of instrumental rationality) tending towards totalitarianism.

Yet other leading intellectuals, such as Noam Chomsky, see a natural evolution, using the term loosely, from early Enlightenment thinking to other forms of social analysis, specifically from The Enlightenment to liberalism, anarchism and socialism. The relationship between these different schools of thought, Chomsky and others argue, can be seen in the works of von Humboldt, Kropotkin, Bakunin and Marx, among others.

No brief summary can do justice to the diversity of enlightened thought in eighteenth-century Europe. Because it was an attitude rather than a set of shared beliefs, there are many contradictory trains to follow. In his famous essay "What is Enlightenment?" (1784), Immanuel Kant described it simply as freedom to use one's own intelligence.[6]

Important figures

See also

References

  1. ↑ Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd Edn (revised)
  2. ↑ Hackett, Louis (1992). "The age of Enlightenment".
  3. ↑ Hooker, Richard (1996). "The European Enlightenment".
  4. ↑ Frost, Martin (2008). "The age of Enlightenment". Retrieved on 2008-01-18.
  5. ↑ Gay, Peter (1996). The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. W. W. Norton & Company. 
  6. ↑ Blissett, Luther (1997). "Anarchist Integralism: Aesthetics, Politics and the Après-Garde". Retrieved on 2008-01-18.

Further reading