Enlightenment

In the late 17th century and the 18th century, enlightened thought and reforms, which represented a sharp break with the preceding Baroque period and age of confessionalism, occurred in various European countries and worldwide and developed everywhere relatively undisturbed until the French Revolution (1789). Our concept of modernity stems from the Enlightenment as well as the antirational Romantic movement that followed it. Many, if not all, of the processes of modernization, such as industrialization, urbanization, establishment of democratic governance and civic society, and social and educational reforms have their roots and legitimacy in Enlightenment thought. The French Revolution, with its stress on human freedom, equality, and fraternity, viewed itself as the daughter of the Enlightenment. However, so did the ideas of the absolutism of the state over the individual, centralism, and reforms enforced “from above;” the belief in the automatic progress of mankind; and the nationalistic, fascistic, and totalitarian evils of the 20th century.

Though the “enlightened” 18th century referred to itself as the Age of Reason, the later term Enlightenment (lumières in French, illuminismo in Italian, die Aufklärung in German) meant the spread of a new, rational, scientific, and humanistic light. Enlightened thinkers and rulers tried to transform the ancien régime through revolution, but the term originally signified more of an atonement or gradual process of reform than a radical shift in power. The confident, rationalistic rectification of past faults, “superstitions,” and “fanaticism” was to apply to everything, from political and economic reforms, to the reconstruction of “true” Christianity or a “natural” religion, and even to technical innovations.

Historians widely agree that there were two main sources for this reformism. First, whereas 17th-century thinkers like Descartes and Spinoza had established rationalism as a system of scientific thought, their disciples took it further and made it a tool for understanding and redressing the wrongs of society as a whole. Enlightened philosophes in France and elsewhere thus criticized despotism and the incompetence of the perpetual dominance, the brutality, and the religious intolerance of the confessionalist age, which in their eyes was conduct incompatible with “true” Christian ethics. Others criticized the social embeddedness of human institutions in the name of a “natural” law or religion: They wanted to liberate society from the influence of the church and the market from its artificial restrictions (reducing the impact of Adam Smith's “invisible hand”). Second, criticism of the past grew stronger through evaluation [Page 346]of “other,” non-Western societies, distinct from anything known in Europe or the Mediterranean, the Bible, and classical antiquity. Chinese and Indian societies thus became (idealized) models of “how to do things better”—for example, positing a mandarin as the archetype of the virtuous atheist. For Enlightenment thinkers, reason alone, emancipated from all its historical and institutional restraints, was capable of judging what is the “right” form of social organization or ultimate course of development humankind should take.

Although cosmopolitan in nature and clearly led by the French, the Enlightenment was not one single movement. On the contrary, it was polycentric in nature and comprised various “national” streams that differed in both theoretical thinking and social applications. English, Scottish, and Dutch intellectuals and even immigrants to these liberal countries established learned societies and a free press, contributing to the rapid development of public thought. They called for the liberation of humanity, separation of powers, and establishment of a “true” religion. These new ideas were well suited to Protestant virtues and popular interests, so even though this type of radical freethinking died out early, it still had a significant impact on practical everyday life. In England and its North American colonies, and in Holland, the Enlightenment transformed itself into the struggle to achieve progress, industrialization, and democratic social organization from the bottom up, with an emphasis on individual endeavor. Even the American War of Independence, led by the enlighteners, can be seen as this kind of individualist, civic, and capitalist movement. With respect to religion, radical critics of the revealed religion (i.e., church-based Christianity) were not around for very long, and most societies followed liberal versions of Protestantism, which eventually led to secularization, though there were some counter-revivals, especially in the United States, known as the Great Awakenings.

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