7.1 History and Philosophy
Enlightenment
Historians have typically located the birthplace of the Enlightenment in Western Europe. Its inspirations were truly global in nature, however, ranging from the cosmopolitanism of the ethnically, religiously, and culturally diverse Ottoman Empire to the rich philosophical traditions of China. Ultimately, these ideas were more influential in Europe than elsewhere, but the consequences of the Enlightenment were by no means limited to Europe. Enlightenment thinkers in Europe created a new synthesis of knowledge that later spread to the rest of the world, where colonial subjects added their own interpretations and put these ideas to their own uses.
Many of the components of Western science that, along with the ideas of the Italian Renaissance, inspired Enlightenment thought were built on scientific traditions developed in the Islamic world, which had absorbed ancient Greek and Indian systems of knowledge. In particular, Al-Andalus, the Muslim-ruled area of Spain and Portugal that rose to power in 711, began wielding significant influence on European intellectual activity in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. By preserving and translating the works of ancient Greek thinkers, such as Aristotle and Plato, that were not available in Europe at the time, Muslim scholars in Spain fueled both the European Renaissance of the twelfth century and the Italian Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In addition to preserving seminal Greek texts, Muslim scholars in medieval Al-Andalus, such as the twelfth-century intellectual Averroes, also wrote and translated Arabic philosophical treatises that were widely read by scholars in Christian Europe.
Among the principles that influenced Enlightenment perceptions of knowledge were the twin concepts of deductive and inductive reasoning. Inherited from the intellectual framework of the Scientific Revolution, these approaches represent different methods of organizing information and developing hypotheses. While inductive reasoning gathers specific examples and observations to arrive at a broad generalization, deductive reasoning, in contrast, begins with a general statement or theory and applies it to specific conclusions.
Deductive reasoning had its origins in the fourth century BCE in the teachings of the Greek philosopher Aristotle, but it became a vital component of the Scientific Revolution in the work of French philosopher René Descartes. Descartes combined deductive reasoning with empiricism, the acquisition of knowledge from sensory experiences, to establish the foundations of the scientific method. Inductive reasoning, on the other hand, played an important role in the work of the English natural philosopher Francis Bacon. Bacon asserted that whereas the deductive method began with a proposition and discarded evidence that did not support that premise, inductive reasoning reached a conclusion only after the collection of evidence. According to Bacon, only inductive reasoning enabled researchers to support observations with empirical data rather than conjecture.
Ultimately, both inductive and deductive reasoning influenced the intellectual context of the Enlightenment by providing two systematic means of drawing conclusions about the natural world from observations and evidence. Whichever method they adopted, Enlightenment thinkers embraced the scientific method as a means of applying reason and objectivity to the collection and analysis of information.
Natural Rights
The topic of natural rights, rights possessed by all human beings, such as the right to life and liberty, formed the focus of many philosophical treatises and conver
rights that cannot be revoked or rescinded by human laws, the concept of natural rights originated not in the Enlightenment but in far older traditions of justice and natural law. In the ancient Persian tradition of Zoroastrianism, for example, the concept of asha, meaning “God’s will,” connoted the unchangeable law that emanates from the divine and governs the universe. Although many ancient religious and philosophical traditions developed interpretations of natural law, European Enlightenment thinkers transformed such ideas into a political system, which was novel at the time. The growing emphasis on reason and the desire to improve human life in the eighteenth century led Enlightenment philosophers to envision political systems based on natural rights, rather than the divine right of kings or traditional Christian social hierarchies.
One of the first Enlightenment thinkers to tackle the issue of natural rights was the English philosopher John Locke, who argued that people have fundamental rights to life, liberty, and property. In his influential work of political philosophy, Two Treatises of Government, he argued that all people are born in a state of freedom and that government should exist only by their consent, a principle called popular sovereignty. Although Locke and his European contemporaries asserted the inherent equality of all humans, their interpretation of equality is somewhat paradoxical, since in practice they supported the unequal institutions of colonialism and the Atlantic slave trade that deprived all but White men of their natural rights.
Like Locke and his contemporaries in England, key figures of the French Enlightenment also debated the scope of natural rights. François-Marie d’Arouet, more commonly known by his pen name Voltaire, was an especially vigorous advocate of intrinsic rights and freedoms. An outspoken critic of the Catholic Church, the aristocracy, and the French monarchy, he was particularly focused on defending religious toleration, freedom of speech, and the innate utility of reason, which he did in such works as Treatise on Tolerance and Republican Ideas. In his most famous work, the 1759 satire Candide, Voltaire mocked both established religion and secular government. His contemporary Montesquieu also wrote extensively about the relationship between laws and rights. Montesquieu was principally concerned with the concept of political liberty and enforcing the separation of a state’s legislative, executive, and judicial powers as a means of keeping the government in check, which he discussed in his 1748 book The Spirit of the Laws.
The tension between state authority and the right of individuals to make decisions for themselves likewise inspired the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose contributions to Enlightenment philosophy included his influential treatise The Social Contract. Dating to the era of Plato and Socrates in the fourth and fifth centuries BCE and to the second-century BCE Buddhist text The Mahāvastu, the social contract is an idea centered on the belief that individuals surrender their natural rights to the state, which is then charged with the task of maintaining and protecting those rights. In his assessment of natural rights, Rousseau contends that the formation of human communities makes interdependence necessary and requires reconciling individual freedoms with the sovereignty of the state. Individuals must be free to do as they choose, but the government must also be able to restrict people’s actions in order to protect the rights of all. He also discussed the theory of the general will, a concept by which a state can be legitimate only if it is guided by the will of the people as a whole, rather than the whims of an elite minority.
Whereas Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau reinforced the distinction between inalienable rights and the authority of the state, some philosophers of the era, such as Jeremy Bentham and Edmund Burke, cast doubt on the very existence of natural rights. Bentham was an English lawyer known for his adoption of utilitarianism, a political philosophy that emphasized the goal of achieving the greatest good for the greatest number of people. He contended that rights came into being only as a creation of the state and did not exist outside the confines of civil society. Even if a government did not do what the general will wished or disregarded the supremacy of natural law, Bentham wrote, disputing
its legitimacy could lead only to chaos and lawlessness.
Like Bentham, the Irish philosopher Edmund Burke also rejected the concept of popular sovereignty. Although he did not dispute the existence of natural law, he argued that natural rights became irrelevant with the formation of civil society, since only people of virtue and good judgment should be permitted to exercise political power. They would serve in the best interests of the people, who, according to Burke, would naturally give up their selfish desires and individual will in the interests of the state.
Although the Enlightenment produced a wide range of opinions about the origins and meaning of natural rights, it also enabled people to think more critically about their relationship with the state and the legitimacy of revolution. While some thinkers such as Burke and Bentham defended the supremacy of the state over individual rights, others such as Locke and Voltaire championed the integrity of natural rights and believed that political liberty could not be interfered with. As the argument continued during the Enlightenment period, it expanded into discussions of social contract theory that focused more specifically on the ethics and legitimacy of law and the political order.
Social Contract Theory
At the core of Enlightenment debate about the relationship between state authority and natural rights was the fundamental character of the social contract. This implicit agreement, or “contract,” compels those living in a society to abide by its rules and regulations or suffer punishments for violating them. In essence, those who enter into the social contract implicitly surrender their natural rights to the state, which is then charged with the task of maintaining and protecting those rights. However, according to many social contract theorists like Rousseau, when a state fails to maintain the general will or protect natural rights, citizens may in turn withdraw their social and moral obligations to the state.
The ultimate goal of social contract theory was to demonstrate that the rules imposed by civil society could be rationally justified, and that in its ideal form, government would effectively serve the interests of the people and uphold the general will. As a result, stability and social order would prevail for all. The roles of justice and liberty in civil society thus formed the focus of much debate among philosophers and European rulers concerned with preserving the balance between individual rights and political authority.
Enlightened despots often invited renowned philosophers to their courts to help design laws and policies that would—at least in theory—protect the essence of the social contract. Frederick of Prussia, for example, invited the French philosopher Voltaire to live at his palace in Potsdam in 1750. Although the nature of authoritarian rule may seem at odds with the preservation of natural rights and the social contract, many philosophers developed political models that appealed to enlightened despots. Locke, Rousseau, and Thomas Hobbes are often lauded in traditional historical narratives for their defense of rights and freedoms. Hobbes maintained that an absolute government, characterized by unlimited centralized political authority, provided the best means of preserving rights and freedoms in what would otherwise be an anarchic state of nature, while Rousseau and Locke extolled the virtues of more democratic political models.
In what later became the United States and in some European countries, Enlightenment theories coexisted with the institution of slavery, the appropriation of lands from Indigenous people, and access to political participation and the protections afforded by the state that were generally limited to White men of property. Social contract theorists generally justified such contradictions by asserting that because Indigenous peoples resided in a nonpolitical state, and because they were believed to lack the capacity to reason, they were not entitled to the rights and protections afforded to other peoples. Enlightenment lawyers, moreover, used social contract theory to defend slavery, on the grounds that either it was a justifiable consequence of conquest or Black people were incapable of governing themselves without the protection of White owners. Although social contract theory ultimately formed the foundations of seminal documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, the ideals of rights and freedoms it espoused coexisted with engrained racial injustices that formed the foundation of slavery and colonialism.
Copyright: Kordas, A., Lynch, R. J., Nelson, B., & Tatlock, J. (2022). The Enlightenment. In World History Volume 2, from 1400. OpenStax.
Immanuel Kant What Is Enlightenment?
The Prussian philosopher, Immanuel Kant, created a revolutionary stir in eighteenth-century philosophy. He advanced innovative solutions to ancient questions concerning truth, justice, and faith by differentiating between scientific knowledge and theology. He also proposed individual morality through a break from religious authority and a consciousness based on sense and reason. He further set forth the idea that, even though the existence of God is necessary to the notion of a life after death, human beings must arrive at a universal code of morality without divine revelation. Kant’s theories of individualism and humanism set him at odds with the monarchy and the church, of course. However, Kant’s theory that the world is a construct of the human mind became an influential concept in philosophers who came after him, most notably Samuel Coleridge and the Romantics.
Kant’s premise in What is Enlightenment? is that human beings must move out of their “self-imposed nonage,” or the immaturity of a people who bend to authority for guidance in all areas of their lives, to gain true enlightenment. Only by “cultivating their own minds” may humankind deliver themselves from mental and political tyranny. Without a change in the way we think, we are forever under the control of an elite few. These guardians of immature people, including the entire female sex, keep them low by denying them the opportunity for the education and understanding necessary for self-reliance. Kant warns that there is danger in forming new opinions that collide with the status quo; once we accept responsibility for our own morality and actions, we can no longer blame others for our choices or circumstances. Without the sovereign or priest as a guide, we are left to ourselves for wisdom. However, according to Kant, without enlightenment, humankind is never truly free.
Consider while reading:
- Note the behavior of the few who throw off the yoke of authority only to become part of the elite class.
- Why do people accept guidance from others who oppress them?
- Why does Kant say the liberation of thought is worth the danger?
What Is Enlightenment?
Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage s man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! “Have courage to use your own reason!”- that is the motto of enlightenment.
Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a portion of mankind, after nature has long since discharged them from external direction (naturaliter maiorennes), nevertheless remains under lifelong tutelage, and why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians. It is so easy not to be of age. If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth, I need not trouble myself. I need not think, if I can only pay – others will easily undertake the irksome work for me.
That the step to competence is held to be very dangerous by the far greater portion of mankind (and by the entire fair sex) – quite apart from its being arduous is seen to by those guardians who have so kindly assumed superintendence over them. After the guardians have first made their domestic cattle dumb and have made sure that these placid creatures will not dare take a single step without the harness of the cart to which they are tethered, the guardians then show them the danger which threatens if they try to go alone. Actually, however, this danger is not so great, for by falling a few times they would finally learn to walk alone. But an example of this failure makes them timid and ordinarily frightens them away from all further trials.
For any single individua1 to work himself out of the life under tutelage which has become almost his nature is very difficult. He has come to be fond of his state, and he is for the present really incapable of making use of his reason, for no one has ever let him try it out. Statutes and formulas, those mechanical tools of the rational employment or rather misemployment of his natural gifts, are the fetters of an everlasting tutelage. Whoever throws them off makes only an uncertain leap over the narrowest ditch because he is not accustomed to that kind of free motion. Therefore, there are few who have succeeded by their own exercise of mind both in freeing themselves from incompetence and in achieving a steady pace.
But that the public should enlighten itself is more possible; indeed, if only freedom is granted enlightenment is almost sure to follow. For there will always be some independent thinkers, even among the established guardians of the great masses, who, after throwing off the yoke of tutelage from their own shoulders, will disseminate the spirit of the rational appreciation of both their own worth and every man’s vocation for thinking for himself. But be it noted that the public, which has first been brought under this yoke by their guardians, forces the guardians themselves to renain bound when it is incited to do so by some of the guardians who are themselves capable of some enlightenment – so harmful is it to implant prejudices, for they later take vengeance on their cultivators or on their descendants. Thus the public can only slowly attain enlightenment. Perhaps a fall of personal despotism or of avaricious or tyrannical oppression may be accomplished by revolution, but never a true reform in ways of thinking. Farther, new prejudices will serve as well as old ones to harness the great unthinking masses.
For this enlightenment, however, nothing is required but freedom, and indeed the most harmless among all the things to which this term can properly be applied. It is the freedom to make public use of one’s reason at every point. But I hear on all sides, “Do not argue!” The Officer says: “Do not argue but drill!” The tax collector: “Do not argue but pay!” The cleric: “Do not argue but believe!” Only one prince in the world says, “Argue as much as you will, and about what you will, but obey!” Everywhere there is restriction on freedom.
Which restriction is an obstacle to enlightenment, and which is not an obstacle but a promoter of it? I answer: The public use of one’s reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among men. The private use of reason, on the other hand, may often be very narrowly restricted without particularly hindering the progress of enlightenment. By the public use of one’s reason I understand the use which a person makes of it as a scholar before the reading public. Private use I call that which one may make of it in a particular civil post or office which is entrusted to him. Many affairs which are conducted in the interest of the community require a certain mechanism through which some members of the community must passively conduct themselves with an artificial unanimity, so that the government may direct them to public ends, or at least prevent them from destroying those ends. Here argument is certainly not allowed – one must obey. But so far as a part of the mechanism regards himself at the same time as a member of the whole community or of a society of world citizens, and thus in the role of a scholar who addresses the public (in the proper sense of the word) through his writings, he certainly can argue without hurting the affairs for which he is in part responsible as a passive member. Thus it would be ruinous for an officer in service to debate about the suitability or utility of a command given to him by his superior; he must obey. But the right to make remarks on errors in the military service and to lay them before the public for judgment cannot equitably be refused him as a scholar. The citizen cannot refuse to pay the taxes imposed on him; indeed, an impudent complaint at those levied on him can be punished as a scandal (as it could occasion general refractoriness). But the same person nevertheless does not act contrary to his duty as a citizen, when, as a scholar, he publicly expresses his thoughts on the inappropriateness or even the injustices of these levies, Similarly a clergyman is obligated to make his sermon to his pupils in catechism and his congregation conform to the symbol of the church which he serves, for he has been accepted on this condition. But as a scholar he has complete freedom, even the calling, to communicate to the public all his carefully tested and well meaning thoughts on that which is erroneous in the symbol and to make suggestions for the better organization of the religious body and church. In doing this there is nothing that could be laid as a burden on his conscience. For what he teaches as a consequence of his office as a representative of the church, this he considers something about which he has not freedom to teach according to his own lights; it is something which he is appointed to propound at the dictation of and in the name of another. He will say, “Our church teaches this or that; those are the proofs which it adduces.” He thus extracts all practical uses for his congregation from statutes to which he himself would not subscribe with full conviction but to the enunciation of which he can very well pledge himself because it is not impossible that truth lies hidden in them, and, in any case, there is at least nothing in them contradictory to inner religion. For if he believed he had found such in them, he could not conscientiously discharge the duties of his office; he would have to give it up. The use, therefore, which an appointed teacher makes of his reason before his congregation is merely private, because this congregation is only a domestic one (even if it be a large gathering); with respect to it, as a priest, he is not free, nor can he be free, because he carries out the orders of another. But as a scholar, whose writings speak to his public, the world, the clergyman in the public use of his reason enjoys an unlimited freedom to use his own reason to speak in his own person. That the guardian of the people (in spiritual things) should themselves be incompetent is an absurdity which amounts to the eternalization of absurdities.
But would not a society of clergymen, perhaps a church conference or a venerable classis (as they call themselves among the Dutch), be justified in obligating itself by oath to a certain unchangeable symbol in order to enjoy an unceasing guardianship over each of its numbers and thereby over the people as a whole, and even to make it eternal? I answer that this is altogether impossible. Such contract, made to shut off all further enlightenment from the human race, is absolutely null and void even if confirmed by the supreme power, by parliaments, and by the most ceremonious of peace treaties. An age cannot bind itself and ordain to put the succeeding one into such a condition that it cannot extend its (at best very occasional) knowledge, purify itself of errors, and progress in general enlightenment. That would be a crime against human nature, the proper destination of which lies precisely in this progress and the descendants would be fully justified in rejecting those decrees as having been made in an unwarranted and malicious manner.
The touchstone of everything that can be concluded as a law for a people lies in the question whether the people could have imposed such a law on itself. Now such religious compact might be possible for a short and definitely limited time, as it were, in expectation of a better. One might let every citizen, and especially the clergyman, in the role of scholar, make his comments freely and publicly, i.e. through writing, on the erroneous aspects of the present institution. The newly introduced order might last until insight into the nature of these things had become so general and widely approved that through uniting their voices (even if not unanimously) they could bring a proposal to the throne to take those congregations under protection which had united into a changed religious organization according to their better ideas, without, however hindering others who wish to remain in the order. But to unite in a permanent religious institution which is not to be subject to doubt before the public even in the lifetime of one man, and thereby to make a period of time fruitless in the progress of mankind toward improvement, thus working to the disadvantage of posterity – that is absolutely forbidden. For himself (and only for a short time) a man may postpone enlightenment in what he ought to know, but to renounce it for posterity is to injure and trample on the rights of mankind. And what a people may not decree for itself can even less be decreed for them by a monarch, for his lawgiving authority rests on his uniting the general public will in his own. If he only sees to it that all true or alleged improvement stands together with civil order, he can leave it to his subjects to do what they find necessary for their spiritual welfare. This is not his concern, though it is incumbent on him to prevent one of them from violently hindering another in determining and promoting this welfare to the best of his ability. To meddle in these matters lowers his own majesty, since by the writings in which his own subjects seek to present their views he may evaluate his own governance. He can do this when, with deepest understanding, he lays upon himself the reproach, Caesar non est supra grammaticos. Far more does he injure his own majesty when he degrades his supreme power by supporting the ecclesiastical despotism of some tyrants in his state over his other subjects.
If we are asked, “Do we now live in an enlightened age?” the answer is, “No,” but we do live in an age of enlightenment. As things now stand, much is lacking which prevents men from being, or easily becoming, capable of correctly using their own reason in religious matters with assurance and free from outside direction. But on the other hand, we have clear indications that the field has now been opened wherein men may freely dea1 with these things and that the obstacles to general enlightenment or the release from self-imposed tutelage are gradually being reduced. In this respect, this is the age of enlightenment, or the century of Frederick.
A prince who does not find it unworthy of himself to say that he holds it to be his duty to prescribe nothing to men in religious matters but to give them complete freedom while renouncing the haughty name of tolerance, is himself enlightened and deserves to be esteemed by the grateful world and posterity as the first, at least from the side of government, who divested the human race of its tutelage and left each man free to make use of his reason in matters of conscience. Under him venerable ecclesiastics are allowed, in the role of scholar, and without infringing on their official duties, freely to submit for public testing their judgments and views which here and there diverge from the established symbol. And an even greater freedom is enjoyed by those who are restricted by no official duties. This spirit of freedom spreads beyond this land, even to those in which it must struggle with external obstacles erected by a government which misunderstands its own interest. For an example gives evidence to such a government that in freedom there is not the least cause for concern about public peace and the stability of the community. Men work themselves gradually out of barbarity if only intentional artifices are not made to hold them in it.
I have placed the main point of enlightenment – the escape of men from their self-incurred tutelage – chiefly in matters of religion because our rulers have no interest in playing guardian with respect to the arts and sciences and also because religious incompetence is not only the most harmful but also the most degrading of all. But the manner of thinking of the head of a state who favors religious enlightenment goes further, and he sees that there is no danger to his lawgiving in allowing his subjects to make public use of their reason and to publish their thoughts on a better formulation of his legislation and even their open-minded criticisms of the laws already made. Of this we have a shining example wherein no monarch is superior to him we honor.
But only one who is himself enlightened, is not afraid of shadows, and has a numerous and well-disciplined army to assure public peace, can say: “Argue as much as you will, and about what you will, only obey!” A republic could not dare say such a thing. Here is shown a strange and unexpected trend in human affairs in which almost everything, looked at in the large, is paradoxical. A greater degree of civil freedom appears advantageous to the freedom of mind of the people, and yet it places inescapable limitations upon it. A lower degree of civil freedom, on the contrary, provides the mind with room for each man to extend himself to his full capacity. As nature has uncovered from under this hard shell the seed for which she most tenderly cares – the propensity and vocation to free thinking – this gradually works back upon the character of the people, who thereby gradually become capable of managing freedom; finally, it affects the principles of government, which finds it to its advantage to treat men, who are now more than machines, in accordance with their dignity.
Source: Internet Modern History Sourcebook
World Literature Copyright © by Anita Turlington; Rhonda Kelley; Matthew Horton; Laura Ng; Kyounghye Kwon; Laura Getty; Karen Dodson; and Douglas Thomson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.