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The Age of Enlightenment refers to the 18th Century in European Philosophy , and is often thought of as part of a period which includes the Age Of Reason . The term also more specifically refers to a historical intellectual movement, "The Enlightenment." This movement advocated Rationality as a means to establish an authoritative system of Ethics , Aesthetics , and Knowledge . The intellectual leaders of this movement regarded themselves as courageous and elite, and regarded their purpose as leading the world toward Progress and out of a long period of doubtful Tradition , full of irrationality, superstition, and tyranny (which they believed began during a historical period they called the " Dark Ages "). This movement also provided a framework for the American and French Revolution , the Latin American independence movement, and the Polish Constitution Of May 3 , and also led to the rise of Capitalism and the birth of Socialism , Liberalism and Fascism . It is matched by the high Baroque and classical eras in music, and the Neo-classical period in the arts, and receives contemporary application in the unity of science movement which includes Logical Positivism . Another important movement in 18th century philosophy, which was closely related to it, was characterized by a focus on belief and piety. Some of its proponents attempted to use Rationalism to demonstrate the existence of a supreme being. In this period, piety and belief were integral parts in the exploration of Natural Philosophy and Ethics in addition to Political theories of the age. However, prominent Enlightenment philosophers such as Voltaire , Jean-Jacques Rousseau , and David Hume questioned and attacked the existing institutions of both Church and State . The 18th century also saw a continued rise of Empirical philosophical ideas, and their application to Political Economy , Government and sciences such as Physics , Chemistry and Biology . According to scholarly opinion , the Enlightenment was preceded by the Age Of Reason (if thought of as a short period) or by the Renaissance and the Reformation (if thought of as a long period). It was followed by Romanticism . 's ''Newton'' as a divine geometer (1795)]] History of Enlightenment philosophy The boundaries of the Enlightenment cover much of the 17th century as well, though others term the previous era " The Age Of Reason ." For the present purposes, these two eras are Split ; however, it is equally acceptable to think of them conjoined as one long period. Europe was ravaged by religious wars. When the political situation stabilized after the Peace Of Westphalia and at the end of the English Civil War , there was an upheaval which overturned the notions of mysticism and faith in individual revelation as the primary source of knowledge and wisdom—perceived to have been a driving force for instability. Instead, (according to those that split the two periods), the Age of Reason sought to establish axiomatic philosophy and absolutism as the foundations for knowledge and stability. Epistemology, in the writings of Michel De Montaigne and René Descartes , was based on extreme skepticism, and inquiry into the nature of "knowledge." This goal in the Age of Reason, which was built on self-evident axioms, reached its height with Baruch (Benedictus De) Spinoza 's Ethics, which expounded a pantheistic view of the universe where God and Nature were one. This idea became central to the Enlightenment from Newton through to Jefferson. The Enlightenment was, in many ways, influenced by the ideas of of Sir Isaac Newton . The ideas of Newton, which combined the mathematics of Axiom attic proof with the mechanics of physical observation, resulted in a coherent system of verifiable predictions and set the tone for much of what would follow in the century after the publication of his '' Philosophies Naturalism Principal Mathematical .'' But Newton was not alone in the systematic revolution in thinking; he was merely the most visible and famous example. The idea of uniform laws for natural phenomena mirrored the greater systematization in a variety of studies. If the previous era was the age of reasoning from first principles, Enlightenment thinkers saw themselves as looking into the mind of God by studying creation and deducing the basic truths of the world. This view may seem overreaching to some in the present-day, where belief is that human beings apprehend a truth that is more provisional, but in that era it was a powerful notion which turned on its head the previous basic notions of the sources of legitimacy. For those that divide the "Age of Reason" from the "Enlightenment," the precipitating figure of Newton offers a specific example of the importance of the difference, because he took empirically observed and codified facts, such as Kepler's planetary motion, and the "optics" which had explained lenses, and began to create an underlying theory of how they functioned. This point is, perhaps, the central point of contention over the Enlightenment: whether the construction of reason and credibility creates, inherently, as many problems as it deals with. From the perspective of many crucial figures of the Enlightenment, credible reports, viewed through the lens of reason annealed knowledge, empirical observation, and knowledge should be compiled into a source which stood as the authoritative one. The opposing view, which was held with increasing force by the Romantic movement and its adherents, is that this process is inherently corrupted by social convention, and bars truth which is unique, individual and immanent from being expressed. edye, on the call for "natural" freedom which was good, without a "license" which would, in their view, degenerate. Thus the Age of Enlightenment sought reform of the Monarchy by laws which were in the best interest of its subjects, and the "enlightened" ordering of society. The idea of enlightened ordering was reflected in the sciences by, for example, Carolus Linnaeus ' categorization of Biology . fand Imperial France was the Metric System . In a uniform system of weights and measures, based on axiomatic units—the radius of the earth, the weight and thermodynamic properties of water—prices would float industry from the tyranny of old production laws, and hence from Medieval structure. Key conflicts within Enlightenment-period philosophy As with most periods, the individuals present within the Enlightenment were more aware of their differences than their similarities; within the period there were schools of thought, which saw themselves as widely divergent, even as later perspective has come to consider them similar. One key conflict is on the role of theology - during the previous period, there had been the splintering of the Catholic Church, not, as with previous schisms, largely along political control of the papacy, but along doctrinal lines between Roman Catholic and Protestant theologies. Consequently, theology itself became a source of partisan debate, with different schools attempting to create rationales for their viewpoints, which then, in turn, became generally used. Thus philosophers such as Spinoza searched for a metaphysics of ethics. This trend would influence Pietism and eventually Transcendental searches such as those by Immanuel Kant . Religion was linked to another feature which produced a great deal of Enlightenment thought, namely the rise of the Nation State . In medieval and Renaissance periods, the state was restricted by the need to work through a host of intermediaries. This system existed because of poor communication, where localism thrived in return for loyalty to some central organization. With the improvements in transportation, organization, navigation and finally the influx of gold and silver from trade and conquest, the state began to assume more and more authority and power. The response against this was a series of theories on the purpose of, and limits of state power. The Enlightenment saw both the cementing of Absolutism and counter-reaction of limitation advocated by a string of philosophers from John Locke forward, who influenced both Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau . Within the period of the Enlightenment, these issues began to be explored in the question of what constituted the proper relationship of the citizen to the monarch or the state. The idea that Society Is A Contract between individual and some larger entity, whether society or state, continued to grow throughout this period. A series of philosophers, including Rousseau , Montesquieu , Hume and ultimately Jefferson advocated this idea. Furthermore, thinkers of this age advocated the idea that nationality had a basis beyond mere preference. Philosophers such as Johann Gottfried Von Herder reasserted the idea from Greek antiquity that Language had a decisive influence on cognition and thought, and that the meaning of a particular book or text was open to deeper exploration based on deeper connections, an idea now called Hermeneutics . The original focus of his scholarship was to delve into the meaning in the Bible and in order to gain a deeper understanding of it. These two concepts - of the contractual nature between the state and the citizen, and the reality of the "nation" beyond that contract, had a decisive influence in the development of Liberalism , Democracy and constitutional government which followed. At the same time, the integration of , the discovery of the first planet since antiquity, Uranus by William Herschel , and the calculation of the mass of the Sun using Newton's theory of universal gravitation. The effect that this series of discoveries had on both pragmatic commerce and philosophy was momentous. The excitement of creating a new and orderly vision of the world, as well as the need for a philosophy of science which could encompass the new discoveries would show its fundamental influence in both religious and secular ideas. If Newton could order the cosmos with "natural philosophy," so, many argued, could political philosophy order the body politic. Within the Enlightenment there were two main theories contending to be the basis of that ordering: "divine right" and "natural law." It might seem that divine right would yield absolutist ideas, and that natural law would lead to theories of liberty. The writing of , though an absolutist in government, drew this argument in '' Leviathan ''. Once the concept of natural law was invoked, however, it took on a life of its own. If natural law could be used to bolster the position of the monarchy, it could also be used to assert the rights of subjects of that monarch, that if there were natural laws, then there were Natural Rights associated with them, just as there are rights under man-made laws. What both theories had in common, however, was the need for an orderly and comprehensible function of government. The "Enlightened Despotism" of, for example, Catherine The Great of Russia is not based on mystical appeals to authority, but on the pragmatic invocation of state power as necessary to hold back chaotic and anarchic warfare and rebellion. Regularization and standardization were seen as good things because they allowed the state to reach its power outwards over the entirety of its domain and because they liberated people from being entangled in endless local custom. Additionally, they expanded the sphere of economic and social activity. Thus rationalization, standardization and the search for fundamental unities occupied much of the Enlightenment and its arguments over proper methodology and nature of understanding. The culminating efforts of the Enlightenment: for example the economics of Adam Smith , the physical chemistry of Antoine Lavoisier , the idea of evolution pursued by Goethe, the declaration by Jefferson of "inalienable" rights, in the end overshadowed the idea of "divine right" and direct alteration of the world by the hand of God. It was also the basis for overthrowing the idea of a completely rational and comprehensible universe, and led, in turn, to the metaphysics of Hegel and the search for the emotional truth of Romanticism . Role of the Enlightenment in later philosophy 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 being a period of rationality which was overturning foolishly established traditions, and therefore analogized itself to the Encyclopediasts and other philosophes. A variety of 20th century movements, including Liberalism and Neo-classicism traced their intellectual heritage back to the "reasonable" past, and away from the "emotionalism" of the 19th century. Geometric order, rigor and reductionism were seen as virtues of the Enlightenment. The modern movement points to Reductionism and Rationality as crucial aspects of Enlightenment thinking of which it is the inheritor, 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 are Jürgen Habermas and Isaiah Berlin . This view asserts that the Enlightenment was the point where Europe broke through what historian Peter Gay calls "the sacred circle," where previous dogma circumscribed thinking. The Enlightenment is held, in this view, to be the source of critical ideas, such as the centrality of Freedom , Democracy and Reason as being the primary values of a 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 and racial 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 to be 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. With the end of the tending towards totalitarianism. Alternatively, the Enlightenment was used as a powerful symbol to argue for the supremacy of rationalism and rationalization, and therefore any attack on it is connected to despotism and madness, for example in the writings of Gertrude Himmelfarb and Robert Nozick . This is not to be confused with the role of specific philosophers or individuals from the Enlightenment, but the use of the term in a broad sense by writers in the present of varying points of view. Precursors of the Enlightenment
Important figures of the Enlightenment era
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