The Enlightenment
Overview
The Enlightenment
The Age of the Enlightenment in Europe flowered in the wake of the spectacular advances of the Scientific Revolution.
Learning Objectives
Identify the leading figures of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment and discuss their contributions and impacts.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
scientific method: a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge based on empirical or measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning
Empiricism: a theory that states that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience; one of several views of epistemology—the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism and skepticism; emphasizes the role of experience and evidence (especially sensory experience), in the formation of ideas, over the notion of innate ideas or traditions
Encyclopédie: a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements, revised editions, and translations (It had many writers and was edited by Denis Diderot, and, until 1759, co-edited by Jean le Rond d’Alembert. It is the most famous for representing the thought of the Enlightenment.)
Newtonianism: a doctrine that involves following the principles and using the methods of natural philosopher Isaac Newton (Newton’s broad conception of the universe as being governed by rational and understandable laws laid the foundation for many strands of Enlightenment thought.)
Reductionism: the term that refers to several related but distinct philosophical positions regarding the connections between phenomena, or theories, “reducing” one to another, usually considered “simpler” or more “basic” (The Oxford Companion to Philosophy suggests a three-part division: ontological—a belief that the whole of reality consists of a minimal number of parts; methodological—the scientific attempt to provide explanation in terms of ever smaller entities; and theory—the suggestion that a newer theory does not replace or absorb the old, but reduces it to more basic terms.)
Metaphysics: a traditional branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world that encompasses it (Traditionally, it attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms: “Ultimately, what is there?” and “What is it like?”)
cogito ergo sum: a Latin philosophical proposition by René Descartes, the first modern rationalist, usually translated into English as “I think, therefore I am.” (This proposition became a fundamental element of western philosophy, as it purported to form a secure foundation for knowledge in the face of radical doubt. Descartes asserted that the very act of doubting one’s own existence served, at minimum, as proof of the reality of one’s own mind.)
The Enlightenment
The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Enlightenment, was a philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe in the 18th century. It was centered around the idea that reason is the primary source of authority and legitimacy, and it advocated such ideals as liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state. The Enlightenment was marked by an emphasis on the scientific method and reductionism, along with increased questioning of religious orthodoxy. The ideas of the Enlightenment undermined the authority of the monarchy and the church and paved the way for the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries that swept across Europe and the Americas.
French historians traditionally place the Enlightenment between 1715, the year that Louis XIV died, and 1789, the beginning of the French Revolution. Some recent historians begin the period in the 1620s, with the start of the scientific revolution. However, different national varieties of the movement flourished between the first decades of the 18th century and the first decades of the 19th century.
The ideas of the Enlightenment played a major role in inspiring the French Revolution, which began in 1789 and emphasized the rights of the common men, as opposed to the exclusive rights of the elites. However, historians of race, gender, and class note that Enlightenment ideals were not originally envisioned as universal in the today’s sense of the word. Although they did eventually inspire the struggle for rights of people of color, women, and the working masses, most Enlightenment thinkers did not advocate equality for all; rather they insisted that rights and freedoms were not hereditary. This perspective directly attacked the traditionally exclusive position of the European aristocracy, but it was still largely limited to expanding the political and individual rights of white males of particular social standing.
Philosophy
In the mid-18th century, Europe witnessed an explosion of philosophic and scientific activity that challenged traditional doctrines and dogmas. The philosophic movement was led by Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argued for a society based upon reason rather than faith and Catholic doctrine, for a new civil order based on natural law, and for science based on experiments and observation. The political philosopher Montesquieu introduced the idea of a separation of powers in a government, a concept which was enthusiastically adopted by the authors of the United States Constitution. While the philosophers of the French Enlightenment were not revolutionaries, and many were members of the nobility, their ideas played an important part in undermining the legitimacy of the “Old Regime” (the traditional monarchies and social order) and shaping the French Revolution.
There were two distinct lines of Enlightenment thought. One was the radical enlightenment, which was inspired by the philosophy of Spinoza, who advocated democracy, individual liberty, freedom of expression, and eradication of religious authority. A second, more moderate variety sought accommodation between reform and the traditional systems of power and faith; this was supported by René Descartes, John Locke, Christian Wolff, Isaac Newton and others.
Several Enlightenment thinkers left their mark on the future. David Hume and Adam Smith developed much of what is incorporated in the scientific method (the nature of knowledge, evidence, experience, and causation), as well as some modern attitudes towards the relationship between science and religion. Hume became a major figure in the skeptical philosophical and empiricist traditions of philosophy. Immanuel Kant tried to reconcile rationalism and religious belief, individual freedom and political authority, as well as map out a view of the public sphere through private and public reason. Kant’s work continued to shape German thought, and indeed all of European philosophy, well into the 20th century. Mary Wollstonecraft was one of England’s earliest feminist philosophers. She argued for a society based on reason and that women should be treated as rational beings.
Science
While the Enlightenment cannot be pigeonholed into a specific doctrine or set of dogmas, science came to play a leading role in Enlightenment discourse and thought. Many Enlightenment writers and thinkers had backgrounds in the sciences; they associated scientific advancement with the overthrow of religion and traditional authority in favor of the development of free speech and thought. Broadly speaking, Enlightenment science greatly valued empiricism and rational thought, which was entwined with the idea of advancement and progress.
The 18th century saw significant advancements in the practice of medicine, mathematics, and physics; the development of biological taxonomy; a new understanding of magnetism and electricity; and the maturation of chemistry as a discipline, which established the foundations of modern chemistry.
Science during the Enlightenment was dominated by scientific societies and academies, which had largely replaced universities as centers of scientific research and development. Societies and academies were also the backbone of the maturation of the scientific profession. Another important development was the popularization of science among an increasingly literate population. Many scientific theories reached the wide public, notably through the Encyclopedie (a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772) and the popularization of Newtonianism.
Rationalism
Rationalism—an appeal to human reason as a way of obtaining knowledge—has a philosophical history dating from antiquity. While rationalism—the view that reason is the main source of knowledge—did not dominate the Enlightenment, it laid a critical foundation for the debates that developed over the course of the 18th century. As the Enlightenment centered on reason as the primary source of authority and legitimacy, many philosophers of the period drew from earlier philosophical contributions, most notably those of René Descartes (1596 – 1650), a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist.
Descartes was the first of the modern rationalists. He thought that only knowledge of eternal truths (including the truths of mathematics and the foundations of the sciences) could be attained by reason alone, while the knowledge of physics required experience of the world, aided by the scientific method. He argued that reason alone determined knowledge, and that this could be done independently of the senses. For instance, his famous dictum cogito ergo sum—“I think, therefore I am”—is a conclusion reached a priori (i.e., prior to any kind of experience on the matter). The simple meaning is that doubting one’s existence, in and of itself, proves that an “I” exists to do the thinking.
Descartes laid the foundation for 17th-century continental rationalism, which was later advocated by Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz, but was also opposed by the empiricist school of thought consisting of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Leibniz, Spinoza, and Descartes were all well-versed in mathematics, as well as philosophy, and Descartes and Leibniz contributed greatly to science as well.
Rationalism v. Empiricism
Since the Enlightenment, rationalism is usually associated with the introduction of mathematical methods into philosophy, as seen in the works of Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza. This is commonly called continental rationalism because it was predominant in the continental schools of Europe, whereas in Britain empiricism dominated as a theory that posits knowledge as attainable only through a sensory experience. Although rationalism and empiricism are traditionally seen as opposing each other, the distinction between rationalists and empiricists was drawn at a later period and would not have been recognized by philosophers involved in Enlightenment debates. Furthermore, the distinction between the two philosophies is not as clear-cut as is sometimes suggested. For example, Descartes and John Locke had similar views about the nature of human ideas.
Proponents of some varieties of rationalism argue that starting with foundational basic principles, like the axioms of geometry, one could deductively derive the rest of all possible knowledge. The philosophers who held this view most clearly were Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz, whose attempts to grapple with the epistemological and metaphysical problems raised by Descartes led to a development of the fundamental approach of rationalism. Both Spinoza and Leibniz asserted that, in principle, all knowledge could be gained through the use of reason alone. However they both observed that this was not possible for human beings in practice, except in specific areas, such as mathematics. On the other hand, Leibniz admitted in his book, Monadology, that “we are all mere Empirics in three fourths of our actions.”
Immanuel Kant
Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz are usually credited for laying the groundwork for the 18th-century Enlightenment. During the mature Enlightenment period, Immanuel Kant attempted to explain the relationship between reason and human experience, and to move beyond the failures of traditional philosophy and metaphysics. He wanted to put an end to an era of futile and speculative theories of human experience and regarded himself as ending and showing the way beyond the impasse between rationalists and empiricists. He is widely credited with synthesizing these two early modern traditions.
Kant named his brand of epistemology or theory of knowledge “transcendental idealism,” and he first laid out these views in his famous work The Critique of Pure Reason. In it, he argued that there were fundamental problems with both rationalist and empiricist dogma. To the rationalists, he argued that pure reason is flawed when it goes beyond its limits and claims to know those things that are necessarily beyond the realm of all possible experience (e.g., the existence of God, free will, or the immortality of the human soul). To the empiricist, he argued that while it is correct that experience is fundamentally necessary for human knowledge, reason is necessary for processing that experience into coherent thought. He, therefore, concluded that both reason and experience are necessary for human knowledge. In the same way, Kant also argued that it was wrong to regard thought as mere analysis. In his views, a priori concepts do exist, but if they are to lead to the amplification of knowledge, they must be brought into relation with empirical data.
The Enlightenment and the Natural Rights of Men
The Enlightenment changed the way that people viewed the relationship between the government and citizen with the idea that people possessed "natural" rights.
Learning Objectives
Identify the leading figures of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment and discuss their contributions and impacts.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
Legal rights: the rights bestowed onto a person by a given legal system (i.e., rights that can be modified, repealed, and restrained by human laws)
Natural rights: the rights that are not dependent on the laws, customs, or beliefs of any particular culture or government, and are therefore universal and inalienable (i.e., rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws)
natural law: a philosophy that certain rights or values are inherent by virtue of human nature and can be universally understood through human reason. (Historically, it refers to the use of reason to analyze both social and personal human nature in order to deduce binding rules of moral behavior. The law of nature, like nature itself, is universal.)
Index Librorum Prohibitorum: a list of publications deemed heretical, anti-clerical, or lascivious, and therefore banned by the Catholic Church
Glorious Revolution: the overthrow of King James II of England (who was also James VII of Scotland and James II of Ireland) by a union of English Parliamentarians with the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange-Nassau (William of Orange). (William’s successful invasion of England with a Dutch fleet and army led to his ascending of the English throne as William III of England jointly with his wife Mary II of England, in conjunction with the documentation of the Bill of Rights 1689.)
separation of powers: a model for the governance of a state (or who controls the state), first proposed in ancient Greece and developed and modernized by the French political philosopher Montesquieu (Under this model, the state is divided into branches, each with separate and independent powers and areas of responsibility so that the powers of one branch are not in conflict with the powers associated with the other branches. The typical division of branches is legislature, executive, and judiciary.)
The Spirit of the Laws: a treatise on political theory first published anonymously by Montesquieu in 1748, in which Montesquieu pleaded in favor of a constitutional system of government and the separation of powers, the ending of slavery, and the preservation of civil liberties and the law, as well as the idea that political institutions ought to reflect the social and geographical aspects of each community
social contract theory: in moral and political philosophy, a theory or model originating during the Age of Enlightenment that typically addresses the questions of the origin of society and the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual; posits that individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the ruler or magistrate (or to the decision of a majority), in exchange for protection of their remaining rights
Modern Western Government
The Enlightenment has long been hailed as the foundation of modern western political and intellectual culture. In the west, it brought a focus on democratic values and institutions, which led to the creation of modern, liberal democracies.
The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes ushered in a new debate on government with his work Leviathan in 1651. Hobbes also developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought: the right of the individual; the natural equality of all men; the artificial character of the political order (which led to the later distinction between civil society and the state); the view that all legitimate political power must be “representative” and based on the consent of the people; and a liberal interpretation of law that leaves people free to do whatever the law does not explicitly forbid.
John Locke and Rousseau also developed social contract theories. Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau agreed that a social contract—in which the government’s authority lies in the consent of the governed—is necessary for man to live in civil society, although they differed in the details. Locke is particularly known for his statement that individuals have a right to “Life, Liberty and Property,” as well as his belief that the natural right to property is derived from labor. His theory of natural rights has influenced many political documents, including the United States Declaration of Independence and the French National Constituent Assembly’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Though much of Enlightenment’s political thought was dominated by social contract theorists, some Scottish philosophers, most notably David Hume and Adam Ferguson, criticized this camp. Theirs was the assumption that governments derived from a ruler’s authority and force (Hume) and polities grew out of social development rather than social contract (Ferguson).
Religion
Enlightenment era religious commentary was a response to the preceding century of religious conflict in Europe. Enlightenment thinkers sought to curtail the political power of organized religion and, thereby, prevent another age of intolerant religious war. A number of novel ideas developed, including Deism (belief in God as a Creator who does not intervene in human affairs) and atheism. The latter was much discussed but there were few proponents. Many, like Voltaire, held that without belief in a God who punishes evil the moral order of society was undermined.
The radical Enlightenment promoted the concept of separating church and state, an idea often credited to Locke. According to Locke’s principle of the social contract, the government lacked authority in the realm of individual conscience, as this was something rational people could not cede to the government. For Locke, this created a natural right in the liberty of conscience, which he said must remain protected from any government authority. These views on religious tolerance and the importance of individual conscience, along with the social contract, became particularly influential in the American colonies and the drafting of the United States Constitution.
While the philosophy of the Enlightenment was dominated by men, the question of women’s rights appeared as one of the most controversial ideas. Mary Wollstonecraft, one of few female thinkers of the time, was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women’s rights. She is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men but appear to be so only because they lack education. She maintains that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagined a social order founded on reason.
Politics
Since the Enlightenment, rationalism in politics historically emphasized a “politics of reason” centered upon rational choice, utilitarianism, and secularism. The relationship between rationalism and religion was ameliorated by the adoption of pluralistic rationalist methods practicable regardless of religious or irreligious ideology, but for a time it was conflated with atheism and might still be, as John Cottingham notes: “In the past, particularly in the 17th and 18th centuries, the term ‘rationalist’ was often used to refer to free thinkers of an anti-clerical and anti-religious outlook, and for a time the word acquired a distinctly pejorative force [ . . . ]. The use of the label ‘rationalist’ to characterize a world outlook which has no place for the supernatural is becoming less popular today; terms like ‘humanist’ or ‘materialist’ seem largely to have taken its place. But the old usage still survives.”
Natural Rights
Natural rights are usually contrasted with the concept of legal rights. Legal rights are those bestowed onto a person by a given legal system (i.e., rights that can be modified, repealed, and restrained by human laws). Natural rights are those that are not dependent on the laws, customs, or beliefs of any particular culture or government; this makes them universal and inalienable (i.e., rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws). Natural rights are closely related to the concept of natural law (or laws). During the Enlightenment, the concept of natural laws was used to challenge the divine right of kings and became an alternative justification for the establishment of a social contract, positive law, and government or legal rights; this led to classical republicanism, which is built around concepts such as civil society, civic virtue, and mixed government. Conversely, the concept of natural rights is used by others to challenge the legitimacy of all such establishments.
The idea of natural rights is also closely related to that of human rights; some acknowledge no difference between the two, while others choose to keep the terms separate to eliminate the association of human rights with some features traditionally associated with natural rights. This may be because natural rights, in particular, are considered beyond the authority of any government or international body to dismiss.
Natural Rights and Social Contract
Although natural rights have been discussed since antiquity, it was the philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment that developed the modern concept of natural rights, which has been critical to the development of modern republican government and civil society.
Natural rights developed as part of the social contract theory, which addressed the questions of the origin of society and the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual. Social contract arguments typically posit that individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the ruler or magistrate (or to the decision of a majority), in exchange for protection of their remaining rights. The question of the relation between natural and legal rights, therefore, is often an aspect of social contract theory.
Thomas Hobbes’s conception of natural rights extended from his conception of man in a “state of nature.” He argued that the essential natural (human) right was “to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own Nature; that is to say, of his own Life.” Hobbes sharply distinguished this natural “liberty” from natural “laws.” In his natural state, according to Hobbes, man’s life consisted entirely of liberties, and not at all of laws. He objected to the attempt to derive rights from “natural law,” arguing that law (“lex”) and right (“jus”) though often confused, signify opposites; Hobbes saw law as referring to obligations, while rights refers to the absence of obligations. He argues that since, by our (human) nature, we seek to maximize our wellbeing, rights are prior to law, natural or institutional, and people will not follow the laws of nature without first being subjected to a sovereign power, without which all ideas of right and wrong are meaningless.
Thomas Hobbes’s 1651 book Leviathan established social contract theory, which serves as the foundation of most later western political philosophy. Though on rational grounds a champion of absolutism for the sovereign, Hobbes also developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought: the right of the individual; the natural equality of all men; the artificial character of the political order (which led to the later distinction between civil society and the state); the view that all legitimate political power must be “representative” and based on the consent of the people; and a liberal interpretation of law that leaves people free to do whatever the law does not explicitly forbid.
The most famous natural right formulation comes from John Locke in his Second Treatise, when he introduces the state of nature. For Locke, the law of nature is grounded on mutual security, or the idea that one cannot infringe on another’s natural rights, as every man is equal and has the same inalienable rights. These natural rights include perfect equality and freedom and the right to preserve life and property. Such fundamental rights could not be surrendered in the social contract. Another 17th-century Englishman, John Lilburne (known as Freeborn John) argued for level human rights that he called “freeborn rights,” which he defined as being rights that every human being is born with, as opposed to rights bestowed by government or by human law. The distinction between alienable and unalienable rights was introduced by Francis Hutcheson, who argued that “Unalienable Rights are essential Limitations in all Governments.” In the German Enlightenment, Georg Hegel gave a highly developed treatment of the inalienability argument. Like Hutcheson, Hegel based the theory of inalienable rights on the de facto inalienability of those aspects of personhood that distinguish persons from things. A thing, like a piece of property, can in fact be transferred from one person to another. According to Hegel, the same would not apply to those aspects that make one a person. Thomas Paine further elaborated on natural rights in his influential work Rights of Man (1791), emphasizing that rights cannot be granted by any charter because this would legally imply they can also be revoked, and under such circumstances, they would be reduced to privileges.
Natural Rights, Slavery, and Abolitionism
Many historical apologies for slavery and illiberal government were based on explicit or implicit voluntary contracts to alienate any natural rights to freedom and self-determination. In discussion of social contract theory, “inalienable rights” were those rights that could not be surrendered by citizens to the sovereign. Such rights were thought to be natural rights, independent of positive law. Some social contract theorists reasoned, however, that in the natural state only the strongest could benefit from their rights. Thus, people form an implicit social contract, ceding their natural rights to the authority to protect the people from abuse, and living henceforth under the legal rights of that authority. Locke argued against slavery on the basis that enslaving yourself goes against the law of nature: you cannot surrender your own rights because your freedom is absolute and no one can take it from you. Additionally, Locke argued that one person cannot enslave another because it is morally reprehensible, although he introduces a caveat by saying that enslavement of a lawful captive in time of war would not go against one’s natural rights. The de facto inalienability arguments of Hutcheson and his predecessors provided the basis for the anti-slavery movement to argue not simply against involuntary slavery but against any explicit or implied contractual forms of slavery. Any contract that tried to legally alienate such a right would be inherently invalid. Similarly, the argument was used by the democratic movement to argue against any explicit or implied social contracts of subjection by which a people would supposedly alienate their right of self-government to a sovereign.
Baron de Montesquieu
Baron de Montesquieu, usually referred to as simply Montesquieu, was a French lawyer, man of letters, and one of the most influential political philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment. He was born in France in 1689. After losing both parents at an early age, he became a ward of his uncle, the Baron de Montesquieu. He became a counselor of the Bordeaux Parliament in 1714. A year later, he married Jeanne de Lartigue, a Protestant, who bore him three children. Montesquieu’s early life occurred at a time of significant governmental change. England had declared itself a constitutional monarchy in the wake of its Glorious Revolution (1688 – 89) and had joined with Scotland in the Union of 1707 to form the Kingdom of Great Britain. In France, the long-reigning Louis XIV died in 1715, and was succeeded by five year-old Louis XV. These national transformations had a great impact on Montesquieu, who would refer to them repeatedly in his work. Montesquieu withdrew from the practice of law to devote himself to study and writing.
Besides writing works on society and politics, Montesquieu traveled for a number of years through Europe, including Austria and Hungary, spending a year in Italy and 18 months in England, where he became a freemason before resettling in France. He was troubled by poor eyesight and was completely blind by the time he died from a high fever in 1755.
The Spirit of Laws
The Spirit of the Laws is a treatise on political theory first published anonymously by Montesquieu in 1748. The book was originally published anonymously partly because Montesquieu’s works were subject to censorship, but its influence outside France grew with rapid translation into other languages. In 1750, Thomas Nugent published the first English translation. In 1751, the Catholic Church added it to its Index Librorum Prohibitorum (list of prohibited books). Yet Montesquieu’s political treatise had an enormous influence on the work of many others, most notably the founding fathers of the United States Constitution, and Alexis de Tocqueville, who applied Montesquieu’s methods to a study of American society in Democracy in America.
Montesquieu spent around 21 years researching and writing The Spirit of the Laws, covering many things, including the law, social life, and the study of anthropology, and providing more than 3,000 commendations. In this political treatise, Montesquieu pleaded in favor of a constitutional system of government and the separation of powers, the ending of slavery, the preservation of civil liberties and the law, and the idea that political institutions should reflect the social and geographical aspects of each community.
Montesquieu defines three main political systems: republican, monarchical, and despotic. As he defines them, republican political systems vary depending on how broadly they extend citizenship rights: those that extend citizenship relatively broadly are termed democratic republics, while those that restrict citizenship more narrowly are termed aristocratic republics. The distinction between monarchy and despotism hinges on whether or not a fixed set of laws exists that can restrain the authority of the ruler. If so, the regime counts as a monarchy. If not, it counts as despotism.
A second major theme in The Spirit of Laws concerns political liberty and the best means of preserving it. Montesquieu’s political liberty is what we might call today personal security, especially insofar as this is provided for through a system of dependable and moderate laws. He distinguishes this view of liberty from two other, misleading views of political liberty. The first is the view that liberty consists in collective self-government (i.e., that liberty and democracy are the same). The second is the view that liberty consists of being able to do whatever one wants without constraint. Political liberty is not possible in a despotic political system, but it is possible, though not guaranteed, in republics and monarchies. Establishing political liberty requires two things: the separation of the powers of government, and the appropriate framing of civil and criminal laws so as to ensure personal security.
Separation of Powers and Appropriate Laws
Building on and revising a discussion in John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, Montesquieu argues that the executive, legislative, and judicial functions of government (the so-called tripartite system) should be assigned to different bodies, so that attempts by one branch of government to infringe on political liberty might be restrained by the other branches (checks and balances). Montesquieu based this model on the Constitution of the Roman Republic and the British constitutional system. He took the view that the Roman Republic had powers separated so that no one could usurp complete power. In the British constitutional system, Montesquieu discerned a separation of powers among the monarch, Parliament, and the courts of law. He also notes that liberty cannot be secure where there is no separation of powers, even in a republic. Montesquieu also intends what modern legal scholars might call the rights to “robust procedural due process,” including the right to a fair trial, the presumption of innocence, and the proportionality in the severity of punishment. In accordance with this requirement to frame civil and criminal laws appropriately to ensure political liberty, Montesquieu also argues against slavery and for the freedom of thought, speech, and assembly.
Voltaire, Rousseau, and Wollstonecraft
These three Enlightenment thinkers shaped the direction and scope of the Emlightenment as a philosophical movement.
Learning Objectives
Identify the leading figures of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment and discuss their contributions and impacts.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
Deism: a theological/philosophical position that combines the rejection of revelation and authority as a source of religious knowledge, with the conclusion that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to determine the existence of a single creator of the universeThe Philosophical Dictionary: an encyclopedic dictionary published by Voltaire in 1764 (The alphabetically arranged articles often criticize the Roman Catholic Church and other institutions. It represents the culmination of Voltaire’s views on Christianity, God, morality, and other subjects.)
The Treatise on Tolerance: a work by French philosopher Voltaire, published in 1763, in which he calls for tolerance between religions and targets religious fanaticism, especially that of the Jesuits (under whom Voltaire received his early education), indicting all superstitions surrounding religions
Ancien Régime: the monarchic-aristocratic, social, and political system established in the Kingdom of France from approximately the 15th century until the latter part of the 18th century (“early modern France”), under the late Valois and Bourbon Dynasties; used to refer to the similar feudal social and political order of the time elsewhere in Europe
“noble savage”: a literary stock character who embodies the concept of an idealized indigene, outsider, or “other” who has not been “corrupted” by civilization and, therefore, symbolizes humanity’s innate goodness In English, the phrase first appeared in the 17th century in John Dryden’s heroic play The Conquest of Granada (1672).
The Discourse on the Origins of Inequality Among Men: a work by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau that first exposes his conception of a human state of nature and of human perfectibility, an early idea of progress (In it, Rousseau explains how, according to him, people may have established civil society, which leads him to present private property as the original source and basis of all inequality.)
state of nature: a concept used in moral and political philosophy, religion, social contract theories, and international law to denote the hypothetical conditions of what the lives of people might have been like before societies came into existence (In some versions of social contract theory, there are no rights in the state of nature, only freedoms, and it is the contract that creates rights and obligations. In other versions the opposite occurs: the contract imposes restrictions upon individuals that curtail their natural rights.)
Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences: a 1750 treatise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which argued that the arts and sciences corrupt human morality (It was Rousseau’s first expression of his influential views about nature vs. society, to which he would dedicate most of his intellectual life.)
The Social Contract: a 1762 treatise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau that helped inspire political reforms and revolutions in Europe, in which he theorized the best way to establish a political community in the face of the problems of commercial society; argues against the idea that monarchs were divinely empowered to legislate and asserts that only the people have that all-powerful right
general will: a philosophical and political concept, developed and popularized in the 18th century, that denoted the will of the people as a whole; served to designate the common interest as distinct from embodied in legal tradition, transcending people’s private and particular interests at any particular time
Rationalism: in epistemology, the view that regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge, or any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification; a methodology, or a theory, in which the criterion oftruth is not a result of experience but of intellect and deduction
Idea of Progress: in intellectual history, the idea that advances in technology, science, and social organization can produce an improvement in the human condition, that people can become better, in terms of quality of life (social progress), through economic development (modernization), and the application of science and technology (scientific progress)
A Vindication of the Rights of Men: a 1790 political pamphlet written by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft that attacks aristocracy and advocates republicanism (It was the first response in a pamphlet war sparked by the publication of Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), a defense of constitutional monarchy, aristocracy, and the Church of England.)
Reflections on the Revolution in France: a political pamphlet written by the Irish statesman Edmund Burke and published in 1790; one of the best-known intellectual attacks against the French Revolution; a defining tract of modern conservatism, as well as an important contribution to international theory
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: a 1792 work by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft that is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy; argues that women should have an education commensurate with their position in society, claiming that women are essential to the nation because they educate its children and because they could be “companions” to their husbands, rather than just wives
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet, known by his literary pseudonym Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and separation of church and state.
He was born in Paris in 1694 and educated by the Jesuits at the Collège Louis-le-Grand (1704 – 1711). By the time he left school, Voltaire had decided he wanted to be a writer, against the wishes of his father who wanted him to become a lawyer. Under his father’s pressure, he studied law, but he continued to write, producing essays and historical studies. In 1713, his father obtained a job for him as a secretary to a French ambassador in the Netherlands, but Voltaire was forced to return to France after a scandalous affair. From early on, he had trouble with the authorities over his critiques of the government. These activities were to result in two imprisonments and a temporary exile to England. One satirical verse, in which Voltaire accused Philippe II, Duke of Orléans of incest with his own daughter, led to an eleven-month imprisonment in the Bastille; it was after this that he adopted the name Voltaire. He mainly argued for religious tolerance and freedom of thought. He campaigned to eradicate priestly and aristocratic-monarchical authority and supported a constitutional monarchy that protects people’s rights.
Voltaire was a versatile writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets. He was an outspoken advocate of several liberties, despite the risk incurred under the strict censorship laws of the time. As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma, and the French institutions of his day.
Political and Philosophical Views
Voltaire’s political and philosophical views can be found in nearly all of his prose writings, even in what would be typically categorized as fiction. Most of his prose, including such genres as romance, drama, or satire, was written as polemics with the goal of conveying radical political and philosophical messages. His works, especially private letters, frequently contain the word “l’infâme” and the expression “écrasez l’infâme,” or “crush the infamous.” The phrase refers to abuses of the royalty and the clergy that Voltaire had experienced or observed, as well as the superstition and intolerance that the clergy bred within the people.
First Publications
Voltaire’s first major philosophical work in his battle against “l’infâme” was The Treatise on Tolerance (1763), in which he calls for tolerance between religions and targets religious fanaticism, especially that of the Jesuits, indicting all superstitions surrounding religions. The book was quickly banned. Only a year later, he published The Philosophical Dictionary— an encyclopedic dictionary with alphabetically arranged articles that criticize the Roman Catholic Church and other institutions. In it, Voltaire is concerned with the injustices of the Catholic Church, which he sees as intolerant and fanatical. At the same time, he espouses deism, tolerance, and freedom of the press. The Dictionary was Voltaire’s lifelong project, modified and expanded with each edition. It represents the culmination of his views on Christianity, God, morality, and other subjects.
Voltaire as Historian
Voltaire had an enormous influence on the development of historiography through his demonstration of fresh new ways to look at the past. His best-known historiography works are The Age of Louis XIV (1751) and The Essay on the Customs and the Spirit of the Nations (1756). Voltaire broke from the tradition of narrating diplomatic and military events, and emphasized customs, social history, and achievements in the arts and sciences. The Essay traced the progress of world civilization in a universal context, rejecting both nationalism and the traditional Christian frame of reference. Voltaire was also the first scholar to make a serious attempt to write the history of the world, eliminating theological frameworks and emphasizing economics, culture, and political history. He treated Europe as a whole, rather than a collection of nations. He was the first to emphasize the debt of medieval culture to Middle Eastern civilization, and consistently exposed the intolerance and frauds of the church over the ages.
Views on the Society
In his criticism of the French society and existing social structures, Voltaire hardly spared anyone. He perceived the French bourgeoisie (middle class) to be too small and ineffective, the aristocracy to be parasitic and corrupt, the commoners as ignorant and superstitious, and the church as a static and oppressive force useful only on occasion as a counterbalance to the rapacity of kings, although all too often, even more rapacious itself. Voltaire distrusted democracy, which he saw as propagating the idiocy of the masses. He long thought only an enlightened monarch could bring about change, given the social structures of the time and the extremely high rates of illiteracy; additionally, he felt that it was in the king’s rational interest to improve the education and welfare of his subjects. But his disappointments and disillusions with Frederick the Great changed his philosophy and soon gave birth to one of his most enduring works, his novella Candide, or Optimism (1759), which ends with a new conclusion: “It is up to us to cultivate our garden.”
Voltaire is remembered and honored in France as a courageous polemicist who tirelessly fought for civil rights (such as the right to a fair trial and freedom of religion) and who denounced the hypocrisies and injustices of the Ancien Regime. The Ancien Régime involved an unfair balance of power and taxes between the three Estates: clergy and nobles on one side, the commoners and middle class, who were burdened with most of the taxes, on the other.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a French speaking, Swiss philosopher, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the Enlightenment in France and across Europe. Rousseau’s philosophy was also important to the French Revolution and the overall development of modern political and educational thought.
Rousseau was born in 1712 in Geneva in Switzerland, which was at the time a city-state and a Protestant associate of the Swiss Confederacy. His mother died several days after he was born. After his father remarried a few years later, Jean-Jacques was left with his maternal uncle, who sent both him and his own son to board for two years with a Calvinist minister in a hamlet outside Geneva. Here, the boys picked up the elements of mathematics and drawing. After his father and uncle had more or less disowned him, the teenage Rousseau wandered through Italy and France, supporting himself for a time as a servant, secretary, and tutor. He had been an indifferent student, but during his 20she applied himself to the study of philosophy, mathematics, and music, even though this time for him was marked by long bouts of hypochondria. Rousseau spent his adulthood holding numerous administrative positions and moving across Europe, often to escape a controversy caused by his radical writings. His relationships with various women had important impacts on his life choices (e.g., temporary conversion to Catholicism) and inspired many of his writings. His decision to place his five children (born from a long-term domestic partnership with Thérèse Levasseur) in a shelter for abandoned children was widely criticized by his contemporaries and generations to come, particularly in light of his progressive works on education. Rousseau died in 1778.
The Theory of Natural Human
In common with other philosophers of the day, Rousseau looked to a hypothetical state of nature as a normative guide. Contrary to Thomas Hobbes’s views, Rousseau holds that “uncorrupted morals” prevail in the “state of nature.” In The Discourse on the Origins of Inequality Among Men (1754), Rousseau maintained that man in a state of nature had been a solitary, ape-like creature, who was not méchant (bad), as Hobbes had maintained, but (like some other animals) had an “innate repugnance to see others of his kind suffer.” He asserted that the stage of human development associated with what he called “savages” was the best or optimal in human development; this fell between the less-than-optimal extreme of brute animals on the one hand and the extreme of decadent civilization on the other. Espousing the belief that all degenerates in men’s hands, Rousseau taught that men would be free, wise, and good in the state of nature. He felt that instinct and emotion, when not distorted by the unnatural limitations of civilization, are nature’s voices and instructions to the good life. Rousseau’s “noble savage” stands in direct opposition to the man of culture; however, while Rousseau discusses the concept, he never uses the phrase that appears in other authors’ writings of the period. In his Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences (1750), Rousseau argued, that the arts and sciences corrupt human morality, which was in opposition to the dominant stand of Enlightenment thinkers.
The Social Contract
The Social Contract outlines the basis for a legitimate political order within a framework of classical republicanism. Published in 1762, it became one of the most influential works of political philosophy in the western tradition. Rousseau claimed that the state of nature was a primitive condition without law or morality, which human beings left for the benefits and necessity of cooperation. As society developed, division of labor and private property required the human race to adopt institutions of law. According to Rousseau, by joining together into civil society through the social contract, and abandoning their claims of natural right, individuals can both preserve themselves and remain free. This is because submission to the authority of the general will of the people guarantees individuals against being subordinated to the wills of others, as well as ensures that they obey themselves because they are, collectively, the authors of the law. The idea of general will denoted the will of the people as a whole. It served to designate the common interest embodied in legal tradition, as distinct from and transcending people’s private and particular interests at any particular time.
Although Rousseau argues that sovereignty (or the power to make the laws) should be in the hands of the people, he also makes a sharp distinction between the sovereign and the government. He posits that the political aspects of a society should be divided into two parts. First, there must be a sovereign consisting of the whole population, women included, that represents the general will and is the legislative power within the state. The second division is that of the government, being distinct from the sovereign. This division is necessary because the sovereign cannot deal with particular matters like applications of the law; doing so would undermine its generality and damage its legitimacy. Thus, government must remain a separate institution from the sovereign body. When the government exceeds the boundaries set in place by the people, it is the mission of the people to abolish such government and begin anew.
Education Theory
Rousseau’s philosophy of education, elaborated in his 1762 treatise Emile, or On Education, concerns itself with developing the students’ character and moral sense, so that they may learn to practice self-mastery and remain virtuous even in the unnatural and imperfect society in which they will have to live. The hypothetical boy, Émile, is to be raised in the countryside, which Rousseau believes is a more natural and healthy environment than the city, as well as under the guardianship of a tutor, who will guide him through various learning experiences. Rousseau felt that children learn right and wrong through experiencing the consequences of their acts, rather than through physical punishment. The tutor will make sure that no harm results to Émile through his learning experiences. With Emile Rousseau became an early advocate of developmentally appropriate education.
Although many of Rousseau’s ideas foreshadowed modern ones in many ways, in one way they do not: Rousseau was a believer in the moral superiority of the patriarchal family on the antique Roman model. Sophie, the young woman Émile is destined to marry, as a representative of ideal womanhood, is educated to be governed by her husband; on the other hand, Émile is educated to be self-governing, as representative of the ideal man. This is an essential feature of Rousseau’s educational and political philosophy, and particularly important to the distinction between private, personal relations and the public world of political relations. The private sphere as Rousseau imagines it depends on the subordination of women, in order for both it and the public political sphere to function as Rousseau imagines it could and should. Rousseau anticipated the modern idea of the bourgeois nuclear family, with the mother at home taking responsibility for the household, childcare, and early education.
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 – 1797) was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women’s rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children’s book. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft’s life, which encompassed an illegitimate child, passionate love affairs, and suicide attempts, received more attention than her writing. After two ill-fated affairs, with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay (by whom she had a daughter, Fanny Imlay), Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin—one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement. She died at the age of 38, eleven days after giving birth to her second daughter, leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts. The second daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, became an accomplished writer herself as Mary Shelley—the author of Frankenstein.
After Wollstonecraft’s death, her widower published a memoir (1798) of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for almost a century. However, with the emergence of the feminist movement at the turn of the twentieth century, Wollstonecraft’s advocacy of women’s equality and critiques of conventional femininity became increasingly important. Today, Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and work as important influences. Despite the controversial topic, the Rights of Woman received favorable reviews and was a great success. It was almost immediately released in a second edition in 1792. Several American editions appeared, and it was translated into French.
Education Theory
The majority of Wollstonecraft’s early works focus on education. She assembled an anthology of literary extracts “for the improvement of young women” entitled The Female Reader. In both her conduct book Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787) and her children’s book Original Stories from Real Life (1788), Wollstonecraft advocates educating children into the emerging middle-class ethos of self-discipline, honesty, frugality, and social contentment. Both books also emphasize the importance of teaching children to reason, revealing Wollstonecraft’s intellectual debt to the important 17th-century educational philosopher John Locke. Both texts also advocate the education of women, a controversial topic at the time, and one which she would return to throughout her career. Wollstonecraft argues that well-educated women will be good wives and mothers, and ultimately contribute positively to the nation.
A Vindication of the Rights of Man
Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Man(1790) attacks aristocracy and advocates republicanism. It was published in response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), which was a defense of constitutional monarchy, aristocracy, and the Church of England, as well as an attack on Wollstonecraft’s friend, Richard Price. In this treatise, Wollstonecraft attacked not only monarchy and hereditary privilege but also the gendered language that Burke used to defend and elevate it. Burke associated the beautiful with weakness and femininity, and the sublime with strength and masculinity. Wollstonecraft turns these definitions against him, arguing that his theatrical approach paints Burke’s readers—the citizens—into weak women who are swayed by show. In her first unabashedly feminist critique, Wollstonecraft indicts Burke’s defense of an unequal society founded on the passivity of women.
In her arguments for republican virtue, Wollstonecraft invokes an emerging middle-class ethos in opposition to what she views as the vice-ridden aristocratic code of manners. Influenced by Enlightenment thinkers, she derides Burke for relying on tradition and custom. She argues for rationality, pointing out that Burke’s system would lead to the continuation of slavery, simply because it had been an ancestral tradition.
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft argues that women ought to have an education commensurate with their position in society, and then proceeds to redefine that position, claiming that women are essential to the nation because they educate its children and because they could be “companions” to their husbands, rather than just wives. Instead of viewing women as ornaments to society or property to be traded in marriage, Wollstonecraft maintains that they are human beings deserving of the same fundamental rights as men. Large sections of the Rights of Woman respond vitriolically to the writers, who wanted to deny women an education.
While Wollstonecraft does call for equality between the sexes in particular areas of life, such as morality, she does not explicitly state that men and women are equal. She claims that men and women are equal in the eyes of God. However, such statements of equality stand in contrast to her statements respecting the superiority of masculine strength and valor. Her focus on the rights of women does distinguish Wollstonecraft from most of her male Enlightenment counterparts. However, some of them, most notably Marquis de Condorcet, expressed a much more explicit position on the equality of men and women, advocating women’s suffrage.
In many ways the Rights of Woman is inflected by a bourgeois view of the world. Wollstonecraft addresses her text to the middle class, which she describes as the “most natural state.” It encourages modesty and industry in its readers and attacks the uselessness of the aristocracy. But Wollstonecraft is not necessarily a friend to the poor. For example, in her national plan for education, she suggests that, after the age of nine, the poor, except for those who are brilliant, should be separated from the rich and taught in another school.
Primary Source: Immanuel Kant: “What is Enlightenment” (1784)
In this essay, the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant defined the meaning of “Enlightenment”.
Immanuel Kant: “What is Enlightenment” (1784)
Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is 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 remain 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 because 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 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.
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(c)Paul Halsall Aug 1997
Attributions
Title Image
Portrait of John Locke, Godfrey Kneller, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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