Age of Enlightenment

An Age of Enlightenment is an intellectual movement during the 1800s that stressed reason and science over tradition as the primary source of authority and legitimacy, and advanced ideals like liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government and separation of church and state.

• AKA: Age of Reason.
• Context:
  • …
• Counter-Example(s):
  • Age of belief in magic
  • Age of belief in a father in the sky
  • Age of belief in a strong chief to protect the tribe
  • Age of myths of heroic ancestors?
  • Age of Romanticism.
• See: Romanticism, Individual Liberty, Religious Tolerance, Absolute Monarchy, Roman Catholic Church.

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References

2020

• https://thoughteconomics.com/steven-pinker/
  • QUOTE: ... When I refer to Enlightenment ideas, I am speaking of the quartet of ideas in the subtitle of my book: reason, science, humanism and progress. Not all Enlightenment thinkers endorsed all of those ideas, and they weren’t conceived from nothing. There were antecedents in Ancient Greek thinking and they can be seen sporadically through the history of the East and West. But they came together in the second half of the 18th century, so “Enlightenment” ideals seemed the best label. I could also have referred to them as “secular humanism” or “liberal cosmopolitanism.” …

2018

• (Wikipedia, 2018) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment Retrieved:2018-2-18.
  • The Enlightenment (also known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason) was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 18th century, "The Century of Philosophy". The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on reason as the primary source of authority and legitimacy, and came to advance ideals like liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government and separation of church and state. In France the central doctrines of the Enlightenment philosophers were individual liberty and religious tolerance, in opposition to an absolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church. The Enlightenment was marked by an emphasis on the scientific method and reductionism, along with increased questioning of religious orthodoxy — an attitude captured by the phrase Sapere aude, "Dare to know". 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. Les philosophes (French for "the philosophers") of the period widely circulated their ideas through meetings at scientific academies, Masonic lodges, literary salons, coffee houses and in printed books and pamphlets. 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. A variety of 19th-century movements, including liberalism and neo-classicism, trace their intellectual heritage back to the Enlightenment. The Age of Enlightenment was preceded by and closely associated with the scientific revolution. Earlier philosophers whose work influenced the Enlightenment included Bacon, Descartes, Locke, and Spinoza. The major figures of the Enlightenment included Beccaria, Diderot, Hume, Kant, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Adam Smith, and Voltaire. Some European rulers, including Catherine II of Russia, Joseph II of Austria and Frederick II of Prussia, tried to apply Enlightenment thought on religious and political tolerance, which became known as enlightened absolutism. Benjamin Franklin visited Europe repeatedly and contributed actively to the scientific and political debates there and brought the newest ideas back to Philadelphia. Thomas Jefferson closely followed European ideas and later incorporated some of the ideals of the Enlightenment into the Declaration of Independence (1776). One of his peers, James Madison, incorporated these ideals into the United States Constitution during its framing in 1787. The most influential publication of the Enlightenment was the (Encyclopaedia). Published between 1751 and 1772 in thirty-five volumes, it was compiled by Diderot, d'Alembert (until 1759) and a team of 150 scientists and philosophers. It helped spread the ideas of the Enlightenment across Europe and beyond. Other landmark publications were Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique (Philosophical Dictionary ; 1764) and Letters on the English (1733); Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality (1754) and The Social Contract (1762); Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (1776); and Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws (1748). The ideas of the Enlightenment played a major role in inspiring the French Revolution, which began in 1789. After the Revolution, the Enlightenment was followed by the intellectual movement known as Romanticism.

2018b

• (Pinker, 2018) ⇒ Steven Pinker. (2018). “Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.” Penguin. ISBN:0525427570
  • QUOTE: In his new book, Enlightenment Now, Pinker makes a broader argument that, by all significant measures, humans are making progress. Whereas before he argued that people are more likely to stay alive, now he wants to show that they are also flourishing more than ever across a wide array of areas. Whatever the naysayers might think, human beings are healthier, better fed, and richer than ever before. In spite of some obvious reversals here and there, peace is on the rise, and more people demand and enjoy democracy. Finally, they are happier, by their own testimony. The data he reports shows, for example, that the world has grown 200 times wealthier since [[the Enlightenment, dwarfing growth in all of history to that point. In 1820, Pinker reports, more than 80 percent of human beings lacked basic education, and now more than 80 percent enjoy it.

2018c

• https://newrepublic.com/article/147391/hype-best
  • QUOTE: Not only does Pinker argue that these advances fulfill Enlightenment hopes, he proposes they are a direct result of [[the Enlightenment itself, the period beginning after the Renaissance and Reformation when a group of thinkers insisted on the supremacy of rational inquiry over unthinking dogma, forged a commitment to the perfectibility of global life (in spite of the flaws of human nature), and promoted “humanism” — which Pinker defines as a reliance on institutions to counteract the evil and violent propensities of humankind while coaxing the capacity for cosmopolitan sympathy to its maximum. “The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment set in motion,” he writes, “the process of using knowledge to improve the human condition.” And their plan, Pinker contends, succeeded. As he puts it early in the book, “the Enlightenment has worked.”

2018c

• https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-enlightenment-is-working-1518191343
  • QUOTE: Progress is a gift of the ideals of the Enlightenment and will continue to the extent that we rededicate ourselves to those ideals. Are the ideals of the Enlightenment too tepid to engage our animal spirits? Is the conquest of disease, famine, poverty, violence and ignorance … boring? Do people need to believe in magic, a father in the sky, a strong chief to protect the tribe, myths of heroic ancestors? I don’t think so. Secular liberal democracies are the happiest and healthiest places on earth, and the favorite destinations of people who vote with their feet. And once you appreciate that the Enlightenment project of applying knowledge and sympathy to enhance human flourishing can succeed, it’s hard to imagine anything more heroic and glorious.

2000

• (Headrick, 2000) ⇒ Daniel R. Headrick. (2000). “When Information Came of Age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason and Revolution, 1700-1850.” Oxford University Press on Demand,
  • QUOTE: Historians of the Enlightenment, by and large, have followed the lead of the philosophes in stressing the fundamental ideas of that era: reason and science against religion and superstition, tolerance against prejudice, justice against the abuse of power, a social contract instead of absolutism. …

1784

• (Kant, 1784) ⇒ Immanuel Kant. (1784). “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?”

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