The Enlightenment
The eighteenth century's most exciting intellectual movement is called the Enlightenment. It's powerful dedication to reason and rational thought that until quite recently the era was sometimes characterized as the Age of Reason. The turn toward what became known by 1750 as the Enlightenment began in the late seventeenth century. Three factors were critically important in this new intellectual ferment. One, was a revulsion against monarchical and clerical absolutism and new freedom of publishing. Also, was the rise of a new public and secular culture. And not least, the impact of Scientific Revolution, particularly the excitement generated by Newton's Principia (1687). Newton's work seemed to prove that order and mathematically demonstrable laws were at work in the physical universe. Perhaps a similar order and rationality could be imposed on the social and political institutions. This ideal fired the imagination of the leaders of the Enlightenment, who gradually became known as philosophes, simply French for "philosophers." But regardless of national origin, the name took hold for thinkers as diverse as the French writer Voltaire, the American scientist and statesman Benjamin Franklin, and the G
erman philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). There were radical thinkers during the late eighteenth century, such as the American revolutionary Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) who prepared to endorse an immediate political disruption of the traditional authority of monarchy, aristocracy, fathers, and churchmen. Whether radical or moderate, the philosophes were united by certain key ideas. They believed in the new science, were critical of clergy and all rigid dogma but tolerant of people's right to worship freely, and believed deeply in freedom of the press. They were also willing to entertain, although not necessarily accept, new heresies--such as atheism or the belief that the earth had gradually evolved or the view that the Bible was a series of wise stories but not the literal word of God. Philosophes were found most commonly in the major European cities, where they clubbed and socialized in literary and philosophical societies. The Enlightenment established a vision of humanity so independent of Christianity and so focused on the needs and abuses of the society of the time that no established institution, once grown corrupt and ineffectual, could long withstand its penetrating critique. To that extent, the writings o
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Approximate Word count = 867
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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