Chapter 17: Enlightenment
Chapter Summary
Following the immense scientific achievements of the 17th century Scientific Revolution, the great European cultural movement known as the Enlightenment, appears to us as decidedly modern. The preoccupation with the moral and intellectual improvement of all humanity, the use of criticism as a scalpel to cut away the fanaticism, superstition and bigotry of the ancien regime, the use of reason in all human affairs, the perfectibility of humankind -- all this speaks volumes about the philosophes of the 18th century in particular, and about enlightenment in general. Historians did not invent the expression Enlightenment to specify an age, or even a state of mind. Instead, it was the philosophes of the 18th century itself -- from Italy, France, Germany, the United States and England, indeed, all of Europe as well as across the Atlantic -- who used words like illuminati, Aufklärung, lumiere and enlightenment, to describe the age which they believed they had bequeathed to humanity. Such self-confidence and hope!
Perhaps because of the stature of Voltaire alone, the Enlightenment has often been considered as a French phenomenon. And indeed, French contributions to enlightened thought were immense. But the Enlightenment was a trans-Atlantic phenomenon: for every philosophe one might find in Paris, we could easily locate others in London, Berlin, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Leipzig, or Boston. As one historian has aptly put it, the philosophes constituted a "party of humanity," and while they often quarreled among one another, like any family, they all pulled together in times of crisis.
The great task to which this "party of humanity" addressed themselves was nothing less than the application of reason to all human affairs. Submit everything to reason and criticism, they said. Whatever did not stand the test ought to be eradicated or, as Voltaire put it, Écrasez l'infâme, "wipe out the infamous!" Using the "Holy Trinity" of Bacon, Locke and Newton, the philosophes had all the power of science at their disposal -- if Newton and others could unlock the mysteries of nature with Human Reason, then that same Human Reason could be used to unlock the mysteries of man and society. It is no accident that most of our modern "social" sciences, were born in the 18th century.
The zeal with which the philosophes attacked the institutions of the ancien regime certainly constituted a new faith, and that faith -- a faith in human reason -- would help them build what they called the New Jerusalem here on earth. As Cesar Chesneau Dumarsis wrote in his article "Philosophe" for the Encyclopedia, "Reason is to the philosopher what grace is the to Christian."
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