The Enlightenment is a conventional label in the history of ideas used to cover a set of theories and attitudes developing just before and after the French Revolution, though some would date the Enlightenment as occupying the whole period from the middle of the 17th century to the end of the 18th. Its political importance stems from the way it has influenced most subsequent political thought, partly in terms of its actual content, but as much simply by destroying earlier political assumptions that had reigned throughout the early and medieval periods of European political history. Although the Enlightenment was a broad movement involving many strands of thought, it is associated particularly with writers like Rousseau, Diderot and the other authors of the French Encyclopedia ,and, in Britain, with Hume, and, stretching the definition slightly, with Hobbes and Locke.
The Enlightenment creed stressed the possibility of man’s own intellect planning a society on rational grounds, and denied, therefore, the traditional authority of Kings and the Church. Freedom, especially of thought, and co-operative human behaviour were the high points of the philosophy, which was, on the whole, optimistic about human nature where the prevailing, religiously-derived, notion of man was pessimistic, accepting the Christian doctrine of Original Sin. In many ways Enlightenment social thought was developed on an analogy with physical science, seeking almost mathematically perfect designs for society. The major importance was, indeed, the rejection of received authority, especially that of the Church, rather than any particular specific doctrine.
Some have thought Rousseau to be responsible for the French Revolution, because he argued that men could be, were originally, but were not now, free, and that this freedom, possible only in an egalitarian society, could be grasped by modern man if only the chains of traditional expectation could be thrown off. In contrast to the conservative doctrines that were developed by, for example, Burke in opposition to this movement, the Enlightenment put great emphasis on the power of independent human thought, and may well be seen as the precursor of modern liberalism and socialism, especially in writers like John Stuart Mill and others in the tradition of utilitarianism. A later Enlightenment thinker, Kant, summed up the entire spirit of the movement with his motto, the title of an article he wrote, Sapere Aude (‘Dare to Know’). Kant, Hegel and Marx followed the more continental aspect of the theories originating in Rousseau that have led to the contemporary European socialist position, while James Mill, Bentham and J.S. Mill developed Hume’s British version of the position into liberalism. There was, however, an important reaction to the challenges and threats of the Enlightenment, found in Britain with the moderate conservatism of Burke, but in Europe in a more sinister, more reactionary trend of thought among those such as De Maistre, and, innocently, among social theorists like Durkheim that may be seen as a precursor position to fascism. The modern radical intellectual movement originating in France, often described as ‘post-modernism’ has in fact taken the Enlightenment as its great enemy, regarding it as a prime example of hubris.
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