Statue of James Hutton, Scottish National Portrait Gallery
James HuttonFRSE (/ˈhʌtən/; 3 June 1726 – 26 March 1797) was a Scottish geologist, physician, chemical manufacturer, naturalist, and experimental agriculturalist. He contributed to what was later called uniformitarianism—a fundamental principle of geology—that explains the features of the Earth's crust by means of natural processes over geologic time.
Hutton's work helped to establish geology as a science, and as a result
he is often referred to as the "Father of Modern Geology", though these principles were already in use by others including Buffon.
Through observation and carefully reasoned geological arguments, Hutton came to believe that the Earth was perpetually being formed; he recognised that the history of Earth could be determined by understanding how processes such as erosion and sedimentation work in the present day. His theories of geology helped to establish geologic time, also called deep time, but unlike modern concepts, Hutton's "system of the habitable Earth" was a deistic mechanism to keep the world would eternally suitable for humans.
Early life and career
Hutton was born in Edinburgh on 3 June 1726, OS
one of five children of Sarah Balfour and William Hutton, a merchant
who was Edinburgh City Treasurer. Hutton's father died in 1729, when he
was three.
He was educated at the High School of Edinburgh (as were most Edinburgh children) where he was particularly interested in mathematics and chemistry, then when he was 14 he attended the University of Edinburgh as a "student of humanity", studying the classics. He was apprenticed to the lawyer George Chalmers WS
when he was 17, but took more interest in chemical experiments than
legal work. At the age of 18, he became a physician's assistant, and
attended lectures in medicine at the University of Edinburgh. After three years he went to the University of Paris to continue his studies, taking the degree of Doctor of Medicine at Leiden University in 1749 with a thesis on blood circulation.
After his degree Hutton returned to London, then in mid-1750 went
back to Edinburgh and resumed chemical experiments with close friend,
James Davie. Their work on production of sal ammoniac from soot led to their partnership in a profitable chemical works,
manufacturing the crystalline salt which was used for dyeing,
metalworking and as smelling salts and had been available only from
natural sources and had to be imported from Egypt. Hutton owned and rented out properties in Edinburgh, employing a factor to manage this business.
Farming and geology
Hutton inherited from his father the Berwickshire farms of Slighhouses, a lowland farm which had been in the family since 1713, and the hill farm of Nether Monynut. In the early 1750s he moved to Slighhouses
and set about making improvements, introducing farming practices from
other parts of Britain and experimenting with plant and animal
husbandry. He recorded his ideas and innovations in an unpublished treatise on The Elements of Agriculture.
This developed his interest in meteorology
and geology. In a 1753 letter he wrote that he had "become very fond of
studying the surface of the earth, and was looking with anxious
curiosity into every pit or ditch or bed of a river that fell in his
way". Clearing and draining his farm provided ample opportunities. The
mathematician John Playfair
described Hutton as having noticed that "a vast proportion of the
present rocks are composed of materials afforded by the destruction of
bodies, animal, vegetable and mineral, of more ancient formation". His
theoretical ideas began to come together in 1760. While his farming
activities continued, in 1764 he went on a geological tour of the north
of Scotland with George Maxwell-Clerk, ancestor of the famous James Clerk Maxwell.
Edinburgh and canal building
In 1768 Hutton returned to Edinburgh,
letting his farms to tenants but continuing to take an interest in farm
improvements and research which included experiments carried out at Slighhouses. He developed a red dye made from the roots of the madder plant.
He had a house built in 1770 at St John's Hill, Edinburgh, overlooking Salisbury Crags. This later became the Balfour family home and, in 1840, the birthplace of the psychiatrist James Crichton-Browne. Hutton was one of the most influential participants in the Scottish Enlightenment, and fell in with numerous first-class minds in the sciences including mathematician John Playfair, philosopher David Hume and economist Adam Smith. Hutton held no position in the University of Edinburgh and communicated his scientific findings through the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He was particularly friendly with physician and chemist Joseph Black, and together with Adam Smith they founded the Oyster Club for weekly meetings.
Between 1767 and 1774 Hutton had close involvement with the construction of the Forth and Clyde canal,
making full use of his geological knowledge, both as a shareholder and
as a member of the committee of management, and attended meetings
including extended site inspections of all the works. At this time he is
listed as living on Bernard Street in Leith. In 1777 he published a pamphlet on Considerations on the Nature, Quality and Distinctions of Coal and Culm which successfully helped to obtain relief from excise duty on carrying small coal.
The memorial to James Hutton at his grave in Greyfriars Kirkyard
From 1791 Hutton suffered extreme pain from stones in the bladder and
gave up field work to concentrate on finishing his books. A dangerous
and painful operation failed to resolve his illness. He died in Edinburgh and was buried in the vault of Andrew Balfour, opposite the vault of his friend Joseph Black, in the now sealed south-west section of Greyfriars Kirkyard commonly known as the Covenanter's Prison.
Hutton did not marry and had no legitimate children.
Around 1747 he had a son by a Miss Edington, and though he gave his
child James Smeaton Hutton financial assistance, he had little to do
with the boy who went on to become a post-office clerk in London.
Theory of rock formations
Hutton developed several hypotheses to explain the rock formations
he saw around him, but according to Playfair he "was in no haste to
publish his theory; for he was one of those who are much more delighted
with the contemplation of truth, than with the praise of having
discovered it". After some 25 years of work, his Theory of the Earth; or an Investigation of the Laws observable in the Composition, Dissolution, and Restoration of Land upon the Globe was read to meetings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in two parts, the first by his friend Joseph Black on 7 March 1785, and the second by himself on 4 April 1785. Hutton subsequently read an abstract of his dissertation Concerning the System of the Earth, its Duration and Stability to Society meeting on 4 July 1785, which he had printed and circulated privately. In it, he outlined his theory as follows;
The solid parts of the present land
appear in general, to have been composed of the productions of the sea,
and of other materials similar to those now found upon the shores.
Hence we find reason to conclude: 1st, That the land on which we rest is not simple and original,
but that it is a composition, and had been formed by the operation of
second causes.
2nd, That before the present land was made, there had subsisted a world
composed of sea and land, in which were tides and currents, with such
operations at the bottom of the sea as now take place. And,
Lastly, That while the present land was forming at the bottom of the
ocean, the former land maintained plants and animals; at least the sea
was then inhabited by animals, in a similar manner as it is at present.
Hence we are led to conclude, that the greater part of our land, if not
the whole had been produced by operations natural to this globe; but
that in order to make this land a permanent body, resisting the
operations of the waters, two things had been required;
1st, The consolidation of masses formed by collections of loose or incoherent materials;
2ndly, The elevation of those consolidated masses from the bottom of the
sea, the place where they were collected, to the stations in which they
now remain above the level of the ocean.
Search for evidence
Hutton's Section on Edinburgh's Salisbury Crags
In 1785 at Glen Tilt in the Cairngorm mountains in the Scottish Highlands, Hutton found granite penetrating metamorphicschists, in a way which indicated that the granite had been molten at the time. This demonstrated to him that granite formed from the cooling of molten rock rather than it precipitating out of water as others at the time believed, and therefore the granite must be younger than the schists.
Hutton Unconformity at Jedburgh. Photograph (2003) below Clerk of Eldin illustration (1787).
The existence of angular unconformities had been noted by Nicolas Steno and by French geologists including Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, who interpreted them in terms of Neptunism
as "primary formations". Hutton wanted to examine such formations
himself to see "particular marks" of the relationship between the rock
layers. On the 1787 trip to the Isle of Arran he found his first example of Hutton's Unconformity to the north of Newton Point near Lochranza, but the limited view meant that the condition of the underlying strata was not clear enough for him, and he incorrectly thought that the strata were conformable at a depth below the exposed outcrop.
Later in 1787 Hutton noted what is now known as the Hutton or "Great" Unconformity at Inchbonny, Jedburgh, in layers of sedimentary rock. As shown in the illustrations to the right, layers of greywacke in the lower layers of the cliff face are tilted almost vertically, and above an intervening layer of conglomerate lie horizontal layers of Old Red Sandstone.
He later wrote of how he "rejoiced at my good fortune in stumbling upon
an object so interesting in the natural history of the earth, and which
I had been long looking for in vain." That year, he found the same
sequence in Teviotdale.
An eroded outcrop at Siccar Point showing sloping red sandstone above vertical greywacke was sketched by Sir James Hall in 1788.
In the Spring of 1788 he set off with John Playfair to the Berwickshire coast and found more examples of this sequence in the valleys of the Tour and Pease Burns near Cockburnspath. They then took a boat trip from Dunglass Burn east along the coast with the geologist Sir James Hall of Dunglass. They found the sequence in the cliff below St. Helens, then just to the east at Siccar Point found what Hutton called "a beautiful picture of this junction washed bare by the sea". Playfair later commented about the experience, "the mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time".
Continuing along the coast, they made more discoveries including
sections of the vertical beds showing strong ripple marks which gave
Hutton "great satisfaction" as a confirmation of his supposition that
these beds had been laid horizontally in water. He also found
conglomerate at altitudes that demonstrated the extent of erosion of the
strata, and said of this that "we never should have dreamed of meeting
with what we now perceived".
Hutton reasoned that there must have been innumerable cycles, each involving deposition on the seabed, uplift with tilting and erosion
then undersea again for further layers to be deposited. On the belief
that this was due to the same geological forces operating in the past as
the very slow geological forces seen operating at the present day, the
thicknesses of exposed rock layers implied to him enormous stretches of
time.
Publication
Though Hutton circulated privately a printed version of the abstract of her Theory (Concerning the System of the Earth, its Duration, and Stability) which he read at a meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 4 July 1785;
the full account of his theory as read at 7 March 1785 and 4 April 1785
meetings did not appear in print until 1788. It was titled Theory of the Earth; or an Investigation of the Laws observable in the Composition, Dissolution, and Restoration of Land upon the Globe and appeared in Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. I, Part II, pp. 209–304, plates I and II, published 1788.
He put forward the view that "from what has actually been, we have data
for concluding with regard to that which is to happen thereafter." This
restated the Scottish Enlightenment concept which David Hume had put in 1777 as "all inferences from experience suppose ... that the future will resemble the past", and Charles Lyell memorably rephrased in the 1830s as "the present is the key to the past".
Hutton's 1788 paper concludes; "The result, therefore, of our present
enquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning,–no prospect of an
end." His memorably phrased closing statement has long been celebrated. (It was quoted in the 1989 song “No Control" by songwriter and professor Greg Graffin.)
Following criticism, especially the arguments from Richard Kirwan who thought Hutton's ideas were atheistic and not logical, Hutton published a two volume version of his theory in 1795,
consisting of the 1788 version of his theory (with slight additions)
along with a lot of material drawn from shorter papers Hutton already
had to hand on various subjects such as the origin of granite. It
included a review of alternative theories, such as those of Thomas Burnet and Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon.
The whole was entitled An Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge and of the Progress of Reason, from Sense to Science and Philosophy when the third volume was completed in 1794.
Its 2,138 pages prompted Playfair to remark that "The great size of the
book, and the obscurity which may justly be objected to many parts of
it, have probably prevented it from being received as it deserves.”
Opposing theories
His new theories placed him into opposition with the then-popular Neptunist theories of Abraham Gottlob Werner, that all rocks had precipitated out of a single enormous flood. Hutton proposed that the interior of the Earth
was hot, and that this heat was the engine which drove the creation of
new rock: land was eroded by air and water and deposited as layers in
the sea; heat then consolidated the sediment into stone, and uplifted it into new lands. This theory was dubbed "Plutonist" in contrast to the flood-oriented theory.
As well as combating the Neptunists, he also opened up the concept of deep time for scientific purposes, in opposition to Catastrophism. Rather than accepting that the earth was no more than a few thousand years old, he maintained that the Earth must be much older, with a history extending indefinitely into the distant past.
His main line of argument was that the tremendous displacements and
changes he was seeing did not happen in a short period of time by means
of catastrophe, but that processes still happening on the Earth in the
present day had caused them. As these processes were very gradual, the
Earth needed to be ancient, to allow time for the changes. Before long,
scientific inquiries provoked by his claims had pushed back the age of
the earth into the millions of years – still too short when compared
with the accepted 4.6 billion year age in the 21st century, but a
distinct improvement.
Acceptance of geological theories
It has been claimed that the prose of Principles of Knowledge was so obscure that it also impeded the acceptance of Hutton's geological theories. Restatements of his geological ideas (though not his thoughts on evolution) by John Playfair in 1802 and then Charles Lyell
in the 1830s popularised the concept of an infinitely repeating cycle,
though Lyell tended to dismiss Hutton's views as giving too much
credence to catastrophic changes.
Other contributions
Meteorology
It was not merely the earth to which Hutton directed his attention. He had long studied the changes of the atmosphere. The same volume in which his Theory of the Earth appeared contained also a Theory of Rain. He contended that the amount of moisture which the air can retain in solution
increases with temperature, and, therefore, that on the mixture of two
masses of air of different temperatures a portion of the moisture must
be condensed and appear in visible form. He investigated the available
data regarding rainfall and climate in different regions of the globe, and came to the conclusion that the rainfall is regulated by the humidity of the air on the one hand, and mixing of different air currents in the higher atmosphere on the other.
Earth as a living entity
Hutton taught that biological and geological processes are interlinked. James Lovelock, who developed the Gaia hypothesis in the 1970s, cites Hutton as saying that the Earth was a superorganism and that its proper study should be physiology. Lovelock writes that Hutton’s view of the Earth was rejected because of the intense reductionism among 19th-century scientists.
Evolution
Hutton also advocated uniformitarianism for living creatures – evolution, in a sense – and even suggested natural selection as a possible mechanism affecting them:
"...if an organised body is not in the situation and
circumstances best adapted to its sustenance and propagation, then, in
conceiving an indefinite variety among the individuals of that species,
we must be assured, that, on the one hand, those which depart most from
the best adapted constitution, will be the most liable to perish, while,
on the other hand, those organised bodies, which most approach to the
best constitution for the present circumstances, will be best adapted to
continue, in preserving themselves and multiplying the individuals of
their race." – Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge, volume 2.
Hutton gave the example that where dogs survived through "swiftness
of foot and quickness of sight... the most defective in respect of those
necessary qualities, would be the most subject to perish, and that
those who employed them in greatest perfection... would be those who
would remain, to preserve themselves, and to continue the race".
Equally, if an acute sense of smell
became "more necessary to the sustenance of the animal... the same
principle [would] change the qualities of the animal, and.. produce a
race of well scented hounds, instead of those who catch their prey by
swiftness". The same "principle of variation" would influence "every
species of plant, whether growing in a forest or a meadow". He came to
his ideas as the result of experiments in plant and animal breeding, some of which he outlined in an unpublished manuscript, the Elements of Agriculture. He distinguished between heritable variation as the result of breeding, and non-heritable variations caused by environmental differences such as soil and climate.
Though he saw his "principle of variation" as explaining the
development of varieties, Hutton rejected the idea that evolution might
originate species as a "romantic fantasy", according to palaeoclimatologist Paul Pearson. Influenced by deism,
Hutton thought the mechanism allowed species to form varieties better
adapted to particular conditions and provided evidence of benevolent design in nature. Studies of Charles Darwin's notebooks have shown that Darwin arrived separately at the idea of natural selection which he set out in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species,
but it has been speculated that he had some half-forgotten memory from
his time as a student in Edinburgh of ideas of selection in nature as
set out by Hutton, and by William Charles Wells and Patrick Matthew who had both been associated with the city before publishing their ideas on the topic early in the 19th century.
Street sign in the Kings Buildings complex in Edinburgh to the memory of James Hutton
A street was named after Hutton in the Kings Buildings complex (a series of science buildings linked to Edinburgh University) in the early 21st century.
The punk band Bad Religion quoted James Hutton with "no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end" in their song "No Control".
The Age of Enlightenment (also known as the Age of Reason or simply the Enlightenment)
was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world
of ideas in Europe during the 18th century, the "Century of
Philosophy".
Some consider the publication of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica
(1687) as the first major enlightenment work. French historians
traditionally date the Enlightenment from 1715 to 1789, from the
beginning of the reign of Louis XV until the French Revolution.
Most end it with the turn of the 19th century. Philosophers and
scientists of the period widely circulated their ideas through meetings
at scientific academies, Masonic lodges, literary salons, coffeehouses and in printed books, journals, 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 neoclassicism, trace their intellectual heritage to the Enlightenment.
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).
Significant people and publications
The most famous work by Nicholas de Condorcet, Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progres de l'esprit humain, 1795. With the publication of this book, the development of the Age of Enlightenment is considered generally ended.
The most influential publication of the Enlightenment was the Encyclopédie (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 Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and 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.
These laid down two distinct lines of Enlightenment thought: first, the moderate variety, following Descartes, Locke and Christian Wolff,
which sought accommodation between reform and the traditional systems
of power and faith, and second, the radical enlightenment, inspired by
the philosophy of Spinoza, advocating democracy, individual liberty, freedom of expression and eradication of religious authority. The moderate variety tended to be deistic,
whereas the radical tendency separated the basis of morality entirely
from theology. Both lines of thought were eventually opposed by a
conservative Counter-Enlightenment, which sought a return to faith.
In the mid-18th century, Paris became the center of an explosion of
philosophic and scientific activity challenging traditional doctrines
and dogmas. The philosophic movement was led by Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argued for a society based upon reason as in ancient Greece
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 Philosophes
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 and shaping the French Revolution.
Francis Hutcheson, a moral philosopher, described the utilitarian and consequentialist
principle that virtue is that which provides, in his words, "the
greatest happiness for the greatest numbers". Much of what is
incorporated in the scientific method
(the nature of knowledge, evidence, experience and causation) and some
modern attitudes towards the relationship between science and religion
were developed by his protégés David Hume and Adam Smith. Hume became a major figure in the skeptical philosophical and empiricist traditions of philosophy.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) 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 as well as men
should be treated as rational beings. She is best known for her work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1791).
Science
Science played an important role in Enlightenment discourse and
thought. Many Enlightenment writers and thinkers had backgrounds in the
sciences and associated scientific advancement with the overthrow of
religion and traditional authority in favour of the development of free
speech and thought. Scientific progress during the Enlightenment
included the discovery of carbon dioxide (fixed air) by the chemist Joseph Black, the argument for deep time by the geologist James Hutton and the invention of the condensing steam engine by James Watt. The experiments of Lavoisier were used to create the first modern chemical plants in Paris and the experiments of the Montgolfier Brothers enabled them to launch the first manned flight in a hot-air balloon on 21 November 1783 from the Château de la Muette, near the Bois de Boulogne.
Broadly speaking, Enlightenment science greatly valued empiricism
and rational thought and was embedded with the Enlightenment ideal of
advancement and progress. The study of science, under the heading of natural philosophy, was divided into physics and a conglomerate grouping of chemistry and natural history, which included anatomy, biology, geology, mineralogy and zoology.
As with most Enlightenment views, the benefits of science were not seen
universally: Rousseau criticized the sciences for distancing man from
nature and not operating to make people happier. Science during the Enlightenment was dominated by scientific societies and academies,
which had largely replaced universities as centres 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. Philosophes introduced the public to many scientific theories, most notably through the Encyclopédie and the popularization of Newtonianism by Voltaire and Émilie du Châtelet. Some historians have marked the 18th century as a drab period in the history of science. However, the 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.
Scientific academies and societies grew out of the Scientific
Revolution as the creators of scientific knowledge in contrast to the
scholasticism of the university.
During the Enlightenment, some societies created or retained links to
universities, but contemporary sources distinguished universities from
scientific societies by claiming that the university's utility was in
the transmission of knowledge while societies functioned to create
knowledge.
As the role of universities in institutionalized science began to
diminish, learned societies became the cornerstone of organized science.
Official scientific societies were chartered by the state in order to
provide technical expertise.
Most societies were granted permission to oversee their own
publications, control the election of new members and the administration
of the society.
After 1700, a tremendous number of official academies and societies
were founded in Europe and by 1789 there were over seventy official
scientific societies. In reference to this growth, Bernard de Fontenelle coined the term "the Age of Academies" to describe the 18th century.
The influence of science also began appearing more commonly in
poetry and literature during the Enlightenment. Some poetry became
infused with scientific metaphor and imagery, while other poems were written directly about scientific topics. Sir Richard Blackmore committed the Newtonian system to verse in Creation, a Philosophical Poem in Seven Books (1712). After Newton's death in 1727, poems were composed in his honour for decades. James Thomson
(1700–1748) penned his "Poem to the Memory of Newton", which mourned
the loss of Newton, but also praised his science and legacy.
Sociology, economics and law
Cesare Beccaria, father of classical criminal theory (1738–1794)
Hume and other Scottish Enlightenment thinkers developed a "science of man", which was expressed historically in works by authors including James Burnett, Adam Ferguson, John Millar and William Robertson,
all of whom merged a scientific study of how humans behaved in ancient
and primitive cultures with a strong awareness of the determining forces
of modernity. Modern sociology largely originated from this movement
and Hume's philosophical concepts that directly influenced James
Madison (and thus the U.S. Constitution) and as popularised by Dugald Stewart, would be the basis of classical liberalism.
Cesare Beccaria,
a jurist, criminologist, philosopher and politician and one of the
great Enlightenment writers, became famous for his masterpiece Of Crimes and Punishments (1764), later translated into 22 languages,
which condemned torture and the death penalty and was a founding work
in the field of penology and the Classical School of criminology by
promoting criminal justice. Another prominent intellectual was Francesco Mario Pagano, who wrote important studies such as Saggi Politici (Political Essays, 1783), one of the major works of the Enlightenment in Naples; and Considerazioni sul processo criminale (Considerations on the criminal trial, 1787), which established him as an international authority on criminal law.
Politics
The Enlightenment has long been hailed as the foundation of modern Western political and intellectual culture.
The Enlightenment brought political modernization to the West, in terms
of introducing democratic values and institutions and the creation of
modern, liberal democracies. This thesis has been widely accepted by
Anglophone scholars and has been reinforced by the large-scale studies
by Robert Darnton, Roy Porter and most recently by Jonathan Israel.
Theories of government
John Locke, one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers, based his governance philosophy in social contract theory, a subject that permeated Enlightenment political thought. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes ushered in this new debate 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 which leaves people free to do whatever the law
does not explicitly forbid.
Both Locke and Rousseau developed social contract theories in Two Treatises of Government and Discourse on Inequality,
respectively. While quite different works, 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. Locke defines the state
of nature as a condition in which humans are rational and follow natural
law, in which all men are born equal and with the right to life,
liberty and property. However, when one citizen breaks the Law of Nature
both the transgressor and the victim enter into a state of war, from
which it is virtually impossible to break free. Therefore, Locke said
that individuals enter into civil society to protect their natural
rights via an "unbiased judge" or common authority, such as courts, to
appeal to. Contrastingly, Rousseau's conception relies on the
supposition that "civil man" is corrupted, while "natural man" has no
want he cannot fulfill himself. Natural man is only taken out of the
state of nature when the inequality associated with private property is
established.
Rousseau said that people join into civil society via the social
contract to achieve unity while preserving individual freedom. This is
embodied in the sovereignty of the general will, the moral and collective legislative body constituted by citizens.
Locke is known for his statement that individuals have a right to
"Life, Liberty and Property" and his belief that the natural right to
property is derived from labor. Tutored by Locke, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury
wrote in 1706: "There is a mighty Light which spreads its self over the
world especially in those two free Nations of England and Holland; on
whom the Affairs of Europe now turn". Locke's 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.
The philosophes argued that the establishment of a contractual basis of rights would lead to the market mechanism and capitalism, the scientific method, religious tolerance and the organization of states into self-governing republics through democratic means. In this view, the tendency of the philosophes in particular to apply rationality to every problem is considered the essential change.
Although much of Enlightenment political thought was dominated by
social contract theorists, both David Hume and Adam Ferguson criticized
this camp. Hume's essay Of the Original Contract argues that
governments derived from consent are rarely seen and civil government is
grounded in a ruler's habitual authority and force. It is precisely
because of the ruler's authority over-and-against the subject, that the
subject tacitly consents and Hume says that the subjects would "never
imagine that their consent made him sovereign", rather the authority did
so. Similarly, Ferguson did not believe citizens built the state, rather polities grew out of social development. In his 1767 An Essay on the History of Civil Society,
Ferguson uses the four stages of progress, a theory that was very
popular in Scotland at the time, to explain how humans advance from a
hunting and gathering society to a commercial and civil society without
"signing" a social contract.
Both Rousseau and Locke's social contract theories rest on the presupposition of natural rights,
which are not a result of law or custom, but are things that all men
have in pre-political societies and are therefore universal and
inalienable. 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, as well as the right to preserve
life and property. Locke also argued against slavery on the basis that
enslaving yourself goes against the law of nature because you cannot
surrender your own rights, your freedom is absolute and no one can take
it from you. Additionally, Locke argues 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.
As a spillover of the Enlightenment, nonsecular beliefs expressed
first by Quakers and then by Protestant evangelicals in Britain and the
United States emerged. To these groups, slavery became "repugnant to
our religion" and a "crime in the sight of God."
These ideas added to those expressed by Enlightenment thinkers, leading
many in Britain to believe that slavery was "not only morally wrong and
economically inefficient, but also politically unwise." As these notions gained more adherents, Britain was forced to end its participation in the slave trade.
Enlightened absolutism
The Marquis of Pombal, as the head of the government of Portugal, implemented sweeping socio-economic reforms (abolished slavery, significantly weakened the Inquisition,
created the basis for secular public schools and restructured the tax
system), effectively ruling as a powerful, progressive dictator
The leaders of the Enlightenment were not especially democratic, as
they more often look to absolute monarchs as the key to imposing reforms
designed by the intellectuals. Voltaire despised democracy and said the
absolute monarch must be enlightened and must act as dictated by reason
and justice – in other words, be a "philosopher-king".
Denmark's minister Johann Struensee, a social reformer, was publicly executed in 1772
In several nations, rulers welcomed leaders of the Enlightenment at
court and asked them to help design laws and programs to reform the
system, typically to build stronger states. These rulers are called
"enlightened despots" by historians. They included Frederick the Great of Prussia, Catherine the Great of Russia, Leopold II of Tuscany and Joseph II
of Austria. Joseph was over-enthusiastic, announcing many reforms that
had little support so that revolts broke out and his regime became a
comedy of errors and nearly all his programs were reversed. Senior ministers Pombal in Portugal and Johann Friedrich Struensee in Denmark also governed according to Enlightenment ideals. In Poland, the model constitution of 1791 expressed Enlightenment ideals, but was in effect for only one year before the nation was partitioned among its neighbors. More enduring were the cultural achievements, which created a nationalist spirit in Poland.
Frederick the Great, the king of Prussia
from 1740 to 1786, saw himself as a leader of the Enlightenment and
patronized philosophers and scientists at his court in Berlin. Voltaire,
who had been imprisoned and maltreated by the French government, was
eager to accept Frederick's invitation to live at his palace. Frederick
explained: "My principal occupation is to combat ignorance and
prejudice ... to enlighten minds, cultivate morality, and to make people
as happy as it suits human nature, and as the means at my disposal
permit".
French Revolution
The Enlightenment has been frequently linked to the French Revolution of 1789. One view of the political changes that occurred during the Enlightenment is that the "consent of the governed" philosophy as delineated by Locke in Two Treatises of Government (1689) represented a paradigm shift from the old governance paradigm under feudalism known as the "divine right of kings".
In this view, the revolutions of the late 1700s and early 1800s were
caused by the fact that this governance paradigm shift often could not
be resolved peacefully and therefore violent revolution was the result.
Clearly a governance philosophy where the king was never wrong was in
direct conflict with one whereby citizens by natural law had to consent
to the acts and rulings of their government.
Alexis de Tocqueville
proposed the French Revolution as the inevitable result of the radical
opposition created in the 18th century between the monarchy and the men
of letters of the Enlightenment. These men of letters constituted a sort
of "substitute aristocracy that was both all-powerful and without real
power". This illusory power came from the rise of "public opinion", born
when absolutist centralization removed the nobility and the bourgeoisie
from the political sphere. The "literary politics" that resulted
promoted a discourse of equality and was hence in fundamental opposition
to the monarchical regime. De Tocqueville "clearly designates ... the cultural effects of transformation in the forms of the exercise of power".
Religion
Enlightenment era religious commentary was a response to the preceding century of religious conflict in Europe, especially the Thirty Years' War.
Theologians of the Enlightenment wanted to reform their faith to its
generally non-confrontational roots and to limit the capacity for
religious controversy to spill over into politics and warfare while
still maintaining a true faith in God.
For moderate Christians, this meant a return to simple Scripture. John
Locke abandoned the corpus of theological commentary in favor of an
"unprejudiced examination" of the Word of God alone. He determined the
essence of Christianity to be a belief in Christ the redeemer and recommended avoiding more detailed debate. In the Jefferson Bible, Thomas Jefferson went further and dropped any passages dealing with miracles, visitations of angels and the resurrection of Jesus after his death, as he tried to extract the practical Christian moral code of the New Testament.
Enlightenment scholars sought to curtail the political power of organized religion and thereby prevent another age of intolerant religious war. Spinoza determined to remove politics from contemporary and historical theology (e.g., disregarding Judaic law). Moses Mendelssohn
advised affording no political weight to any organized religion, but
instead recommended that each person follow what they found most
convincing. They believed a good religion based in instinctive morals
and a belief in God should not theoretically need force to maintain
order in its believers, and both Mendelssohn and Spinoza judged religion
on its moral fruits, not the logic of its theology.
A number of novel ideas about religion developed with the Enlightenment, including deism and talk of atheism. According to Thomas Paine, deism is the simple belief in God the Creator,
with no reference to the Bible or any other miraculous source. Instead,
the deist relies solely on personal reason to guide his creed, which was eminently agreeable to many thinkers of the time.
Atheism was much discussed, but there were few proponents. Wilson and
Reill note: "In fact, very few enlightened intellectuals, even when they
were vocal critics of Christianity, were true atheists. Rather, they
were critics of orthodox belief, wedded rather to skepticism, deism,
vitalism, or perhaps pantheism". Some followed Pierre Bayle and argued that atheists could indeed be moral men.
Many others like Voltaire held that without belief in a God who
punishes evil, the moral order of society was undermined. That is, since
atheists gave themselves to no Supreme Authority and no law and had no
fear of eternal consequences, they were far more likely to disrupt
society.
Bayle (1647–1706) observed that, in his day, "prudent persons will
always maintain an appearance of [religion]," and he believed that even
atheists could hold concepts of honor and go beyond their own
self-interest to create and interact in society.
Locke said that if there were no God and no divine law, the result
would be moral anarchy: every individual "could have no law but his own
will, no end but himself. He would be a god to himself, and the
satisfaction of his own will the sole measure and end of all his
actions."
Separation of church and state
The "Radical Enlightenment" promoted the concept of separating church and state, an idea that is often credited to English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704). According to his principle of the social contract,
Locke said that the government lacked authority in the realm of
individual conscience, as this was something rational people could not
cede to the government for it or others to control. For Locke, this
created a natural right in the liberty of conscience, which he said must
therefore 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. Thomas Jefferson
called for a "wall of separation between church and state" at the
federal level. He previously had supported successful efforts to
disestablish the Church of England in Virginia and authored the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Jefferson's political ideals were greatly influenced by the writings of John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton, whom he considered the three greatest men that ever lived.
The Enlightenment took hold in most European countries, often with a
specific local emphasis. For example, in France it became associated
with anti-government and anti-Church radicalism, while in Germany it
reached deep into the middle classes, where it expressed a
spiritualistic and nationalistic tone without threatening governments or
established churches. Government responses varied widely. In France, the government was hostile, and the philosophes
fought against its censorship, sometimes being imprisoned or hounded
into exile. The British government, for the most part, ignored the
Enlightenment's leaders in England and Scotland, although it did give
Isaac Newton a knighthood and a very lucrative government office.
Great Britain
England
The very existence of an English Enlightenment has been hotly debated
by scholars. The majority of textbooks on British history make little
or no mention of an English Enlightenment. Some surveys of the entire
Enlightenment include England and others ignore it, although they do
include coverage of such major intellectuals as Joseph Addison, Edward
Gibbon, John Locke, Isaac Newton, Alexander Pope, Joshua Reynolds and
Jonathan Swift. Roy Porter
argues that the reasons for this neglect were the assumptions that the
movement was primarily French-inspired, that it was largely a-religious
or anti-clerical, and that it stood in outspoken defiance to the
established order.
Porter admits that, after the 1720s, England could claim thinkers to
equal Diderot, Voltaire or Rousseau. However, its leading intellectuals
such as Edward Gibbon, Edmund Burke and Samuel Johnson
were all quite conservative and supportive of the standing order.
Porter says the reason was that Enlightenment had come early to England
and had succeeded so that the culture had accepted political liberalism,
philosophical empiricism, and religious toleration of the sort that
intellectuals on the continent had to fight for against powerful odds.
Furthermore, England rejected the collectivism of the continent and
emphasized the improvement of individuals as the main goal of
enlightenment.
One leader of the Scottish Enlightenment was Adam Smith, the father of modern economic science
Scotland
In the Scottish Enlightenment, Scotland's major cities created an
intellectual infrastructure of mutually supporting institutions such as
universities, reading societies, libraries, periodicals, museums and
masonic lodges.
The Scottish network was "predominantly liberal Calvinist, Newtonian,
and 'design' oriented in character which played a major role in the
further development of the transatlantic Enlightenment". In France, Voltaire said that "we look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilization".
The focus of the Scottish Enlightenment ranged from intellectual and
economic matters to the specifically scientific as in the work of William Cullen, physician and chemist; James Anderson, an agronomist; Joseph Black, physicist and chemist; and James Hutton, the first modern geologist.
Several Americans, especially Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, played a major role in bringing Enlightenment ideas to the New World and in influencing British and French thinkers. Franklin was influential for his political activism and for his advances in physics.
The cultural exchange during the Age of Enlightenment ran in both
directions across the Atlantic. Thinkers such as Paine, Locke and
Rousseau all take Native American cultural practices as examples of
natural freedom. The Americans closely followed English and Scottish political ideas, as well as some French thinkers such as Montesquieu.
As deists, they were influenced by ideas of John Toland (1670–1722) and
Matthew Tindal (1656–1733). During the Enlightenment there was a great
emphasis upon liberty, republicanism and religious tolerance.
There was no respect for monarchy or inherited political power. Deists
reconciled science and religion by rejecting prophecies, miracles and
Biblical theology. Leading deists included Thomas Paine in The Age of Reason and by Thomas Jefferson in his short Jefferson Bible – from which all supernatural aspects were removed.
German states
Prussia
took the lead among the German states in sponsoring the political
reforms that Enlightenment thinkers urged absolute rulers to adopt.
There were important movements as well in the smaller states of Bavaria,
Saxony, Hanover and the Palatinate. In each case, Enlightenment values
became accepted and led to significant political and administrative
reforms that laid the groundwork for the creation of modern states.
The princes of Saxony, for example, carried out an impressive series of
fundamental fiscal, administrative, judicial, educational, cultural and
general economic reforms. The reforms were aided by the country's
strong urban structure and influential commercial groups and modernized
pre-1789 Saxony along the lines of classic Enlightenment principles.
Before 1750, the German upper classes looked to France for
intellectual, cultural and architectural leadership, as French was the
language of high society. By the mid-18th century, the Aufklärung (The Enlightenment) had transformed German high culture in music, philosophy, science and literature. Christian Wolff
(1679–1754) was the pioneer as a writer who expounded the Enlightenment
to German readers and legitimized German as a philosophic language.
Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803) broke new ground in philosophy and poetry, as a leader of the Sturm und Drang movement of proto-Romanticism. Weimar Classicism (Weimarer Klassik)
was a cultural and literary movement based in Weimar that sought to
establish a new humanism by synthesizing Romantic, classical and
Enlightenment ideas. The movement (from 1772 until 1805) involved Herder
as well as polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and Friedrich Schiller
(1759–1805), a poet and historian. Herder argued that every folk had
its own particular identity, which was expressed in its language and
culture. This legitimized the promotion of German language and culture
and helped shape the development of German nationalism. Schiller's plays
expressed the restless spirit of his generation, depicting the hero's
struggle against social pressures and the force of destiny.
In remote Königsberg, philosopher Immanuel Kant
(1724–1804) tried to reconcile rationalism and religious belief,
individual freedom and political authority. Kant's work contained basic
tensions that would continue to shape German thought – and indeed all of
European philosophy – well into the 20th century.
The German Enlightenment won the support of princes, aristocrats and the middle classes and it permanently reshaped the culture. However, there was a conservatism among the elites that warned against going too far.
In the 1780s, Lutheran ministers Johann Heinrich Schulz and Karl Wilhelm Brumbey got in trouble with their preaching as they were attacked and ridiculed by Immanuel Kant, Wilhelm Abraham Teller
and others. In 1788, Prussia issued an "Edict on Religion" that forbade
preaching any sermon that undermined popular belief in the Holy Trinity
and the Bible. The goal was to avoid skepticism, deism and theological
disputes that might impinge on domestic tranquility. Men who doubted the
value of Enlightenment favoured the measure, but so too did many
supporters. German universities had created a closed elite that could
debate controversial issues among themselves, but spreading them to the
public was seen as too risky. This intellectual elite was favoured by
the state, but that might be reversed if the process of the
Enlightenment proved politically or socially destabilizing.
Italy
The Enlightenment played a distinctive, if small, role in the history of Italy. Although most of Italy was controlled by conservative Habsburgs or the pope, Tuscany had some opportunities for reform. Leopold II of Tuscany abolished the death penalty in Tuscany and reduced censorship. From Naples, Antonio Genovesi
(1713–1769) influenced a generation of southern Italian intellectuals
and university students. His textbook "Diceosina, o Sia della Filosofia
del Giusto e dell'Onesto" (1766) was a controversial attempt to mediate
between the history of moral philosophy on the one hand and the specific
problems encountered by 18th-century commercial society on the other.
It contained the greater part of Genovesi's political, philosophical and
economic thought – guidebook for Neapolitan economic and social
development. Science flourished as Alessandro Volta and Luigi Galvani made break-through discoveries in electricity. Pietro Verri was a leading economist in Lombardy. Historian Joseph Schumpeter states he was "the most important pre-Smithian authority on Cheapness-and-Plenty". The most influential scholar on the Italian Enlightenment has been Franco Venturi. Italy also produced some of the Enlightenment's greatest legal theorists, including Cesare Beccaria, Giambattista Vico and Francesco Mario Pagano. Beccaria in particular is now considered one of the fathers of classical criminal theory as well as modern penology. Beccaria is famous for his masterpiece On Crimes and Punishments
(1764), a treatise (later translated into 22 languages) that served as
one of the earliest prominent condemnations of torture and the death
penalty and thus a landmark work in anti-death penalty philosophy.
Russia
In
Russia, the government began to actively encourage the proliferation of
arts and sciences in the mid-18th century. This era produced the first
Russian university, library, theatre, public museum and independent
press. Like other enlightened despots, Catherine the Great
played a key role in fostering the arts, sciences and education. She
used her own interpretation of Enlightenment ideals, assisted by notable
international experts such as Voltaire (by correspondence) and in
residence world class scientists such as Leonhard Euler and Peter Simon Pallas. The national Enlightenment differed from its Western European counterpart in that it promoted further modernization of all aspects of Russian life and was concerned with attacking the institution of serfdom in Russia.
The Russian enlightenment centered on the individual instead of
societal enlightenment and encouraged the living of an enlightened life. A powerful element was prosveshchenie
which combined religious piety, erudition and commitment to the spread
of learning. However, it lacked the skeptical and critical spirit of the
European Enlightenment.
Portugal
The enlightenment in Portugal (iluminismo) was marked by the rule of the Prime Minister Marquis of Pombal under King Joseph I of Portugal from 1756 to 1777. Following the 1755 Lisbon earthquake which destroyed great part of Lisbon, the Marquis of Pombal
implemented important economic policies to regulate commercial activity
(in particular with Brazil and England), and to standardise quality
throughout the country (for example by introducing the first integrated
industries in Portugal). His reconstruction of Lisbon's
riverside district in straight and perpendicular streets, methodically
organized to facilitate commerce and exchange (for example by assigning
to each street a different product or service), can be seen as a direct
application of the Enlightenment ideas to governance and urbanism. His
urbanistic ideas, also being the first large-scale example of earthquake engineering, became collectively known as Pombaline style,
and were implemented throughout the kingdom during his stay in office.
His governance was as enlightened as ruthless, see for example the Távora affair.
Enlightenment ideas (oświecenie) emerged late in Poland, as the Polish middle class was weaker and szlachta (nobility) culture (Sarmatism) together with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth political system (Golden Liberty) were in deep crisis. The political system was built on republicanism,
but was unable to defend itself against powerful neighbors Russia,
Prussia and Austria as they repeatedly sliced off regions until nothing
was left of independent Poland. The period of Polish Enlightenment began
in the 1730s–1740s and especially in theatre and the arts peaked in the
reign of King Stanisław August Poniatowski
(second half of the 18th century). Warsaw was a main centre after 1750,
with an expansion of schools and educational institutions and the arts
patronage held at the Royal Castle.
Leaders promoted tolerance and more education. They included King
Stanislaw II Poniatowski and reformers Piotr Switkowski, Antoni
Poplawski, Josef Niemcewicz and Jósef Pawlinkowski, as well as Baudouin
de Cortenay, a Polonized dramatist. Opponents included Florian
Jaroszewicz, Gracjan Piotrowski, Karol Wyrwicz and Wojciech Skarszewski.
The movement went into decline with the Third Partition of Poland (1795) – a national tragedy inspiring a short period of sentimental writing – and ended in 1822, replaced by Romanticism.
Historiography
The
Enlightenment has always been contested territory. According to Keith
Thomas, its supporters "hail it as the source of everything that is
progressive about the modern world. For them, it stands for freedom of
thought, rational inquiry, critical thinking, religious tolerance,
political liberty, scientific achievement, the pursuit of happiness, and
hope for the future."
Thomas adds that its detractors accuse it of shallow rationalism, naïve
optimism, unrealistic universalism and moral darkness. From the start,
conservative and clerical defenders of traditional religion attacked
materialism and skepticism as evil forces that encouraged immorality. By
1794, they pointed to the Terror
during the French Revolution as confirmation of their predictions. As
the Enlightenment was ending, Romantic philosophers argued that
excessive dependence on reason was a mistake perpetuated by the
Enlightenment because it disregarded the bonds of history, myth, faith,
and tradition that were necessary to hold society together.
Definition
The term "Enlightenment" emerged in English in the later part of the 19th century, with particular reference to French philosophy, as the equivalent of the French term Lumières (used first by Dubos in 1733 and already well established by 1751). From Immanuel Kant's 1784 essay "Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?" ("Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?"), the German term became Aufklärung (aufklären = to illuminate; sich aufklären
= to clear up). However, scholars have never agreed on a definition of
the Enlightenment, or on its chronological or geographical extent. Terms
like les Lumières (French), illuminismo (Italian), ilustración (Spanish) and Aufklärung (German)
referred to partly overlapping movements. Not until the late nineteenth
century did English scholars agree they were talking about "the
Enlightenment".
If there is something you know, communicate it. If there is something you don't know, search for it.
An engraving from the 1772 edition of the Encyclopédie; Truth, in the top center, is surrounded by light and unveiled by the figures to the right, Philosophy and Reason
Enlightenment historiography
began in the period itself, from what Enlightenment figures said about
their work. A dominant element was the intellectual angle they took. D'Alembert'sPreliminary Discourse of l'Encyclopédie
provides a history of the Enlightenment which comprises a chronological
list of developments in the realm of knowledge – of which the Encyclopédie forms the pinnacle. In 1783, Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn referred to Enlightenment as a process by which man was educated in the use of reason.
Immanuel Kant called Enlightenment "man's release from his
self-incurred tutelage", tutelage being "man's inability to make use of
his understanding without direction from another".
"For Kant, Enlightenment was mankind's final coming of age, the
emancipation of the human consciousness from an immature state of
ignorance". The German scholar Ernst Cassirer
called the Enlightenment "a part and a special phase of that whole
intellectual development through which modern philosophic thought gained
its characteristic self-confidence and self-consciousness". According to historian Roy Porter,
the liberation of the human mind from a dogmatic state of ignorance, is
the epitome of what the Age of Enlightenment was trying to capture.
Bertrand Russell
saw the Enlightenment as a phase in a progressive development which
began in antiquity and that reason and challenges to the established
order were constant ideals throughout that time. Russell said that the Enlightenment was ultimately born out of the Protestant reaction against the Catholic counter-reformation
and that philosophical views such as affinity for democracy against
monarchy originated among 16th-century Protestants to justify their
desire to break away from the Catholic Church. Although many of these
philosophical ideals were picked up by Catholics, Russell argues that by
the 18th century the Enlightenment was the principal manifestation of
the schism that began with Martin Luther.
Jonathan Israel rejects the attempts of postmodern and Marxian
historians to understand the revolutionary ideas of the period purely as
by-products of social and economic transformations. He instead focuses on the history of ideas
in the period from 1650 to the end of the 18th century and claims that
it was the ideas themselves that caused the change that eventually led
to the revolutions of the latter half of the 18th century and the early
19th century. Israel argues that until the 1650s Western civilization "was based on a largely shared core of faith, tradition and authority".
Time span
There
is little consensus on the precise beginning of the Age of
Enlightenment, though several historians and philosophers argue that it
was marked by Descartes' 1637 philosophy of Cogito, ergo sum ("I think, therefore I Am"), which shifted the epistemological basis from external authority to internal certainty. In France, many cited the publication of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687). The middle of the 17th century (1650) or the beginning of the 18th century (1701) are often used as epochs. French historians usually place the Siècle des Lumières ("Century of Enlightenments") between 1715 and 1789: from the beginning of the reign of Louis XV until the French Revolution. Most scholars use the last years of the century, often choosing the French Revolution of 1789 or the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars (1804–1815) as a convenient point in time with which to date the end of the Enlightenment.
Enlightenment,
understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always
aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as
masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth radiates under the sign of
disaster triumphant.
Extending Horkheimer and Adorno's argument, intellectual historian
Jason Josephson-Storm has argued that any idea of the Age of
Enlightenment as a clearly defined period that is separate from the
earlier Renaissance and later Romanticism or Counter-Enlightenment
constitutes a myth. Josephson-Storm points out that there are vastly
different and mutually contradictory periodizations of the Enlightenment
depending on nation, field of study, and school of thought; that the
term and category of "Enlightenment" referring to the scientific
revolution was actually applied after the fact; that the Enlightenment
did not see an increase in disenchantment or the dominance of the mechanistic worldview; and that a blur in the early modern ideas of the Humanities and natural sciences makes it hard to circumscribe a Scientific Revolution.
Josephson-Storm defends his categorization of the Enlightenment as
"myth" by noting the regulative role ideas of a period of Enlightenment
and disenchantment play in modern Western culture, such that belief in
magic, spiritualism, and even religion appears somewhat taboo in
intellectual strata.
In the 1970s, study of the Enlightenment expanded to include the
ways Enlightenment ideas spread to European colonies and how they
interacted with indigenous cultures and how the Enlightenment took place
in formerly unstudied areas such as Italy, Greece, the Balkans, Poland,
Hungary and Russia.
Intellectuals such as Robert Darnton and Jürgen Habermas
have focused on the social conditions of the Enlightenment. Habermas
described the creation of the "bourgeois public sphere" in 18th-century
Europe, containing the new venues and modes of communication allowing
for rational exchange. Habermas said that the public sphere was
bourgeois, egalitarian, rational and independent from the state, making
it the ideal venue for intellectuals to critically examine contemporary
politics and society, away from the interference of established
authority. While the public sphere is generally an integral component of
the social study of the Enlightenment, other historians have questioned
whether the public sphere had these characteristics.
Society and culture
A medal minted during the reign of Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, commemorating his grant of religious liberty to Jews and Protestants in Hungary—another important reform of Joseph II was the abolition of serfdom
In contrast to the intellectual historiographical approach of the
Enlightenment, which examines the various currents or discourses of
intellectual thought within the European context during the 17th and
18th centuries, the cultural (or social) approach examines the changes
that occurred in European society and culture. This approach studies the
process of changing sociabilities and cultural practices during the
Enlightenment.
One of the primary elements of the culture of the Enlightenment was the rise of the public sphere,
a "realm of communication marked by new arenas of debate, more open and
accessible forms of urban public space and sociability, and an
explosion of print culture", in the late 17th century and 18th century.
Elements of the public sphere included that it was egalitarian, that it
discussed the domain of "common concern," and that argument was founded
on reason.
Habermas uses the term "common concern" to describe those areas of
political/social knowledge and discussion that were previously the
exclusive territory of the state and religious authorities, now open to
critical examination by the public sphere. The values of this bourgeois
public sphere included holding reason to be supreme, considering
everything to be open to criticism (the public sphere is critical), and the opposition of secrecy of all sorts.
German explorer Alexander von Humboldt
showed his disgust for slavery and often criticized the colonial
policies—he always acted out of a deeply humanistic conviction, borne by
the ideas of the Enlightenment
The creation of the public sphere has been associated with two
long-term historical trends: the rise of the modern nation state and the
rise of capitalism.
The modern nation state, in its consolidation of public power, created
by counterpoint a private realm of society independent of the state,
which allowed for the public sphere. Capitalism also increased society's
autonomy and self-awareness,
as well as an increasing need for the exchange of information. As the
nascent public sphere expanded, it embraced a large variety of institutions
and the most commonly cited were coffee houses and cafés, salons and
the literary public sphere, figuratively localized in the Republic of
Letters.
In France, the creation of the public sphere was helped by the
aristocracy's move from the King's palace at Versailles to Paris in
about 1720, since their rich spending stimulated the trade in luxuries
and artistic creations, especially fine paintings.
The context for the rise of the public sphere was the economic and social change commonly associated with the Industrial Revolution:
"Economic expansion, increasing urbanization, rising population and
improving communications in comparison to the stagnation of the previous
century".
Rising efficiency in production techniques and communication lowered
the prices of consumer goods and increased the amount and variety of
goods available to consumers (including the literature essential to the
public sphere). Meanwhile, the colonial experience (most European states
had colonial empires in the 18th century) began to expose European
society to extremely heterogeneous cultures, leading to the breaking
down of "barriers between cultural systems, religious divides, gender
differences and geographical areas".
The word "public" implies the highest level of inclusivity – the
public sphere by definition should be open to all. However, this sphere
was only public to relative degrees. Enlightenment thinkers frequently
contrasted their conception of the "public" with that of the people: Condorcet contrasted "opinion" with populace, Marmontel "the opinion of men of letters" with "the opinion of the multitude" and d'Alembert the "truly enlightened public" with "the blind and noisy multitude". Additionally, most institutions of the public sphere excluded both women and the lower classes.
Cross-class influences occurred through noble and lower class
participation in areas such as the coffeehouses and the Masonic lodges.
Social and cultural implications in the arts
Because of the focus on reason over superstition, the Enlightenment cultivated the arts.
Emphasis on learning, art and music became more widespread, especially
with the growing middle class. Areas of study such as literature,
philosophy, science, and the fine arts increasingly explored subject
matter to which the general public, in addition to the previously more
segregated professionals and patrons, could relate.
As musicians depended more and more on public support, public
concerts became increasingly popular and helped supplement performers'
and composers' incomes. The concerts also helped them to reach a wider
audience. Handel, for example, epitomized this with his highly public musical activities in London. He gained considerable fame there with performances of his operas and oratorios. The music of Haydn and Mozart, with their Viennese Classical styles, are usually regarded as being the most in line with the Enlightenment ideals.
The desire to explore, record and systematize knowledge had a meaningful impact on music publications. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Dictionnaire de musique (published 1767 in Geneva and 1768 in Paris) was a leading text in the late 18th century.
This widely available dictionary gave short definitions of words like
genius and taste and was clearly influenced by the Enlightenment
movement. Another text influenced by Enlightenment values was Charles Burney's A General History of Music: From the Earliest Ages to the Present Period (1776), which was a historical survey and an attempt to rationalize elements in music systematically over time. Recently, musicologists have shown renewed interest in the ideas and consequences of the Enlightenment. For example, Rose Rosengard Subotnik's Deconstructive Variations (subtitled Music and Reason in Western Society) compares Mozart's Die Zauberflöte
(1791) using the Enlightenment and Romantic perspectives and concludes
that the work is "an ideal musical representation of the Enlightenment".
As the economy and the middle class expanded, there was an
increasing number of amateur musicians. One manifestation of this
involved women, who became more involved with music on a social level.
Women were already engaged in professional roles as singers and
increased their presence in the amateur performers' scene, especially
with keyboard music.
Music publishers begin to print music that amateurs could understand
and play. The majority of the works that were published were for
keyboard, voice and keyboard and chamber ensemble.
After these initial genres were popularized, from the mid-century on,
amateur groups sang choral music, which then became a new trend for
publishers to capitalize on. The increasing study of the fine arts, as
well as access to amateur-friendly published works, led to more people
becoming interested in reading and discussing music. Music magazines,
reviews and critical works which suited amateurs as well as connoisseurs
began to surface.
Dissemination of ideas
The philosophes
spent a great deal of energy disseminating their ideas among educated
men and women in cosmopolitan cities. They used many venues, some of
them quite new.
The term "Republic of Letters" was coined in 1664 by Pierre Bayle in his journal Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres. Towards the end of the 18th century, the editor of Histoire de la République des Lettres en France, a literary survey, described the Republic of Letters as being:
In
the midst of all the governments that decide the fate of men; in the
bosom of so many states, the majority of them despotic ... there exists a
certain realm which holds sway only over the mind ... that we honour
with the name Republic, because it preserves a measure of independence,
and because it is almost its essence to be free. It is the realm of
talent and of thought.
The Republic of Letters was the sum of a number of Enlightenment
ideals: an egalitarian realm governed by knowledge that could act across
political boundaries and rival state power. It was a forum that supported "free public examination of questions regarding religion or legislation".
Immanuel Kant considered written communication essential to his
conception of the public sphere; once everyone was a part of the
"reading public", then society could be said to be enlightened. The people who participated in the Republic of Letters, such as Diderot and Voltaire, are frequently known today as important Enlightenment figures. Indeed, the men who wrote Diderot's Encyclopédie arguably formed a microcosm of the larger "republic".
Many women played an essential part in the French Enlightenment, due to the role they played as salonnières in Parisian salons, as the contrast to the male philosophes. The salon was the principal social institution of the republic
and "became the civil working spaces of the project of Enlightenment".
Women, as salonnières, were "the legitimate governors of [the]
potentially unruly discourse" that took place within.
While women were marginalized in the public culture of the Old Regime,
the French Revolution destroyed the old cultural and economic restraints
of patronage and corporatism (guilds), opening French society to female
participation, particularly in the literary sphere.
In France, the established men of letters (gens de lettres) had fused with the elites (les grands) of French society by the mid-18th century. This led to the creation of an oppositional literary sphere, Grub Street, the domain of a "multitude of versifiers and would-be authors".
These men came to London to become authors, only to discover that the
literary market simply could not support large numbers of writers, who
in any case were very poorly remunerated by the publishing-bookselling guilds.
The writers of Grub Street, the Grub Street Hacks, were left feeling bitter about the relative success of the men of letters and found an outlet for their literature which was typified by the libelle. Written mostly in the form of pamphlets, the libelles
"slandered the court, the Church, the aristocracy, the academies, the
salons, everything elevated and respectable, including the monarchy
itself". Le Gazetier cuirassé
by Charles Théveneau de Morande was a prototype of the genre. It was
Grub Street literature that was most read by the public during the
Enlightenment. According to Darnton, more importantly the Grub Street hacks inherited the "revolutionary spirit" once displayed by the philosophes and paved the way for the French Revolution by desacralizing figures of political, moral and religious authority in France.
The book industry
ESTC data 1477–1799 by decade given with a regional differentiation
The increased consumption of reading materials of all sorts was one
of the key features of the "social" Enlightenment. Developments in the
Industrial Revolution allowed consumer goods to be produced in greater
quantities at lower prices, encouraging the spread of books, pamphlets,
newspapers and journals – "media of the transmission of ideas and
attitudes". Commercial development likewise increased the demand for
information, along with rising populations and increased urbanisation.
However, demand for reading material extended outside of the realm of
the commercial and outside the realm of the upper and middle classes, as
evidenced by the Bibliothèque Bleue. Literacy rates are difficult to gauge, but in France the rates doubled over the course of the 18th century.
Reflecting the decreasing influence of religion, the number of books
about science and art published in Paris doubled from 1720 to 1780,
while the number of books about religion dropped to just one-tenth of
the total.
Reading underwent serious changes in the 18th century. In particular, Rolf Engelsing has argued for the existence of a Reading Revolution.
Until 1750, reading was done intensively: people tended to own a small
number of books and read them repeatedly, often to small audience. After
1750, people began to read "extensively", finding as many books as they
could, increasingly reading them alone. This is supported by increasing literacy rates, particularly among women.
The vast majority of the reading public could not afford to own a
private library and while most of the state-run "universal libraries"
set up in the 17th and 18th centuries were open to the public, they were
not the only sources of reading material. On one end of the spectrum
was the Bibliothèque Bleue, a collection of cheaply produced
books published in Troyes, France. Intended for a largely rural and
semi-literate audience these books included almanacs, retellings of
medieval romances and condensed versions of popular novels, among other
things. While some historians have argued against the Enlightenment's
penetration into the lower classes, the Bibliothèque Bleue represents at least a desire to participate in Enlightenment sociability.
Moving up the classes, a variety of institutions offered readers access
to material without needing to buy anything. Libraries that lent out
their material for a small price started to appear and occasionally
bookstores would offer a small lending library to their patrons. Coffee
houses commonly offered books, journals and sometimes even popular
novels to their customers. The Tatler and The Spectator,
two influential periodicals sold from 1709 to 1714, were closely
associated with coffee house culture in London, being both read and
produced in various establishments in the city.
This is an example of the triple or even quadruple function of the
coffee house: reading material was often obtained, read, discussed and
even produced on the premises.
It is extremely difficult to determine what people actually read
during the Enlightenment. For example, examining the catalogs of private
libraries gives an image skewed in favor of the classes wealthy enough
to afford libraries and also ignores censored works unlikely to be
publicly acknowledged. For this reason, a study of publishing would be
much more fruitful for discerning reading habits.
Across continental Europe, but in France especially, booksellers
and publishers had to negotiate censorship laws of varying strictness.
For example, the Encyclopédie narrowly escaped seizure and had to be saved by Malesherbes,
the man in charge of the French censor. Indeed, many publishing
companies were conveniently located outside France so as to avoid
overzealous French censors. They would smuggle their merchandise across
the border, where it would then be transported to clandestine
booksellers or small-time peddlers.
The records of clandestine booksellers may give a better representation
of what literate Frenchmen might have truly read, since their
clandestine nature provided a less restrictive product choice.
In one case, political books were the most popular category, primarily
libels and pamphlets. Readers were more interested in sensationalist
stories about criminals and political corruption than they were in
political theory itself. The second most popular category, "general
works" (those books "that did not have a dominant motif and that
contained something to offend almost everyone in authority"),
demonstrated a high demand for generally low-brow subversive literature.
However, these works never became part of literary canon and are
largely forgotten today as a result.
A healthy, legal publishing industry existed throughout Europe,
although established publishers and book sellers occasionally ran afoul
of the law. For example, the Encyclopédie condemned not only by
the King, but also by Clement XII, nevertheless found its way into print
with the help of the aforementioned Malesherbes and creative use of
French censorship law.
However, many works were sold without running into any legal trouble at
all. Borrowing records from libraries in England, Germany, and North
America indicate that more than 70 percent of books borrowed were
novels. Less than 1 percent of the books were of a religious nature,
indicating the general trend of declining religiosity.
Natural history
Georges Buffon is best remembered for his Histoire naturelle, a 44 volume encyclopedia describing everything known about the natural world
A genre that greatly rose in importance was that of scientific
literature. Natural history in particular became increasingly popular
among the upper classes. Works of natural history include René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur's Histoire naturelle des insectes and Jacques Gautier d'Agoty's La Myologie complète, ou description de tous les muscles du corps humain (1746). Outside ancien régime
France, natural history was an important part of medicine and industry,
encompassing the fields of botany, zoology, meteorology, hydrology and
mineralogy. Students in Enlightenment universities and academies were
taught these subjects to prepare them for careers as diverse as medicine
and theology. As shown by Matthew Daniel Eddy, natural history in this
context was a very middle class pursuit and operated as a fertile
trading zone for the interdisciplinary exchange of diverse scientific
ideas.
The target audience of natural history was French polite society,
evidenced more by the specific discourse of the genre than by the
generally high prices of its works. Naturalists catered to polite
society's desire for erudition – many texts had an explicit instructive
purpose. However, natural history was often a political affair. As Emma
Spary writes, the classifications used by naturalists "slipped between
the natural world and the social ... to establish not only the expertise
of the naturalists over the natural, but also the dominance of the
natural over the social". The idea of taste (le goût)
was a social indicator: to truly be able to categorize nature, one had
to have the proper taste, an ability of discretion shared by all members
of polite society. In this way natural history spread many of the
scientific developments of the time, but also provided a new source of
legitimacy for the dominant class. From this basis, naturalists could then develop their own social ideals based on their scientific works.
The first scientific and literary journals were established during the Enlightenment. The first journal, the Parisian Journal des Sçavans,
appeared in 1665. However, it was not until 1682 that periodicals began
to be more widely produced. French and Latin were the dominant
languages of publication, but there was also a steady demand for
material in German and Dutch. There was generally low demand for English
publications on the Continent, which was echoed by England's similar
lack of desire for French works. Languages commanding less of an
international market—such as Danish, Spanish and Portuguese—found
journal success more difficult and more often than not a more
international language was used instead. French slowly took over Latin's
status as the lingua franca
of learned circles. This in turn gave precedence to the publishing
industry in Holland, where the vast majority of these French language
periodicals were produced.
Jonathan Israel called the journals the most influential cultural innovation of European intellectual culture.
They shifted the attention of the "cultivated public" away from
established authorities to novelty and innovation and instead promoted
the "enlightened" ideals of toleration and intellectual objectivity.
Being a source of knowledge derived from science and reason, they were
an implicit critique of existing notions of universal truth monopolized
by monarchies, parliaments and religious authorities. They also advanced
Christian enlightenment that upheld "the legitimacy of God-ordained
authority"—the Bible—in which there had to be agreement between the
biblical and natural theories.
Encyclopedias and dictionaries
First page of the Encyclopedie, published between 1751 and 1766
Although the existence of dictionaries and encyclopedias
spanned into ancient times, the texts changed from simply defining
words in a long running list to far more detailed discussions of those
words in 18th-century encyclopedic dictionaries.
The works were part of an Enlightenment movement to systematize
knowledge and provide education to a wider audience than the elite. As
the 18th century progressed, the content of encyclopedias also changed
according to readers' tastes. Volumes tended to focus more strongly on secular affairs, particularly science and technology, rather than matters of theology.
Along with secular matters, readers also favoured an alphabetical
ordering scheme over cumbersome works arranged along thematic lines. Commenting on alphabetization, the historian Charles Porset
has said that "as the zero degree of taxonomy, alphabetical order
authorizes all reading strategies; in this respect it could be
considered an emblem of the Enlightenment". For Porset, the avoidance of
thematic and hierarchical systems thus allows free interpretation of the works and becomes an example of egalitarianism.
Encyclopedias and dictionaries also became more popular during the Age
of Enlightenment as the number of educated consumers who could afford
such texts began to multiply.
In the later half of the 18th century, the number of dictionaries and
encyclopedias published by decade increased from 63 between 1760 and
1769 to approximately 148 in the decade proceeding the French Revolution
(1780–1789).
Along with growth in numbers, dictionaries and encyclopedias also grew
in length, often having multiple print runs that sometimes included in
supplemented editions.
The first technical dictionary was drafted by John Harris and entitled Lexicon Technicum: Or, An Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences.
Harris' book avoided theological and biographical entries and instead
it concentrated on science and technology. Published in 1704, the Lexicon technicum was the first book to be written in English that took a methodical approach to describing mathematics and commercial arithmetic along with the physical sciences and navigation. Other technical dictionaries followed Harris' model, including Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia (1728), which included five editions and was a substantially larger work than Harris'. The folio edition of the work even included foldout engravings. The Cyclopaedia emphasized Newtonian theories, Lockean philosophy and contained thorough examinations of technologies, such as engraving, brewing and dyeing.
"Figurative system of human knowledge", the structure that the Encyclopédie organised knowledge into—it had three main branches: memory, reason and imagination
In Germany, practical reference works intended for the uneducated majority became popular in the 18th century. The Marperger Curieuses Natur-, Kunst-, Berg-, Gewerkund Handlungs-Lexicon (1712) explained terms that usefully described the trades and scientific and commercial education. Jablonksi Allgemeines Lexicon (1721) was better known than the Handlungs-Lexicon
and underscored technical subjects rather than scientific theory. For
example, over five columns of text were dedicated to wine while geometry
and logic were allocated only twenty-two and seventeen lines, respectively. The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1771) was modelled along the same lines as the German lexicons.
However, the prime example of reference works that systematized scientific knowledge in the age of Enlightenment were universal encyclopedias
rather than technical dictionaries. It was the goal of universal
encyclopedias to record all human knowledge in a comprehensive reference
work. The most well-known of these works is Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert's Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers.
The work, which began publication in 1751, was composed of thirty-five
volumes and over 71 000 separate entries. A great number of the entries
were dedicated to describing the sciences and crafts in detail and
provided intellectuals across Europe with a high-quality survey of human
knowledge. In d'Alembert's Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot, the work's goal to record the extent of human knowledge in the arts and sciences is outlined:
As an Encyclopédie, it is to set
forth as well as possible the order and connection of the parts of human
knowledge. As a Reasoned Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Trades,
it is to contain the general principles that form the basis of each
science and each art, liberal or mechanical, and the most essential
facts that make up the body and substance of each.
The massive work was arranged according to a "tree of knowledge". The
tree reflected the marked division between the arts and sciences, which
was largely a result of the rise of empiricism. Both areas of knowledge
were united by philosophy, or the trunk of the tree of knowledge. The
Enlightenment's desacrilization of religion was pronounced in the tree's
design, particularly where theology accounted for a peripheral branch,
with black magic as a close neighbour. As the Encyclopédie gained popularity, it was published in quarto and octavo editions after 1777. The quarto and octavo editions were much less expensive than previous editions, making the Encyclopédie more accessible to the non-elite. Robert Darnton estimates that there were approximately 25 000 copies of the Encyclopédie in circulation throughout France and Europe before the French Revolution.
The extensive, yet affordable encyclopedia came to represent the
transmission of Enlightenment and scientific education to an expanding
audience.
Popularization of science
One
of the most important developments that the Enlightenment era brought
to the discipline of science was its popularization. An increasingly
literate population seeking knowledge and education in both the arts and
the sciences drove the expansion of print culture and the dissemination
of scientific learning. The new literate population was due to a high
rise in the availability of food. This enabled many people to rise out
of poverty, and instead of paying more for food, they had money for
education.
Popularization was generally part of an overarching Enlightenment ideal
that endeavoured "to make information available to the greatest number
of people".
As public interest in natural philosophy grew during the 18th century,
public lecture courses and the publication of popular texts opened up
new roads to money and fame for amateurs and scientists who remained on
the periphery of universities and academies.
More formal works included explanations of scientific theories for
individuals lacking the educational background to comprehend the
original scientific text. Sir Isaac Newton's celebrated Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
was published in Latin and remained inaccessible to readers without
education in the classics until Enlightenment writers began to translate
and analyze the text in the vernacular.
The first significant work that expressed scientific theory and
knowledge expressly for the laity, in the vernacular and with the
entertainment of readers in mind, was Bernard de Fontenelle's Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds
(1686). The book was produced specifically for women with an interest
in scientific writing and inspired a variety of similar works.
These popular works were written in a discursive style, which was laid
out much more clearly for the reader than the complicated articles,
treatises and books published by the academies and scientists. Charles Leadbetter'sAstronomy (1727) was advertised as "a Work entirely New" that would include "short and easie [sic] Rules and Astronomical Tables". The first French introduction to Newtonianism and the Principia was Eléments de la philosophie de Newton, published by Voltaire in 1738. Émilie du Châtelet's translation of the Principia, published after her death in 1756, also helped to spread Newton's theories beyond scientific academies and the university. Writing for a growing female audience, Francesco Algarotti published Il Newtonianism per le dame, which was a tremendously popular work and was translated from Italian into English by Elizabeth Carter. A similar introduction to Newtonianism for women was produced by Henry Pemberton. His A View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy
was published by subscription. Extant records of subscribers show that
women from a wide range of social standings purchased the book,
indicating the growing number of scientifically inclined female readers
among the middling class. During the Enlightenment, women also began producing popular scientific works themselves. Sarah Trimmer wrote a successful natural history textbook for children titled The Easy Introduction to the Knowledge of Nature (1782), which was published for many years after in eleven editions.
Schools and universities
Most work on the Enlightenment emphasizes the ideals discussed by
intellectuals, rather than the actual state of education at the time.
Leading educational theorists like England's John Locke and
Switzerland's Jean Jacques Rousseau both emphasized the importance of
shaping young minds early. By the late Enlightenment, there was a rising
demand for a more universal approach to education, particularly after
the American and French Revolutions.
The predominant educational psychology from the 1750s onward,
especially in northern European countries was associationism, the notion
that the mind associates or dissociates ideas through repeated
routines. In addition to being conducive to Enlightenment ideologies of
liberty, self-determination and personal responsibility, it offered a
practical theory of the mind that allowed teachers to transform
longstanding forms of print and manuscript culture into effective
graphic tools of learning for the lower and middle orders of society. Children were taught to memorize facts through oral and graphic methods that originated during the Renaissance.
Many of the leading universities associated with Enlightenment
progressive principles were located in northern Europe, with the most
renowned being the universities of Leiden, Göttingen, Halle,
Montpellier, Uppsala and Edinburgh. These universities, especially
Edinburgh, produced professors whose ideas had a significant impact on
Britain's North American colonies and later the American Republic.
Within the natural sciences, Edinburgh's medical school also led the way
in chemistry, anatomy and pharmacology.
In other parts of Europe, the universities and schools of France and
most of Europe were bastions of traditionalism and were not hospitable
to the Enlightenment. In France, the major exception was the medical
university at Montpellier.
Learned academies
Louis XIV visiting the Académie des sciences
in 1671: "It is widely accepted that 'modern science' arose in the
Europe of the 17th century, introducing a new understanding of the
natural world" — Peter Barrett
The history of Academies in France during the Enlightenment begins with the Academy of Science,
founded in 1635 in Paris. It was closely tied to the French state,
acting as an extension of a government seriously lacking in scientists.
It helped promote and organize new disciplines and it trained new
scientists. It also contributed to the enhancement of scientists' social
status, considering them to be the "most useful of all citizens".
Academies demonstrate the rising interest in science along with its increasing secularization, as evidenced by the small number of clerics who were members (13 percent).
The presence of the French academies in the public sphere cannot be
attributed to their membership, as although the majority of their
members were bourgeois, the exclusive institution was only open to elite
Parisian scholars. They perceived themselves as "interpreters of the
sciences for the people". For example, it was with this in mind that
academicians took it upon themselves to disprove the popular
pseudo-science of mesmerism.
The strongest contribution of the French Academies to the public sphere comes from the concours académiques
(roughly translated as "academic contests") they sponsored throughout
France. These academic contests were perhaps the most public of any
institution during the Enlightenment.
The practice of contests dated back to the Middle Ages and was revived
in the mid-17th century. The subject matter had previously been
generally religious and/or monarchical, featuring essays, poetry and
painting. However, by roughly 1725 this subject matter had radically
expanded and diversified, including "royal propaganda, philosophical
battles, and critical ruminations on the social and political
institutions of the Old Regime". Topics of public controversy were also
discussed such as the theories of Newton and Descartes, the slave trade,
women's education and justice in France.
Antoine Lavoisier conducting an experiment related to combustion generated by amplified sun light
More importantly, the contests were open to all and the enforced
anonymity of each submission guaranteed that neither gender nor social
rank would determine the judging. Indeed, although the "vast majority"
of participants belonged to the wealthier strata of society ("the
liberal arts, the clergy, the judiciary and the medical profession"),
there were some cases of the popular classes submitting essays and even
winning.
Similarly, a significant number of women participated—and won—the
competitions. Of a total of 2,300 prize competitions offered in France,
women won 49—perhaps a small number by modern standards, but very
significant in an age in which most women did not have any academic
training. Indeed, the majority of the winning entries were for poetry
competitions, a genre commonly stressed in women's education.
In England, the Royal Society of London
also played a significant role in the public sphere and the spread of
Enlightenment ideas. It was founded by a group of independent scientists
and given a royal charter in 1662. The Society played a large role in spreading Robert Boyle's experimental philosophy around Europe and acted as a clearinghouse for intellectual correspondence and exchange.
Boyle was "a founder of the experimental world in which scientists now
live and operate" and his method based knowledge on experimentation,
which had to be witnessed to provide proper empirical legitimacy. This
is where the Royal Society came into play: witnessing had to be a
"collective act" and the Royal Society's assembly rooms were ideal
locations for relatively public demonstrations.
However, not just any witness was considered to be credible: "Oxford
professors were accounted more reliable witnesses than Oxfordshire
peasants". Two factors were taken into account: a witness's knowledge in
the area and a witness's "moral constitution". In other words, only
civil society were considered for Boyle's public.
Salons
It was the place in which philosophes got reunited and talked about
old, actual or new ideas. Salons were the place where intellectual and
enlightened ideas were built.
Coffeehouses
Coffeehouses were especially important to the spread of knowledge
during the Enlightenment because they created a unique environment in
which people from many different walks of life gathered and shared
ideas. They were frequently criticized by nobles who feared the
possibility of an environment in which class and its accompanying titles
and privileges were disregarded. Such an environment was especially
intimidating to monarchs who derived much of their power from the
disparity between classes of people. If classes were to join together
under the influence of Enlightenment thinking, they might recognize the
all-encompassing oppression and abuses of their monarchs and because of
their size might be able to carry out successful revolts. Monarchs also
resented the idea of their subjects convening as one to discuss
political matters, especially those concerning foreign affairs—rulers
thought political affairs to be their business only, a result of their
supposed divine right to rule.
Coffeehouses represent a turning point in history during which
people discovered that they could have enjoyable social lives within
their communities. Coffeeshops became homes away from home for many who
sought, for the first time, to engage in discourse with their neighbors
and discuss intriguing and thought-provoking matters, especially those
regarding philosophy to politics. Coffeehouses were essential to the
Enlightenment, for they were centers of free-thinking and
self-discovery. Although many coffeehouse patrons were scholars, a great
deal were not. Coffeehouses attracted a diverse set of people,
including not only the educated wealthy but also members of the
bourgeoisie and the lower class. While it may seem positive that
patrons, being doctors, lawyers, merchants, etc. represented almost all
classes, the coffeeshop environment sparked fear in those who sought to
preserve class distinction. One of the most popular critiques of the
coffeehouse claimed that it "allowed promiscuous association among
people from different rungs of the social ladder, from the artisan to
the aristocrat" and was therefore compared to Noah's Ark, receiving all
types of animals, clean or unclean. This unique culture served as a catalyst for journalism when Joseph Addison and Richard Steele recognized its potential as an audience. Together, Steele and Addison published The Spectator (1711),
a daily publication which aimed, through fictional narrator Mr.
Spectator, both to entertain and to provoke discussion regarding serious
philosophical matters.
The first English coffeehouse opened in Oxford in 1650. Brian Cowan said that Oxford coffeehouses developed into "penny universities",
offering a locus of learning that was less formal than structured
institutions. These penny universities occupied a significant position
in Oxford academic life, as they were frequented by those consequently
referred to as the virtuosi, who conducted their research on some
of the resulting premises. According to Cowan, "the coffeehouse was a
place for like-minded scholars to congregate, to read, as well as learn
from and to debate with each other, but was emphatically not a
university institution, and the discourse there was of a far different
order than any university tutorial".
The Café Procope
was established in Paris in 1686 and by the 1720s there were around 400
cafés in the city. The Café Procope in particular became a center of
Enlightenment, welcoming such celebrities as Voltaire and Rousseau. The
Café Procope was where Diderot and D'Alembert decided to create the Encyclopédie. The cafés were one of the various "nerve centers" for bruits publics, public noise or rumour. These bruits were allegedly a much better source of information than were the actual newspapers available at the time.
Debating societies
The debating societies are an example of the public sphere during the Enlightenment. Their origins include:
Clubs of fifty or more men who, at the beginning of the 18th
century, met in pubs to discuss religious issues and affairs of state.
Mooting clubs, set up by law students to practice rhetoric.
Spouting clubs, established to help actors train for theatrical roles.
John Henley's Oratory, which mixed outrageous sermons with even more absurd questions, like "Whether Scotland be anywhere in the world?".
An example of a French salon
In the late 1770s, popular debating societies began to move into more
"genteel" rooms, a change which helped establish a new standard of
sociability.
The backdrop to these developments was "an explosion of interest in the
theory and practice of public elocution". The debating societies were
commercial enterprises that responded to this demand, sometimes very
successfully. Some societies welcomed from 800 to 1,200 spectators a
night.
The debating societies discussed an extremely wide range of
topics. Before the Enlightenment, most intellectual debates revolved
around "confessional" – that is, Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed
(Calvinist) or Anglican issues and the main aim of these debates was to
establish which bloc of faith ought to have the "monopoly of truth and a
God-given title to authority".
After this date, everything thus previously rooted in tradition was
questioned and often replaced by new concepts in the light of
philosophical reason. After the second half of the 17th century and
during the 18th century, a "general process of rationalization and
secularization set in" and confessional disputes were reduced to a
secondary status in favor of the "escalating contest between faith and
incredulity".
In addition to debates on religion, societies discussed issues
such as politics and the role of women. However, it is important to note
that the critical subject matter of these debates did not necessarily
translate into opposition to the government. In other words, the results
of the debate quite frequently upheld the status quo.
From a historical standpoint, one of the most important features of the
debating society was their openness to the public, as women attended
and even participated in almost every debating society, which were
likewise open to all classes providing they could pay the entrance fee.
Once inside, spectators were able to participate in a largely
egalitarian form of sociability that helped spread Enlightenment ideas.
Masonic lodges
Masonic initiation ceremony
Historians have long debated the extent to which the secret network of Freemasonry
was a main factor in the Enlightenment. The leaders of the
Enlightenment included Freemasons such as Diderot, Montesquieu,
Voltaire, Lessing, Pope, Horace Walpole, Sir Robert Walpole, Mozart, Goethe, Frederick the Great, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. Norman Davies said that Freemasonry was a powerful force on behalf of liberalism
in Europe from about 1700 to the twentieth century. It expanded rapidly
during the Age of Enlightenment, reaching practically every country in
Europe. It was especially attractive to powerful aristocrats and
politicians as well as intellectuals, artists and political activists.
During the Age of Enlightenment, Freemasons comprised an
international network of like-minded men, often meeting in secret in
ritualistic programs at their lodges. They promoted the ideals of the
Enlightenment and helped diffuse these values across Britain and France
and other places. Freemasonry as a systematic creed with its own myths,
values and set of rituals originated in Scotland around 1600 and spread
first to England and then across the Continent in the eighteenth
century. They fostered new codes of conduct—including a communal
understanding of liberty and equality inherited from guild
sociability—"liberty, fraternity and equality".
Scottish soldiers and Jacobite Scots brought to the Continent ideals of
fraternity which reflected not the local system of Scottish customs but
the institutions and ideals originating in the English Revolution
against royal absolutism.
Freemasonry was particularly prevalent in France—by 1789, there were
perhaps as many as 100,000 French Masons, making Freemasonry the most
popular of all Enlightenment associations.
The Freemasons displayed a passion for secrecy and created new degrees
and ceremonies. Similar societies, partially imitating Freemasonry,
emerged in France, Germany, Sweden and Russia. One example was the Illuminati
founded in Bavaria in 1776, which was copied after the Freemasons, but
was never part of the movement. The Illuminati was an overtly political
group, which most Masonic lodges decidedly were not.
Masonic lodges created a private model for public affairs. They
"reconstituted the polity and established a constitutional form of
self-government, complete with constitutions and laws, elections and
representatives". In other words, the micro-society set up within the
lodges constituted a normative model for society as a whole. This was
especially true on the continent: when the first lodges began to appear
in the 1730s, their embodiment of British values was often seen as
threatening by state authorities. For example, the Parisian lodge that
met in the mid 1720s was composed of English Jacobite exiles.
Furthermore, freemasons all across Europe explicitly linked themselves
to the Enlightenment as a whole. For example, in French lodges the line
"As the means to be enlightened I search for the enlightened" was a part
of their initiation rites. British lodges assigned themselves the duty
to "initiate the unenlightened". This did not necessarily link lodges to
the irreligious, but neither did this exclude them from the occasional
heresy. In fact, many lodges praised the Grand Architect, the masonic
terminology for the deistic divine being who created a scientifically
ordered universe.
German historian Reinhart Koselleck claimed: "On the Continent
there were two social structures that left a decisive imprint on the Age
of Enlightenment: the Republic of Letters and the Masonic lodges".
Scottish professor Thomas Munck argues that "although the Masons did
promote international and cross-social contacts which were essentially
non-religious and broadly in agreement with enlightened values, they can
hardly be described as a major radical or reformist network in their
own right".
Many of the Masons values seemed to greatly appeal to Enlightenment
values and thinkers. Diderot discusses the link between Freemason ideals
and the enlightenment in D'Alembert's Dream, exploring masonry as a way
of spreading enlightenment beliefs. Historian Margaret Jacob stresses the importance of the Masons in indirectly inspiring enlightened political thought.
On the negative side, Daniel Roche contests claims that Masonry
promoted egalitarianism and he argues that the lodges only attracted men
of similar social backgrounds.
The presence of noble women in the French "lodges of adoption" that
formed in the 1780s was largely due to the close ties shared between
these lodges and aristocratic society.
The major opponent of Freemasonry was the Roman Catholic Church
so that in countries with a large Catholic element, such as France,
Italy, Spain and Mexico, much of the ferocity of the political battles
involve the confrontation between what Davies calls the reactionary
Church and enlightened Freemasonry. Even in France, Masons did not act as a group. American historians, while noting that Benjamin Franklin and George Washington
were indeed active Masons, have downplayed the importance of
Freemasonry in causing the American Revolution because the Masonic order
was non-political and included both Patriots and their enemy the
Loyalists.
Art
The art produced
during the Enlightenment was about a search for morality that was absent
from previous art. At the same time, the Classical art of Greece and
Rome became interesting to people again, since archaeological teams
discovered Pompeii and Herculaneum.
People took inspiration from it and revived the classical art into
neo-classical art. This can be especially seen in early American art,
where, throughout their art and architecture, they used arches,
goddesses, and other classical architectural designs.
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