HIS 3210

THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

There are a number of issues that we consider as we look at the Age of

Enlightenment. First, the nature of Enlightenment thought; the professed spirit of the
Enlightenment; the patterns of morality embodied in Enlightenment ideas; and the
ways in which authority was rejected and nature elevated to great importance. Second,
who the philosophes were and how we should characterise them; what their common
psychological traits, their religious beliefs, and their interactions were. Finally, how
Enlightenment thought affected 18th century politics before the French Revolution;
whether or not there was such a phenomenon as enlightened despotism, and if there
was, what it meant.

As a period of intellectual history in Western civilisation, the 18 th century is known

quite appropriately as the Age of Enlightenment. It is said that the starting point for
Enlightenment was John Locke’s (1632-1705) book entitled Essay Concerning
Human Understanding published in 1690, which attacked metaphysical arguments.
Metaphysics is belief in the existence of objects that cannot be seen or touched.

During the Enlightenment, a group of thinkers, who were called philosophes,

developed and popularised related sets of ideas that formed the basis for modern
thought. Their methods emphasised scepticism (a doubting state of mind), empirical
reasoning (relying on observation and experiment, not theory), and satire (a form of
writing which holds up a person or society to ridicule or shows the foolishness or
wickedness of an idea, customs, etc.). They spread their ideas through works ranging
from pamphlets to the great Encyclopaedia and numerous meetings in aristocratic
salons.

The state of affairs in France in the 18th century was criticised by many French writers
(philosophes), whose ideas spread throughout the land, and indeed, into several other
countries of Europe. Although it was centred in France, this intellectual movement
took place throughout Europe. Most of the philosophes believed that Western
civilisation was on the verge of enlightenment, that reasoning and education could
quickly remove the darkness of the past that had kept people in a state of immaturity.

The philosophes based their ideas mainly on reason, and they condemned everything
that rested merely on authority and tradition. In this regard, the main objects of their
criticism were institutions such as government and the Church, which were based on
authority and tradition, and irrational customs that perpetuated old ways of thinking
and thus hindered progress. Other institutions – noble privileges, the taxation system,
the courts of law, the conditions of the peasantry – were also subject to the
condemnation of the philosophes. While critical and combative, the philosophes were
not political or social revolutionaries, and their views were not always sound. They
found it easier to condemn the existing state of affairs than to suggest alternatives.
Their ideas were revolutionary in many ways, but in practice these thinkers hoped for
rather painless change, often through reform from above by enlightened monarchs.
Enlightened thinkers usually admired England, where liberal ideas and practices were
most developed, yet they showed an imperfect understanding of the English system.
This was the case, for example, with Baron de Montesquieu.

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While other men made up their minds to act without thinking, or without being
conscious of the causes that made them do certain things, or even that such causes
existed, the philosophes distinguished the causes and to what extent he could act. In
this way the philosopher avoided taking action without using reason. For the
philosopher, truth was not something he believed could be found everywhere; he
looked for it wherever he could find it. The greatest principle of the philosopher was
that when he did not find the truth, that is, when he had no grounds for passing
judgement, he refrained from passing judgement. The philosophic spirit involved
observation and accuracy because it made sure everything was carefully examined.
According to philosophers, man was not a monster, who should live only at the
bottom of the sea or in the forests. The demands of man’s life made it necessary for
him to mix with others socially. Reason demanded that man should know that he
should study and that he should work hard to acquire good social habits. In this
regard, the philosopher wished to mix with others and to enjoy what nature had given
him. The philosopher, therefore, was an honest man, motivated by reason, who
wished to participate in creating a good society.

The Philosophes (Philosophers)

IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804)

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) of Konigsberg in East Prussia was one of the world’s
most profound philosophers. He is particularly known for his analysis of the human
mind and how it related to nature as explained in his book Critique of Pure Reason
(1781). He explained that Enlightenment was the act of man/woman leaving his self-
caused immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s intelligence without the
guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of
intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one’s intelligence
without being guided by another. All that was required for enlightenment was
freedom. So, the main point of enlightenment was that man should release himself
from his self-caused immaturity, especially in matters of religion. Most
Enlightenment thinkers rejected traditional sources of authority such as the Church or
custom. Instead they argued that people should rely on reason, experience, and nature
as their guides.

Baron d’Holbach (1723-1789)

Baron Paul d’Holbach (1723-1789), a German aristocrat and scientist who assumed
French citizenship, was one of the advocates of such ideas. He is best known for his
attacks on organised religion and his contributions to the Encyclopaedia. He stated
that the source of man’s unhappiness is his ignorance of Nature. The determined way
in which man clung to blind opinions learned in his infancy, and which interweaved
themselves with his existence, the consequent prejudice that corrupted his mind,
preventing its expansion and making him a slave of fiction, appeared to make him
doomed to continued error. The way to get rid of ignorance was to understand nature,
which acted by simple, uniform, and unchanging laws. The Encyclopaedia of Arts
and Sciences, edited by Denis Diderot (1713-1784) and Jean le-Rond d’Alembert
(1717-1783), summarised the Enlightenment more than any other work. Written
between 1745 and 1780, it represented to the public all the knowledge which the

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Enlightenment thinkers considered important. The Encyclopaedia was the main
document of the philosophes. It declared the supremacy of the new science,
denounced superstition, and expounded the merits of human freedom. It contained
critical articles on unfair taxes, the evils of the slave trade, and the cruelty of criminal
laws. It has now come to be known that the Encyclopaedia and many other
achievements of the philosophes were joint efforts with their female colleagues
among the salonnieres.

Madame Marie-Therese de Geoffrin (1699-1777) was known as the unofficial

godmother of the Encyclopaedia. She lost her parents at an early age and was married
off at the age of fifteen by her well-meaning grandmother to a rich and boring
businessman of forty-eight. She developed one of the most famous salons that
counted Fontenelle and Montesquieu among its regular guests. She made her salon the
headquarters for planning and managing the Encyclopaedia. She made generous
financial contributions towards its production, for example, she contributed 200,000
livres (about $280,000) to the Encyclopaedia.

Mademoiselle Julie de Lespinasse (1732-1776), was the friend and confidential

advisor of Jean d’Alembert (1717-1783), who assisted Diderot in editing the work.
She turned her salon into a forum for criticising prospective articles. Most
philosophes relied upon such assistance.

Voltaire was coached in science by Madame du Chatelet; and the Marquis de

Condorcet (1742-1794), the prophet of progress and women’s rights among the
philosophes, was intellectually partnered by his wife, Sophie (1764-1812), who
popularised their ideas in her own salon. Even Madame de Pompadour aided the
philosophes in 1759, when she persuaded Louis XV to allow the sale of the
Encyclopaedia. The critical Enlightenment spirit revealed in the Encyclopaedia led
traditional authorities to condemn it and to suppress it more than once.

David Hume (1711-1776)

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian and economist. He was an

empiricist from the school of Locke. Among the interesting features of Hume’s
empiricist philosophy are a revolutionary view of causality, the problem of induction,
and the distinction between fact and value. For empiricists, knowledge comes to a
person exclusively through experience. What is true is what is experienced by the
senses, and which, at the same time, is consistent and coherent with past experiences.
It was upon this basis that the natural physical laws, such as Newtonian laws, were
developed. Hume was a relentless critic of metaphysics and religion. In the Dialogues
Concerning Natural Religion, he examines and largely refutes the argument upon
which the natural religion of the British Royal Society was founded. Though better
known for his treatment of philosophy, history, and politics, He also made several
essential contributions to economic thought. His empirical argument against British
mercantilism formed a building block for classical economics. His contributions to
economics are found mostly in his Political Discourse (1752) that strongly influenced
his close friend and fellow countryman, Adam Smith. Hume died in the year The
Wealth of Nations was published and in the presence of its author, Adam Smith.

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Voltaire (1694-1778)

Francois Marie Arouet, who later adopted the name Voltaire (1694-1778), was
certainly the most famous of the philosophes. He was the recognised leader of the
French Enlightenment. He had a better mind and a sharper wit than most philosophes.
In his long career, this son of a comfortable middle class family wrote more than
seventy witty volumes, interacted with kings and queens, and died a millionaire
because of shrewd business speculations. He wrote almost every type of literature,
from drama and satire to history and essays, and exhibited most of the main elements
of the Enlightenment. His estimated correspondence of 10,000 letters, including many
to Frederick the Great and Catherine the Great, used his clever way of writing in
spreading the gospel of rationalism and reform of abuses. His early career, however,
was turbulent. In 1717, he was imprisoned for eleven months in the Bastille in Paris
for insulting the regent of France. In 1726, a barb from his sharp tongue led a great
French nobleman to have beaten and arrested. This experience made a deep
impression on Voltaire. All his life he struggled against legal injustice and unequal
treatment before the law. When he was released from prison after promising to leave
the country, Voltaire went into exile in England where he lived from 1726 to 1729.
This was how he became familiar with England and how he came to share
Montesquieu’s admiration for English institutions. One of these elements was the
philosophes’ admiration for and idealisation of England’s political system.

When he returned to France, he was soon threatened again with prison in Paris, but
fortunately met Gabrielle-Emilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise du Chatelet
(1706-1749), an intellectually gifted woman from the high aristocracy with a passion
for science. She invited Voltaire to live in her country house at Cirey in Lorraine and
became his long-time companion under the eyes of her tolerant husband. Madame du
Chatelet was perhaps the finest representative of a small number of elite
Frenchwomen who made scientific achievements during the Enlightenment, but
because she was a woman, she suffered exclusion from the Royal Academy of
Science and from interacting with other scientists. In true style of the Enlightenment,
Voltaire mixed the glorification of science and reason with an appeal for better
individuals and institutions. However, like all the philosophes, Voltaire was a
reformer, not a revolutionary, in social and political matters. Voltaire continued to
champion toleration. He popularised Newtonian science, fought for freedom of the
press, and actively crusaded against the Church. He was eventually appointed royal
historian in 1743 and his book, Age of Louis XIV portrayed Louis as the dignified
leader of his age. After the death of his beloved Emilie, he accepted an invitation from
Frederick the Great to go and brighten up the Prussian court in Berlin, but the two
men later quarrelled, but Voltaire always admired Frederick as a free thinker and an
enlightened monarch.

Many Enlightenment thinkers were strongly opposed to traditional religious

institutions and ideas, but only a few went so far as to profess atheism (i.e. belief that
there is no God). Voltaire, more than any of the philosophes, personified the
scepticism of his century towards traditional religion and the injustices of the Ancien
Regimes (Old Regimes). Even in his own time, his reputation became a legend among
kings as well as literate commoners. As we have seen, his caustic pen brought him
two imprisonments in the Bastille and even banishment to England for three years.

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ADAM SMITH (1723-1790)

Adam Smith is often regarded as the father of economics, and his writings have been
enormously influential. His celebrated book, An Inquiry into the Nature of the Wealth
of Nations (1776) was the first serious attempt to study the nature of capital and the
historical development of industry and commerce among European nations. Smith’s
book represents the first serious attempt in the history of economic thought to separate
the study of political economy from the related fields of political science, ethics, and
jurisprudence (or law). It contains a good analysis of the processes whereby economic
wealth is produced and distributed and shows that the fundamental sources of all
income, that is, the basic forms in which wealth is distributed, are rent, wages, and
profits. Smith was highly critical of the 18th century mercantilism. He argued that
mercantilism meant a combination of stifling government regulations and unfair
privileges for state-approved monopolies and government favourites. He argued that
what was far better was free competition, which would best protect consumers from
price hikes and give all citizens a fair and equal right to do what they did best.

The central argument of The Wealth of Nations is that capital is best employed for the
production and distribution of wealth under conditions of governmental non-
interference, or laissez-faire, and free trade. Smith set out the mechanisms by which
he felt economic society operated. Each individual strives to become wealthy,
intending only his own gain, but to this end he must exchange what he owns or
produces with others who sufficiently value what he has to offer. In this way, by
division of labour and free market, public interest is advanced. To explain this
concept of government maintaining a laissez-faire attitude towards commercial
endeavours, Smith proclaimed the principle of the invisible hand that he saw as the
mechanism by which a benevolent God administered a world in which human
happiness was maximised. He made it clear in his writings that certain structures in
society needed to be in place before the invisible hand mechanism could work
efficiently. For example, property rights had to be strong, and there had to be
widespread adherence to moral values, such as prohibitions against theft and
misrepresentation.

Theft was, to Smith, the worst crime of all, even though if a poor man stole from a
rich man that might increase the overall happiness (of the poor man)!! In fact, Smith
went so far as to say that the purpose of government was to defend the rich from the
poor. In keeping with the “system of natural liberty” that he advocated, Smith argued
that government should limit itself to “only three duties”. It should (a) provide
defence against foreign invasion, (b) maintain civil order with courts and police
protection, and (c) sponsor certain indispensable public works and institutions that
could never adequately profit private investors. The following is a description of the
way Smith imagined the universe operated:

(a) There is a benevolent deity (God) who administers the world in such a way as
to maximise human happiness.
(b) In order to do this he has created humans with a nature that leads them to act
in a certain way.
(c) The world as we know it is pretty much perfect, and everyone is about equally
happy. In particular, the rich are no happier than the poor.

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(d) Although this means we should all be happy with our lot in life, our nature
(which, remember, was created by God for the purpose of maximising happiness)
leads us to think that we would be happier if we were wealthier.
(e) This is a good thing, because it leads us to struggle to become wealthier, thus
increasing the sum total of human happiness through mechanisms of exchanges and
division of labour.

Although in the 19th and 20th centuries he was satirised as a mouthpiece for business
interests (i.e. capitalism) he is considered one of the Enlightenment’s most original
and characteristic thinkers.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

What was more common was some form of deism, i.e. a belief in a God who created
a rational universe with natural laws but who no longer intervened in the course of
events. A good example of this belief is found in Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason
(1794).
Paine (1737-1809) was an unusually international man. He was born in England, but
became an American patriot and later a member of the French Convention, 1792-
1793. His most famous works are Common Sense and The Rights of Man, in both of
which he justifies revolution. In The Age of Reason Paine placed himself within the
tradition of Enlightenment thought and summarised his religious views. Paine’s
religious views were: (a) He believed in one God, and no more; and hoped for
happiness beyond the life he lived on earth; and (b) He believed in the equality of
man, he believed that religious duties consisted in doing justice, showing loving
mercy, and endeavouring to make fellow creatures happy. He declared that there were
also things he did not believe and had his reasons for not believing them. For
example, he did not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish, Roman, Greek,
Turkish and Protestant Churches or any Church that he knew of. He declared that his
own mind was his own Church. According to Paine, all national institutions of
churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish were nothing but human inventions
set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolise power and profit. He stated that
his declaration was not meant to condemn those who believed otherwise because they
had the same right to their belief as he had his.

Cesare Beccaria (1735-1794)

The philosophy of Enlightenment was manifest in analyses of social and political

institutions. One of the most influential calls for enlightened reform came from
Cesare Beccaria, who was an Italian aristocrat and government official. In On
Crimes and Punishments (1764), he severely criticised the criminology (i.e. the
scientific study of crimes and criminals) and penology (the scientific study of the
punishment of crimes and the prison system) of the Ancien Regime and suggested
reforms. The authoritative work influenced many reforms during the 18th and early
19th centuries. Some of Beccaria’s views were particularly modern. He believed, for
example, that it was better to prevent crimes than to punish them and that this should
be the real aim of every good legislation. He believed that in order to prevent crime, it
was important that the laws were clear and simple and that the entire force of a nation
was united in their defence, with no group working against them. The laws were not
to favour classes of men, but men themselves; and men were to fear the laws and

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nothing else. Another way to prevent crime was by rewarding virtue, the way
academics that discovered scientific truths were rewarded. The surest but most
difficult way to prevent crime was by perfecting education.

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

Rousseau was, perhaps, the single most important Enlightenment writer and also
perhaps the best-known of all the philosophes. More than anyone else, he tested the
outer limits of Enlightenment thought and went on to criticise its very foundations.
However, some people say that he merely recycled older Enlightenment ideas.
104. As a philosopher, he is famous for his books, The Social Contract, Emile,
Discourse on the Origin of Inequality and Confessions. He was born in Geneva,
Switzerland, the son of a watchmaker. His mother died a few days after his birth. His
father abandoned him when he was ten, and left him with relatives and friends. He
was brought up a Calvinist and had no regular schooling though he was encouraged to
develop an interest in reading serious books. In the 1740s, he appeared in Paris and
ended up spending much of his life in France (mainly in Paris), where he became one
of the philosophes who contributed to the Encyclopaedia. He was important not
merely for his ideas but for his passionate rhetoric, which enflamed a generation and
beyond. Although he believed in the general objectives of the Enlightenment, he
distrusted reason and science. He believed in human impulse and intuition, trusted
emotions rather than thought, the heart rather than the mind. His being shunned by the
upper class people encouraged his hatred for the Ancien Regime. He summed up the
major problem that he tackled most of his life in the first sentence of The Social
Contract (1762), his most famous and also his most important political work in which
he provided a blueprint for the ideal society, in contrast to his earlier books, Emile
and The Origin of Inequality. The Social Contract starts with the famous opening line:
“Man is born free but everywhere is in chains.” The central concept in Rousseau’s
thought was liberty, and most of his work dealt with the mechanisms through which
humans were forced to give up their liberty.

At the core of his thought on government and authority was the idea of the social
contract, in which government and authority are a mutual contract between the
authorities and the governed. This contract implies that the governed agree to be ruled
only so that their rights, property and happiness should be protected by their rulers.
Once rulers cease to protect the ruled, the social contract is broken and the governed
are free to choose another set of rulers. This idea became the primary animating force
in the Declaration of Independence, which was more or less a legal document
outlining a breach of contract suit. In fact, all modern liberation discourse at some
level or another owes its origin to the Social Contract and Rousseau’s earlier treatise,
The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality published in 1754. The Discourse on the
Origin of Inequality outlines all the key ideas that were to greatly influence modern
culture: (a) the idea of the noble savage, i.e. the happiest state of humankind is a
middle state between completely wild and completely civilised; (b) the idea of social
contract; (c) the nature of human distinctions; (d) the criticism of property; and (e) the
nature of human freedom. But Rousseau also undermined Enlightenment thought by
arguing that social institutions had corrupted people and that human beings in the
state of nature were more pure, freer and happier than in modern civilisation. This line
of thought provided a foundation for the growth of Romanticism in the 18th and early
19th centuries.

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The French Enlightenment exerted a powerful influence on English thought. Many
young upper-class Englishmen visited France to complete their education. Among
them were three leading English thinkers: Adam SMITH (1723-1790), the Scottish
father of modern economics; David Hume (1711-1766), the best-known English
sceptic; and Jeremy BENTHAM (1748-1832), the founder of utilitarian philosophy.

Baron Charles de Montesquieu (1689-1755)

Baron Charles de Montesquieu had inherited a fortune and time to write and he mixed
with Parisian higher society, where he proved himself as a good conversationalist.
Baron de Montesquieu was one of the greatest philosophes who brilliantly pioneered
the method of writing novels, plays and so on, when he wrote The Persian Letters, an
extremely influential social satire published in 1721. He satirized French society. He
criticized France’s monarchical absolutism and the Church because like many
members of the high French nobility, he was dismayed that royal absolutism had
triumphed in France under Louis XIV. He offended authorities with his views, but
that added to his popularity. He was a Catholic who believed that people should think
for themselves. In his other work, The Spirit of Laws (1748), he argued that despotism
could be avoided if there was a separation of powers, with political power divided
and shared by a variety of classes and legal estates holding unequal rights and
privileges. A strong, independent upper class was especially important, according to
Montesquieu, because in order to prevent the abuse of power, it was necessary that by
the arrangement of things, power checked power. (Today we say “Checks and
balances.”) Montesquieu greatly admired the English balance of power among the
king, the houses of Parliament, and the independent courts. He believed that in France
the thirteen (13) high courts – the parlements – were frontline defenders of liberty
against royal despotism. Montesquieu was clearly not a democrat because he showed
apprehension about the uneducated poor, but his theory of separation of powers had
a great impact on the wealthy and educated people of France. The constitutions of the
young United States in 1789 and of France in 1791 were based in large part on this
theory.

Women and the Enlightenment

Although the Enlightenment was dominated by men, there were possibilities for
active involvement by women. The Enlightenment did not only affect Englishmen,
such as Smith, Hume and Bentham, it also affected English women. Hannah
MOORE and a number of lady intellectuals known as bluestockings maintained a
conservative imitation of the French salons after the 1770s. One atypical
bluestocking was Catherine MACAULAY (1731-1791), a leading historian who
published eight widely acclaimed volumes on the Stuart period. She was a republican
defender of the American and French Revolutions who exerted a lot of influence on
Mary Wollstonecraft. Several women played particularly important roles as patrons
and intellectual contributors to the gatherings of philosophes and members of the
upper middle class and aristocratic elite held in the salons of Paris and elsewhere.

It was, however, far more difficult for a woman to publish serious essays in the
Enlightenment traditions. In fact, Enlightenment thinkers did little to change basic
attitudes about the inferiority of women. One person who managed to do both was

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Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797). Her life symbolised the Enlightenment and the
emerging English feminist movement. Born in poverty and burdened by a dependent
family, Wollstonecraft became a teacher and a successful professional writer.
Wollstonecraft was personally acquainted with leading English radicals, including
Richard Price, Thomas Paine, and William Godwin (1756-1836), whom she later
married. In 1792 she published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, a sharply
reasoned attack against the oppression of women and an argument for educational
change. The book is also seen as the first serious answer to Edmund Burke’s diatribe
against the French Revolution, which Wollstonecraft personally observed and
ardently supported.

Women in the salons

Parisian women established the institution of the salon by the last quarter of the 17th
century (i.e. c.1675). Aspiring hostesses competed to attract the talented, the witty,
and the powerful to their homes. By 1750, Madame Geoffrin of Paris was a leading
saloniere, and in her home, she brought together the brightest and most talented
people of her day. She became the most prominent of the salonieres. Other famous
salonieres were Mademoiselle Julie de Lespinasse and Madame du Chatelet. The
new social circles, which were outside the powerful French court and frequently in
opposition to it, offered women a new possibility. It was the possibility of being a
saloniere, who by her graciousness and skill enabled conversation to flourish, artists
to find patrons, and aristocrats to be entertained. This was the exciting challenge to
these women. As a saloniere, a woman brought the circles of power into her home. In
the environment she created, she could help or hinder not only artistic and literary
reputations, but political policies as well.

The financial remedies for France’s economy were debated in the salons; the king’s
choices of ministers were strongly influenced by the backing of powerful salonieres.
Salonieres were privy (i.e. were allowed to know them) to court secrets; salons were
frequented by statesmen and ambassadors as well as intellectuals and artists.
Salonieres could make or break careers and often provided havens for new political
philosophies and the new political opposition to the monarchy.

In the environment of the salon, therefore, opportunities were many for an

enterprising woman, for example, a woman could meet and marry a man of superior
social rank or wealth. The hallmarks of Enlightenment culture were rational
conversation, sociability between women and men, and delight in the pleasures of this
world. The men who mingled with the Bluestockings and frequented the salons were
the men who produced the Enlightenment. (Bluestockings are women who have
superior literary tastes and intellectual interests.) It is considered a tragedy for women
that these Enlightenment men, who were aided, sponsored, and lionised by the
salonieres, produced, with very few exceptions, art and writing which either ignored
women completely or upheld (supported) the most traditional views of womanhood.

So, just as there was no Renaissance or Scientific Revolution for women, in the
sense that the goals and ideals of those movements were perceived as applicable only
to men, there was no Enlightenment for women. Enlightenment thinkers questioned
all the traditional limits on men, and indeed challenged the validity of tradition itself.
They championed the rights of commoners, citizens, slaves, Jews, Indians and

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children, but not those of women. Instead, often at great cost to their own logic and
rationality, they continued to reaffirm the most ancient inherited traditions about
women. These traditions said women were inferior to men in the important areas of
reason and ethics, and so should be subordinated to men.

In philosophy and in art, men of the Enlightenment upheld the traditional ideal of the
woman: she was one who should be silent, obedient, subservient, modest, and chaste.
The saloniere, who was witty, independent, powerful, well-read, and sometimes
libertine (i.e. someone immoral, especially in sexual matters and does not care about
the offence or harm they may cause) was condemned and mocked. A few
Enlightenment thinkers e.g. Thomas Hobbes and John Locke mildly questioned the
idea that women were naturally subordinate to men. D’Alembert thought female
limitations resulted from women’s degradation by society. Montesquieu saw absolute
monarchy as the cause for women’s lack of status. However, those who argued that
women should be given a bigger role did not go far. They aroused anger, and then
were ignored. As far as the philosophers and writers were concerned, women were
inferior, a view clearly articulated by Rousseau in his book, Emile.

Enlightened despots

It was believed that the Enlightenment influenced not only writers and philosophers,
but also the rulers of Europe. The rulers who were interested in the new thought of the
period were called Enlightened Despots. Enlightened despots were absolute rulers
who used their power to bring about political and social change. The Enlightened
Despots were rulers such as Emperor Joseph II and Empress Maria Theresa of
Austria, Catherine the Great of Russia and Frederick II of Prussia. Historians
have for a long time debated exactly how much the Enlightenment influenced
monarchs of the time. Traditionally there has been considerable acceptance of the
view that monarchs such as Joseph II of Austria and Frederick II of Prussia were
enlightened.

In recent years this view has been seriously narrowed and questioned to the point
where many historians feel that enlightened despotism and enlightened absolutism
are no longer terms that can usefully be applied to these 18th century monarchs. It has
been argued that whatever the enlightened despots tried to do, follow to some extent,
traditional channels. With a few exceptions, the enlightened despots hoped to achieve
their goals by increasing their own authority and the power of the central government
in their states. Most of the enlightened despots merely carried on the work started by
their predecessors.

Achievements of the age of Enlightenment

As we have tried to show, the Enlightenment owes its substance to the thought of a
relatively small group of 18th century philosophers who came from many countries but
were centred in France. Although they often argued among themselves, there was a
set of approaches and propositions upon which most of them agreed. As a result, there
emerged a moral outlook distinct from that of the previous age. The 18 th century
philosophers popularised general rules of conduct which in time were widely accepted
in most civilised societies.

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The points upon which the philosophers agreed were as follows: (i)They made
aggressive war look repulsive and mocked the ideal of military glory. (ii) They
preached religious toleration, free speech, and a free press. (iii) They were in
favour of the sanction s of law to protect individual liberties and they were against
tyranny, which governed by caprice (unexpected and unpredictable change in
someone’s behaviour, which you have no control over). (iv)They wanted equality of
all citizens before the law and they were opposed to any recognition of social
distinctions (classes) when men were brought to justice. (v) They abhorred torture and
other barbaric punishments and pleaded for their abolition. (vi) They believed that
punishment should fit the crime and should be imposed only to restrain potential
offenders. (vii) They wanted freedom of movement across state boundaries
both for individuals and items of trade. (viii) Most of them believed that it did not
require the threat of eternal torment in hell to make moral ideas generally accepted
among mankind. (ix) They were convinced that a good number of men, if their
natural goodness was not perverted in childhood, could follow simple, clear rules and
be good citizens without the necessity of imposing harsh punishments on them.

In summary, it can be said that although the philosophes did not solve the problem of
the existence of evil and suffering in the world, the Enlightenment achieved a number
of things such as:

(a) Establishing in European society a general consensus about behaviour which

is evil. This is a moral attitude which still guides Europe.
(b) Although the behaviour of some of the philosophes towards some of the
European despots was subservient and some of their doctrines supported social
anarchy and exhibited absolute self-interest, they led to the formulation of a
set of moral principles which to this day remain basic to any discussion of
human rights.
(c) The short-comings of their optimistic moral and political outlook are now
clear, but they provided the first brave examination of reality since the Greeks.

(d) Another achievement was that they also brought out brand new ideas about
man and the universe. They taught their contemporaries to look at the
institutions of church and state in the light of reason and to judge them by the
simple criterion of whether or not they brought happiness to the people.
(e) Religious thinkers repeatedly say the Enlightenment is dead, while Marxists
denounce it for promoting capitalist ideals at the expense of workers.
However, the Enlightenment is even more alive today as it left a lasting
heritage for future generations. The notions of human rights it developed are
powerfully attractive to oppressed peoples everywhere. They appeal to the
same notion of natural law that inspired Voltaire and Thomas Jefferson very
much. Enlightenment served as the model for political and economic
liberalism and for humanitarian reform throughout the 19th century Western
world.
(f) Rousseau’s notions of self-rule are ideals accepted the world over to the extent
that dictators are no longer welcome anywhere.
(g) As a result of the Enlightenment, religious tolerance is now encouraged.
Enlightenment marked a key stage in the decline of the church and the growth
of modern secularism.

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 (h) Enlightenment was the watershed (i.e. turning point) for the widespread belief
in the possibility and the necessity of progress that survived, even if it was in a
weakened form, into the 20th century and now the 21st century.
(i) The Enlightenment is usually said to have ended with the French Revolution
in 1789. Indeed, some people see the social and political ferment of this period
as being responsible for the Revolution. The Revolution embodied many of
the ideals of the philosophes, but critics see the Enlightenment as having been
a fantasy that collapsed amid the more violent stages of the French Revolution
(1792-94) that served to discredit the ideals of the philosophes in the eyes of
many European contemporaries and was swept away by Romanticism.

A point that causes division in interpretation among historians of the Enlightenment

concerns the question how modern and secular the philosophes were. 19th and early
20th century Historians argued that the philosophes were more modern than medieval.
They also argued that the philosophes drew more from the classical pagan world than
from the medieval world. This view still predominates among historians of the period.
During the latter 18th century certain changes in emphasis emerged in Enlightenment
thought. Under the influence of Rousseau, sentiment and emotion became as
respectable as reason. In the 1770s writers broadened their field of criticism to include
political and economic issues. The experience of the American Revolution was, in this
regard, very important. In the eyes of Europeans, the Declaration of Independence and
the Revolutionary War in America signalled that for the first time, some individuals
were going beyond mere discussion of enlightened ideas and were actually putting
them in practice. The American Revolution (1776) probably encouraged attacks and
criticisms against existing European regimes.

Friday E. Mulenga, PhD

27th April 2020

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