The Long Eighteenth

Century:
The cultural and sociopolitical timeline
 The Age of Enlightenment. Periodization

The Long Eighteenth Century: The cultural and sociopolitical timeline.

• It is a period of time that extends from roughly the 1660s to 1815 (the Battle of
Waterloo) or, for other historians, to the 1830s.

• It is a historical period defined naturally by the events and forces happening within
the period than by the more artificial means of the calendar. A cultural and historical
period, in other words, never starts on January 1st. As you can see below, centuries
overlap and intersect. Yet, the attributive ‘long’ may not imply that the century in
question was essentially a monolithic age. In this sense there is not a single eighteenth
century; there are a number of different, similar, contradictive and mutually exclusive
eighteenth centuries, not identical for all Western European countries.
 The Age of Enlightenment. Periodization

The Renaissance The ‘Long’ The ‘Long’ The Short Twentieth

Eighteenth Century Nineteenth Century Century

Late 15th century – 1660s 1660/88 – 1815/30s 1789 – 1914 1914/18 – 1989/91
The Age of Enlightenment. Periodization

A number of appellations appear to designate overlapping and contradictory trends

and movements in this ‘long’ eighteenth century.
• The Restoration (1660 -- 1700)
• Augustan Age (Augustan poetry, Augustan satire)
• Neoclassicism (= Restoration, the Augustan Age, the Age of Johnson)
• Sentimentalism
• Age of Sensibility
• The Age of Reason
• The Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment. Periodization
The Age of Enlightenment. Periodization
 The Age of Enlightenment. Periodization

• The core concept of the age is reason that delineated a method of looking
at the world. Reason was the critical tool for independent thinking and
critical assessment through empirical evidence (based on observations,
experiments and measurement tools); by the empiricists, it was ‘the source
and test of knowledge’ that saw truth to be grasped primarily as deductive
and intellectual rather than as sensory or intuitive for there are intrinsic
laws that need to be perceived only through the work of the mind.
 The Age of Enlightenment. Periodization

• Francis Bacon’s empiricism, Rene Descartes’ rationalism, and Isaac Newton’s mechanism
[1] set the tone of this method and outlined the philosophical origins, the visions, and
the framework of the whole age. It was not a method applied to sciences only, it was a
method to shape the worldview of eighteenth-century thinkers and writers. This
essentially optimistic outlook that scholars have identified with progress and have
labelled as the age of ‘scientific revolution’ meets a critical response. In Dialectic of
Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, for
example, point out that the historical Enlightenment dialectically also allowed a
“subjection to technical rationality and an impersonal system of administration.” [2]

[1] see Joanna Boehnert, 'Ecological Theory in Design,' Routledge Theory of Sustainable Design, ed. Rachel Beth Egenhoefer.
[2] http://thoughtleader.co.za/bertolivier/2012/10/16/what-is-enlightenment.
 The Age of Enlightenment. Periodization

• Let us first consider a definition from Encyclopaedia Britannica:

• Enlightenment, French, siècle des Lumières (literally “century of the
Enlightened”), German Aufklärung, a European intellectual movement
of the 17th and 18th centuries in which ideas concerning God, reason,
nature, and humanity were synthesized into a worldview that gained wide
assent in the West and that instigated revolutionary developments in art,
philosophy, and politics. Central to Enlightenment thought were the use
and celebration of reason, the power by which humans understand the
universe and improve their own condition. The goals of rational humanity
were considered to be knowledge, freedom, and happiness.

• The Heroes of the Enlightenment, Part 1:

• https://archive.org/details/BBCHeroesOfTheEnlightenment
 The Age of Enlightenment. Periodization

• The Enlightenment is probably best described in Immanuel Kant’s essay “Was ist Aufklärung?” (1784)

• Enlightenment is man's emergence [‘escape’, in another translation] from

his self-imposed [also ‘self-incurred’] nonage [in another translation
‘immaturity’ as well as ‘tutelage,’ i.e. the condition of ‘not [being] of age’].
Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's
guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of
understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind
without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) “Have the
courage to use your own understanding,” is therefore the motto of the
enlightenment.
 The Age of Reason
Liberalism vs Conservativism
Individualism
Capitalism & Social stratification
Reason
Francis Bacon, 1620s
Rene Descartes, 1641
John Locke, 1690s
Physics
Natural Sciences
Sciences Medicine
(challenged the nature of divine superintendence) Engineering
The Age of Enlightenment. Key Figures

• Key figures whose work shaped the mindset and framework of the rational,
empirical, experimental method of observation and independent originality
which is to define the ethical and scientific parameters of the
Enlightenment in the eighteenth century.
René Descartes

• René Descartes’ rationalist system of philosophy: Rationalism and the

Enlightenment
• In his The Rise of the Novel (1957), Ian Watt makes the following observation:
The greatness of Descartes was primarily one of method, of the thoroughness of
his determination to accept nothing on trust; and his Discourse on Method (1637)
and his Meditations did much to bring about the modern assumption whereby
the pursuit of truth is conceived of as a wholly individual matter, logically
independent of the tradition of past thought, and indeed as more likely to be
arrived at by a departure from it. The novel is the form of literature which most
fully reflects this individualist and innovating reorientation. (p. 12)
René Descartes

René Descartes’ rationalist system of philosophy.

- The method of doubt (an attitude characteristic of the Enlightenment)

• o the investigator : doubt all propositions that can be doubted.
• o An investigator : determine whether a proposition is dubitable –
• - a possible scenario
• - no other authority but one’s own conviction is to be trusted
• - skeptical questioning.

Doubt upon the senses as authoritative source of knowledge.

René Descartes
o The doctrine of the dualism of mind and body.
• Mind and body - two distinct substances, each with its own essence.
• § The material world, known through the senses: an “external” world
• § The problem of objectivity in empirical knowledge:
• - central epistemological problem (not only of the Enlightenment, but also of
modernity.

o All human knowledge - depends on metaphysical knowledge of God.

• § Though he grounds all scientific knowledge in metaphysical knowledge of God, his system
contributes significantly to the advance of natural science in C17.
• § His philosophy attacks the scholastic-Aristotelians, a hindrance in the way of the development of the
new science. [3]

[3] Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/enlightenment/#RatEnl.

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon’s New Organon (1620): Empiricism and the Enlightenment

Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum Scientiarum (1620):

• - reference to Aristotle’s Organon, the treatise on logic and syllogism.
• - In his New Organon: a new system of logic.
• - he considers novel and superior to the system of the ancients.
• - only empirical investigation and empirical evidence can bring
greater understanding of the physical world.
• - empiricism affected the practice of science and the theory of
knowledge
Francis Bacon
• With the seventeenth century rationalist metaphysical systems of Descartes, Spinoza and
Leibniz had tremendous influence on Enlightenment philosophy. The three empiricists –
Francis Bacon, John Locke, and Isaac Newton – however, marked the rise of empiricism
in the C17 and C18.
• The founder of the rationalist strain of the Enlightenment is Descartes.
• The founder of the empiricist strain is Francis Bacon (1561–1626).
• Though Bacon’s work belongs to the Renaissance, his revolutionary new system inspired
and influenced Enlightenment thinkers as it proposed a method of analytically examining
the world.
• The Enlightenment thus admired Bacon as “the father of experimental philosophy.”
 Francis Bacon
Bacon’s revolution (launched, among other works, in The New Organon, 1620)
involves conceiving the new science as

(1) founded on empirical observation and experimentation;

(2) arrived at through the method of induction; and

(3) seen to aim at (and be confirmed by) practical capacities (hence the
Baconian motto, “knowledge is power”).
 The Age of Enlightenment. Induction vs deduction

• - Whereas for C17 rationalists :: scientific knowledge of nature :: made in a system

which expresses the observable phenomena of nature by DEDUCTION from first
principles, known a priori,
• - Newton’s method :: observed phenomena of nature :: reduces its multiplicity to
unity by INDUCTION :: mathematical laws or principles from which the
observed phenomena can be derived or explained.
• The rise of modern science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries:
• - separation from the doctrines and methodology of theology;

• Natural science in the eighteenth century:

- proceeds to separate itself from metaphysics.
• https://archive.org/details/novumorganonora00kitcgoog
• https://archive.org/stream/novumorganonora00kitcgoog#page/n40/mode/2up
John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

• another foundational text of the Enlightenment.
• The source of its influence is the epistemological rigor
• anti-metaphysical.
• examines the human understanding to determine the limits of human
knowledge;
• a pattern of Enlightenment epistemology.
• For Locke – the source of all our ideas (i.e. the ideas out of which human
knowledge is constructed) in the senses
• argues against the rationalists’ doctrine of innate ideas.
 The Age of Enlightenment. Periodization

• The goal of Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) is:

- to establish epistemological foundations for the new science by examining

the scope and limitations of human knowledge
- to oppose uncritical belief, borrowed opinion, and mere superstition.
- Locke applied the Baconian methods to the pursuit of his own philosophical
aims. [4]

[4] Adapted from the following source: Garth Kemerling, ‘Locke: The Origin of Ideas,’ The Philosophy Pages. Last modified
12 November 2011.
 Descartes
Rationalism, method of doubt, deduction from first
principles, innate ideas
Descartes
& Bacon
Bacon
Empiricism, observation, experimental philosophy,
inductive reasoning, method of induction, scientific
method, systematic observations, investigative
method, rejection of medieval Aristotelianism, no
innate ideas according to Locke
 Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

• Like Bacon, this is how Locke views the independence of thinking. Consider, for example, Chapter III. Other
considerations concerning Innate Principles, both Speculative and Practical, BOOK I: Neither Principles nor Ideas
Are Innate, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690):
• 24. Men must think and know for themselves […]. This I am certain, I have not made it my
business either to quit or follow any authority in the ensuing Discourse. Truth has been my only aim; and
wherever that has appeared to lead, my thoughts have impartially followed, without minding whether the
footsteps of any other lay that way or not. Not that I want a due respect to other men's opinions; but, after
all, the greatest reverence is due to truth: and I hope it will not be thought arrogance to say, that perhaps
we should make greater progress in the discovery of rational and contemplative knowledge, if we sought it
in the fountain, in the consideration of things themselves; and made use rather of our own thoughts than
other men's to find it. For I think we may as rationally hope to see with other men's eyes, as to know by
other men's understandings. So much as we ourselves consider and comprehend of truth and reason, so
much we possess of real and true knowledge. The floating of other men's opinions in our brains, makes us
not one jot the more knowing, though they happen to be true. What in them was science, is in us but
opiniatrety; whilst we give up our assent only to reverend names, and do not, as they did, employ our own
reason to understand those truths which gave them reputation. Aristotle was certainly a knowing man,
but nobody ever thought him so because he blindly embraced, and confidently vented the opinions of
another. And if the taking up of another's principles, without examining them, made not him a
philosopher, I suppose it will hardly make anybody else so. In the sciences, every one has so much as he
really knows and comprehends. What he believes only, and takes upon trust, are but shreds; which,
however well in the whole piece, make no considerable addition to his stock who gathers them. Such
borrowed wealth, like fairy money, though it were gold in the hand from which he received it, will be but
leaves and dust when it comes to use.
Isaac Newton
• Isaac Newton:
• “But hitherto I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from
phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena
is to be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of
occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.” (Principia
Mathematica, “General Scholium”)

The foundation of Enlightenment epistemology is the

Baconian method, which defines the whole age that aimed at
scientific discoveries, order in society, and creative,
individualistic approach to the undiscovered.
 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno
In Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno make an
extensive definition of the Age of Enlightenment, showing its origins in Bacon’s 1620s treatise:
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 is
radiant with triumphant calamity. Enlightenment’s program was the disenchantment of the world. It
wanted to dispel myths, to overthrow fantasy with knowledge. Bacon, “the father of experimental
philosophy,” brought these motifs together. He despised the exponents of tradition, who substituted
belief for knowledge and were as unwilling to doubt as they were reckless in supplying answers. All
this, he said, stood in the way of “the happy match between the mind of man and the nature of things,”
with the result that humanity was unable to use its knowledge for the betterment of its condition.
Such inventions as had been made—Bacon cites printing, artillery, and the compass—had been arrived
at more by chance than by systematic enquiry into nature. Knowledge obtained through such enquiry
would not only be exempt from the influence of wealth and power but would establish man as the
master of nature:

Therefore, no doubt, the sovereignty of man lieth hid in knowledge; wherein many things are
reserved, which kings with their treasure cannot buy, nor with their force command; their spials
and intelligencers can give no news of them, their seamen and discoverers cannot sail where they
grow: now we govern nature in opinions, but we are thrall unto her in necessity: but if we would
be led by her in invention, we should command her by action.
 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno

Although not a mathematician, Bacon well understood the scientific temper which was to come after
him. The “happy match” between human understanding and the nature of things that he envisaged is
a patriarchal one: the mind, conquering superstition, is to rule over disenchanted nature. Knowledge,
which is power, knows no limits, either in its enslavement of creation or in its deference to worldly
masters. Just as it serves all the purposes of the bourgeois economy both in factories and on the
battlefield, it is at the disposal of entrepreneurs regardless of their origins. Kings control technology
no more directly than do merchants: it is as democratic as the economic system* with which it
evolved. Technology is the essence of this knowledge. It aims to produce neither concepts nor images,
nor the joy of understanding, but method, exploitation of the labor of others,* capital. […]
But the Enlightenment discerned the old powers in the Platonic and Aristotelian heritage of
metaphysics and suppressed the universal categories’ claims to truth as superstition. In the authority
of universal concepts the Enlightenment detected a fear of the demons through whose effigies human
beings had tried to influence nature in magic rituals. From now on matter was finally to be controlled
without the illusion of immanent powers or hidden properties. For enlightenment, anything which
does not conform to the standard of calculability and utility must be viewed with suspicion.
Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes dissimilar things comparable by reducing them to
abstract quantities. For the Enlightenment, anything which cannot be resolved into numbers, and
ultimately into one, is illusion; modern positivism consigns it to poetry. Unity remains the watchword
[…]. All gods and qualities must be destroyed.
 Kant’s ‘What is Enlightenment?’

• Kant’s ‘What is Enlightenment?’

As earlier said, the Enlightenment is probably best described in Immanuel Kant’s essay “Was ist
Aufklärung?” (1784). Let us consider again what Kant says about the Enlightenment.

Enlightenment is man's emergence [‘escape’, in another translation] from his

self-imposed [also ‘self-incurred’] nonage [in another translation ‘immaturity’
as well as ‘tutelage,’ i.e. the condition of ‘not [being] of age’]. Nonage is the
inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This
nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in
indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's
guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own
understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.
 Kant’s ‘What is Enlightenment?’

• Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large part of mankind gladly remain minors all
their lives, long after nature has freed them from external guidance. They are the reasons why it is
so easy for others to set themselves up as guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor. If I have a
book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet,
and so on—then I have no need to exert myself. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will
take care of that disagreeable business for me. Those guardians who have kindly taken supervision
upon themselves see to it that the overwhelming majority of mankind—among them the entire fair
sex—should consider the step to maturity, not only as hard, but as extremely dangerous. First, these
guardians make their domestic cattle stupid and carefully prevent the docile creatures from taking a
single step without the leading-strings to which they have fastened them. Then they show them the
danger that would threaten them if they should try to walk by themselves. Now this danger is really
not very great; after stumbling a few times they would, at last, learn to walk. However, examples of
such failures intimidate and generally discourage all further attempts.
• Thus it is very difficult for the individual to work himself out of the nonage which has become
almost second nature to him. He has even grown to like it, and is at first really incapable of using his
own understanding because he has never been permitted to try it. Dogmas and formulas, these
mechanical tools designed for reasonable use—or rather abuse—of his natural gifts, are the fetters of
an everlasting nonage. The man who casts them off would make an uncertain leap over the
narrowest ditch, because he is not used to such free movement. That is why there are only a few
men who walk firmly, and who have emerged from nonage by cultivating their own minds.
 Kant’s ‘What is Enlightenment?’

• […]
• This enlightenment requires nothing but freedom—and the most innocent
of all that may be called "freedom": freedom to make public use of one's
reason in all matters. Now I hear the cry from all sides: "Do not argue!"
The officer says: "Do not argue—drill!" The tax collector: "Do not argue—
pay!" The pastor: "Do not argue—believe!" Only one ruler in the world
says: "Argue as much as you please, but obey!" We find restrictions on
freedom everywhere. But which restriction is harmful to enlightenment?
Which restriction is innocent, and which advances enlightenment? I reply:
the public use of one's reason must be free at all times, and this alone can
bring enlightenment to mankind.
 Kant’s ‘What is Enlightenment?’
On the other hand, the private use of reason may frequently be narrowly restricted without
especially hindering the progress of enlightenment. By "public use of one's reason" I mean that
use which a man, as scholar, makes of it before the reading public. I call "private use" that use
which a man makes of his reason in a civic post that has been entrusted to him. […] This creates
an artificial unanimity which will serve the fulfillment of public objectives, or at least keep these
objectives from being destroyed. Here arguing is not permitted: one must obey. […] Thus it
would be very unfortunate if an officer on duty and under orders from his superiors should want
to criticize the appropriateness or utility of his orders. He must obey. But as a scholar he could
not rightfully be prevented from taking notice of the mistakes in the military service and from
submitting his views to his public for its judgment. The citizen cannot refuse to pay the taxes
levied upon him; indeed, impertinent censure of such taxes could be punished as a scandal that
might cause general disobedience. Nevertheless, this man does not violate the duties of a citizen
if, as a scholar, he publicly expresses his objections to the impropriety or possible injustice of
such levies. A pastor, too, is bound to preach to his congregation in accord with the doctrines of
the church which he serves, for he was ordained on that condition. But as a scholar he has full
freedom, indeed the obligation, to communicate to his public all his carefully examined and
constructive thoughts concerning errors in that doctrine and his proposals concerning
improvement of religious dogma and church institutions.
 The Age of Enlightenment. Periodization

Thank you!