18th century philosophy

The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries with global influences and effects. The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on the value of human happiness, the pursuit of knowledge obtained by means of reason and the evidence of the senses, and ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, and constitutional government.

The Enlightenment was preceded by the Scientific Revolution and the work of Francis Bacon, John Locke, and others. Some date the beginning of the Enlightenment to the publication of René Descartes' ''Discourse on the Method'' in 1637, featuring his famous dictum, ''Cogito, ergo sum'' ("I think, therefore I am"). Others cite the publication of Isaac Newton's ''Principia Mathematica'' (1687) as the culmination of the Scientific Revolution and the beginning of the Enlightenment. European historians traditionally date its beginning with the death of Louis XIV of France in 1715 and its end with the 1789 outbreak of the French Revolution. Many historians now date the end of the Enlightenment as the start of the 19th century, with the latest proposed year being the death of Immanuel Kant in 1804.

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 Catholic Church and paved the way for the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries. A variety of 19th-century movements, including liberalism, communism, and neoclassicism, trace their intellectual heritage to the Enlightenment.

The central doctrines of the Enlightenment were individual liberty and religious tolerance, in opposition to an absolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas of the Church. The principles of sociability and utility also played an important role in circulating knowledge useful to the improvement of society at large. The Enlightenment was marked by an increasing awareness of the relationship between the mind and the everyday media of the world, and by an emphasis on the scientific method and reductionism, along with increased questioning of religious orthodoxy—an attitude captured by Immanuel Kant's essay '' Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment'', where the phrase ''Sapere aude'' (Dare to know) can be found.

Important intellectuals

The Age of Enlightenment was preceded by and closely associated with the Scientific Revolution. Earlier philosophers whose work influenced the Enlightenment included Francis Bacon and René Descartes. Some of the major figures of the Enlightenment included Cesare Beccaria, Denis Diderot, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, John Locke, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Hugo Grotius, Baruch Spinoza, and Voltaire.Jeremy Black, "Ancien Regime and Enlightenment. Some Recent Writing on Seventeenth-and Eighteenth-Century Europe," ''European History Quarterly'' 22.2 (1992): 247–55.

One particularly influential Enlightenment publication was the ' (''Encyclopedia''). Published between 1751 and 1772 in thirty-five volumes, it was compiled by Denis Diderot, Jean le Rond d'Alembert, and a team of 150 other intellectuals. The ''Encyclopédie'' helped in spreading the ideas of the Enlightenment across Europe and beyond.

Other landmark publications of the Enlightenment included Voltaire's '' Letters on the English'' (1733) and ''Dictionnaire philosophique'' (''Philosophical Dictionary''; 1764); Hume's '' A Treatise of Human Nature'' (1740); Montesquieu's ''The Spirit of the Laws'' (1748); 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 Kant's '' Critique of Pure Reason'' (1781).

Topics

Philosophy

Francis Bacon's empiricism and René Descartes' rationalist philosophy laid the foundation for enlightenment thinking. Descartes attempt to construct the sciences on a secure metaphysical foundation was not as successful as his method of doubt applied in philosophic areas leading to a dualistic doctrine of mind and matter. His skepticism was refined by John Locke's ''Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' (1690) and David Hume's writings in the 1740s. His dualism was challenged by Spinoza's uncompromising assertion of the unity of matter in his ''Tractatus'' (1670) and ''Ethics'' (1677).

According to Jonathan Israel, 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 philosophic and scientific activity challenging traditional doctrines and dogmas. The philosophical 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 and founding figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, 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 Hutcheson's protégés in Edinburgh, Scotland, 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 Antoine Lavoisier

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