Early modern Europe · c. 1685–1800
The Enlightenment
Human reason, freely and publicly used, can criticise tradition and authority and make human life better.
Can reason free humanity from superstition and tyranny?
Newton’s physics seemed to show that the universe obeys knowable laws, and Locke’s philosophy that the mind is formed by experience and education. In eighteenth-century France, Britain and beyond, writers in salons, coffee houses and a growing press turned these ideas against censorship, religious persecution and absolute monarchy.
If nature runs on discoverable laws, so may society, morals and government; customs that cannot justify themselves before reason have no claim to obedience. And if people are shaped by their surroundings rather than born corrupt, better laws, education and knowledge can make them freer and happier.
- Knowledge should be gathered, organised and shared with everyone.
- Religious toleration and free expression are essential to a decent society.
- Power is safest when divided so that power checks power.
It left the ideals of human rights, toleration, separation of powers and progress through science — and the long line of critiques, from Romanticism to the Frankfurt School, of what its reason overlooked.
Thinkers
1689–1755MontesquieuFrench magistrate who compared the laws of many nations1694–1778VoltaireFrench writer who campaigned against intolerance and fanaticism1713–1784Denis DiderotChief editor of the Encyclopédie, materialist and critic1723–1790Adam SmithScottish moral philosopher and founder of political economyKey texts
Where it came from
Grew out ofBritish empiricismVoltaire’s Letters on the English (1733) presented Locke and Newton to France as models of a modest, experimental reason.Grew out of
Social contract theoryLocke’s theory of consent and rights, and later Rousseau’s popular sovereignty, gave critics of absolute monarchy their political language.Grew out of
RationalismDescartes’ method of doubt and Spinoza’s critical reading of the Bible taught that tradition and scripture must answer to reason.
What it led to
Carried on byKant’s critical philosophyKant’s essay “What Is Enlightenment?” (1784) defined the movement as daring to use one’s own understanding, and his ethics of autonomy carried its ideals.Carried on by
UtilitarianismBentham took the “greatest happiness” formula and the drive for rational legal reform from Enlightenment writers such as Beccaria and Helvétius.Opposed by
MarxismMarx turned the political economy of Adam Smith into a critique: the labour that creates value is exploited.Opposed by
Critical theory (Frankfurt School)Dialectic of Enlightenment argued that reason bent on mastering nature can turn into domination over people.Carried on by
Feminist philosophyWollstonecraft claimed the Enlightenment’s universal reason and rights for women.Borrowed by
Neo-Vedānta & modern Indian thoughtReformers from Ram Mohan Roy onward adopted Enlightenment ideals of reason, universal religion and social reform, recasting Vedānta to meet missionary and rationalist critiques.