Often called Enlightenment , the 18th century was marked by the cultural movement of the same name, which flourished partly in reaction to the religious conflicts of the previous century. The expression "Age of Enlightenment" is frequently used by writers of the time, convinced that they had just emerged from a long period of darkness and ignorance and entered a new age illuminated by reason, science and respect for humanity. Rationalists and humanists, the Enlightenment philosophers were not democrats, however, advocating instead "enlightened despotism". In France, this movement is carried by the writings of Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau and by the encyclopedia of Diderot and d'Alembert.
Europe in the Age of Enlightenment
In the 1730s and 1740s, several dynastic wars tore the continent apart, while Austria and then Russia began to reconquer the territories that had fallen into the hands of the Ottomans. The "Seven Years' War" (1756-1763) united France, Austria and Russia against Great Britain and the then expanding Kingdom of Prussia. Forced to cede most of these colonial colonies to England, France, which remained one of the leading European powers, responded by taking up the cause of the American colonies during their war of independence. In Eastern Europe, Poland broke up between Russia and Prussia and Austria, ceased to exist as a sovereign state in 1795.
It's up to its third king, Frederick the Great , who reigned from 1740 to 1786, that Prussia owes its rise. A talented military strategist, he aroused as much admiration for his exploits as hatred for his excessive ambitions. Passionate about art, music and philosophy, Frederick II was the first European sovereign to advocate public education and universal religious tolerance. The majority of European sovereigns of the time reigned as absolute monarchs, supporters of religious conformity and protectors of aristocratic privileges.
Almost everywhere in Europe, the practice of serfdom continued to tie peasants to the land, hampering innovations. In France, the Ancien Régime maintained a conservative social order , dominated by the monarchy is supported by the church. Although prosperous, numerous and in full expansion, the middle class remained excluded from power, whose pulse continued to beat at the court of Versailles. Gradually, brilliant intellectuals, such as the philosopher and essayist Voltaire, attacked the repression exerted by the Catholic Church and tried to convince the leaders to introduce progressive reforms in order to abolish serfdom and the practice of torture.
Dare to know
In terms of ideas, this century was marked by a rise in rationalist thought, the scientific spirit taking precedence over metaphysical reflection:it is a question of discovering the laws of the functioning of matter or human societies, through observations free from dogmatic a priori. This new philosophy affirms its faith in reason and in the progress of humanity and leads to the encyclopedist movement hosted by Diderot and d'Alembert (encyclopedia or dictionary of arts and crafts sciences ). This collective work, which seeks to free itself from the enormous weight of religion and the censorship of conservative political power, also illustrates the rise of new social classes, in opposition to the traditional aristocracy.
More than a set of specific ideas, the Enlightenment is an attitude, a method of thought. According to Immanuel Kant, the watchword of the century must be “dare to know”:the desire to re-examine and question all received ideas and values, to explore new ideas in different directions, must be permanent. This deliberate openness to all fields of knowledge is not without causing inconsistencies and contradictions in the writings of Enlightenment thinkers. These are not all philosophers properly speaking; rather, they are popularizers committed to disseminating new ideas. They like to call themselves the "party of humanity" and, to curry favor with public opinion, write anonymous pamphlets and tracts and write articles for newly created journals and newspapers. P>
The limits of criticism
These thinkers, however, were neither the heralds of 19th century society nor "pre-revolutionaries":Voltaire spent his life trying to be accepted by the high nobility, dreaming than "enlightened despotism" and shows worrying anti-Semitism and racism; Denis Diderot and, even more so, J.-J. Rousseau, with their hymn to “natural” man, uncorrupted by modern society, are as much part of pre-Romantic sensibility as they are of the modernist scientific current; the Physiocrats are above all preoccupied with the development of agriculture and commerce, and take no interest in new productive techniques, while the industrial revolution is brewing in Great Britain; nowhere (except in Rousseau) does a serious reflection on social inequalities or on the fate of the poorest appear either. Only Condorcet proposes "progressive" reforms, which will be applied later.
Ultimately, these authors express the limits of the development of thought stemming from circles influenced by the economic boom of the century, but also by the social upheavals it entailed. But, for the time being, this “eighteenth century of the Enlightenment” is only the culmination of the transformations specific to “feudal-mercantile society”; Yet it is from this bubbling of ideas and these reflections on social imperfections that the modes of thought that will dominate the revolutionary period will emerge.
The Age of Enlightenment in France
France is the epicenter of Enlightenment thought. The political philosopher and jurist Charles de Montesquieu was one of its first representatives:after several satirical works on the setbacks of Western civilization, he published his monumental study, De l'esprit des lois (1748).
François-marie Arrouet August 1694 1788, dit Voltaire , is another emblematic figure of lights. One of the greatest French writers, he devoted his life to castigating tyranny, intolerance and injustice. His sharp mind earned him several stays in the Bastille and nearly thirty years of exile, part of which was in Great Britain, a country he admired for its freedom of thought. In the 1750s, Frederick II of Prussia offered him asylum in his palace at Sanssouci. Voltaire also maintained a regular correspondence with Catherine II, Empress of Russia.
An unshakeable faith in the dignity of man, not as a subject of the king but as an individual, underpinned the thinking of the Enlightenment philosophers. The success of the American Revolution, supported by France, only reinforced their convictions. It is in the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau that these ideas found their fullest expression. His political treatises, in particular "Du Contrat Social" (1762), emphasize individual freedom, and helped to forge the intellectual context in which the great debates of the revolution were to develop. Moreover, Rousseau's approach to nature cleared the ground on which early 19 th Romanticism would flourish. century.
The intellectual movement of the Enlightenment is distinguished by its profoundly cosmopolitan and anti-nationalist character. Emmanuel Kant in Germany, David Hume in Scotland, Cesare Beccaria in Italy and Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson in the British colonies in America, all maintain close contacts with French philosophers, while themselves actively collaborating in the movement. /P>
The triumph of Enlightenment ideas
During the first half of the 18th century, several leading Enlightenment leaders were imprisoned for their writings, and most of them had to endure government censorship and attacks from the 'Church. The last decades of the century were, however, marked by the triumph of Enlightenment ideas in Europe and America. In the 1770s, second-generation philosophers received government pensions and took control of prestigious cultural institutions.
The dramatic increase in the number of journals and books published guarantees wide dissemination of their ideas. Scientific experiments and philosophical writings are fashionable in many social strata, even among the nobility and the clergy. A number of European monarchs also adopted some of the ideas or, at least, the vocabulary of the Enlightenment. Voltaire and other philosophers, fond of the idea of the philosopher king enlightening the people from above, enthusiastically welcomed the appearance of the so-called "enlightened despots":Frederick II of Prussia, Catherine II the Great of Russia and Joseph II of Austria.
Then, towards the end of the 18th century, significant changes occurred in Enlightenment thought. Under the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, feeling and emotion become as respectable as reason. In the 1770s, writers extended the scope of their criticism to political and economic questions. The American War of Independence (1776-1783), in which the France of Louis XVI participated, did not fail to strike the spirits. In the eyes of Europeans, the declaration of independence and the revolutionary war represented, for the first time, the implementation of “enlightened” ideas and encouraged political movements directed against the established regimes in Europe.
The Age of Enlightenment culminated in the French Revolution of 1789. However, in its violent phases between 1792 and 1794, the Revolution temporarily discredited the ideals embodied by the Enlightenment. However, this period bequeaths a lasting legacy to the 19th and 20th centuries:the 18th century marks the decline of the Church, opens the way to political and economic liberalism, and brings about democratic changes in the Western world of the 19th century. The Age of Enlightenment thus appears both as an intellectual movement and a historical period marked by decisive events.
Bibliography
- The Europe of Enlightenment by Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire. 2004, PUF.
- The Age of Enlightenment by Alejo Carpentier. Folio, 1977.