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Adventures in Philosophy |
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Select: English Illuminism - French Illuminism - Voltaire - Denis Diderot Etienne Bonnot de Condillac - Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Jean Baptiste Le Rond D'Alembert Paul Henri Thiry Baron D'Holbach - German Illuminism - Gotthold Ephraim Lessing Italian Illuminism |
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Introduction The vast intellectual movement which made its appearance at the close of the "Glorious Revolution" in England (1688) and continued until the French Revolution (1789) is called Illuminism, or the Enlightenment. The new culture, advancing under the aegis of "reason," launched itself in bitter opposition to all the past in general, and in particular to the Middle Ages. According to the Illuminati -- the exponents of the Enlightenment -- the Middle Ages, victim of philosophical and religious prejudices, had not made use of "reason," and hence they called it the age of obscurantism, or the Dark Ages. The new philosophy, on the other hand, was to introduce an age of enlightenment; it was to dispel the darkness of the past. Opposition to the immediate past had manifested itself, though to a limited degree, during the Renaissance. Humanism had in fact minimized and ignored the Middle Ages, and had accentuated and lauded the classical world of ancient Greece and Rome; and Protestantism had extolled "primitive Christianity." Illuminism attempted to go further still, to excel the past in its various manifestations of culture, religion and government -- for its philosophers considered the entire past to be the work of "non-reason." (Anti-historicalism.) Everything appeared before the tribunal of "reason" to receive its condemnation. With all science of the past discredited, man was brought back at last to his origins, to his natural state; Illuminism they worked to formulate a new philosophical system, a rational system because it was evolved by reason purified of all prejudice. It is a system which embraces all human activity -- civil, juridical and religious. (Naturalism.) Reason, as understood by the Illuminati, is the faculty which Descartes had called "good sense" and is equally distributed and common to all men. The rational order means the association of one phenomenon with another, not by reason of finality or causality but simply by virtue of mechanical necessity. In order to understand the strange trend of the philosophy of the Enlightenment, we must bear in mind that this age is witness to the establishment of modern physics as the science of nature; and physics, as we know, is regulated by mechanical necessity. Illuminism attempted to apply the same laws and methods of mechanical necessity to every field of human knowledge. With all authority and finalism banished and mechanism proclaimed in their stead as the single rational means of solving the problems of nature, there inevitably emerges a natural right, a natural society, a natural religion. Everything consists in a succession of phenomena starting from the so-called "state of nature" and proceeding one from another by mechanical necessity. All these suppositions of naturalism were to find violent manifestation in the great upheaval of the French Revolution. Illuminism in England was concerned with defending religion and morality against the atheistic conclusion of empiristic philosophy, particularly as expressed by Thomas Hobbes. This aim gave rise to two manifestations, namely, the moralism of Cambridge, and the "common sense" of the Scottish School (Thomas Reid). The first, starting from a world Platonically conceived, tried to defend and justify the laws of "natural religion" and "natural morality." The second held that morality finds its justification in certain primitive judgments which are intuitively known as "common sense." (Note: the use of the term "common sense" here is not the same as we use it in traditional commonsense philosophical realism.) In The Radical Academy
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The Encyclopédie In France Illuminism found such a favorable reception that it was able to develop to its ultimate consequences. The Encyclopédie was the instrument for expressing these new ideas and spreading them throughout Europe. The Encyclopédie was the work of many years; it required the collaboration of many cultured men. The authors were of varied opinions, but united by a single purpose -- to give a new political and religious doctrine to France in the name of "reason." The fundamental characteristics of French Illuminism are:
The outstanding figure of French Illuminism and European culture was Francois Marie Arouet, known to history as Voltaire. In The Radical Academy
Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694-1778) Voltaire (picture) was the embodiment of the 18th century Enlightenment. He was born in Paris, educated by the Jesuits, studied law, and then turned to writing. His ideas were an important influence on the intellectual climate leading to the French Revolution. W. Somerset Maugham, the well-known novelist and playwright, has declared: "Before I start writing a novel, I read Candide over again so that I may have in the back of my mind the touchstone of that lucidity, grace and wit." Voltaire's Candide is, however, not only a literary masterwork that defies the change of time and taste; it is also an attack on Leibniz' Theodicy. With mordant irony it castigates the belief that the existing world is the best of all possible ones. Life and studies confirmed Voltaire in his bitter criticism of man and human institutions. Three times imprisoned in the Bastille in Paris, Voltaire was then banished from France. As an exile in England, he studied Locke and Newton, and adopted Bolingbroke's deism. The result of these studies, Voltaire's Philosophical Letters (1734), was publicly burned by the hangman in Paris. Dissatisfied with his own time, Voltaire, one of the initiators of modern history of civilization, saw that in the past the triumph of error and injustice had been even more outrageous. But he persisted in teaching that man is capable of shaping the future of humanity in accordance with true morality by making prevail the results of secular science and by resisting arbitrary power and intolerance. Until the last day of his life, Voltaire struggled for liberty of though and conscience. He, a single man, defeated the organized power of fanaticism by rehabilitating Jean Calas, the victim of a judicial murder, and by saving his relatives from imprisonment. Voltaire passed the watchword of resistance to fanaticism. It became a battle cry that is heard and echoed in the present time. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On the Internet
As a philosopher, Denis Diderot (picture) has often been underestimated. His unique versatility of mind was amazing. The journalistic vein (characteristic of his mentality) enabled him to enlarge, rectify, and communicate his philosophical knowledge and his personal concepts of man, nature, life, and moral and cultural values. His arguments were founded upon those recent scientific discoveries whole philosophical consequences he grasped with extraordinary agility. Diderot, in addition to being the editor of the most influential and famous encyclopedia, was himself a living encyclopedia; well versed in the natural and social sciences, in the history of literature and the arts; in philosophy and religion. He never confined his achievements to the mere summarization of the knowledge of his time; he was an innovator in many fields. He was the first modern art critic. He rebelled against the authority of classicism in the literary and artistic life of continental Europe. He criticized the civil and religious institutions of his time and demonstrated the necessity for change. As a dramatist, he pioneered in dealing with social problems and in representing modern middle-class life on the stage. All of these activities were compatible with his philosophical outlook which conceived of life and spirit as eternal and eternally changing. He stated that the formation of moral values could be traced back to the experiences of early childhood of both the individual and mankind. He made many studies of the blind, mute, and deaf, and proceeded to epistemological, psychological, aesthetic, and sociological points of view that have since had great consequence. His daring spirit caused Diderot to incur royal and papal interdictions and imprisonment. In The Radical Academy
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Etienne Bonnot de Condillac (1715-1780) Condillac was born in Grenoble, France, and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1740. He became a tutor to the Duke of Parma, and Abbé de Mureaux. He based all knowledge on the senses. Representative of the philosophy of French Illuminism is the sensationalism of Condillac. He rejected the distinction Locke had made between ideas of sensation and ideas of reflection. Knowledge is nothing other than pure sensation. Intellective life is reducible to sensation. Also, emotional life is a distinct degree of sensation is so far as sensation, affecting the heart, causes emotion. Often referred to as the "philosophers' philosopher," historically, the influence of Condillac is still important, although his prestige has waned. He was an eighteenth century abbot, whose ecclesiastical garment neither hampered his enjoyment of life, nor interfered with his secular thinking. Condillac professed spiritualism in the area of metaphysics; metaphysics was only loosely connected with his principal interests and occupied a very small part of his writings. In his chief works, An Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge (1746) and Treatise on Sensations (1754) Condillac, like Locke and some of the Cartesians who in some respects deviated from Descartes, denied the usefulness of speculating about the metaphysical nature of the mind. He preferred to study the human mind as a psychologist in order to understand its operations. He thought that the analysis of sensation contained the elements of any judgment connected with the sensation. He regarded the human individual as composed of two egos, that of habit and that of reflection. The ego of habit acted unconsciously: it was capable of the senses of sight, hearing and smell. The ego of reflection was conscious of its acts while performing them. Instinct was derived from the ego of habit, and reason from the habit of reflection. Many of his solutions were considered rash; today, it is recognized that his critics, Kant and Helmholtz among others, were wrong. Condillac was also interested in the psychology of animals, logic and mathematics. His work in economics, Le Commerce et Le Couvernement, deals with ideas and problems very similar to those treated by Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations, both published simultaneously (1776). In The Radical Academy
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) Jean Jacques Rousseau (picture) is the most original figure of French Illuminism. The basic idea of Rousseau was that "nature is good." No progress of culture or civilization results in goodness and happiness. This can be expected only by developing nature rationally. Hence the fundamental idea of Rousseau is to restore human life: "Back to nature." He develops this concept in two masterpieces -- the Social Contract and Emile. The "Social Contract": Men living in the state of nature were free and happy. The passage from this state to the social state was made by means of a contract with the intention of man's not being a slave but being protected as regards his right to natural freedom. Social authority is the personification of this general will. Emile: According to the principle that nature is good, Rousseau attempts to show also that in private education man never must be a slave of prejudices. He must obey nature alone. In The Radical Academy
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Jean Baptiste Le Rond D'Alembert (1717-1783) Considered the father of positivism, and in many ways the progenitor of pragmatism, D'Alembert (picture) maintained that truth is hypothetical but useful. In his introduction to the famous encyclopedia that he and Diderot edited, D'Alembert outlined the psychological genesis of knowledge, and the logical order and historical sequence of the sciences. He classed mathematics with natural philosophy, stating that it could be developed into a science of general dimensions contrary to the mathematical theories of Plato and Descartes. One of the most eminent mathematicians of his century, his theory of mathematics was consistent with his perceptual empiricism. He also made valuable contributions to physics, meteorology, and astronomy. In his literary works, he violently opposed all religious organization. Abandoned as an infant, he was found on November 16, 1717, near the entrance to the Church St. Jean-Le-Rond by a glazier's wife. Brilliant and talented as a child, he achieved membership in the Academy of Science at the age of twenty-four. When he had become famous, his real mother, Madame de Tencin, socially important in Paris, recognized him, but he remained attached to his foster mother. He declined the presidency of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, offered him by Frederick II of Prussia, and the offer of Catherine II of Russia who wanted him to become a tutor for her grandson, who later became Czar Paul I. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Paul Henri Thiry Baron D'Holbach (1723-1789) Friends and foes of the French Revolution used to regard Holbach, who died some months before its outbreak, as one of its most important prophets. His writings were deemed responsible for the anticlerical and anti-Christian excesses which took place. This may be true. But Holbach's atheism was detested by such influential leaders as Robespierre just as by the priests who had been attacked constantly in Holbach's pamphlets and books. All who knew Holbach personally liked him. He was gentle, generous, ready to help poor writers and scholars, and a brilliant host. Only priests, the Church and religious were hated fanatically by him. His criticism of deism and theism challenged even Voltaire. Holbach was a German nobleman who settled in Paris and adopted trench nationality. He wrote many treatises on political, social and religious questions, generally hiding himself behind a pseudonym. His principal work The System of Nature (1770) has been called ' the Bible of the atheists." It is something more. Holbach, while dealing with "the laws of the physical and moral world, represented nature not as a creation but as an immense workshop that provides man with tools by means of which he is enabled to give his life a better shape. He developed a philosophy of eternal change, and energetically rejected the assumption that all species have existed all the time or must exist in the future. He sneered at those philosophers or scientists who think nature incapable of giving rise to new organisms hitherto unknown. Man is not exempt from the law of change. Nature is indispensable to man, but man is not indispensable to nature which can continue her eternal course without man. Holbach must be credited for having, in 1770, pronounced evolutionism, declaring "Nature contains no constant forms." In The Radical Academy
Germany and Italy received Illuminism from England and France, and each country developed it in accordance with its own traditional character; thus Illuminism was prevalently religious in Germany, and practical in Italy. German Illuminism was the occasion for the rise of a movement called Pietism, a reaction against Protestant dogmatism. Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1796) through numerous publications defended the position that philosophy clarifies what is obscure in religion. The most representative exponent of German Illuminism was Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781), who defended the value of history and revelation, because through them men were elevated from earlier forms of life to the higher, and are still elevated by these factors. In The Radical Academy
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) Lessing was born in Kamenz, Germany, and after studying theology at Leipzig University, he worked as a translator, then continued his studies at Wittenberg (1751). The first German playwright of lasting importance, he produced his classic tragedy Miss Sara Sampson in 1755. The idea of religious tolerance has been given its noblest poetic symbolization in Lessing's drama Nathan the Wise (1779), which also became the model for Goethe's and Schiller's classical dramas. For admonishing the German people to love their fellow men without prejudice, Lessing was hated by German zealots of religious, political and racial orthodoxy, and considered to be not a genuine German but of Slavic origin. Poet, dramatist, critic of art and literature, archeologist, historian and theologian, Lessing was the first man of letters in Germany who dared to earn his living as a freelance writer. Living among people who recoiled from activities involving personal responsibility, Lessing valued independent thinking and feeling, criticism and knowledge as the highest energies of life and mind, and endeavored to awaken the spirit of responsibility among the German people. He rehabilitated wrongly depreciated or condemned thinkers of the past, he struggled against wrong authorities of his time, he tried to secure liberty of expression for a German literature that did not yet exist when he wrote his principal works. But he was not satisfied with his success in combating prejudices and narrowing rules. He also tried to establish standards of judgment and principles of poetic and artistic creation. This he did in his Hamburgische Dramaturgic and Laokoon (1766-67). Open revolt against the absolutist regime, in particular that of Frederick II of Prussia, was considered hopeless by Lessing, who limited his political criticism to some sporadic bitter remarks in his printed works but branded the political and social conditions of Germany with mordant sarcasm in his correspondence. At the end of his life, Lessing concentrated upon the theological disquisitions and defending himself against attacks on the part of orthodox clergymen. In this struggle that threatened his civil existence, Lessing proclaimed that he put striving for truth above possession of truth. In The Radical Academy
Giovanni Battista Vico (1668-1744) A strong criticism of Cartesian Rationalism is found in Principi di Una Scienza Nuova by Giovanni Battista Vico (picture). The "new science" consists in knowledge of history and the rules governing the course of history. Vico tried to show that the progressive civilization of man is a fact deriving from the exercise of those rules. Vico was neither a historian nor a philosopher. What has to be remembered about his work is that he seemed to have remarkable insight concerning the primitive life of man. In The Radical Academy
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