The Age of Reason and Enlightenment--www.world-class-education.org

IV.3 The Age of Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment—17^th to 19^th century--was a most fertile period in the history of intellectual progress. It was a philosophical movement characterized by an emphasis on humanitarian political goals and social progress through a reliance on reason and experience rather than mysticism, revelation, dogma, customs, and tradition. Its main figures were French (Voltaire, Diderot, d’Holbach), Scottish (David Hume, Adam Smith), American (Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson), and German (Goethe, Hegel, and later Nietzsche).

This writer

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 myth, 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.

M. Horkheimer (1895-1973) and T. W. Adorno (1903-69)

What is Enlightenment?

Enlightenment is man's leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if its cause is not lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one's intelligence without being guided by another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own intelligence!"

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

*See The Scientific Revolution in Timeline: From Prehistory to Modernity

Introduction

A. The Enlightenment's Major Findings

B. The Enlightenment's Objectives

C. Leading Figures of the Enlightenment

John Locke (1632-1704)
Pierre Bayle (1647-1706)
Jean Meslier (1664-1729)
Montesquieu (1689-1755)
Voltaire (1694-1778)
David Hume (1711-76)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78)
Denis Diderot (1713–1784)
Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789)
Adam Smith (1723-90)
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
Marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794)
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
Johann G. Herder (1744-1803)
Johann W. Goethe (1749-1832)
Georg W. F. Hegel (1770-1831)
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
Karl Marx (1818-1883)

D. Recent Continuers of the Enlightenment Tradition

John Dewey (1859-1952)
Paul Kurtz (b.1925)
Edward O. Wilson (b.1929)

Introduction

The Age of Enlightenment was an antidote to the Dark Middle Ages which was a recurrence of "the human predatory phase of development" thought largely eliminated in the earlier Greco-Roman culture. The "darkness" had its beginnings in 313 CE when the Roman Catholic version of Christianity emerged as the Roman Empire's one and only religion. It was primarily shaped by the Roman nobility and the Bishops of Rome under the leadership of the Roman Emporers and for their benefit. After the 5th century, the Roman Church gradually replaced the Roman Empire in Western Europe as the single unifying force. The darkest part of this period lasted until the 15th century, and it had meant an era in Europe that was characterized by intellectual stagnation, widespread ignorance, poverty, excesses of theology, and cultural decline. This period started to lose much of its influence with the arrival of the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, and other events (see Timeline: From Prehistory to Modernity).

However, when the Enlightenment began in the second half of the 17th century, there was still much suffering and mental poverty that was crying out for this reform movement. Moreover, unnecessary suffering and mental poverty is still present in our time, that is, at the beginning of the 21st century. It follows, the project that began with the Age of Enlightenment is far from finished and must therefore continue.

The Enlightenment is held to be the source of critical ideas, such as the centrality of freedom, well-being, democracy and reason as primary values of society. This view argues that the establishment of a contractual basis of rights would lead to the market mechanism, social justice, the Scientific Method, religious tolerance, and the organization of states into self-governing republics. To apply reason and experience to every problem was considered the essential change. Scientists, thinkers, writers and all others were held to be free to follow the truth in whatever form and wherever it leads, without the threat of punishment for violating established ideas and opinions.
The leaders of this movement were freethinkers practicing a high standard of intellectual honesty such as explained in Intellectual Standards.

As may be concluded from the writings below, they viewed themselves as an elite body of courageous intellectuals who were guiding humanity toward progress out of a long period of irrationality, widespread ignorance, superstition, and tyranny which was a remnant from the period they called the "Dark Ages".

Finally, today, to finish the enlightenment project, we need the examples of the Enlightenment thinkers just as they needed the guiding examples of their highly regarded Romans, Cicero (106-43 BCE) and Seneca (4 BCE-65 CE).

A. The Enlightenment's Major Findings

Without the freedom to think there is no freedom to act.

To expose Western civilization's gigantic errors was among the Enlightenment’s objectives. These pernicious blunders had found their way into religion, philosophy, politics, and thinking in general:

· The illusion of permanence had erroneously yielded the assumption that the world is a finished product. This delusion led to a misguided quest for certain knowledge of an unchanging reality. Its implication for living was that there is nothing more to do but to reproduce order given in the world and to live by it. Instead, life is an ongoing process of knowing more and more.

· The transformation of facts into essences and of historical conditions into metaphysical ones. This deception is a particularly destructive force. The Enlightenment marks the shift to evolutionary essences and evolutionary metaphysics.

· The imprisonment of independent thought by religious and totalitarian authorities.

· The disavowal of the absolute primacy of the moral consciousness, which is the first principle of morality.

· The denial that reason possesses the right of the first born because it is older than any opinion or prejudice which have obscured it in the course of history.

· The declaration of transcendental and anti-sensual moralities that were grounded in abstract and often unintelligible metaphysics. Ayn Rand observed in her novel Atlas Shrugged (1957):

For centuries the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors; between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetence on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.

These errors are still found in the world religions, but they have been almost completely eliminated in the sciences, however, less so in secular societies that are under the influence of religion. Hence, these errors are explained in detail in Egregious Errors in Religions . These elucidations are for the most part found in the writings of the Enlightenment philosophers.

B. The Enlightenment's Objectives

The Enlightenment thinkers shared a profound feeling for human suffering coupled with an extraordinary lucidity and wit to state problems and develop solutions. They defined themselves as "modern," and were the first to explore in detail what it meant. Moreover, they had the courage to take risks based on limited knowledge and had the open-mindedness to reformulate long-standing assumptions no matter how cherished by the many or the powerful.

To reform society for the betterment of the multitude. The thinkers of the Enlightenment realized that for most of history the rules or laws had exploited the masses in favor of the few--for them, the alliance of throne and altar had endured too long. Justice, they claimed, was served if and only if all get what they deserve. And laws that would not result in just outcomes were declared unjust and therefore no laws at all. Law was not to be arbitrarily imposed from the top, but was discovered by right reason, experience and the moral conscience as a final judge.
To implement the rights to liberty, equality, the inviolability of personal property, and the right to resist oppression.
To advance the idea of self-determination which for the individual claimed that a morally autonomous person was competent to freely and rationally chose the right of course of action, thus, becoming self-determining or self-governing; see From Moral Insight to Autonomy.
To decide and clarify by what right or need do people form states and what the best form for a state should be. Hence, there had to be a distinction between the idea of state and government. "It was decided that state would refer to a set of enduring institutions through which power would be distributed and its use justified. The term government would refer to a specific group of people who occupied, and indeed still occupy the institutions of the state, and create the laws and ordinances by which the people, themselves included, would be bound. "
To establish the autonomy of reason, observation and experience in all fields of knowledge and to root out the powers of convention, tradition, dogma, and authority.
To use reason and experience to free people from disabling assumptions and attitudes so that they can live fuller lives. As a consequence, there is an emphasis on the uniqueness of each individual coupled with increased freedom for self-direction and self-fulfillment. The individual is then in a position to choose his own values and meanings.
To proceed with the realization that there is no fixed human nature that remains identical regardless of time, place, and circumstance. Instead, human nature develops in accordance with self-knowledge and with insight into the essence of things (Vico, 1668-1744).

C. Leading Figures of the Enlightenment

Almost all of the above stated "Findings" and "Objectives" may be credited to these great thinkers. As their writings reveal, most of them were deists, that is, they believed in the existence of a God and natural religion on purely rational grounds without reliance on revelation or authority. Furthermore, they held that God created the world and its natural laws, but takes no further part in its functioning. Deism was popular in the 17th- and 18th-century. They use the word "God" in this sense.

Although, both, religious authors such as Thomas Aquinas (1225?-74) and the Enlightenment writers would sometimes speak of God as the author of the natural law and as the source of its authority,

but in actuality they all [the Enlightenment writers] derived its origin and binding quality from the nature of man, the agreement of wise men across the world and through history, the testimony of reason, man's natural sense of justice, and, as Diderot put it in a revolutionary if still tentative way in the "Encyclopédie," the infallible general will of men.

Peter Gay (1923)

1. John Locke (1632-1704) was an English empirical philosopher--empiricists believe that all knowledge derives from experience. He made major contributions to the theory of knowledge in his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) and politics in his work Two Treatises of Government (1689). According to Locke, individual political states are to be evaluated in terms of how well they protect the natural rights of the individuals living there. In America, the "Founding Fathers" used Locke's theory to justify the American Revolution, and they incorporated many of his political ideas in their Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution. B. M. Leiser* summarized Locke's major ideas:

There are no innate ideas.
Human knowledge is derived either from sense experience or from introspection (reflection).
Ideas are signs that represent physical and mental things.
Things have primary qualities (solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number) and secondary qualities (all others, including color, sounds, smells, flavors and so forth).
Bodies actually possess the primary qualities, but the secondary qualities are merely the effects observed by those who perceive them.
Good is whatever produces pleasure and evil whatever produces pain.
Liberty is for the sake of producing happiness.
The state of nature, prior to the existence of human government, is subject to the rule of natural or divine laws, which are revealed through the exercise of reason.
The chief reason for establishing governments is the preservation of property.
Civil government comes about as a result of a social contract.

2. Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) was a French critic and philosopher who dealt with a variety of topics and used them to attack superstition, intolerance, bad philosophy, and inaccurate history.

Concerning history, according to him nothing is more erroneous and harmful than the prejudice that historical truth must be accepted on trust and faith. Instead, it must be examined with the greatest care. And he asks "do you think, then, that there is any honest gain from trafficking in hearsay? Tradition, O fool, is indeed a chimera! Judgment is required; reason alone can rescue you from the bondage of belief--reason which you have already renounced."
Concerning the most admired persons in the Old Testament, in the early history of Christianity, and in the Reformation, he detects that they were quite immoral persons, and hardly good examples of pious living.
Concerning the problem of evil he noted that within the framework of Christian teachings there is no way of explaining the existence of evil.
Concerning morality he observed that it is completely separate from religious belief and concluded that a society of atheists could be more moral than a society of Christians.
Concerning supernatural beliefs he forcefully insists that since they cannot be proved to be true or false, all should be completely tolerated. Also, he thinks that coercion to impose religion is absurd and reprehensible and can thus never be justified.
Concerning the Bible and history, he demands that careful unprejudiced erudition and exact reasoning have to be applied to eliminate the errors of the past and present. For him it follows that every literal interpretation of the Bible must therefore be rejected if it commands us to act contrary to the absolute primacy of the moral consciousness, which is the first principle of morality.

3. Jean Meslier (1664-1729) was a French village priest who well-informed about the science of his time offered a thoroughgoing critique of Christianity from the perspective of naturalistic philosophy. It was stated in his his Last Will and Testament published after his death because, as he wrote, he did not want to get burned alive. Voltaire (1694-1778) got hold of an original of Meslier's Last Will and published it. In a letter to Helvetius, on May 1, 1763, Voltaire writes:

They have sent me the two abstracts of Jean Meslier. It is true that it is written in the style of a carriage-horse, but it is well suited to the street. And what testimony! that of a priest who asks pardon in dying, for having taught absurd and horrible things! What an answer to the platitudes of fanatics who have the audacity to assert that philosophy is but the fruit of libertinage [morally, unrestrained, licentious thinking].

Meslier condemned the accumulation of property in the hands of a few. By the time he attended to his priestly duties, the conclusions of the early Church Fathers, that

the earth of which we are all born is common to all, and, therefore, the fruit that the earth brings forth belongs without distinction to all,

had largely been forgotten in Christianity. And in France, the Roman Catholic church had accumulated immense riches and influence. Thus, this church had a vested interest in the continuation of economic and political institutions linked to the feudal exploitation and oppression of the large majority of people. It is against this background that we must see Meslier’s condemnation of Christian practice and private property.

After witnessing for about thirty years as a village priest the abuse of his flock and himself by church and royal authorities, he decided to air his indignation in his Last Will and Testament. His condemnation of Christianity was rooted in the eminently human sentiment to have pity for the downtrodden and helpless. And his thinking concerning property was close to that of the early Church Fathers, as noted above, rather than their contemporary representatives.

Meslier asserted that the church and nobility, religion and the institution of private property, tyrannize and enslave the many. His basic assumption was that religion is a political tool whereby the established rulers exercise a stronghold over the large majority of week and poor members of society. He suggested that all religious dogmas, beliefs, and rituals, devised by priests in cooperation with and enforced by secular rulers are means of governing those who live in darkness. As such, these "divine" prescriptions are for the most part pure and unadulterated errors and superstitions that bamboozle and paralyze the victims of an unjust social order. All religions are nothing but "erreurs, abus, illusions, et impostures." Thus held in ignorant fear, it keeps the bamboozled from acting decisively to alleviate their unjustly imposed misery by getting rid of their exploiters. Meslier claims that those who hold now the bulk of private property, or at least benefit from it, namely, royalty, nobility, and church, consist of an assortment of bandits, thieves, pirates, and parasites.

For Meslier, nature created all men with equal rights to enjoy their natural freedom and to partake in the fruits this earth brings forth. But instead, he comments, a few appropriate the greater part of this wealth as private property, and thus condemn the large majority to a life of worry, hatred, envy, theft, and murder, for poverty breeds crime. But if we would have a form of community property, he asserts, then the inhabitants of a village or town could form one family and could love each other like the children of one father and one mother. All this would be possible since the earth produces enough, he argued, if it were not for the exploiting institutions. In the Testament he states his often quoted wish:

I would like to see the last king strangled with the guts of the last priest (Je voudrais que le dernier des rois fût ètranglè avec les boyaux du dernier prêtre).

And as one commentator observed: "Nobody ever preached such an inflammatory hatred for the exploiting classes. These terrible words already portend the thunder of the coming French revolution with all its gigantic excesses . . ."

4. Montesquieu (1689-1755) was a French social commentator and political thinker. He is famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers, taken for granted in modern discussions of government and implemented in many constitutions throughout the world.

He was also highly esteemed in the British colonies in America as a champion of British liberty, though not of American independence. Political scientist Donald Lutz found that Montesquieu was the most frequently quoted authority on government and politics in colonial pre-revolutionary British America.

Following the American War of Independence, Montesquieu's work remained a powerful influence on many of the American Founders, most notably James Madison of Virginia, who was the "Father of the Constitution." Montesquieu's philosophy that "government should be set up so that no man need be afraid of another" impressed on Madison and others that a free and stable foundation for their new fderal government required a clearly defined and balanced separation of powers.

5. Voltaire (1694-1778) was a French writer and philosopher. He wrote several books that influenced politics. He used satires to draw attention to pernicious political deficiencies that influenced politics to this day.

Concerning politics, he was an early advocate of the doctrine of separation of church and state. He was also one of the first progressives, arguing in favor of strong politicians informed by intelligent advisors who could cultivate the garden of humanity. He considered the middle class too superstitious to rule themselves, the aristocracy too corrupt to rule others, and businessmen too self-centered to do either.
Concerning the Bible, he held that it was 1) an outdated legal and/or moral reference, 2) by and large a metaphor, but one that still taught some good lessons, and 3) a work of Man, not a divine gift.
Concerning supernatural religions he held that they were based on ignorance and superstition. Thus, believed that man’s life is not controlled by destiny or supernatural beings. Also, he points out that the human situation can be improved by eliminating superstition and fanaticism
Concerning nature, ethics, and justice, he held that while we can not have a complete explanation of nature, the best accounts of it are empirical and materialistic. Furthermore, there is a natural basis for ethics and nature.
Concerning the claim that this is the best of all possible worlds, he insists that natural and human evil contradicts this view (made popular by Leibnitz, 1646-1716).

6. David Hume (1711-76) was a Scottish historian, philosopher and economist. Best known for his empiricism and scientific skepticism, he advanced doctrines of naturalism and material causes. He influenced Adam Smith and Kant who unsuccessfully tried to refute Hume's theory of knowledge, moral philosophy, and critique of religion. Hume was on the side of those who claimed that all our ideas are derived originally from sense experience. Concerning the existence of God, he held the view that it is perplexing problem. Although the chief arguments that attempt to establish that God exists are subject to plausible objections, they still have a residual validity when they support people's hope for eternal life, heaven, etc.

Hume in his ethical thinking argued that moral progress consists in including more and more people in our sense of community, and thus extending our moral sentiments over a larger domain. Moreover, he held that the concept of right and wrong is not rationally determined but arises from a regard for ones own needs or happiness. In his work An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding he suggests that by sticking to relevant details only, we might get at the subject of what is human nature with clarity. His suggested methodology and goals are as pertinent today as they were over 200 years ago when he wrote:

The abstractness of these speculations [about human nature] is no recommendation, but rather a disadvantage to them, and as this difficulty may perhaps be surmounted by care and art, and the avoiding of all unnecessary detail, we have, in the following enquiry, attempted to throw some lights upon subjects, from which uncertainty has hitherto deterred the wise, and obscurity the ignorant. Happy if we can unite the different species of philosophy, by reconciling profound enquiry with clearness, and truth with novelty? And still more happy, if, reasoning in this easy manner, we can undermine the foundations of an abtruse philosophy, which seems to have hitherto served only as a shelter to superstition, and a cover to absurdity and error (1977,9).

Hume and other philosophers of the Enlightenment, with their emphasis for gaining knowledge from experience and reason rather than from religion and authority, developed a naturalistic view of human beings. They thought that there was a constant human nature beneath superficial differences due to culture and society.

7. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) was a French political philosopher. In his work Social Contract (1762) he argued that the basis of morality was conscience, rather than reason. He argued that citizens of a state must take part in creating a "social contract" that lays out the state's ground rules in order to found an ideal society in which the citizen are free from arbitrary power. His rejection of reason in favor of life in nature and the "Noble Savage" may be considered a reaction against the enlightenment. He largely rejected the individualism inherent in classical liberalism, arguing that the general will overrides the will of the individual.

Constance Creede* summed up Rousseau's major ideas:

Man is by nature good.
In a state of nature, the individual is characterized by healthy self-love; sel-love is accompanied by a natural compassion.
In society, natural self-love becomes corrupted into a venal pride, which seeks only the good opinion of others and, in so doing, causes the individual to lose touch with his or her true nature; the loss of one's true nature ends in a loss of freedom.
While society corrupts human nature, it also represents the possibility of its perfection in morality.
Human interaction requires the transformation of natural freedom into moral freedom; this transformation is based on reason and provides the foundation for a theory of political right.
A just society replaces the individual's natural freedom of will with the general will; such a society is based on a social contract by which each individual alienates all of his or her natural rights to create a new corporate person, the sovereign, the repository of the general will.
The individual never loses freedom, but rediscovers it in the general will; the general will acts always for the good of society as a whole.

8. Denis Diderot (1713–1784) was a French man of letters and philosopher who, from 1745 to 1772, served as chief editor of the Encyclopédie, which was one of the principal works of the Age of Enlightenment. It was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements and revisions in 1772, 1777 and 1780 and numerous foreign editions and later derivatives.
Diderot also speculated on free will, attachment to material objects, and contributed to the theory of literature. Moreover, he was the author of many other works that sowed nearly every field of intellectual interest with new and creative ideas.

9. Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789) French. Author, encyclopedist and one of Europe's first outspoken atheist. For the Encyclopédie he authored and translated a large number of articles on topics such as politics, religion, chemistry and mineralogy. The translations he contributed were chiefly from German sources.

However, he was better known for his philosophical writings. The System of Nature or Le Système de la nature (1770) was his most famous work. His writings expressed an atheistic materialism, anticlericalism and Epicureanism, which is named after the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BCE) and advocated that the goal of man should be a life characterized by serenity of mind and the enjoyment of moderate pleasures.

Concerning good sense and religion, he writes in his The System of Nature:

When we examine the opinions of men, we find that nothing is more uncommon, than common sense; or, in other words, they lack judgment to discover plain truths, or to reject absurdities, and palpable contradictions.
The enlightened man, is a man in his maturity, in his perfection, who is capable of pursuing his own happiness; because he has learned to examine, to think for himself, and not to take that for truth upon the authority of others, which experience has taught him examination will frequently prove erroneous.
If we go back to the beginning we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned or disfigured them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them, and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of men serve their own interests.
All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God.
It is thus superstition that infatuates man from his infancy, fills him with vanity, and enslaves him with fanaticism.
If ignorance of Nature gave birth to gods, then knowledge of Nature is calculated to destroy them.
Religion has ever filled the mind of man with darkness, and kept him in ignorance of his real duties and true interests. It is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of Religion, that we shall discover Truth, Reason, and Morality. Religion diverts us from the causes of evils, and from the remedies which nature prescribes; far from curing, it only aggravates, multiplies, and perpetuates them.
All religions are ancient monuments to superstitions, ignorance, ferocity; and modern religions are only ancient follies rejuvenated.
Humans are entirely the product of nature and subject to the laws governing the physical universe that constitutes the whole of reality.
Suns [stars] are extinguished or become corrupted, planets perish and scatter across the wastes of the sky; other suns are kindled, new planets formed to make their revolutions or describe new orbits, and man, an infinitely minute part of a globe which itself is only an imperceptible point in the immense whole, believes that the universe is made for himself.

Concerning politics he writes elsewhere:

The state's role is simply an extension of the social ethics of enlightened self-love. It ought to nurture, in every possible way, the virtues of cooperation on which the good of society and the happiness of each of its members depend.
The social pact or contract itself is based on the useful services that the individual and society are able to render to one another, and it remains valid only to the extent that its mutually beneficial aims are fulfilled.
Therefore, the legitimacy of any government varies directly with the happiness of one and all living under it.
The people have the right, if there were no other hope of assuring their welfare, to overthrow and replace their rulers.
Where the happiness of a society was at stake, it was the sovereign; governments, which were merely means to an end, had no absolute or divine authority.
Hereditary class privileges must be abolished and replaced with a hierarchy of status based on the degree of socially useful service actually rendered by its members.
finally, taxation should be progressive according to wealth and individual ownership of property to be as proportionate as possible to the value of work performed.

10. Adam Smith (1723-90) was a Scottish moral philosopher and economist. He argues that economic liberty was the foundation of a natural economic system. And in spite of some moral reservations, he declared private property as the foundation and driving force for economic development. Moreover, he maintained that wealth was not money in itself, but wealth was derived from the added value in manufactured items produced by both invested capital and labor. He is often selectively quotes as supporting Laissez-faire economics, but in fact argues that the primary role of government is to protect the market from internal and external subversion.

Concerning morals, he argued in his The Theory of Moral Sentiment (1759) that when we adopt the role of impartial spectators, sympathy is the natural sentiment that is the basis for moral judgments as determined by the faculty of mind. In other words, sentiment is the spring for virtue.
Concerning economics, he claimed in his most influential work Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) that self-interest together with the inclination to "trade, barter, and exchange" provide a basis for the division of labor and economic growth. Moreover, this self-interested pursuit of wealth may not be individually fulfilling but leads to a total increase in wealth that is in the best interests of a nation. Furthermore, he explains that in a market economy free from monopolies and self-serving public policies, competition among the self-interests of isolated consumers and producers generate an expanding and stable economy.

11. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was undoubtedly one of the most influential philosophers of all times, and some even say one of the greatest. Both the pro and the contra Enlightenment camp quote him in favor of their respective positions. Kant tried to bridge the divide between religion (faith) and science (knowledge), and between the moral necessity for a free will and a world in which all appears to be determined. In the introduction to his most famous work, Critique of Pure Reason (1781) he writes, ”I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief." Hence, Kant was a controversial figure of the Enlightenment when compared with giants like Voltaire, Hume, Smith, Paine, and Jefferson who were all clearly in the Enlightenment camp. His contribution to the Enlightenment, though important, was for the most part limited to writings against the irrational exuberance of religious claims. His disservice was the implausibility of his model of the mind that brought forth his unreal theory of knowledge and moral theory. Also, with his greatest work, Critique of Pure Reason, he introduced a new genre of writing philosophy. Writing where one does not know what one reads much of the time on account of unnecessary complex sentence structures that mislead and obscure much that is central to his work. N. K. Smith (1872-1958) is the best accredited translator Kant’s work into English. He writes:

Kant contradicts himself in almost every chapter; and that there is hardly a technical term which is not employed by him in a variety of different and conflicting senses. As a writer, he is the least exact of all the great thinkers (in Intro to Commentary To Kant’s Critique of Pure, originally published: 1923).

These above noted negative contributions nearly ruined the philosophical enterprise and are an obstacle to this day. No wonder, Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) called Kant "one of philosophy's great misfortunes." The preceding should explain to the reader why in this work, written in the Enlightenment tradition, quoted material from Kant is often contradictory, for it is both pro and contra the spirit of the Enlightenment.

Against theological orthodoxy and dogmatism he maintained that many religious knowledge claims are the product of an excessive fantasy or imagination, which if not disciplined results in losing track of the real by crediting the unreal. After a strong condemnation by the priests of Germany and complaints by the King of Prussia, Kant apparently suffered from a failure of nerves. He declared that practical reason demands that we believe in God, freedom (of the will), and immortality, for though these beliefs cannot be proved or disproved, they are necessary foundations of a rational morality. Thereafter, Kant's philosophy was embraced in Germany by the Catholic and Protestant clergy, the church-controlled universities, and it remains so to this day.

Kant's theory of knowledge is closely connected to his belief that there is a non-human reality, a noumeanal thing-in-itself (German: “das Ding an sich”), that is inaccessible to human thought. Therefore, human thought has access only to itself. As a consequence, he argued, the appearances of ultimate reality are processed by the human mind that thereby creates, structures and regulates, a world for as humans to live in. To elaborate, he held that the content of knowledge, the scrambled material, comes a posteriori (after experience) from sense perception, but that its form, the unscrambling, is determined by a priori (prior to experiences) categories of the mind. Moreover, he claimed that there was synthetic (experiential) knowledge a priori (prior to experience). This, the hallmark of his theory of knowledge, the synthetic a priori, has been demonstrated to be manifestly false when Euclidian geometry (one of his examples) was shown to be the product of experience together with other (non-Euclidian) geometries. Kant’s theory of knowledge is scientifically discredited.

Kant's moral theory was based on his model of the mind that could produce moral principles a priori, that is, without the influence of experience, which he considered corrupting and contaminating. Thereafter, the derivation of moral principles a priori, that is, out of pure nothing became acceptable. Kant's anti-Semitism, misogyny, and obedience to authority no matter how tyrannical were apparently derived by him by this method. For example he claimed:

It is the people’s duty to endure even the most intolerable abuse of supreme authority. The reason for this is that resistance to the supreme legislation can itself only be unlawful.

Almost certainly, the King of Prussia liked that demand for what the Germans call "Kadavergehorsam" (cadaver obedience) meaning that one should offer no more resistance to a command by an authority than that of a corpse! No wonder that Kant became later the Nazis' favored philosopher together with Nietzsche when they were selectively, sometimes out of context, quoted. His moral theory is also scientifically discredited.

12. Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was an English/American writer, pamphleteer, and polemicist. He was most famous for his work Common Sense (1776) attacking England's domination of the colonies in America. This text was key in fomenting the American Revolution. Another work, The Rights of Man (1792), was written in defense of the French Revolution which was attacked by conservatives. It is a classic example of arguments in favor of classical liberalism. He also wrote The Age of Reason (1794-96) which remains one of the most persuasive critiques of the Bible ever written. M. D. Purinton* summarized Paine's major ideas:

The rights of humankind originate at birth.
Government should exist only for the security, happiness, and unity of humankind.
Equality of natural property and the right of suffrage are essential for a free society.
Republican government is based on reason and engenders freedom; government by hereditary succession is based on ignorance and reduces people to slavery.
The unrestrained communication of ideas, the right to reform, and freedom of religious belief are all natural rights.
God is the first cause of all things; only by exercising reason can humankind discover God.

13. Marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794) was a French philosopher, mathematician, and early political scientist. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he advocated a liberal economy, free and equal public education, constitutionalism, and equal rights for women and people of all races. His ideas and ideals remain influential to this day. R. H. Popkin* summarized Condorcet's major ideas:

There is limited certainty in all branches of human knowledge
Probability theory can be applied to natural and social sciences.
Mankind is infinitely perfectible.
There can be continuous progress in and improvement in human affairs.
Mathematics can be applied to the social sciences and to human problems.
Human suffering can be ameliorated through social scientific study.
There are rational and scientific reasons why slavery should be abolished.
There is a reasonable basis for decision making in human affairs.

14. Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was a U.S. statesman, political philosopher, and educator. He was also the 3rd president of the U.S. (1801-18090. As a philosopher best known for the United States Declaration of Independence (1776) and his interpretation of the United States Constitution (1787) which he pursued as president. Argued for natural rights as the basis of all states, argued that violation of these rights negates the contract which bind a people to their rulers and that therefore there is an inherent "Right to Revolution."

All human beings are created equal and are endowed with certain inalienable rights.
Governments are established to protect the rights of citizens.
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.
It does me no injury for my neighbors to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
The right to work the land is a fundamental human right; consequently, a state that allows private ownership of land must provide employment to those who do not have such property.
Right to Freedom of and from religion.
Right to Universal education.

Other significant American Enlightenment thinkers were Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) and James Madison (1751-1836) who was also the 4th president of the U.S. (1809-17).

15. Johann G. Herder (1744-1803) German philosopher and linguist. Proposed that language determines thought, introduced concepts of ethnic study and nationalism, influential on later Romantic thinkers. Early supporter of democracy and republican self rule. Herder introduced Goethe to the works of Shakespeare (1564-1616).

16. Johann W. Goethe (1749-1832) was a German of great and diversified learning. Walther A. Kaufmann called him the greatest German ever. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, theology, philosophy, humanism, and science. Goethe's magnum opus, lauded as one of the peaks of world literature, is the two-part drama Faust.

His other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman (novel of self-cultivation) genre, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and the novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. He is the author of the scientific text Theory of Colors and influenced Darwin with his focus on plant morphology.

Goethe is the originator of the concept of Weltliteratur ("world literature"), having taken great interest in the literatures of England, France, Italy, classical Greece, Persia, Arabic literature, amongst others. His influence on German philosophy is virtually immeasurable, having major impact especially on the generation of Hegel, Schelling, and much later Walter A. Kaufmann.

His influence spread across Europe, and for the next century his works were a major source of inspiration in music, drama, poetry and philosophy. He is considered by many to be the most important writer in the German language and one of the most important thinkers in Western culture as well.

Goethe acknowledges his indebtedness to Shakespeare. The Germans have the exclamation, "Es ist noch kein Meister vom Himmel gefallen!" (It never happened that a genius dropped out of he sky!). Meaning of course that there are antecedent causes for a person’s brilliant contributions to whatever field. And Goethe is no exception, for he gratefully acknowledges his debt. In one of his literary essays, Shakespeare ad Infinitum, he pays tribute:

. . . it is the characteristic of genius ever to be stimulating other men’s genius. . . . The highest achievement possible to a man is the full consciousness of his own feelings and thoughts, for this gives him the means of knowing intimately the hearts of others. Now there are men who are born with a natural talent for this and who cultivate it by experience towards practical ends. . . . If we call Shakespeare [1564-1616] one of the great poets, we mean that few have perceived the world as accurate as he, that few have expressed their inner contemplation of it have given the reader deeper insight into its meaning and consciousness.

Goethe held the view that a person is his or her deeds, and that a history of the deeds gives us the essence. Thus, mind is what it does and not some spirit or soul behind the phenomenal self. In the preface to his Doctrine of Colors (1810) he states that point concisely:

We really try in vain to express the essence of a thing. We become aware of effects [Wirkungen], and a complete history of these effects would seem to comprehend the essence of a thing. We exert ourselves in vain to describe the character of a human being; but assemble his action, his deeds, and a picture of his character will confront us.

This statement implicitly rejects the two-world view concerning the same subject in the world religions and the philosophies of the ancient Plato and earlier Kant as well as in the later Kierkegaard and Heidegger.

Goethe concluded that the best and perhaps the only method to understand the mind and everything spiritual is through its development. Thus, in order to understand

personality, we must see the self in terms of its long term development and

becoming during the course of a person’s life. In other words, and this is crucial,

the self is not waiting to be found, but instead it is something created by the

individual under society’s influence.

17. Georg W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) was a German philosopher who held that human nature was something solely molded by historical and social circumstances. However, both, the Enlightenment philosophers and Hegel, believed in the perfectibility of humankind through education and an improvement in the material condition. As a consequence of enlightened self-interest, humankind would have a common core that contains sympathy with others, benevolence, a capacity for quiet assent in just institutions, and a foundation for secular rather than religious ethics.

Moreover, Hegel further developed Goethe’s concepts of becoming and autonomy while making some contributions of his own to the development of mind. These ideas are found mainly in The Phenomenology of Spirit (mind) and particularly in its Preface:

His systems approach advocated that views and positions have to be seen in their

entirety, that is, the theoretical and moral belong together as aspects of a single

point of view. For analyticity, as Mephistopheles explained to the newly arrived

student, gives us "all the sections, [that] lacks nothing except the spirits connection."
Moreover, he stressed that each view has also to be seen in relation to the person holding it, because it is a means for overcoming the divide between the subject and the object, the thinker and his expressed thoughts.
Furthermore, he proposed that every position or perspective should be seen as a phase in the development of that individual’s mind. This too applies to the development of the human mind and self-consciousness through history. For positions derive their meaning in part from their developmental context, that is, the things that came before and if applicable after it.
A position has to be seen in relation to divergent views and in particular to views that are vitally different. These contrasts, then, help us to understand not only the driving force of the position under scrutiny but also the partialities and inadequacies of both sides.

In connection with this insight, and concerning today's Enlightenment, Walter A. Kaufmann (1921-80) observes that philosophers belonging to certain schools have never learned the whole lesson. For "School philosophers, whether they are Thomists or Marxists, phenomenologists or analytic philosophers, usually match their wits against other members of their own school, relying on unquestioned consensus and concentrating on relative minute differences." In other words, Hegel recognized clearly that what is crucial is not the trivia of minor disagreements of those who share the same school of thought but rather the relation of fundamentally different positions to each other.

Finally, Hegel, as reflected by his posthumously published lectures, applied the

preceding insights from the Phenomenology to his immensely influential lectures on

the philosophy of history, aesthetics, religion, and the history of philosophy. He

instructed people to see these fields as means through which we can discover the

human mind or self-consciousness, that is, ourselves. Progress in history, then,

can be measured relative to an increase in human consciousness. And Kaufmann

claims that Hegel "revolutionized" the study of all of the disciplines noted above.

The core tenets of Hegel's position are substantiated by the latest findings of the sciences such as empirical psychology, sociobiology, and evolutionary psychology.

18. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher. His writings influenced subsequent philosophers, and his psychological were esteemed by the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). He too accepted Goethe’s concept of development and becoming, but he credited Hegel with its explication in philosophy. In his work The Gay Science he declares:

We Germans are Hegelians even if there never had been any Hegel, insofar as we (unlike all Latins) instinctively attribute a deeper meaning and greater value to becoming and development than to what "is"; we hardly believe in the justification of the concept of "being" . . . .

This is of course diametrically opposite to Kant’s theory of an immutable mind and Heidegger’s search for the "essence" or the "Being" of man. Nietzsche made significant contributions to the development of human self-understanding. His claim in Ecce Homo, "That a psychologist without equal speaks from my writings . . . . " does not appear to be a statement of delusional self-praise. For a later psychologist "without equal" Sigmund Freud said of Nietzsche, "The degree of introspection achieved by Nietzsche had never be achieved by anyone, nor is it likely ever to be reached again."

The most important of Nietzsche’s contribution to human self-understanding is deep, complex, and has widespread implications, for it indicates in many different contexts that the part our consciousness seems to play has been immensely overrated. He expressed it in a mere four words: "consciousness is a surface". Instead, he advocates that "our moral judgments and evaluations" are rationalizations of unconscious processes:

Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there stands a mighty ruler, an unknown sage – whose name is self. In your body he dwells; he is your body. There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom. And who knows why your body needs precisely your best wisdom. Your self laughs at your ego and its bold leaps. "What are these leaps and flights of thought to me?" it says to itself. "A detour to my end. I am the leading strings of the ego and the prompter of its concepts"

This claim suggests that we are "on a biological leash," to use E. O. Wilson’s characterization, which substantially controls and directs our cognitive faculties towards its own ends. Of course, this is akin to Hume’s claim that "reason is the slave of the passions." And it is a reversal of Plato’s assertion made so memorable in his image where the charioteer representing reason directs the movements of the carriage, his life, through controlling the untamed horses representing the passions.

J. K. Roth* notes his other major ideas:

Self-deception is a particular destructive characteristic of Western culture.
Life is the will to power; our natural desire is to dominate and to reshape the world to fit our own preferences and to assert our personal strength to the fullest degree possible.
Struggle, through which individuals achieve a degree of power commensurate with their abilities, is the basic fact of human existence.
Ideals of human equality perpetuate mediocrity--a truth that has been distorted and concealed by modern value systems.
Christian morality, which identifies goodness with meekness and servility, is the prime culprit in creating a cultural climate that thwarts the drive for excellence and self-realization.
God [at least the priestly version of it] is dead; a new era of human creativity and achievement is at hand.

19. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) was an English philosopher and economist. Ethics and social thought were his main interest as disclosed in his works On Liberty (1859) and Utilitarianism (1863).

Utilitarianism is the doctrine that the worth or value of anything is determined solely by its utility or usefulness. This was a further development of the idea that the purpose of all action should be to bring about the greatest happiness of the greatest numbers as originally proposed by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). Mill believed that while each person seeks his or her own pleasure, this does not necessarily lead to egoism. Instead, through a humane nurturing of our emotions or feelings, we can find pleasure in the pleasure of others.

In On Liberty he insists that:

The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right...The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

While a defender of a liberal social order and democracy, he was concerned because it could lead to a tyranny of the majority. Warning against this danger, he wrote:

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

Oliver Johnson summarized* Mill's major ideas:

All knowledge is derived originally from sense perception.
Matter, or the external world, can be defined as the permanent possibility of sensation.
Mind is reducible to successive conscious states.
True inference is always accomplished through induction rather than deduction.
Pleasure alone is intrinsically good and pain alone is intrinsically bad.
Pleasures differ from each other qualitatively as well as quantitatively, a "higher" pleasure being intrinsically better than a "lower" pleasure. [Mill famously said: "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied."]
The only justification society has in interfering with the liberty of action of any individual is self-protection.
Given the existence of evil, God cannot be both omnipotent and morally good; if he exists, he must be limited in power.

20. Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a German philosopher, or better, a revolutionary thinker, who developed what he called "scientific socialism." He was horrified by the material and mental poverty of the masses in his time. Hence, he analyzed the underlying causes of this tragedy which he found in the selfishness, "greed," dehumanization and "alienation" in work, thought, and religious belief.

By "alienation" Marx meant people's estrangement from their true nature that prevents them from reaching their full potential as self-determined beings. One of his conclusions was that economic justice will be achieved only if there is communal ownership of the means of production, for instance, today's large industries, banks, insurance companies, and corporate farms. This is because the community and the multitude depend on it for their freedom and well-being but private parties pursue their own and not the people's interests while excluding the large majority of about 95 percent from ownership. Concerning this type of private property Marx wrote:

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.
In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.

Karl Marx (1818-83)

As summarized by G. J. Stack, Marx expounded and held a few basic assumptions, namely:

that religious beliefs channel human energy and hope into another, ethereal [heavenly] world and thereby divert man's efforts from the improvement of this earthly estate [the Dark Middle Ages are a good example];
that the capitalist economy, especially in the form of political economy, is unjust and encourages egoism and selfishness, breeding "social atoms" that are only interested in their own welfare;
that there are "laws" governing human history, principles of economic evolution, and dialectical opposition that derive from the historical pattern of "class conflict";
that a truly human society of communal cooperation toward a common end is possible;
that man must overcome both religious and economic alienation if he would attain genuine emancipation; and
that the capitalist system of economy entails basic "contradictions" (especially that engendered by the collective production of goods and the unequal benefits of the distribution of these goods) that will eventually lead to its negation.

*These writers made their contributions in chapters of Ian P. Mc Greal's Great Thinkers of the Western World (1992).

D. Recent Continuers of the Enlightenment Tradition

1. John Dewey (1859-1952) was a U.S. philosopher, most influential educator, and the foremost exponent of pragmatism, the most distinctive philosophical school to emerge from the United States that attempted to bring philosophy down to earth. Pragmatism asserts: "An idea which is found to be useful in practice proves thereby that it is also true in theory, and the fruitful is thus always true." It was originally developed by the U.S. philosopher William James (1842-1910). P. E. Hurley* stated his major ideas:

Pragmatism emphasizes the pervasive but often-overlooked role of practical activity in inquiry and experience.
The history of philosophy is a misguided quest for certain knowledge of an unchanging reality.
Scientific method, as a method linking the acquisition of knowledge to practical activity, is to be generalized and adopted as the method of all inquiry, including all aspects of philosophical inquiry.
Knowledge is properly understood as warrantedly assertible belief.
["Truth is a collection of truths"]
Art is experience aiming at the production of objects that, as experienced, yield continuously renewed delights.
Ethics involves relating the desirable to the desired.
Education is best practiced as the art of inquiry rather than as the mere transference of factual knowledge.

2. Paul Kurtz (b.1925) is a contemporary philosopher best known for developing and explicating a philosophy or life stance that advocates the actual practice and secularization of Renaissance and deistic (deism) Enlightenment humanism. Kurtz's explanation and its main principles are in Being Democratic, Modern, and Humane. His tenets of a moral philosophy are found in The Common Moral Decencies and Ethical Excellences.

A critique of the paranormal is another aspect of his work. He was one of the founders of The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), which has become the most publicly visible institution engaged in the debate on the paranormal. In 1976 CSICOP started Skeptical Inquirer, its official journal. Like Martin Gardner, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov and others, Kurtz has popularized scientific skepticism and critical thinking about claims of the paranormal. Kurtz wrote:

[An] explanation for the persistence of the paranormal, I submit, is due to the transcendental temptation. In my book by that name, I present the thesis that paranormal and religious phenomena have similar functions in human experience; they are expressions of a tendency to accept magical thinking. This temptation has such profound roots within human experience and culture that it constantly reasserts itself.

3. Edward O. Wilson (b.1929) is a contemporary U.S. biologist and philosopher in the Enlightenment tradition as demonstrated by his work Consilience (1998). To resolve the contradiction between what appeared to the Enlightenment philosophers as an underlying constant human nature with Hegel’s idea of a human nature exclusively molded by historical and social circumstances we have to turn to Wilson who solved the "nature" vs. "nurture" problem with the following observation:

When societies are strictly viewed as populations, the relationship between culture and heredity can be defined more precisely. Human social evolution proceeds along a dual track of inheritance; cultural and biological. Cultural evolution is Lamarckian and very fast, whereas biological evolution is Darwinian and usually very slow (1998, 78).

With the preceding definition, Wilson bridges the gap between those who seek to understand human social behavior as the genetically based product of natural selections and others who claim that behavior is learned. In other words, he escapes the old nature versus nurture controversy. One may conclude that the correlation between biology and culture as the latter satisfying the demands of the former. Cultures in their various forms satisfy biological needs and wants common to all of humankind.

However, Wilson's overarching argument in Consilience (1998) is that there is a fundamental unity of all knowledge. Hence, we must search for consilience--the proof that everything in our world is organized in terms of a small number of fundamental natural laws that comprise the principles underlying every branch of learning.

Also, see his Gene-Culture Co-Evolution or Dual-Inheritance Theory in the Mind Makers: Nature, Culture and Learning.