Page 136 - DPOL201_WESTERN_POLITICAL_THOUGHT_ENGLISH

Western Political Thought

Notes 8.2 Enlightenment

The Enlightenment was described as the Age of Reason. It was a period when thinkers did not
establish any particular mode of philosophical speculation, but agreed on many fundamental
issues. These were placing indomitable faith in the idea of progress, the need to apply scientific
methods, and perceiving reason to be the best guide available for conducting life. The Enlightenment
refers to the series of dramatic revolutions in science, philosophy and politics took place in European
thought and culture from the mid-seventeenth century through the eighteenth century. It culminates
with the French Revolution which saw the violent destruction of the traditional hierarchical,
political and social orders—the French monarchy, the privileges of the French Aristocracy and the
political power and authority of the Catholic Church and replaced by a new political and social
order based on the principles of human rationality, freedom and equality of all. Its roots lay in the
scientific revolution ushered in by Copernicus and Galileo. Peter Gay observed that the
Enlightenment broke through the dogma of ‘the sacred circle’, an interdependent relationship
between the hereditary aristocracy, the leaders of the church and the text of the bible that had
circumscribed thinking. The church sanctioned the rule of the king with whose help the notion of
‘divine right of kings’ was invoked and the king, in return, defended the church. The Enlightenment
was associated with the French thinkers—Voltaire, Diderot, D’Alembert, Montesquieu, and others
called philosophes. In addition to the French Enlightenment were the Scottish Enlightenment—
Hutcheson, Hume, Smith and Reid and the German Enlightenment that included Christian Wolff,
Moses Mendelssohn, G.E. Lessing, Leibniz, Goethe and Kant.
The basic idea underlying all the tendencies of enlightenment was the conviction that human
understanding is capable, by its own power and without any recourse to super-natural assistance,
of comprehending the system of the world and that this new way of understanding the world will
lead to a new way of mastering it (Cassirer 1937: Vol. 5).
Rousseau, a product of the Enlightenment, was aware of these developments. What differentiated
him from his contemporaries was his contempt for knowledge, and his strong conviction of its
uselessness in explaining the individual’s political conduct. He specifically gave a call for discarding
“all those scientific books” by asserting that,
... these vain and futile declaimers (the philosophers) go forth on sides, armed with their fatal
paradoxes, to sap the foundations of our faith and nullify virtue. They smile contemptuously at
such old names as patriotism and religion, and consecrate their talents and philosophy to the
destruction and defamation of all that men hold sacred (Rousseau 1958: 131-132).
Rousseau protested against intelligence, science and reason, insofar as they destroyed reverence,
faith and moral intuition, the factors on which society was based. His protest was a “revolt against
reason”, for he regarded the “thinking animal as a depraved animal” (Sabine 1973: 530-531). His
conviction was reflected by his unhappiness with Grotius, because “his usual method of reasoning
is constantly to establish right by force”. Rousseau rejected the progressive effects of the power
and clarity of reason. Reason might enable individuals to overcome their ignorance, but made
them skeptics. It tempered one’s chauvinism to the point of destroying one’s patriotic sense. It
suppressed and distorted natural responses like sympathy and pity. He doubted whether the
human mind could be fashioned through education, cultivation of fine manners and a benevolent
disposition. He was not optimistic about social reforms in eighteenth-century France.
For Rousseau, arts, manners and politeness not only destroyed martial virtues, but also denied
human nature, forcing individuals to conceal “their real selves”. In modern society, he observed
that happiness was built on the opinions of others, rather than finding it in one’s own hearts. Art
highlighted this truth, for it was deceitful. The origin of art and sciences was in idleness and the
desire for distinction among human beings.

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