(AWESOME) INTRODUCTION TO THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

The diverse and contradictory nature of eighteenth-century Enlightenment thought, commonly known as the Age of Reason, pays homage to the tremendous intellectual ferment of the previous century. In the seventeenth century, the Scientific Revolution had provided a new model for how problems could be solved through rational thought and experimentation, rather than on the authority of religion or the ancients. In fact, the Frenchphilosopher, mathematician and scientist René Descartes had seen man’´s ability to reason as the very proof of his existence, declaring “Cogito, ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am), in his Discourse on Method in 1637. Descartes rejected all forms of intellectual authority except the conclusions of his own thought, which he then used to prove the existence of God.
The Scientific Revolution had actually begun in the mid-16th century with Copernicus’ new theory of the sun as the center of the universe, replacing Ptolemy’s earth-centered model, accepted since antiquity. This revolution culminated in the seventeenth century with the publication of Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia in 1687, in which a thoroughly mechanical universe was explained through universal laws of motion. Newton, like Descartes, presented a vision of the universe whose most basic workings could be calculated and understood rationally, but which was also the work of a Creator.

 The triumph of Newtonian science coincided with and helped to produce a fundamental intellectual change. By the early eighteenth century, the focus of speculation was shifting from theological to secular concerns. This change is at once evident when we compare two rulers who exemplify the old and new outlooks. Louis XIV of France (1643–1715*) was a typical seventeenth-century sovereign, in that he had seen his primary duty to the State as a religious leader. His revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which forced tens of thousands of Protestants to flee France, was an example of his concern with the religious unity of his country. In contrast, the eighteenth-century ruler Frederick the Great of Prussia (1740–86*) was basically a secular leader. He described his own role as that of “first servant of the state.”To Frederick, his subjects’ religions were their own affair, a matter of private conscience, and not a public matter of state. Frederick’s overriding [predominante] concern instead was with building an army and a stable bureaucracy, and putting in place a tax structure to fund them. His rationally organized state machine would assure the security and prosperity of his subjects. The old religious hostilities that had divided Europe since the Reformation no longer preocuppied him. Science and rational inquiry now came to be seen as the common ground which reunited men, previously polarized into Catholic or Protestant, in what the Declaration of Independence would call “the pursuit [persecución] of happiness”— to be achieved in this world, not the next.

 Reason provided a unifying doctrine, and the key to increasing human happiness taking over the position once held by religion. With the right use of reason, all society’s problems could be solved and all mankind could live prosperously and contentedly. This optimism reflected a sense of growing economic opportunity. Europe in the eighteenth century was richer and more populous than ever before. Steady economic growth seemed to bear out [corroborar] the notion that the new key of scientific method could unlock the answers not only to the physical world (as Newton had done), but to theology, history, politics and social problems as well. Using the advances made possible through rational scientific inquiry, farmers pioneered improvements in agriculture and entrepreneurs
experimented with new technologies and products.

 The Enlightenment was a cosmopolitan movement, not restricted to England and France. In Germany, Italy and Spain, thinkers similar to the French Philosophes pursued their campaign against outmoded ideas and political and religious obscurantism.
Europe exercised a decisive influence on American political and social theories. The Declaration of Independence (1776) is one of the clearest and most succinct articulations of the Enlightenment program to be penned in the entire eighteenth century. The development of the scientific method begun in the seventeenth century was continued in the eighteenth, and extended into fields of inquiry largely untouched by the Scientific Revolution, such as biology, botany and chemistry. The work of the Swedish scientist Linnaeus (Carl Linné, 1707–1778), provides an excellent example ofthe growing refinement in science, which was summarized for the general reader in Diderot’s Encyclopédie.

For the men of the Enlightenment the basic question of the age was: how does one make mankind happy and rational and free? Their basic answer was: by discovering the underlying laws which would organize all knowledge into a clear, rational system, enabling individuals to become enlightened, and the societies in which they live to progress. It was a goal seen as obtainable to the people of the eighteenth century. Science and reason seemed to offer the key to the future, to a kind of paradise which would be realized not in the next world, as the theologians asserted, but in this world, here and now.

BRIEF AND USEFUL INFORMATION ABOUT JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

Jean-Jacques Rousseau(1712–1778) was an outspoken critic of the French social and political order. In his landmark work, The Social Contract, written in 1762, Rousseau rejected existing forms of government in favor of a community based on the choice of all its citizens, and their democratic participation in every major decision. These ideas were to be of central importance after the outbreak of the French Revolution. Diderot’s Encyclopédie, to which Rousseau contributed, was a wide-ranging attack on the irrationality of contemporary society and political institutions. Despite being banned, it continued to be published; its last volume was issued in 1772.