In the present we bring you an article about the Century of the lights, where the mentality of science and reason always seeking the truth prevailed, allowing the progress of humanity since the beginning of the XNUMXth century and culminating at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, since at that time there was a spiritual crisis and many philosophers they began to question all the knowledge they had. Read on and find out everything!
CENTURY OF THE LIGHTS
The Age of Enlightenment refers especially to the XNUMXth century, it was an intellectual and cultural movement, which had its origin in the XNUMXth century and its final phase at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, the Age of Enlightenment was mainly inspired by profound changes to the culture, politics and social system. Its influence was marked mainly in the countries of Spain, France, England and Germany and one of the most outstanding and important events of the Age of Enlightenment was the French Revolution.
In this cultural and social movement, it is nuanced by the declared force that was made to dispel the shadows of the darkness of ignorance, which humanity had through knowledge and the use of reason, in this way the eighteenth century was declared, as Age of Enlightenment. Since many philosophical thinkers had the thought that human knowledge had the ability to fight against ignorance, tyranny and superstition that existed in society.
In this way, in the Age of Enlightenment, enlightenment was a function where it had great influence in many aspects such as politics, science, economics, culture and finally in society in order to settle the faith in the progress of humanity of the time.
The illustration had a great impact on the thinking of the bourgeoisie and a large part of the aristocracy through the dissemination of messages through the means of communication that existed at the time, such as the printing press. As well as the meetings held by wealthy people to share the different ideas and opinions that arose from the various topics that were discussed, such as science, politics, philosophy, religion and literature, among many other topics.
Although the Age of Enlightenment was also referred to as the Age of Enlightenment and Encyclopedism, since the movements that arose were made up of intellectuals who wanted to promote their ideas before the society that was in progress, it is in this way that in enlightenment involved making use of attitude as a method of thought. In this way, the philosopher Immanuel affirmed it, who came to define the century of lights as:
“The Enlightenment means the abandonment of man from a mental childhood of which he himself is guilty. Childhood is the inability to use one's reason without the guidance of another person. This childishness is guilty when its cause is not lack of intelligence, but lack of decision or courage to think without help from others. Sapere aude “Dare to know!” Here is the motto of the Enlightenment”
When the philosopher Immanuel Kant, manages to define the century of lights by several countries of the European continent, when the concept of illustration Thanks to the various meetings held by the aristocrats, they placed the name of illustration in the different languages as in France it was called LightsIn England it was known as Enlightenment, while in Italy it got the name of enlightenment and in Germany it was named Aufklärung.
One of the most important philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment was D'Alembert, since together with another philosopher named Diderot they created the L'Encyclopédie, in addition to that he contributed in the field of mathematics with regard to differential equations and partial derivatives. The philosopher in question even said the following about the Age of Enlightenment and the Enlightenment:
"He discussed, analyzed and agitated everything, from the profane sciences to the foundations of revelation, from metaphysics to matters of taste, from music to morals, from the scholastic disputes of theologians to the objects of commerce...
from the rights of princes to those of peoples, from natural law to the arbitrary laws of nations, in a word, from the questions that most concern us to those that interest us most feebly.
This makes us indicate the philosopher D'Alembert, he was very important for what he could contribute to the Age of Enlightenment and for his thought, in the same way from the current of Marxism there is another French philosopher and sociologist of Romanian Jewish origin named Lucien Goldmann, who was a professor at Bribery and an influential Marxist theoretician and went so far as to claim that the Enlightenment it is “a historical stage in the global evolution of bourgeois thought”
Scheme of the century of lights
Although it is taken for granted that the entire Enlightenment movement takes place in Great Britain, there are other researchers who affirm that the Age of Enlightenment began in France, where the philosopher Francois Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, spread Anglophilia, defined as the love for English culture.
For which in France an ideological body was produced that had several ideas to contribute to society called at that time as encyclopedism because they wanted to gather a large amount of knowledge in a single work, these philosophers were Montesquieu, Diderot, Rousseau and Buffon among others. While the philosophy that took the longest to become present in the Age of Enlightenment was German philosophy. That with the philosopher Immanuel Kant would culminate the creation of the project of the century of the lights.
It is important that they have the knowledge that the Age of Enlightenment not only occurred in the countries mentioned, but also spread to other countries on the European continent such as the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Sweden, the Italian and Iberian peninsulas, until reaching the American continent specifically to the United States. But all these cases were conditioned by English and French thought in their encyclopedic ideology.
From the sociopolitical point of view, the Age of Enlightenment had its fruits in the ideological development at the moment when the new ideology was launched in the internal processes that each country experienced throughout its development, which is why the ideology German language was a necessity that developed slowly and with complex assimilation in that country, although for other countries the assimilation of the Enlightenment movement was rapid and was protected by the customs and fashion of the philosophers of the time.
Historical context of the Age of Enlightenment
We have to be aware that the Age of Enlightenment refers to the intellectual movement that was defined as the Enlightenment, although it is known that it was born in the XNUMXth century, it has antecedents at the end of the XNUMXth century, in the countries of England and Scotland.
In Germany there is the movement of illustration, but influenced by the French, it occurs as an expression called Neoclassicism, which consisted of reflecting the movement of illustration in the arts in the mid-eighteenth century, where a philosophy towards culture, but the philosopher Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, who worked as a writer and critic of German art, despised how the subject of culture had been treated from France.
But in the same way, the ideological movement of the illustration, was expanding throughout Europe, until reaching the American continent, but emphasizing the points of politics and the social system, renewing certain points and criteria, although by that time when gave the age of enlightenment, France was a strictly conservative country, which was directed towards the political approach.
But in France, much discussed approaches were being made in various cultural fields such as the Arts and literature, also in those countries, where the social and political movement of illustration took place, Aesthetics was given as a great discipline towards new inventions that were taking place. That many philosophers defended the subject, such as Francis Hutcheson and the empiricists in England, in Germany they found the philosopher and professor of German origin Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten.
The seventeenth-century era of reason
To know how the Age of Enlightenment begins, we must go back a little earlier, at the end of the XNUMXth century and the beginning of the XNUMXth century, since in the XNUMXth century many historians gave it the name of the Age of Reason and at that time, next to the century of lights. They are united and are very similar until the researchers agree to speak of the two eras as if they were the same.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the European continent was full of wars for various situations, the most common were wars for religions between Catholics and Protestants since the year 1648, but the situation tends to calm down when the agreement is signed of peace in Westphalia with the signing of this agreement, a diplomatic order was established on the European continent under the concept of national sovereignty.
Since for the Europe of the XNUMXth century there was an environment of many agitations between faith and mysticism due to the divine revelations that according to what were being given and were captured by several people individually as a main source of knowledge and wisdom, it is for this reason that it was tried to establish a philosophy based on absolutism and was built on the basis of knowledge and stability.
The objective of the century of reason was to build it based on the axioms made by the different philosophers and reaches its highest point with the Ethics of Baruch Spinoza.
Where he explained the vision he had about the world where he affirmed that God and Nature were one, this was called the pantheistic vision and was linked to a biblical expression which affirmed “In Him we live, move and have our being” With this simple idea, the age of illustration was founded from the scientist Isaac Newton to one of the founders of the nation of the United States Thomas Jefferson.
The Age of Enlightenment was greatly influenced by the ideas of various people such as Blaise Pascal, Galileo Galilei, Gottfried Leibniz, and many other philosophers of the earlier period. At that time European thought was going through many changes beginning with the ideas and research of Sir Isaac Newton who was a brilliant physicist and mathematician.
The insights of the brilliant physicist Sir Isaac Newton, who combined them with physical observations into coherent systems of testable predictions, made much sense about the Age of Reason and later the Age of Enlightenment when the scientist published his treatise on Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.
Although the Isaac Newton was not alone in the systematic revolution that was taking place, but he was the most famous for the ideas and laws that he studied for the natural phenomena of that time as well as a large number of studies that he contributed.
In the seventeenth century, their main objective was reasoning about basic principles, while in the eighteenth century, known as the century of enlightenment, the different philosophers dedicated themselves to investigating the mind of God through the study of the creation and deduction of basic truths. in the world, in this way it can be affirmed that the vision that was made has been able to reach our days.
Since the individuals had strong beliefs at that time, but through the different investigations and experiments a powerful truth was reached that contained a series of notions about the source of the legitimacy of the things that happened.
The beginning of the revolutions
In the eighteenth century, all kinds of revolutions began, but it was a time of progress in rational knowledge and perfecting the techniques of science, also in the eighteenth century the new bourgeoisie became richer, but they also maintained the traditional rights that the privileged had within the system of absolutist monarchies that still existed.
It is important to emphasize that the Age of Enlightenment has two well-marked stages, the first stage has the continuity of the old regime that was led by the French revolutionaries that ends in the year 1770 and then begins the second stage that has profound changes and culminates with the three most important revolutions the first the American revolution, the second the Industrial Revolution and ending with the French Revolution.
In the Age of Enlightenment it was led by the Enlightenment movement that advocated reason as the first way to establish an ethical but authoritarian system and between the years 1751 and 1765 in France the first encyclopedia was published where everything was collected. theoretical thought, by the philosophers Denis Diderot together with the philosopher Jean Le Rond D'Alembert. In that encyclopedia they collected quite a few theories about Enlightenment thought.
The purpose of the encyclopedia was to educate society, since a society that thought for itself was a cultured society and had as its objective to ensure the old end of the regime which was "Absolutism and dictatorships are based on the ignorance of the people to dominate it" since with this the regime could be destroyed and for such a situation other enlightened thinkers helped to carry out the encyclopedia, among them are Montesquieu, Rousseau and Voltaire.
But there are also dark sides in the thinking of the illustration and in the design of the French encyclopedia, since in a certain part there was a certain theory that was plagiarized, also in the realization of the encyclopedia as a great project but it was surrounded by many confusing ideas. and others the crimes that were committed so that the encyclopedia would not have an outlet on the European market. It is so much so that when Friedrich Schiller was offered the Paris citizen card, he rejected it and developed a theory about revolutions without violence.
Although the intellectual leaders who belonged to the encyclopedic movement believed themselves to be from high society, since they had the purpose of leading the world towards progress, since they wanted to get the world out of a long time of traditions, superstitions, irrationality, tyranny and despotism According to the Age of Enlightenment, philosophers believed they were going to get society out of the so-called Dark Ages.
In the intellectual framework that the philosophers had proposed, at a certain moment they provoked the War of Independence of the United States and the French Revolution, in the same way they provoked the peak of capitalism and the beginning of socialism, they also faced the dominant baroque music in Europe, and artists responded to the Neoclassical and Rococo movement in France.
There were also other prominent philosophical movements in the Age of Enlightenment, which were related to the Enlightenment movement, but focused specifically on faith and piety, these supporters of the movement tried to make use of rationalism to demonstrate to society the existence of a supreme being, since at that time faith and piety were a fundamental part of the philosophy of ethics and the natural.
It should also be noted that many political theories of the Age of Enlightenment came from prominent philosophers of the Enlightenment such as Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau who used their reason and experiences to question the institutions of the churches and the State. .
After that, in the Age of Enlightenment, as there was a great boom in empirical ideas in philosophy, those ideas were applied in economic policy, government, and the sciences such as physics, chemistry, and biology.
As it is told in history, nothing is accidental, since many acts were carried out that preceded the French Revolution and these were made thanks to the movement of the illustration, placing the light on the ignorance of the Middle Ages, to get away from the dogmas religious and thus explain the phenomena that happen in the world to make them in the light of logic.
It should be mentioned that the Enlightenment movement would not have existed, if the Catholic Church had not been weakened by the Protestant Church, since that reason divided the world among Christians. Humanism was the philosophical movement to man as the center of earthly concerns, removing religion from the theocentrism right that it had until now.
Social context, diffusion and thought of the century of lights
As previously mentioned, that the century of lights was born within the rising bourgeois society, but all the philosophers who contributed some knowledge did not belong to the bourgeois layers, but in the same way the people who did not agree with the movement culture of the illustration also belonged to the bourgeoisie, for example, the group of people who were dedicated to the trafficking of blacks and were from the commercial bourgeoisie.
Also some people belonging to the Catholic Church and the lower clergy, but with ancestry from the nobility such as the Count of Aranda in Spain or the Argenson Family in France, even the same system of state government that was serving as an enlightened despotism with the actions of Federico II, Catalina II and José II who supported the smaller demonstrations against the cultural movement of the illustration.
Although the media used to spread all possible information about the Enlightenment movement was varied, Freemasonry was used as a secret society like many others. In this way, it should be noted that the societies of thought for the time were called the Friends of Spain or the friends of the country. But today it has the name of Academies.
At that time they had the function of disseminating new inventions and ideas for the world in progress, there were also salons where the most outstanding minds met to give opinions on different topics, one of the most influential salons was the Napoleon Bonaparte, designated as the hall of the ideologues or by then called Society of Auteuil.
Other vehicles that were very important to carry the information was the press as well as the internalization of editions, another of the vehicles was the economic independence that the professional of letters had for the moment in which he could make his works or thoughts known.
There were also many discussions and controversies between the philosophers of the Enlightenment movement, for example there were discussions about who owned the intellectual property of the theories as it came to be discussed and the confrontation between Physiocrats and utopians that reached a point where the enmity was enduring for example among the philosophers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Denis Diderot.
But on the other hand, many of the philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment recognized that they had a common line, which made them more supportive in the struggles for Enlightenment thought. Many of the philosophers used reason as a weapon, this was a great instrument for research whose power they had was to acquire more ideas and with them fight against the superstition that the people had and confront the Catholic religious traditions that were they had at the time.
These gave way to the currents called atheism and theism making use of political structures and the argument of authorities and stagnant societies and in this way try to discard all the mysteries that were rooted. Like miracles or strangeness trying to explain everything that happened by reason or anthropocentric ideology.
In this way the philosopher Alexander Pope came to affirm the following "the proper study of the human race is man" this fills with great optimism the future and progress of man, since they are convinced that progress is obtained through the use of technology. reason and you are in the possibility of establishing all happiness on earth and in men who are good for their actions this phrase is also affirmed by the philosopher Rousseau.
It is for this reason that the Enlightenment movement that took place in the Age of Enlightenment was an enthusiastic movement and not only in cold rationalism. Philosophers were also convinced that sensitivity was another aptitude for emotion and power reason in one way or another, and this is directed by the experience of the person in question.
In this way, one of its main phrases can be read in the Encyclopedia, which states the following “as the spirit acquires more lights, the heart acquires more sensitivity” At the same time, in the Age of Enlightenment, society was encouraged to have an exchange economy thought based on a social contract that has individualism and formal egalitarianism as distinctive features through natural law universalism and tolerance always based on the freedom of individual rights.
Most important characteristics of the Age of Enlightenment
Arriving at the second half of the century of enlightenment, in the European continent more than 70 percent of the population was illiterate, the most relevant social and intellectual groups for the time discovered the importance and the role that reason can play together with the simple and natural laws in the transformation and improvement of all aspects of the life of human beings.
To make a diagnosis of the Age of Enlightenment, one should always refer to the fundamental sources of inspiration in the philosophy of René Descartes based on the methodical doubt that placed everything in order to find and admit only the clear and evident truth of the situations. Then you have to turn to the scientist Isaac Newton with the scientific revolution. Since he relied on general and simple physical laws.
The philosophers of the Enlightenment movement were certain that the laws could be discovered through the Cartesian method and applied indistinctly to all governments and human societies, which is why the elite of that time had a great desire to learn and teach what they knew. That is why the work carried out by the philosophers Diderot and D'Alembert when they published the Encyclopédie raisonné des Sciences et des Arts between 1751 and 1765 was very fundamental.
The encyclopedia was inspired by the secular and materialistic principles of the French bourgeoisie and was completed with a great critical dictionary called Dictionnaire philosophique published by the philosopher Voltaire, there was also the work of John Locke, one of the forerunners of the Enlightenment movement and the nineteenth century. of the lights
One of the common characteristics that exists in the Age of Enlightenment was the great progress that there was and the possibility of all men and women to transform their world to a better stage of life. Since the philosophers of the Enlightenment extolled the capacity for action and lay reason that they had to discover natural laws and were guided to carry out all their scientific and analytical investigations.
As a common characteristic of the philosophers of the Enlightenment, it should be noted that they defended a series of natural rights that could not be violated by any rule, just as reformism was against the abuse of absolutist power and the rigidity of the stratified society faced to the old regime, this was the failure of reformism that turned the enlightenment movement into a support for liberalism, blowing up the French Revolution.
In this way, the illustration gave the basis to the French Revolution to criticize the intolerance that existed in matters of religion and the forms that the traditional church took on the Punishing God of the church and rejects any belief that was held and that was not based as a naturalistic conception of religion.
All the approaches that were given in the Age of Enlightenment, which were secular and materialistic thoughts and values that the bourgeoisie that was rising to power had, made a dent in other social scales, empowering society to come out of its obscurantism and go managing the economic, social and political system that was taking place by the noble and clerical classes that culminated in the French Revolution.
Paradigms that occurred in the century of lights
In the Age of Enlightenment, the Enlightenment movement, many paradigms were born through the different philosophical approaches of the philosophers and scientists of the time. We will give you a brief explanation of each one.
Anthropocentrism: according to the new renaissance which revolves around the human being, but emphasizes the way in which he is going to reason and his way of acting in the material and being very sensitive, although it has its highest point in the sixteenth century, although in the first moment it was represented in Italy, this time it is transferred to France where it transfers the Faith of God to man.
It is about demonstrating the confidence and optimism that man can perform and do for himself, that is why it is thought that progress arises from this word and from the age of enlightenment, it is in this way that the progress of the humans is continuous and indefinite. The philosopher Condorcet where he makes a picture where he frames the progress of the human spirit.
Although it is also said that modern authors are better than ancient authors and can improve thanks to these ideas, Leibniz's philosophy of optimism was formulated against the other philosophy that was the very characteristic pessimism of the Middle Ages and in Baroque art.
At that time, societies were changing from the notion of God and religion began to lose and the religious had to take the reins again and had started great wars, that is why the Peace of Westphalia treaty was signed in the middle of the XVII century.
After signing the peace treaty, a new culture develops, but it is secular and anti-religious and anti-clerical, in the same way spiritual forms such as nihilism begin, which is a philosophical doctrine that everything is reduced to nothing, the philosophers who defend this doctrine they were Casanova, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos.
They also gave rise to Freemasonry, which was an institution of an initiatory, philanthropic, symbolic, philosophical, discreet, harmonious, selective, hierarchical, international, humanistic nature and with a federal structure, with the aim of always seeking the truth. After that there is deism which was a religious concept where the existence of gods in nature was believed, after that there are the agnostics based on the knowledge and evidence of certain statements regarding the existence or non-existence of God.
After these three doctrines such as nihilism, deism and in the agnostics another doctrine appears called atheism that in its concept annuls the belief in a God, the doctrine is represented by the following philosophers (Pierre Bayle, Baruch Spinoza, Paul Henri Dietrich The libertinism doctrine that exposes the darkest aspects of man and is exposed in several novels such as the Marquis de Sade, has also been called the dark side of the age of enlightenment.
Rationalism: According to what is stated in the doctrine of rationalism, everything is reduced to reason and experience, and what is not admitted in it cannot be believed. During the French Revolution, the Goddess of Reason was worshiped and is closely associated with to the light and progress of the human spirit.
According to the Marquis de Condorcet, all the passions and feelings of man are evil in themselves, in addition, everything that is devoid of harmony and is unbalanced and asymmetrical, disproportionate and highly exaggerated is something monstrous to aesthetics.
hypercriticism: with reformism the philosophers of the enlightenment movement were not assuming the tradition of the past without being criticized, with the Encyclopedia made by Diderot and D'Alembert there was a rethinking of all the knowledge that was filtered for all the reason that was had until that moment and is excluded when he is subjected to all the secular and materialistic principles that are imposed on him.
In this way the philosophers of the illustration despise all the superstition, deception and common errors that religion made at that time. Well, it was considered as evidence of the obscurantism that existed and of a decayed society, that is why it was necessary to cleanse the past of all dark and unethical issues to which it was subject. In order to rebuild a better and healthier society.
At that time, literature was used. The fable, the theater and the satire in order to correct all the defects that society had until that moment and to be able to improve it. Society begins to be educated to get what is necessary first and it does not entertain itself, that is why the tragedy exposes the adverse results that passions or feelings that cannot be controlled give.
That is why the comedy ridiculed all the moral effects of the human being. While the fable imprinted on the behavior of society at that time the best administrations and useful examples for society to move towards a better project.
From that moment, history begins to be documented, keeping an order and a chronology, the sciences are given some experimental and empirical orders; the society of the time and the governments in power were subjected to social criticism, but this culminated in the revolutions at the end of the Enlightenment period.
All governments wanted to realize the political utopia that the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau had, since he had a concept of the general will in order to inspire governments to exercise politics in a fairer way, in the same way the philosopher Montesquieu had written that in order to For a government to be successful, it had to provide more justice with the principle of the separation of legislative, judicial and executive powers.
In the American continent, the American revolution declares to seek happiness on earth and declares that the people have a democratic right to elect their rulers against the European model that existed, which was the monarchy. Throughout the world people are beginning to talk about constitutions, the progress of the world is present, as institutions are being created to improve all academic areas, among them are scientific academies such as the Royal Society, public libraries, museums, economic societies of friends of the country .
Societies begin to study the different philosophers, for example in the area of science they studied the philosophers Isaac Newton, Leibniz, Georges Louis Leclerc, Linnaeus, Lavoisier, Euler, Franklin. In medicine, vaccines, first attempts at sanitation, among others, were studied.
In technology many advances were made such as inventions such as steam engine, voltaic pile, reinvention of porcelain, flying shuttle, gas lamp, chronometer, thermometer, sextant. In the economy there is notable progress thanks to the contributions of Adam Smith. But there is concern about the large population growth that exists.
Pragmatism: based on the philosophy of utilitarianism advocated by the philosopher Jeremías Bentham, who established only what is useful deserves to be done. Well, the philosopher was based on the thought of Epicurus who affirmed that “the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people” it was also implanted that the arts and literatures should have some purpose and do something useful with them. In the same way they would have a didactic or moral teaching purpose, such as purifying insane passions.
Socially, satire occupied a very important place in society, since the bad habits that society had were being eliminated or corrected by the fact that satire made fun of what they did wrong. That is why novels were made so that people would be aware of what they were doing and novels where they learned many values. And fables were well known for their morals. With the theater many of the customs that existed were corrected, with comedy the passions were cleansed and with tragedy the soul.
In the Age of Enlightenment everything was united in a great poetry that gave life to Neoclassicism in France, but was widely rejected by the empiricism that was preached in England and the Enlightenment movement that is still alive in Germany.
Imitation: in French neoclassicism originality was considered a defect, that is why they never knew how to assume the work of Shakespeare since this playwright of the theater came to estimate that perfect plays can be achieved through a recipe that is imitating the authors Greco-Romans who were models for architecture, sculpture, painting, and literature.
Academicism also made its entrance in the artistic field, stifling all the creativity that had been carried out in France as well as the culture that was subject to influence in this illustration movement. Everything is derived from good taste as the main criterion and leaves out everything that is imperfect, ugly, decadent, superstitious and dark, violence, the night, unleashed passions and death.
The theater had to submit to three rules of the units that were already instituted by Aristotle but were very simplified in unity of action, place and time and the French add another law which is the unity of style. While England implements the empiricist aesthetics and especially Germany represented by the philosophers Lessing and Kant where they define an evolved position where they rejected the theater of France by proposing an originality of genius.
Idealism: good taste is in rejecting the vulgar, in this doctrine of idealism there is no aesthetic reasoning of the people and the context offered by literature in the neoclassical stylized reality that is why language does not accept insults or profanity and always is in search of purism but idealism is often infected with Gallicism that was a form of foreign language similar to French.
It is also presented in such a way that it cannot commit crimes nor is it immutable in matters that are not liked, such as suicide, which only appears in Goethe's romanticism and, above all, idealism is kind and elevated, it also temporarily excludes the historical from the perspectives from the change from below the worldview of the Enlightenment movement.
Universalism: In the Age of Enlightenment, universalism was a belief or existence about the existence of a universal, objective and eternal truth that determined everything to exist on planet earth. And it should also be in every human being, that is why the Enlightenment movement had universalism as the mold that leads to reason and in the Enlightenment movement it should be assumed as a tradition of Cosmopolitan culture.
In the diversity of religions, the philosopher Voltaire assumes a great taste for travel books, while the philosopher of enlightenment Montesquieu criticized all the diversity of religions, as well as the Greco-Roman traditions as a main source, when they felt interest in the exotic but they do not assume it to look for the human and the universal in the exotic.
Although many Enlightenment philosophers realized that French literature and academicism have incorporated it, they also observed that everything published in the French language became fashionable and this made the French language become a sign of elegance. That is why French culture influenced countries like Germany, Spain, England and Russia and the culture of these countries is full of Gallicisms.
Philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment
The philosophy of the illustration has several movements and currents of thought, starting with the seventeenth century called the century of truth in which several doctrines are concentrated, such as Anthropocentrism, whose vision was to place the human being as the measure and center. of all the things that happen. Just as rationalism that aims at the role of reason has to acquire knowledge.
Among the main philosophers who will represent rationalism are René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Nicolás Malebranche, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, among others very important. Similarly, it was followed by the doctrine of Empiricism in which it emphasizes experience and evidence as the formation of ideas and acquisition of knowledge. This doctrine was studied by the following Enlightenment philosophers Francis Bacon, John Locke and David Hume.
Also a philosophy that greatly influenced the Age of Enlightenment was the doctrine of Materialism that advocates that matter will always be primary and that the consciousness of each human being is a consequence of the materialistic state the doctrine is represented by the following philosophers LaMettrie, D'Holbach.
After this, pragmatism made its appearance with the purpose of uniting practice with theory, since the philosophers affirmed that the theory is extracted from the practice, but applying the practice the theory is obtained again. In this way, the intelligent practice was carried out and from there the following characteristics of pragmatism are born, such as instrumentalism, radical empiricism, verificationism, among many others.
Pragmatism along with the doctrine of idealism that advocated that the ideas that human beings have affirm reality and everything that we can know is thanks to the ideas, the representative philosophers of this doctrine are George Berkeley and Immanuel Kant.
In Universalism it is presented as the universal, objective and eternal truth that has determined everything that exists in the world and in this way is present in every human being since universalist thought tries to explain how everything on earth arises.
It is important that in the Age of Enlightenment in the fields of philosophy, metaphysics, geometry, astronomy, astrophysics, geography, logic, ethics, law, aesthetics, deontology, religion, science, politics, the work produced by the German Immanuel Kant It is still very valid and studied to date.
Politics in the century of enlightenment
In the politics that occurred in the Age of Enlightenment, what they called enlightened despotism arose, a concept that was born in the Age of Enlightenment, which is framed in absolutist monarchies and in the system called the old regime. But this doctrine dies when the new theory on the separation of the powers of the state is established.
It is also subordinated to civil religious power, also called secularization, and that is when the first signs of the churches wanting national independence from the Pope, who was in control at the time, are given, the so-called regalism.
At that time, the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau occurs with his theory of the social contract published in the year 1672, which deals with the freedom and equality of human beings under the rule of a state that has had a social contract. According to politics and political science, the social contract will be the agreement that a group of members has agreed to, as an example the State that must fulfill the rights and duties of its citizens, but over time the social contract will become a socialism Utopian.
For the philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment, all men in society should have the destiny of happiness described by Epicurus in his memoirs and that is why the Constitution of the United States will accept that purpose as a final right of citizens. of that country.
But at the end of liberalism with the French Revolution in the year 1789 in Great Britain with the ideas of the philosophers John Locke, Adam Smith, Jeremiah Bentham and John Stuart Mill, the social work of illustrations spread throughout the European continent and the world. American continent ending the old regime
With the end of the old regime, the stratified society that has been following since the time of feudalism ends and a new social class called the bourgeoisie is born, which is acquiring awareness of social and economic power and the impotence it had over politics.
That is why research begins on the phenomena of politics, in this way it will conquer the government throughout the century of enlightenment in the various revolutions that occurred in the years of 1820, 1830 and 1848 where the presence of the thoughts of the enlightenment movement in the various political positions and relegating the aristocratic society to a lower role.
At one point in the Age of Enlightenment, the Marquis Cesare Beccaria 1738-1794, publishes a work on the jurisprudence in the city of Livorno Dei delitti e delle pene, a great written work that lays the foundations for all modern science on criminality , since the philosopher Cesare Beccaria institutes all crimes according to their seriousness and the proportion of the penalty that should be given to the person who committed the crime.
In the same way Cesare Beccaria arrives at his principles through the philosophy of J Locke which was the contractualist utilitarian, where he states that crime is a violation of the social order and also poses a strong criticism of the judicial methods of the time. Which was a strong torture or the death penalty. Thanks to this lesson given by Cesare Beccaria. Catherine II of Russia, ordered to reformulate the criminal code of that country since she had been inspired by what was written by Cesare Beccaria.
The Age of Enlightenment and Religion
After obtaining an important victory of the enlightenment movement over state politics, that is why he turned his studies towards religion and tried to find all the information regarding the superstitions that society had, by making a study of the history of church in a critical way, you will find an example of this study. It is that Father Enrique Flores studied and dismantled various beliefs about Spanish society that were devotions, traditions and false legends.
In the same way, Benedictine Benito Jerónimo Feijoo carried out a study very similar to the previous one, which he called common errors and made some universal critical theater plays, in this way the pedantic preaching but the purpose was to edify and correct the believer, but it was very satirized by José Francisco de Isla a Jesuit of Spanish origin in the satirical novel Fray Gerundio de Campazas.
In the Age of Enlightenment, laymen made the first formulations of the doctrine of deism represented by the philosophers Voltaire, Volney, Rousseau and of the doctrine of atheism presented by the philosophers Diderot, Holbach, La Mettrie. And it is first published in a study called the history of religions which appears as a study on the doctrine of relativism by François-Marie Arouet better known as Voltaire.
The doctrine of libertinism also appears, whose premise is that one does not believe in miracles, while free thought was expanding on the European continent, but the fundamental point was secularism, which is quickly installed in European society very quickly. and it is present in the governments of the entire European continent as a result of the signing of the peace treaty called the Treaty of Westphalia signed in the year of (1648).
At that very moment the Catholic kings realize the economic benefits it brings, which in turn achieved regalisms and democratizations for the government and the state. They also began to discuss in the different monarchies about the abuse and the preponderant role that religious orders had in the education of the universities and in education in general, since the religious had directed the best students to study religion instead of science. practices.
For the year of 1759, the Marquis of Pombal who held the position of minister of the King of Portugal named José I of Portugal, since he made the decision to expel all the Jesuits who were the last defenders of Cesaropapism. After this decision, the European countries such as France in the year 1762, then Spain in the year 1767 and Parma in the year 1768. But in the year 1773 the pope dissolved that law.
Then the Austrian Emperor Joseph II, who belonged to the Catholic religion, made the decision to close all the convents and cloisters with the aim of avoiding the waste of lives that, in his opinion, that decision represented. With this decision he managed to open a path for the secularization and confiscation of all his assets.
Carlos III of Spain also made the decision that produced the expulsion of all his territories from the Jesuits, although at that time his territories included Spain, part of Hispanic America and the Philippines. That is why the decisions were discussed due to the great transcendence and intellectual damage caused in the expulsion that occurred.
But the truth is that several of the Jesuits helped the enlightenment movement during the Age of Enlightenment, but a mature Christian enlightenment was also carried out in Italy where they welcomed all the Jesuits of Spanish origin.
In the countries of Protestant religion, the movement of Martin Luther called pietism, led by August Hermann Francke and Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, argued that religion was purely spiritual, was opposed to the clerical orthodoxy of the time that proclaimed the most worldly religion .
At that time, religion begins to be studied through scientific and secular criteria, as if it were nature in a very utilitarian way, which makes us abandon many of the traditions and superstitions that we had until now. For many philosophers of the Enlightenment movement they had a great rejection of traditional Christianity.
Similarly, the appearance of various secular tendencies was premised on the end of the French Revolution, but it also had a universal spirit as the philosopher Leibniz had much support in the belief in God with his philosophy book known as Théodicée in the year 1710 .
In the age of enlightenment that was always characterized by the use of reason to obtain the best knowledge, also in the year 1690 John Locke in his essay on human understanding, where the philosopher claimed all possible evidence of religious dogmas and carried out a combat against the dogmatism of the time. Meanwhile in England, there was much repudiation of religious tradition, which took refuge in the doctrine of deism where it states that the deities belong to nature.
Although in England only God was recognized as one, while immortality and virtue were recognized as two of the three foundations of universal natural religion, the written work of John Toland, considered the first deist with his book called Christianity not Mysterious (1696), marking the starting point of the deist movement in the XNUMXth century that counted people like Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Voltaire and Volney as its main adherents.
But in the Age of Enlightenment, the most radical trend was the doctrine of French materialism in the 1745th century. In XNUMX, the physician Julien Offray de La Mettrie published his Histoire naturelle de l'âme ("Natural history of the soul»), who has as a final conclusion that the soul is material.
After that his work was burned by the hand of his own executioner, since the Parliament of Paris gave the order, although the doctor developed his own authorship and had published in 1747 his main book, L'Homme Machine, where defines that man is a machine and defends atheistic materialism with all his knowledge.
While Frederick the Great called him to visit him at his Berlin Academy, where the philosopher went in a hurry since he was persecuted in France for his publications, he also had many political ideas, which were considered very dangerous by the french parliament.
While his follower, the Baron de Holbach, managed to expose many of the doctor's theories, which were called French materialism in his Système de la Nature (1770), mixing with elements of the empirical doctrine and the sensualism of Condillac. In addition to the atheistic determinism of Denis Diderot and the morality of selfishness advocated by Helvetius,
By working with all the doctrines, he came to the conclusion that in reality nothing exists outside of eternal matter, from which all the movements of bodies come, and the last reason is that believing in a God is useless, and religion was created by the priests to be able to use and take advantage of the morale of the faithful and this can only harm the people.
All his ideas were disclosed by the enlightenment movement and the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau called coterie holbachique, after this the philosophers began to design their own theories about religion, and although Jacques Rousseau himself had already dealt with some topics about religion and natural faith in a novel written by himself called «Profession of faith of the Savoyard vicar», within his Emilio.
«For the first time there is a firm rejection of all revealed religion in the name of pure materialism and a new vision of the world confronts the theological conception that had been valid until then»
Some philosophes even, like Charles-François Dupuis, reduce the idea of Jesus Christ to that of a solar myth. On the other hand, the set of secret societies such as Freemasonry, the Rosicrucians and the Illuminati identified God as a layman, who was like an architect of the universe, but condemned all people who considered religion as a vulgar superstition.
The important thing for these secret societies was to build a temple of humanity directed on charity and ethics as categories superior to any religion of the moment. The first Lodge that was present in the Age of Enlightenment was founded in England in London between 1717 and 1723, according to James Anderson who was in charge of writing its Constitution and statutes.
After that, the sect of Freemasonry spread throughout the world, an example of great importance was the first republic of the eighteenth century, where the United States is recognized giving way to its first constitution, and does not recognize any official religion, because in this country some political and religious heroes belonged to the sect of Masons, in the same way many monarchs were Masons such as Frederick the Great and even intellectuals such as Wieland, Goethe and Lessing, among many others.
For that moment it is about spreading a more spiritual concept, so that the church would be more tolerant, in this way religion becomes a very personal commitment with God, and the faithful begin to abandon the impositions that the church would have regulated in their dogmatic conception, because according to the enlightened they must be more committed to the true God.
In the Enlightenment movement it was always more tolerant and with greater plurality, although the philosopher Voltaire states in his articles that one should be more tolerant, in this way the philosopher Lessing also follows him in his ideas. Voltaire went on to state:
“In a country where there is only one religion, you cannot live; where there are two, there is civil war; but in England, where there are thirty, there is peace."
While the philosopher Lessing in his thought came to write the drama of Nathan the Wise in the year 1779, where he proclaimed the gospel of love, he also wrote Erziehung des Menschen Geschlechtes ("Education of the human race", 1780) there he explained everything about the contradiction and reason, explaining that ethics will be the ultimate goal of each religion, since Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants will live together in each country; deists and supporters of the so-called natural religion that calls God "Supreme Being".
Although the church was subject to the State, this generated many scenarios of war between Catholic countries since they defended the decisions made by the Pope who were in charge in Rome, exactly Vatican City
The arts and sciences
In the Age of Enlightenment, French Enlightenment was linked to Neoclassicism, which was an aesthetic movement that aimed to reflect the arts of the Enlightenment philosophers, which is why the Church and Empiricism became an important sphere in the fields of knowledge and tried to overshadow the other experimental and social sciences that were trying to light up at that time.
In Germany the illustration movement focuses on art through Romantik, after the Sturm und Drang. While in the other sciences of study such as mathematics, physics and optics, they show great advances and their contributions give something to talk about throughout the European continent, among the most particular representative they had was Sir Isaac Newton, also in economics politics appears as a modern science being the greatest representative Adam Smith and his great work the wealth of nations.
The Encyclopedia also marked an important point in the rupture of the historical concept for a more schematic vision, at that time it was also expected that the cartographers would finish mapping the entire planet earth since it only remained to finish the polar circles, both the Arctic and the Antarctic, as well as the African continent.
The Encyclopedia was the breaking of the historical concept that was held as the schematic vision, but on the other hand the historiography of the moment and the cognitive foundation was one of the great moments of the illustration, from the point of view of the treatment to how it is tried to obscure with romanticism.
The enlightened reformism occurs in Italy and intersects with the Renaissance tradition of the moment, the most relevant result that marked in the political sphere of the laws in the case that had already been explained of the philosopher Cesare Beccaria, there was also the case of the brothers Pietro Verri, Antonio Genovesi, Gaetano Filangieri or Francesco Mario Pagano.
Another important work in the cycle of lights is Tiraboschi's Storia della letteratura italiano, a work that marked an important point in the history of the century of lights on Italian soil and marks a milestone as an example of national literature in Europe.
In Spain, illustration marks the milestone on geography and explorations from the immediate times of Pedro Murillo and Jorge Juan that ended in modern Comparatistics, that is why in art and science important illustrations were made that were published in Spanish. Italian.
The illustration as an intellectual movement
Although the Age of Enlightenment began in the early 1620th century and ended in the early 1750th century, the Enlightenment movement began in the year XNUMX and culminated in the year XNUMX, but it was a great cultural movement that encompassed many areas of culture and politics throughout the European continent as well as economics, science, art, technology, religion, philosophy.
All the philosophers who participated in the enlightenment movement were given the name of illuminists because they were certain that with light they were going to fight the shadows of ignorance, since they wanted to illuminate all the centuries that passed in darkness since the Middle Ages generated by the church of the Middle Ages.
The origin of the movement of the illustration occurs in the stage of the Renaissance, where the ideas of man and culture appear, at this time they face medieval thought where it was believed that everything was the work of God and men already had a predestined destiny. on earth subject to the divine plan, and on the contrary there was the thought of faith in the progress of each man, through the personal effort that each individual made, that is to say that man through his work and sacrifice could change his destiny .
This is why a number of philosophers having a critical spirit began to carry out scientific studies to study the concepts that were held and to place what was known in doubt, and everything that was known was studied and analyzed through observation and experimentation.
Then a conclusion was obtained, since reason is the only tool that philosophers had to find the truth of everything as Rene Descartes left it written looking for the rational and scientific explanation of the Universe. A large number of laws and conclusions were established, making use of mathematics and geometry, questioning what the churches had as God's truth.
In the Age of Enlightenment there was a different vision of man on earth, everything had already changed in the Age of Enlightenment since every man could change his situation through work and his knowledge
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