Part V. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT

The second stage of Modern Philosophy has been called the period of the Enlightenment. This period corresponds very nearly with the eighteenth century. Just as in Greece the Metaphysical era was followed by the more practical inquiries of the Sophists, so in modern times, the feature of this age is a revolt against the scientific or purely theoretic problems with regard to nature and existence, and a return to the more individualistic questions of life and duty. Investigation is transferred from the origin and grounds of being to the nature and limits of the human mind itself. The question is not so much what do we know, as how do we know? Thought has become subjective and empirical, and is inclined to run in psychological channels. Metaphysical speculations give place to the more practical consideration of man’s inner nature and actual experience.

«The proper study of mankind is man.» This saying of Pope may be taken as the keynote of the Enlightenment. The tendency of the age is practical, and the interest centres in the discussion of life and society. Philosophy, moreover, has ceased to be a special and isolated pursuit. It has now become less technical and more popular. Its spirit has penetrated the wider circles of general culture, and has mingled with the literary and scientific activities of the age.

In the sphere of practical life the spirit of the Enlightenment revealed itself in the criticism of old institutions and long-established customs. All past enthusiasms and ideals were discarded and everything in the social and political world was subjected to the test of reason, while man, with his individual rights and powers, became the measure of all belief and conduct. A general revolt against the conventions of society and the assumptions of religion; a determination to be free of all restraints; a claim for individual liberty of thought and action, were among the more distinctive features of the Enlightenment. It was the justification of the individual against authority, privilege, and vested interest. The process was naturally, in the first instance, negative and destructive. Nothing was sacred. Every religious sentiment and traditional belief was held up to the cold, severe light of the intellect and condemned if it could not justify itself to reason or fit itself into the logical scheme of life. The movement reached its height in the French Revolution, which was at once its natural effect and its most characteristic expression.

The Enlightenment first took its rise in England, where, on account of the more stable security and larger liberty of its political life, intellectual inquiry was comparatively unmolested; and where philosophic thought more naturally allied itself with general culture. From England the movement passed to France. Here, however, the new doctrines of liberty and individualism provoked a fierce antagonism to the existing conditions of Church and State, and became the occasion of political strife and revolution. From France and England combined, the influence of the Enlightenment affected Germany, where it worked in a quiet though not less effective way, interpenetrating not only the philosophy, but the general literature of the period.

John Locke was the leader of the English Enlightenment, who gave to the philosophy of Descartes an empirical complexion. While, on the one hand, the empiricism of Locke evoked its idealistic counterpart in Berkeley, it led to its natural conclusion in the general scepticism of Hume, which, in its turn, called forth the protest of the Common Sense philosophy of the Scotch school under Reid and his followers.

The pioneer of French Enlightenment was Pierre Bayle, whose Dictionnaire turned the minds of the cultivated world in the direction of political and religious scepticism, which, in the hands of Voltaire and the Encyclopedists, took the character of materialism and sensualism.

In Germany it was Leibnitz and Wolff who gave to the movement its philosophic form, while Lessing and Herder, by their poetic genius, imparted to it its more popular literary shape.

It will be convenient to consider the various manifestations of this period under three heads: British Enlightenment, French Enlightenment, and German Enlightenment.