What is
Enlightenment?
En-LIGHT-enment
• Lemonnier’s painting shows light streaming
through the window to describe what is
happening in the room: Enlightenment.
• From Johnson’s dictionary, we can see the
relationship between light and knowledge.
• Descartes, in describing his process of
enlightenment, uses the metaphor of walking
around in darkness, moving slowly so as not to
fall.
A little literary/philosophical history
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1637: Descartes’ Discourse on Method
1651: Hobbes’s Leviathan
1689: Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
1739-40: Hume’s Treatises on Human Nature
1751: Diderot’s Encyclopedia
1758: Voltaire’s Candide
1759: Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments
1762: Rousseau’s Social Contract
1784: Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
1789: The beginning of the French Revolution
1792: Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman
How does one attain enlightenment?
• Some terms/ideas that came up in the
reading:
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Reason/Judgment
Education
Making an effort
Rejecting previously held assumptions
Rejecting authority
Reason
• “Have courage to use your own reason” –Kant
(105)
• “… rejecting any of the opinions which had
formerly been able to slip into my belief without
being introduced by reason…” [is essential to any
project of Enlightenment] –Descartes (110)
• “every being may become virtuous by the
exercise of its own reason…” –Wollstonecraft
(134)
Education
• “It may then fairly be inferred, that, till society be
differently constituted, much cannot be expected from
education.” –Wollstonecraft (134)
• “…what they [women] learn is rather by snatches; and
as learning is with them, in general, only a secondary
thing, they do not pursue any one branch with that
persevering ardour necessary to give vigor to the
faculties, and clearness to the judgment.” –
Wollstonecraft (135)
• “Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there
wil be an end to blind obedience…” –Wollstonecraft
(136)
Laziness and Cowardice
• “Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why
so great a portion of mankind […] remains
under lifelong tutelage, and why it is so easy
for others to set themselves up as their
guardians.” –Kant (105)
Habit
• “…so they do to-day, what they did yesterday,
merely because they did it yesterday.” –
Wollstonecraft (135)
The forces of evil
• “After the guardians have first made their domestic
cattle dumb and have made sure that these placid
creatures will not dare take a single step without the
harness of the cart to which they are confined, the
guardians then show them the danger which threatens
if they try to go alone.” –Kant (105)
• “…but as blind obedience is ever sought for by power,
tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they
endevour to keep women in the dark, because the
former only want slaves, and the latter a plaything.” –
Wollstonecraft (136)
Some Implications of
Enlightenment Thinking
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Using individual reason  isolation
Questioning everything  paralyzing doubt
Enlightenment  light/dark dichotomy
“I think therefore I am”  privileging mind
over body
• Reason  what happens to feelings?
Real world consequences of the
Enlightenment
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American and French Revolutions
Increased skepticism in matters of religion
Separation of church and state
Shift to democracy from monarchy
Scientific discovery, scientific method
Systems of ethics deriving from reason rather
than belief