Editing Age of Enlightenment (section)

==Historiography==
The idea of the Enlightenment has always been contested territory. According to [[Keith Thomas (historian)|Keith Thomas]], its supporters "hail it as the source of everything that is progressive about the modern world. For them, it stands for freedom of thought, rational inquiry, critical thinking, religious tolerance, political liberty, scientific achievement, the pursuit of happiness, and hope for the future."<ref>Keith Thomas, "The Great Fight Over the Enlightenment," [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/apr/03/great-fight-over-enlightenment/ ''The New York Review'' April 3, 2014]</ref> Thomas adds that its detractors accuse it of shallow rationalism, naïve optimism, unrealistic universalism, and moral darkness. From the start, conservative and clerical defenders of traditional religion attacked materialism and skepticism as evil forces that encouraged immorality. By 1794, they pointed to the [[Reign of Terror]] during the French Revolution as confirmation of their predictions.

Romantic philosophers argued that the Enlightenment's excessive dependence on reason was a mistake that it perpetuated, disregarding the bonds of history, myth, faith, and tradition that were necessary to hold society together.<ref name="Thomas, 2014">Thomas, 2014</ref> [[Ritchie Robertson]] portrays it as a grand intellectual and political program, offering a "science" of society modeled on the powerful physical laws of Newton. "Social science" was seen as the instrument of human improvement. It would expose truth and expand human happiness.<ref>
Ritchie Robertson, "The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680–1790." (2020) ch. 1.</ref>

The rights of women and nonwhite people were generally overlooked in Enlightenment philosophy, which is often explicitly [[Eurocentric]].<ref name="Bristow 2023"/> [[Scientific racism]] first emerged at this time, bringing together traditional racism and new research methods.<ref name="Boyle p74">{{Cite book |last=Boyle |first=Jen E. |title=Anamorphosis in Early Modern Literature |date=2010 |publisher=Ashgate Publishing |location=Farnham, Surrey |isbn=978-1-409-40069-1 |page=74 |doi=10.4324/9781315262598}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=11 December 2024 |title=Scientific racism {{!}} Categorization, Craniometry, Anthropometry, Louis Agassiz, Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, & Franz Boas {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/scientific-racism |access-date=22 January 2025 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}</ref>  During the Enlightenment, concepts of [[monogenism]] and [[polygenism]] became popular, though they would only be systematized epistemologically during the 19th century. Monogenism contends that all races have a single origin, while polygenism is the idea that each race has a separate origin. Until the 18th century, the words "race" and "species" were interchangeable.<ref name="Boyle p74"/> The classification of non-European peoples as sub-human and irrational served to justify European dominance.{{Efn|{{ill|Michèle Duchet|fr|Michèle Duchet}} was a pioneer in highlighting the darker aspects of the Enlightenment. She focussed on refuting the myth of anti-colonialism in Enlightenment thought, stating that the criticisms sought to preserve European [[neo-colonial]] rule, rather than having been based on humanistic ideals.}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Vartija |first=Devin J. |url=https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=VaE3EAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=enlightenment+race&ots=v5tar_DjDI&sig=aCog_L0mtx11SM7Uq_FjpYcGHrM#v=onepage&q=enlightenment%20race&f=false |title=The Color of Equality: Race and Common Humanity in Enlightenment Thought |date=2021 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |isbn=978-0-8122-5319-1 |language=en}}</ref>{{Rp|page=|pages=4, 10}}

===Definition===
The term "Enlightenment" emerged in English in the latter part of the 19th century,<ref>''Oxford English Dictionary,'' 3rd Edn (revised)</ref> with particular reference to French philosophy, as the equivalent of the French term ''[[Lumières]]'' (used first by [[Jean-Baptiste Dubos]] in 1733 and already well established by 1751). From Kant's 1784 essay "Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?" ("Answering the Question: [[What Is Enlightenment?|What is Enlightenment?]]"), the German term became ''Aufklärun''g (''aufklären''=to illuminate; ''sich aufklären''=to clear up). However, scholars have never agreed on a definition of the Enlightenment or on its chronological or geographical extent. Terms like ''les Lumières'' (French), ''illuminism''o (Italian), ''ilustración'' (Spanish) and ''Aufklärung'' (German) referred to partly overlapping movements. Not until the late 19th century did English scholars agree they were talking about "the Enlightenment."<ref name="Thomas, 2014"/><ref>{{cite journal |first=John |last=Lough |title=Reflections on Enlightenment and Lumieres |year=1985 |volume=8#1 |pages=1–15 |doi=10.1111/j.1754-0208.1985.tb00093.x |journal=Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies |issue=1}}</ref>

[[File:Encyclopedie frontispice full.jpg|thumb|upright|If there is something you know, communicate it. If there is something you don't know, search for it.<div style="text-align:right;">— An engraving from the 1772 edition of the ''[[Encyclopédie]]''; [[Truth]], in the top center, is surrounded by light and unveiled by the figures to the right, Philosophy and [[Reason]]</div>]]

Enlightenment historiography began in the period itself, from what Enlightenment figures said about their work. A dominant element was the intellectual angle they took. [[Jean le Rond d'Alembert]]'s ''Preliminary Discourse'' of ''l'Encyclopédie'' provides a history of the Enlightenment which comprises a chronological list of developments in the realm of knowledge—of which the ''Encyclopédie'' forms the pinnacle.<ref>Jean le Rond d'Alembert, ''Discours préliminaire de l'Encyclopédie''</ref> In 1783, Mendelssohn referred to Enlightenment as a process by which man was educated in the use of reason.<ref>Outram, 1. The past tense is used deliberately as whether man would educate himself or be educated by certain exemplary figures was a common issue at the time. D'Alembert's introduction to l'Encyclopédie, for example, along with Immanuel Kant's essay response (the "independent thinkers"), both support the later model.</ref> Kant called Enlightenment "man's release from his self-incurred tutelage," tutelage being "man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another."<ref>Immanuel Kant, "What is Enlightenment?", 1.</ref> "For Kant, Enlightenment was mankind's final coming of age, the emancipation of the human consciousness from an immature state of ignorance."<ref>{{harvnb|Porter|2001|p=1}}</ref> The German scholar [[Ernst Cassirer]] called the Enlightenment "a part and a special phase of that whole intellectual development through which modern philosophic thought gained its characteristic self-confidence and self-consciousness."<ref>Ernst Cassirer, ''The Philosophy of the Enlightenment,'' (1951), p. vi</ref> According to historian [[Roy Porter]], the liberation of the human mind from a dogmatic state of ignorance, is the epitome of what the Age of Enlightenment was trying to capture.<ref>{{harvnb|Porter|2001|p=70}}</ref>

[[Bertrand Russell]] saw the Enlightenment as a phase in a progressive development which began in antiquity and that reason and challenges to the established order were constant ideals throughout that time.<ref name="Russell, Bertrand p492-494">Russell, Bertrand. ''A History of Western Philosophy.'' pp.&nbsp;492–494</ref> Russell said that the Enlightenment was ultimately born out of the Protestant reaction against the Catholic [[Counter-Reformation]] and that philosophical views such as affinity for democracy against monarchy originated among 16th-century Protestants to justify their desire to break away from the Catholic Church. Although many of these philosophical ideals were picked up by Catholics, Russell argues that by the 18th century the Enlightenment was the principal manifestation of the [[Reformation|schism]] that began with [[Martin Luther]].<ref name="Russell, Bertrand p492-494"/>

Jonathan Israel rejects the attempts of postmodern and [[Marxism|Marxian]] historians to understand the revolutionary ideas of the period purely as by-products of social and economic transformations.{{sfn|Israel|2010|pp=49–50}} He instead focuses on the history of ideas in the period from 1650 to the end of the 18th century and claims that it was the ideas themselves that caused the change that eventually led to the revolutions of the latter half of the 18th century and the early 19th century.{{sfn|Israel|2006|pp=v–viii}} Israel argues that until the 1650s Western civilization "was based on a largely shared core of faith, tradition, and authority."{{Sfn|Israel|2001|pp=3}}

===Time span===
There is little consensus on the precise beginning of the Age of Enlightenment, though several historians and philosophers argue that it was marked by Descartes' 1637 philosophy of ''[[Cogito, ergo sum]]'' ("I think, therefore I am"), which shifted the [[epistemology|epistemological]] basis from external authority to internal certainty.<ref name="Heidegger1938emancipated">Martin Heidegger [1938] (2002) ''The Age of the World Picture'' quotation:{{blockquote|For up to Descartes ... a particular ''sub-iectum'' ... lies at the foundation of its own fixed qualities and changing circumstances. The superiority of a ''sub-iectum'' ... arises out of the claim of man to a ... self-supported, unshakeable foundation of truth, in the sense of certainty. Why and how does this claim acquire its decisive authority? The claim originates in that emancipation of man in which he frees himself from obligation to Christian revelational truth and Church doctrine to a legislating for himself that takes its stand upon itself.}}</ref><ref name="Ingraffia95p126">Ingraffia, Brian D. (1995) [https://books.google.com/books?id=LHjZYbOLG8cC&pg=PA126 ''Postmodern theory and biblical theology: vanquishing God's shadow''] p. 126</ref><ref>Norman K. Swazo (2002) [https://books.google.com/books?id=INP_cy6Mu7EC&pg=PA97 ''Crisis theory and world order: Heideggerian reflections''] pp.&nbsp;97–99</ref> In France, many cited the publication of Newton's ''[[Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica|Principia Mathematica]]'' (1687),<ref>Shank, J. B. ''The Newton Wars and the Beginning of the French Enlightenment'' (2008), "Introduction"{{Page needed|date=July 2020}}</ref> which built upon the work of earlier scientists and formulated the [[Newton's laws of motion|laws of motion]] and [[Newton's law of universal gravitation|universal gravitation]].<ref>{{cite web |title=PHYS 200 – Lecture 3 – Newton's Laws of Motion – Open Yale Courses |url=http://oyc.yale.edu/physics/phys-200/lecture-3 |website=oyc.yale.edu}}</ref> French historians usually place the ''Siècle des Lumières'' ("Century of Enlightenments") between 1715 and 1789: from the beginning of the reign of [[Louis XV]] until the French Revolution.<ref>[[Matthew Smith Anderson|Anderson, M. S.]] ''Historians and eighteenth-century Europe, 1715–1789'' (Oxford UP, 1979); Jean de Viguerie, ''Histoire et dictionnaire du temps des Lumières (1715–1789)'' (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1995).</ref> Most scholars use the last years of the century, often choosing the French Revolution or the beginning of the [[Napoleonic Wars]] (1804) as a convenient point in time with which to date the end of the Enlightenment.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/enlightenment_age.html |title=The age of Enlightenment |last=Frost |first=Martin |year=2008 |access-date=18 January 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071010041056/http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/enlightenment_age.html |archive-date=10 October 2007}}</ref>

In recent years, scholars have expanded the time span and global perspective of the Enlightenment by examining: (1) how European intellectuals did not work alone and other people helped spread and adapt Enlightenment ideas, (2) how Enlightenment ideas were "a response to cross-border interaction and [[globalization|global integration]]," and (3) how the Enlightenment "continued throughout the nineteenth century and beyond."<ref name=":0"/> The Enlightenment "was not merely a history of [[diffusion of innovations|diffusion]]" and "was the work of historical actors around the world... who invoked the term... for their own specific purposes."<ref name=":0"/>

===Modern study===
In their 1947 book ''[[Dialectic of Enlightenment]],'' [[Frankfurt School]] philosophers [[Max Horkheimer]] and [[Theodor W. Adorno]], both wartime exiles from Nazi Germany, critiqued the supposed rational basis of the modern world:

{{blockquote|Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth radiates under the sign of disaster triumphant.<ref name="Zuidervaart p185">{{cite book |last1=Zuidervaart |first1=Lambert |title=Social Philosophy after Adorno |date=2007 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-139-46453-6 |page=185 |doi=10.1017/CBO9780511618970.009 |chapter=Appendix: Adorno's Social Philosophy}}</ref>}}

Extending Horkheimer and Adorno's argument, intellectual historian [[Jason Josephson Storm]] argues that any idea of the Age of Enlightenment as a clearly defined period that is separate from the earlier [[Renaissance]] and later [[Romanticism]] or [[Counter-Enlightenment]] constitutes a myth. Storm points out that there are vastly different and mutually contradictory periodizations of the Enlightenment depending on nation, field of study, and school of thought; that the term and category of "Enlightenment" referring to the Scientific Revolution was actually applied after the fact; that the Enlightenment did not see an increase in [[disenchantment]] or the dominance of the [[mechanism (philosophy)|mechanistic worldview]]; and that a blur in the early modern ideas of the [[humanities]] and natural sciences makes it hard to circumscribe a Scientific Revolution.<ref>{{cite book |last=Josephson-Storm |first=Jason |title=The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences |location=Chicago |publisher=University of Chicago Press |year=2017 |pages=58–61 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xZ5yDgAAQBAJ |isbn=978-0-226-40336-6}}</ref> Storm defends his categorization of the Enlightenment as "myth" by noting the regulative role ideas of a period of Enlightenment and disenchantment play in modern Western culture, such that belief in magic, spiritualism, and even religion appears somewhat taboo in intellectual strata.<ref>{{cite book |last=Josephson-Storm |first=Jason |title=The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences |location=Chicago |publisher=University of Chicago Press |year=2017 |pages=61–62 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xZ5yDgAAQBAJ |isbn=978-0-226-40336-6}}</ref>

In the 1970s, study of the Enlightenment expanded to include the ways Enlightenment ideas spread to European colonies and how they interacted with indigenous cultures and how the Enlightenment took place in formerly unstudied areas such as Italy, Greece, the Balkans, Poland, Hungary, and Russia.<ref>Outram, 6. See also, A. Owen Alridge (ed.), ''The Ibero-American Enlightenment'' (1971)., Franco Venturi, ''The End of the Old Regime in Europe 1768–1776: The First Crisis.''</ref> Intellectuals such as [[Robert Darnton]] and [[Jürgen Habermas]] have focused on the social conditions of the Enlightenment. Habermas described the creation of the "bourgeois public sphere" in 18th-century Europe, containing the new venues and modes of communication allowing for rational exchange. Habermas said that the public sphere was bourgeois, egalitarian, rational, and independent from the state, making it the ideal venue for intellectuals to critically examine contemporary politics and society, away from the interference of established authority. While the public sphere is generally an integral component of the social study of the Enlightenment, other historians{{efn|e.g. Robert Darnton, Roger Chartier, Brian Cowan, Donna T. Andrew.}} have questioned whether the public sphere had these characteristics.