Core Ideals of the Enlightenment
Core Ideals of the Enlightenment
- The Enlightenment: A movement of intellectual change that swept throughout Europe and North America during the 18th century.
- Political ideology: A fairly coherent and comprehensive set of ideas that explains and evaluates social conditions, provides a vision of the ideal society, and provides a program for social and political action.
- Seven core ideals
1. Human autonomy is the means and end of Enlightenment
a. Enlightenment means that humans develop (become “mature”) through the use of their reason. Individuals can seek knowledge and use their own reason rather than be told how to think by the church or the state. Enlightenment means think for yourself!
b. The notion of human autonomy changes the relationship between individual freedom and the state. If individuals should be free to use their own reason and to think what they want, how much power should the state have over individuals’ lives? This becomes a key problem for Enlightenment ideologies.
2. The importance of reason
a. Freedom means being able to think rationally for yourself. Kant argues that humanity must abandon a life of unreason, of relying on superstition, faith, and blind obedience. Instead, we must order our lives according to reason.
b. Reason will lead us to the truth. We find truth through science rather than opinion or faith. Through scientific inquiry we can solve all the mysteries of the universe and reveal the solutions to all the problems people face.
3. Enlightenment is universal
All human beings possess the ability to be enlightened. In other words, humans are equal by nature. All humans are part of a “universal community” who share a single universal human nature. Differences among people are less important than their fundamental sameness.
4. Progress
Humanity is progressing from immaturity, superstition, and slavery to maturity, reason, and freedom. Human history is therefore the story of progress in the human condition.
5. Secularism
Religion and politics should be separated. There should be no official religion. Further, one’s method of worship should be a private matter.
6. The centrality of economics to politics
The social organization of production and distribution becomes a central problem for enlightenment ideologies. A society’s well-being depends on how its economy is structured.
7. The ideal of popular government
a. People are capable of ruling themselves. The aristocracy is not the only class that deserved to rule. The middle class, or bourgeoisie, should also play a part in politics.
b. Support for popular government developed into support for democracy in the nineteenth century. As a result, all ideologies today (except fascism and nazism) claim to be democratic.