4.1: The Enlightenment

Secularization and Race

A “crisis in religion” was one of the consequences of Isacc Newton’s physics and the Scientific Revolution. Although Newton himself seems to have believed in a God of some type, the universe he described in his theories did not require a personal deity to be actively engaged in making things happen. Newton’s universe seemed more like one of the new mechanical clocks that were just becoming popular. These complex machines might require a mechanical engineer or a watchmaker to design and build them but once made and wound they could be left to themselves. Absorbing this watchmaker metaphor, many Enlightenment thinkers rejected the popular religious vision of an activist God who was involved in the day-to-day operation of the world, who rewarded the righteous and punished sinners, or who chose sides in history. Many also began to doubt traditional stories of the deity’s interference in history, including the Christian story of Jesus.

Politically and culturally, Enlightenment thinking fostered beliefs in common humanity, the possibility of societal progress, the remaking of oneself, and the importance of one’s social and ecological environment—a four-pronged revolt against the hierarchies of the Old World. Yet, tension arose due to Enlightenment thinkers’ desire to classify and order the natural world. Carolus Linnaeus, Comte de Buffon, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, and others created connections between race and place as they divided the racial “types” of the world according to skin color, cranial measurements, and hair. They claimed that years under the hot sun and tropical climate of Africa darkened the skin and reconfigured the skulls of the African race, whereas the cold northern latitudes of Europe molded and sustained the “Caucasian” race. The environments endowed both races with respective characteristics, which accounted for differences in humankind tracing back to a common ancestry. A universal human nature, therefore, housed not fundamental differences but rather the “civilized” and the “primitive”—two poles on a scale of social progress.

Figure 4.1.1 is a world map from 1720, by John Senex, who was one the main European cartographers of the eighteenth century. This map is titled "A New Map of the World: From the Latest Observations." This is a double hemisphere world map. The title cartouche in the top center is elaborately surrounded by allegorical figures representing the four continents. Europe in the top left is portrayed as a land of abundance. The figure depicting Asia is seated to the right, carrying a smoking censer in one hand and a balsam branch in the other hand. Africa is depicted as a figure wearing an elephant headdress and holding the scorpion of the desert sands. America is depicted as a robed female with a feather headdress and holding a bow. The map also includes four hemispheric inset maps in each of the corners. The maps of John Senex capture the exploration spirit of the eighteenth century.

Figure 4.1.1 A "New Map" of the World in 1720, Rawpixel Ltd, licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Popular Sovereignty for Who?

The Age of Enlightenment encouraged a gradual shift from an understanding of political sovereignty as a gift of God (the Divine Right of Kings as expressed by absolute monarchs like Louis XIV) to ideas of popular sovereignty and government by consent of the governed or through a “social contract” between rulers and people. The Enlightenment blossomed when people discovered new knowledge through both exploration and science and began throwing off what they considered the superstitions of an earlier age, including the “divine right” of kings.

The topic of natural rights, rights possessed by all human beings, such as the right to life and liberty, formed the focus of many philosophical treatises and conversations in the eighteenth century. One of the first Enlightenment thinkers to tackle the issue of natural rights was the English philosopher, John Locke. In his influential work of political philosophy, Two Treatises of Government, he argued that all people are born in a state of freedom and that government should exist only by their consent, a principle called popular sovereignty. It was the government’s responsibility to protect natural rights.

This “Age of Reason,” as it was also known, however, only pertained to some people, those who had the time and money to study the philosophy being spread. Enlightenment ideas still enabled the continuation of a belief system started on a large scale by the “discovery” of the American continents and the indigenous populations of that area. The belief that certain people were inferior to others has been around as long as there have been humans, but not to the extent that was seen during this period. Although Locke and his European contemporaries asserted the inherent equality of all humans, their interpretation of equality is somewhat paradoxical, since in practice they supported the unequal institutions of colonialism and the Atlantic slave trade that deprived all but white men of their natural rights. Many of the Atlantic Revolutions described here were fought by Europeans against other Europeans, such as the American, French, and Spanish Revolutions. However, it would still inspire other oppressed groups to accomplish freedom for themselves, as seen in the Haitian Revolution.

The Enlightenment and Economics

In 1681, the French finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert asked a group of French business owners led by a man named Thomas Le Gendre how the government could help them. Le Gendre reportedly told Colbert, “Laissez nous faire,” meaning “let us do it.” This gave rise to the concept of laissez-faire economics, which argues that market forces alone should drive the economy and that governments should refrain from direct intervention in or moderation of the economic system.

These ideas were popularized by Adam Smith, a Scottish political economist and philosopher, best known for writing The Wealth of Nations (1776). Earlier scholars had written about various aspects of economics, but with this book Smith became the first person to produce a comprehensive philosophical examination of the way nations should manage their economies. In The Wealth of Nations, Smith argued that the “invisible hand” of the marketplace guided people when they made their own economic decisions. By doing the work that would bring them the greatest profit, he explained, people inadvertently tended to produce the goods and services most needed by society. In Smith’s view, this form of selfishness is often good for the individual and for society. Although Smith did not use the term, preferring to call his system commercial society, he and his supporters promoted the idea later known as capitalism, an economic system in which private individuals and companies typically own the means of production such as factories and farms, and free (unregulated) markets set the value of most goods and services based on supply and demand.

Review Questions

• In what ways does the Age of Enlightenment reject older ideas?
• Who stood to benefit from the ideas of the Enlightenment?