4.2: Age of Enlightenment in Europe

Introduction

Although much of world history focuses on events, concepts, and issues through the lens of European culture and society, we cannot deny that Europe had a significant impact on the Atlantic world, especially in their justification of expansion into areas already occupied as mentioned earlier. Much of what European philosophers espoused during this time had a dual effect as it moved throughout the world. To some powers, it was justification that what they were pursuing, either within their own countries or outside to expand, was right. Colonial powers, predominately European, moved out of some areas and into others in an attempt to regain raw materials and resources lost by these revolutions taking place in the earlier colonized regions of the world. The world was changing rapidly, with new concepts, ideas, and philosophies that would bring great change to existing structures, politically, socially, economically, religiously, and culturally. 

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. Philosophers like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau began reimagining the relationship between individuals and society, while popular writers like Thomas Paine began translating these ideas into pamphlets like Common Sense and into books like The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason that were read not only by other philosophers but also by hundreds of thousands of regular literate people.

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. Many of the Atlantic Revolutions described here were fought by Europeans against other Europeans, such as the American, French, and Mexican Revolutions.  However, it would still inspire other oppressed groups to accomplish freedom for themselves, as seen in the Haitian Revolution. 

Deism

Introduced in the seventeenth century, Deism emerged as a religious aspect of Enlightenment philosophy. It was a more secular take on the popular Protestantism that allowed for more scientific reasoning to be applied to the natural world; whereas earlier, the exploration and discovery of the how’s and why’s of the natural world were discouraged by religion, in Deism it was not only permissible but encouraged. Deism employs what was called “The Watchmaker” theory, which explained that while the Christian God created the Earth and its’ inhabitants, he then stepped back from that creation after setting it in motion, much like a watchmaker does with the timepieces he creates. 

This “crisis in religion” was one of the consequences of Newton’s physics and other Enlightenment ideas. 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 (see Figure 4.2.1) that were just becoming popular. Figure 4.2.1 is photograph of a clock that was commissioned by King Henry VIII for his palace at Hampton Court in the mid sixteenth century. This clock not only looks like a work of art but shows the time, month, day of the month, position of the sun in the zodiac, the phase and age of the moon. Another unique feature of this clock is that it shows the time at which the moon would cross the meridian and therefore the time of high water at London Bridge, which King Henry used for travel to London by the Royal Barge. 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. The Protestant idea of predestination suggested that there was no free will, and that from God’s perspective time and chance did not really exist—Newton and other European scientists challenged that notion. Many also began to doubt traditional stories of the deity’s interference in history, including the Christian story of Jesus.

Figure 4.2.1 Henry VIII's Astrological Clock at Hampton Court Palace, Mike Cattell, is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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.

Review Questions

• In what ways does the Age of Enlightenment contribute to Eurocentrism and European colonization efforts? 
• Why was the Age of Enlightenment an important event? Who ultimately benefited from the movement, and why?