The Philosophy of Illuminism

Introduction

The
vast intellectual movement which made its appearance at the close of the
"Glorious Revolution" in England (1688) and continued until the
French Revolution (1789) is called Illuminism, or the
Enlightenment. The new culture, advancing under the aegis of
"reason," launched itself in bitter opposition to all the past in general, and in particular to the Middle Ages. According to
the Illuminati -- the exponents of the Enlightenment -- the Middle
Ages, victim of philosophical and religious prejudices, had not made use of
"reason," and hence they called it the age of obscurantism, or the
Dark Ages. The new philosophy, on the other hand, was to introduce an age of
enlightenment; it was to dispel the darkness of the past.

Opposition
to the immediate past had manifested itself, though to a limited degree, during
the Renaissance. Humanism had in fact minimized and ignored the Middle Ages, and had accentuated and lauded the classical
world of ancient Greece and Rome; and Protestantism had extolled
"primitive Christianity."

Illuminism attempted to go further still,
to excel the past in its various manifestations of culture, religion and
government -- for its philosophers considered the entire past to be the work of
"non-reason" (Anti-historicalism).
Everything appeared before the tribunal of "reason" to receive its
condemnation. With all science of the past discredited, man was brought back at
last to his origins, to his natural state; Illuminism
then worked to formulate a new philosophical system, a rational system because
it was evolved by reason purified of all prejudice. It is a system which
embraces all human activity -- civil, juridical and religious (Naturalism).

Reason,
as understood by the Illuminati, is the faculty which Descartes had called
"good sense" and is equally distributed and common to all men. The
rational order means the association of one phenomenon with another, not by
reason of finality or causality but simply by virtue of mechanical necessity.

In
order to understand the strange trend of the philosophy of the Enlightenment,
we must bear in mind that this age is witness to the establishment of modern
physics as the science of nature; and physics, as we know, is regulated by
mechanical necessity. Illuminism attempted to apply
the same laws and methods of mechanical necessity to every field of human
knowledge. With all authority and finalism banished and mechanism proclaimed in
their stead as the single rational means of solving the problems of nature,
there inevitably emerges a natural right, a natural society, a natural religion. Everything consists in a
succession of phenomena starting from the so-called "state of nature"
and proceeding one from another by mechanical necessity. All these suppositions
of naturalism were to find violent manifestation in the great upheaval of the
French Revolution.

I. ENGLISH ILLUMINISM

Illuminism in England was concerned with defending
religion and morality against the atheistic conclusion of empiristic
philosophy, particularly as expressed by Thomas Hobbes. This aim gave rise to
two manifestations, namely, the moralism of Cambridge, and the "common
sense" of the Scottish School (Thomas Reid).

The
first, starting from a world Platonically conceived, tried to defend and
justify the laws of "natural religion" and "natural
morality." The second held that morality finds its justification in
certain primitive judgments which are intuitively known as "common
sense." (Note: the use of the term "common sense" here is not
the same as we use it in traditional commonsense philosophical realism.)

II. FRENCH ILLUMINISM

The Encyclopedie

In
France Illuminism found such a favorable reception
that it was able to develop to its ultimate consequences. The Encyclopedie was the instrument for expressing these new
ideas and spreading them throughout Europe. The Encyclopedie was the work of
many years; it required the collaboration of many cultured men. The authors
were of varied opinions, but united by a single purpose -- to give a new
political and religious doctrine to France in the name of
"reason."

The
fundamental characteristics of French Illuminism are:
Hatred of any positive
religion, and in particular of Catholicism;
A tendency to endorse
English Empiricism, which replaced Cartesian Rationalism - such a theory
could better justify the negation of the existence of God and the
mechanistic conception of the universe - thus, many French Illuminati were
atheists, others Deists;
The theory of the equality
of all men in the state of nature - hence, the necessity of the
organization of a new society in accordance with the rights of man in his
natural state.

The
outstanding figure of French Illuminism and European
culture was Francois Marie Arouet, known to history
as Voltaire (picture).

The Sensationalism of Etienne Bonnot
de Condillac (1715-1780)

Representative
of the philosophy of French Illuminism is the
sensationalism of Condillac. He rejected the
distinction Locke had made between ideas of sensation and ideas of reflection.
Knowledge is nothing other than pure sensation. Intellective life is reducible
to sensation. Also, emotional life is a distinct degree of sensation is so far
as sensation, affecting the heart, causes emotion.

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

Jean
Jacques Rousseau (picture)
is the most original figure of French Illuminism.

The
basic idea of Rousseau was that "nature is good." No progress of
culture or civilization results in goodness and happiness. This can be expected
only by developing nature rationally. Hence the fundamental idea of Rousseau is
to restore human life: "Back to nature." He develops this concept in
two masterpieces -- the Social Contract and Emile.

The
"Social Contract":
Men living in the state of nature were free and happy. The passage from this
state to the social state was made by means of a contract with the intention of
man's not being a slave but being protected as regards his right to natural
freedom. Social authority is the personification of this general will.

Emile: According to the principle that
nature is good, Rousseau attempts to show also that in private education man
never must be a slave of prejudices. He must obey nature alone.

III. GERMAN AND ITALIAN
ILLUMINISM

Germany and Italy received Illuminism
from England and France, and each country developed it
in accordance with its own traditional character; thus Illuminism
was prevalently religious in Germany, and practical in Italy.

German Illuminism

German
Illuminism was the occasion for the rise of a
movement called Pietism, a reaction against Protestant dogmatism. Moses
Mendelssohn (1729-1796) through numerous publications defended the position
that philosophy clarifies what is obscure in religion. The most representative
exponent of German Illuminism was Gotthold
Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781), who defended the value
of history and revelation, because through them men were elevated from earlier
forms of life to the higher, and are still elevated by
these factors.

Giovanni Battista Vico (1668-1744)

A
strong criticism of Cartesian Rationalism is found in Principi
di Una Scienza
Nuova by Giovanni Battista Vico
(picture). The "new
science" consists in knowledge of history and the rules governing the
course of history. Vico tried to show that the
progressive civilization of man is a fact deriving from the exercise of those
rules. Vico was neither a historian nor a
philosopher. What has to be remembered about his work is that he seemed to have
remarkable insight concerning the primitive life of man.

The positive contributions of Illuminism
to

the Perennial Philosophy

In
a word, none.
In fact, most of Illuminism is antithetical to
commonsense philosophical realism and a source of much modern confusion about
philosophy.