Great Thinkers In The Enlightenment
As the most profound and significant intellectual movement since the Renaissance in Europe, the Enlightenment in eighteenth century was never a coincidence, instead it was set in complicated economical, scientific and social context. With the growing power of emergent capitalist industrialism, the new middle class who had known poverty and hardship, and most of whom had obtained their present social statue through hard work, put high value on the virtues of self-discipline, thrift and hard work. For them, to work, to economize and to accumulate wealth constituted the whole meaning of their life. While the old social order dominated by monarchy and churches became a barrier for their pursuit of wealth and higher social statue, as a result, the
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Enlightenment might be taken as preparations in public opinion made by the bourgeois. In this sense, the Enlightenment on the whole was an expression of struggle of the then progressive class of bourgeoisie against feudalism. Moreover, early as forerunners such as John Locke and Isaac Newton, whose theories fostered the belief in natural law and universal order and established confidence in human reason. And continuously, with more scientific discoveries on astronomy disproving the false knowledge taught by the Christian churches, the status of churches in people’s mind began to decline. Accompanied by cultural innovations in writing, painting, music, etc, and technological innovations in agriculture and manufactures, people started to realize that knowledge was not confined to the Bible but can be learned from the secular world through experience and scientific experiments. Thus, the enlightenment thinkers strongly advocated concepts of knowledge, experiment, experience and science, which directly challenged the religious authority, the clergy. “In its simplest sense the Enlightenment was the creation of a new framework of ideas about man, society and nature, which challenged existing conceptions rooted in a traditional world-view, dominated by Christianity “(Floy, 1995, p.36). Moreover, by emphasizing individualism claiming that individuals have no reason to be subjected to a higher authority, and all human being are essentially the same regardless of their religions and have freedom to choose their own beliefs, trades, etc, the philosophers also posed a threat to monarchy or absolutism.
The ideas of the Enlightenment such as social equality, human right and liberty and atheism had spread all over France and Europe, greatly shaking the foundation of royal autocracy and its status in people’s minds. And it also provides the theoretical and ideological preparation for the arrival of the French Revolution, which might be the most radical practice of the intellectual principles of the Enlightenment. With only measures helping national efficiency remained, yet the Revolution and its aftermath failed to live up to expectations. Nevertheless, it did arise interest in constructing a new science of society from the wreckage of the Enlightenment, which could be fit for the emergent capitalist industrialism. It is after the French Revolution that people especially well-educated thinkers began to seek for new therapy for the society which led to the development of social theories. And most importantly, it can’t be denied that the Enlightenment played a crucial role of the birth of sociology mainly in that it changed people’s way of thinking about man and society.
After long development of sociological theories, then there comes sociology. Sociology helps to refine our understanding of the society we are involved. We are more aware of what’s going on around us, and what might happen to us as a minor unit in the social group. It can help interpret what we can’t understand before, and thus show respect and tolerance of different patterns of life. Yet, it is the unique point of view from which sociologists look at and analyze human actions that distinguish sociology from all the other subjects. Sociology explores human world as a whole, not a singular individual nor a single aspect of society, but webs of mutual dependence (Bauman, 1990). Morover, sociologists might have to conclude or forecast the changes or problems brought by particular groups or phenomena and give responsible suggestions or solutions for the society. And that’s to certain extent what Enlightenment intellectuals did far early in 18th century who might can be considered to be path-pavers and benchmark-establisher for sociologists afterwards.
When looking at sociology at modern times, it is not difficult to notice that many of sociological thoughts can be derived from the Enlightenment. In spite of deviation from the ideas put forward by those great thinkers for a better world, most of them still have great value nowadays. Do we need a “twenty-first century Enlightenment”? My answer is yes. However, from my perspective, the 21st century Enlightenment does not necessarily require brand new thoughts which challenged previous ones, instead, it is about going back to the origins where only the very nature of key ideas, values, principles of the Enlightenment is emphasized upon.
First of all, freedom as the most important aspect of private concerns, is over-hyped nowadays. It means that though constantly being informed of being free people, freedom here is no longer the original context in the Enlightenment. It is conditional, relative and even deceptive at present. Zygmunt Bauman (2000) in “individuality” describes our culture as a transfer from “heavy and solid” to “liquid” and as the development of capitalism from heavy to light. Along side the development from heavy to light capitalism, individualism affect the way how our social structure functions. At the time of light capitalism nowadays, freedom of the individual seems to be improved tremendously. People have enough room to make choices. However, discipline was not gone with them. We can still see monitoring systems used extensively at work nowadays. The development of technology makes surveillance no longer limited to open and transparent architectural form. Bauman (2000) describes individuals under light capitalism as consumers. In fact, the relationship between individuals and discipline is like an agreement: individuals purchase the skills and the permission of work, and what they pay is the right to be trained and disciplined by the company. After they make the agreement, discipline would be applied on them aboveboard. Under light capitalism, it seems that individuals always have choice: they can tear up the agreement at any time and try the next choice. But the problem is that managers will not make it easy. Every company is trying to make their discipline exclusive, the individuals who are trained to suit the discipline can only produce the best possible results at that particular company. At the same time, managers will adopt the reward and punish policy, and there are always people to be rewarded and billed as role model. In light capitalism, individuals are so easily lost in infinite choices. Discipline and seduction are everywhere, and the ‘infinite choices’ and freedom that individuals have are actually greatly restricted. There is also a unique but common paradox in modern society: with citizens asking for more privacy and protection of personal information on one hand, whereas governments implement increased surveillance measures advocated by many policy makers in the excuse of protecting national security. Especially after the 9/11 attacks, governments worldwide have been devoted to increasing surveillance level on the grounds of terrorism and organized crime. Under no circumstance can the extent to which social life is watched on can be imagined until the PRISM program was publicly revealed by Edward Snowden in June 2013.As a anti-terrorism electronic surveillance program launched in 2007 by the National Security Agency, it warned the public worldwide that the extent to which mass data collected without permission was far greater than expected. This is definitely not true freedom expected by great thinkers in Age of the Enlightenment neither do the public in the 21st century.
What’s more, toleration might also be one notion that the great thinkers in the Enlightenment would have agreed upon.
It indicates that in spite of different religious or moral beliefs, different races or civilizations, and different cultures or societies, all human being are essentially the same. One of the great documents of the Enlightenment is the American Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson (1984, p.19): “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights”. It is universally acknowledged that equality at that time was conditional mainly in that black slaves were excluded. And Jefferson himself was a Virginia gentleman who throughout his life owned black slaves. What hurts most is that after great progress of civilization throughout centuries, prejudice and stereotype are still everywhere all over the world. Undoubtedly, discrimination against certain countries such as typical under-developed countries is still pervasive nowadays. Regardless of political context, those countries get massive prejudice and discrimination all the time. It is really a shame. People in developed countries have been receiving best education all their life-time, how can some of them do not understand the commonsense that seeing is believing and how can it be so easy for them to be swayed by biased comments on certain issues. Moreover, conflicts between races have triggered tense hostility among different groups which post threat to the security of ordinary people and the stability of society.Violent attacks in Australia related Islamic groups is a case in point. While most of Australia’s political leaders have urged restraint and respect for those of different faiths, others still have been accused of stoking tensions between Muslims and the broader community. Another example took place in the United States where several black men including a eighteen-year-old young man
were shot to death by American policeman. Consequently, it led to severe racial conflict and riot in American society. With a black president, discrimination against black people is never literally gone among white people. Admittedly, thought the United States is universally called “a melting pot”, different races and ethnic groups are never really melted together in the United States. Looking back, it is hard to deny that the notion of toleration meaning that all other races or civilizations are not inherently inferior to European Christianity was forgotten and abandoned to certain extent. Even in immigrant countries mentioned above, racism and discrimination are never eliminated, instead become tenser and can be triggered at any moment. What happened indeed? It seems that the more civilized mankind bring no decreased rate of uncivilized events. People have been expanding their outlook thanks to the advent of technology over centuries, but sadly, majority of mankind fail to think bigger and show enough tolerance to people different from them. Why not live and let live as expected by Enlightenment intellectuals?
Last but not least, as for human nature, it was believed due to the Enlightenment that the principal characteristics of human nature were always and everywhere the same (Floy, 1995, 36). Hobbes (1651) claimed that men were born individual egotists who were constantly in pursuit of power and property driven by their own self-interests. Unlike Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1999) took a positive attitude to human nature. He suggested that man was born virtuous, happy and civilized. However, he also slightly expressed conservative idea that human nature is in fact historically variable based on the social relations prevailing at any given time (Callinicos, 2010). However, to their disappointment, mankind tend to be more selfish and more obsessed with self interest than ever nowadays. Admittedly, it is clearer that the public was corrupted by particular forms of imposed authority or lust from outside world. Yes, as Rousseau (1999) predicted, people had learned to be egotists. It is not uncommon to see some news about how people show their nasty personality faced with the lure of power or interest. For example, corruption in political world stained the image of government authority. Existence of liars and cheaters prevents ordinary people from helping those truly in need without hesitation. In Elia’s (2001) view, the term “individual” is primarily used to express uniqueness of every human being as a unit in the society. And he believes that it is typical feature of more developed societies, in which people’s I-identity is valued more highly than their we-identity. In contrast, he believes that we-identity in societies in earlier stages of development outweighs I-identity. He took the republican Roman state as an example. In ancient Roman, belonging to family, tribe and state was of much greater significance than a single person. I think maybe all these we-identity, you-identity or they-identity helped them to survive in such a less developed society. Whereas with the rise of social development to a certain level, the need for uniqueness become stronger and stronger which characterize their special existence different from that of all other. However, this kind of theory is never justification for selfishness and absolute egoism in today’s society. Still, altruism should be strongly promoted and advocated to build a better world in all aspects other than physical conditions. Hopefully, with more and more people managing to reach a fulfilling living standard, they can return back to their very nature as stated by Rousseau which is closely associated with kindness, philanthropy and humanity spirit.
As one of the most important intellectual movement ever, the Enlightenment left us tremendous intellectual treasures about new ideas and beliefs worth being memorized and practiced. Apart from the brief discussion about some of ideas from Enlightenment thinkers, there are much more to say and to prove how those “old” ideas can help us to build a better world and restore the humanity needed and called for nowadays. The Enlightenment was never a misguided attempt to control human life by means of the technocratic state, rather, it was a morally motivated effort to expand human freedom and equality and establish a lasting peace worldwide (Louden, 2007). Even though people at modern times may have failed to live up to Enlightenment ideals, but it doesn't necessarily mean that we should abandon these precious ideas. Isn't the enormous gap between Enlightenment hopes and current realities more than sufficient evidence that a fundamentally different strategy for social reform is urgently needed? My answer will be a definitely no. Instead, we should get hold on to them and rethink about them. Those great thinkers’ hopes to present societies still constitutes humanity's best chance for serious social reform. Whether we people will ever succeed in returning to the very nature described and blessed by Enlightenment thinkers remains to be seen. But if we give up the very nature of our ancestors and ourselves, we are totally lost.
Enlightenment might be taken as preparations in public opinion made by the bourgeois. In this sense, the Enlightenment on the whole was an expression of struggle of the then progressive class of bourgeoisie against feudalism. Moreover, early as forerunners such as John Locke and Isaac Newton, whose theories fostered the belief in natural law and universal order and established confidence in human reason. And continuously, with more scientific discoveries on astronomy disproving the false knowledge taught by the Christian churches, the status of churches in people’s mind began to decline. Accompanied by cultural innovations in writing, painting, music, etc, and technological innovations in agriculture and manufactures, people started to realize that knowledge was not confined to the Bible but can be learned from the secular world through experience and scientific experiments. Thus, the enlightenment thinkers strongly advocated concepts of knowledge, experiment, experience and science, which directly challenged the religious authority, the clergy. “In its simplest sense the Enlightenment was the creation of a new framework of ideas about man, society and nature, which challenged existing conceptions rooted in a traditional world-view, dominated by Christianity “(Floy, 1995, p.36). Moreover, by emphasizing individualism claiming that individuals have no reason to be subjected to a higher authority, and all human being are essentially the same regardless of their religions and have freedom to choose their own beliefs, trades, etc, the philosophers also posed a threat to monarchy or absolutism.
The ideas of the Enlightenment such as social equality, human right and liberty and atheism had spread all over France and Europe, greatly shaking the foundation of royal autocracy and its status in people’s minds. And it also provides the theoretical and ideological preparation for the arrival of the French Revolution, which might be the most radical practice of the intellectual principles of the Enlightenment. With only measures helping national efficiency remained, yet the Revolution and its aftermath failed to live up to expectations. Nevertheless, it did arise interest in constructing a new science of society from the wreckage of the Enlightenment, which could be fit for the emergent capitalist industrialism. It is after the French Revolution that people especially well-educated thinkers began to seek for new therapy for the society which led to the development of social theories. And most importantly, it can’t be denied that the Enlightenment played a crucial role of the birth of sociology mainly in that it changed people’s way of thinking about man and society.
After long development of sociological theories, then there comes sociology. Sociology helps to refine our understanding of the society we are involved. We are more aware of what’s going on around us, and what might happen to us as a minor unit in the social group. It can help interpret what we can’t understand before, and thus show respect and tolerance of different patterns of life. Yet, it is the unique point of view from which sociologists look at and analyze human actions that distinguish sociology from all the other subjects. Sociology explores human world as a whole, not a singular individual nor a single aspect of society, but webs of mutual dependence (Bauman, 1990). Morover, sociologists might have to conclude or forecast the changes or problems brought by particular groups or phenomena and give responsible suggestions or solutions for the society. And that’s to certain extent what Enlightenment intellectuals did far early in 18th century who might can be considered to be path-pavers and benchmark-establisher for sociologists afterwards.
When looking at sociology at modern times, it is not difficult to notice that many of sociological thoughts can be derived from the Enlightenment. In spite of deviation from the ideas put forward by those great thinkers for a better world, most of them still have great value nowadays. Do we need a “twenty-first century Enlightenment”? My answer is yes. However, from my perspective, the 21st century Enlightenment does not necessarily require brand new thoughts which challenged previous ones, instead, it is about going back to the origins where only the very nature of key ideas, values, principles of the Enlightenment is emphasized upon.
First of all, freedom as the most important aspect of private concerns, is over-hyped nowadays. It means that though constantly being informed of being free people, freedom here is no longer the original context in the Enlightenment. It is conditional, relative and even deceptive at present. Zygmunt Bauman (2000) in “individuality” describes our culture as a transfer from “heavy and solid” to “liquid” and as the development of capitalism from heavy to light. Along side the development from heavy to light capitalism, individualism affect the way how our social structure functions. At the time of light capitalism nowadays, freedom of the individual seems to be improved tremendously. People have enough room to make choices. However, discipline was not gone with them. We can still see monitoring systems used extensively at work nowadays. The development of technology makes surveillance no longer limited to open and transparent architectural form. Bauman (2000) describes individuals under light capitalism as consumers. In fact, the relationship between individuals and discipline is like an agreement: individuals purchase the skills and the permission of work, and what they pay is the right to be trained and disciplined by the company. After they make the agreement, discipline would be applied on them aboveboard. Under light capitalism, it seems that individuals always have choice: they can tear up the agreement at any time and try the next choice. But the problem is that managers will not make it easy. Every company is trying to make their discipline exclusive, the individuals who are trained to suit the discipline can only produce the best possible results at that particular company. At the same time, managers will adopt the reward and punish policy, and there are always people to be rewarded and billed as role model. In light capitalism, individuals are so easily lost in infinite choices. Discipline and seduction are everywhere, and the ‘infinite choices’ and freedom that individuals have are actually greatly restricted. There is also a unique but common paradox in modern society: with citizens asking for more privacy and protection of personal information on one hand, whereas governments implement increased surveillance measures advocated by many policy makers in the excuse of protecting national security. Especially after the 9/11 attacks, governments worldwide have been devoted to increasing surveillance level on the grounds of terrorism and organized crime. Under no circumstance can the extent to which social life is watched on can be imagined until the PRISM program was publicly revealed by Edward Snowden in June 2013.As a anti-terrorism electronic surveillance program launched in 2007 by the National Security Agency, it warned the public worldwide that the extent to which mass data collected without permission was far greater than expected. This is definitely not true freedom expected by great thinkers in Age of the Enlightenment neither do the public in the 21st century.
What’s more, toleration might also be one notion that the great thinkers in the Enlightenment would have agreed upon.
It indicates that in spite of different religious or moral beliefs, different races or civilizations, and different cultures or societies, all human being are essentially the same. One of the great documents of the Enlightenment is the American Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson (1984, p.19): “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights”. It is universally acknowledged that equality at that time was conditional mainly in that black slaves were excluded. And Jefferson himself was a Virginia gentleman who throughout his life owned black slaves. What hurts most is that after great progress of civilization throughout centuries, prejudice and stereotype are still everywhere all over the world. Undoubtedly, discrimination against certain countries such as typical under-developed countries is still pervasive nowadays. Regardless of political context, those countries get massive prejudice and discrimination all the time. It is really a shame. People in developed countries have been receiving best education all their life-time, how can some of them do not understand the commonsense that seeing is believing and how can it be so easy for them to be swayed by biased comments on certain issues. Moreover, conflicts between races have triggered tense hostility among different groups which post threat to the security of ordinary people and the stability of society.Violent attacks in Australia related Islamic groups is a case in point. While most of Australia’s political leaders have urged restraint and respect for those of different faiths, others still have been accused of stoking tensions between Muslims and the broader community. Another example took place in the United States where several black men including a eighteen-year-old young man
were shot to death by American policeman. Consequently, it led to severe racial conflict and riot in American society. With a black president, discrimination against black people is never literally gone among white people. Admittedly, thought the United States is universally called “a melting pot”, different races and ethnic groups are never really melted together in the United States. Looking back, it is hard to deny that the notion of toleration meaning that all other races or civilizations are not inherently inferior to European Christianity was forgotten and abandoned to certain extent. Even in immigrant countries mentioned above, racism and discrimination are never eliminated, instead become tenser and can be triggered at any moment. What happened indeed? It seems that the more civilized mankind bring no decreased rate of uncivilized events. People have been expanding their outlook thanks to the advent of technology over centuries, but sadly, majority of mankind fail to think bigger and show enough tolerance to people different from them. Why not live and let live as expected by Enlightenment intellectuals?
Last but not least, as for human nature, it was believed due to the Enlightenment that the principal characteristics of human nature were always and everywhere the same (Floy, 1995, 36). Hobbes (1651) claimed that men were born individual egotists who were constantly in pursuit of power and property driven by their own self-interests. Unlike Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1999) took a positive attitude to human nature. He suggested that man was born virtuous, happy and civilized. However, he also slightly expressed conservative idea that human nature is in fact historically variable based on the social relations prevailing at any given time (Callinicos, 2010). However, to their disappointment, mankind tend to be more selfish and more obsessed with self interest than ever nowadays. Admittedly, it is clearer that the public was corrupted by particular forms of imposed authority or lust from outside world. Yes, as Rousseau (1999) predicted, people had learned to be egotists. It is not uncommon to see some news about how people show their nasty personality faced with the lure of power or interest. For example, corruption in political world stained the image of government authority. Existence of liars and cheaters prevents ordinary people from helping those truly in need without hesitation. In Elia’s (2001) view, the term “individual” is primarily used to express uniqueness of every human being as a unit in the society. And he believes that it is typical feature of more developed societies, in which people’s I-identity is valued more highly than their we-identity. In contrast, he believes that we-identity in societies in earlier stages of development outweighs I-identity. He took the republican Roman state as an example. In ancient Roman, belonging to family, tribe and state was of much greater significance than a single person. I think maybe all these we-identity, you-identity or they-identity helped them to survive in such a less developed society. Whereas with the rise of social development to a certain level, the need for uniqueness become stronger and stronger which characterize their special existence different from that of all other. However, this kind of theory is never justification for selfishness and absolute egoism in today’s society. Still, altruism should be strongly promoted and advocated to build a better world in all aspects other than physical conditions. Hopefully, with more and more people managing to reach a fulfilling living standard, they can return back to their very nature as stated by Rousseau which is closely associated with kindness, philanthropy and humanity spirit.
As one of the most important intellectual movement ever, the Enlightenment left us tremendous intellectual treasures about new ideas and beliefs worth being memorized and practiced. Apart from the brief discussion about some of ideas from Enlightenment thinkers, there are much more to say and to prove how those “old” ideas can help us to build a better world and restore the humanity needed and called for nowadays. The Enlightenment was never a misguided attempt to control human life by means of the technocratic state, rather, it was a morally motivated effort to expand human freedom and equality and establish a lasting peace worldwide (Louden, 2007). Even though people at modern times may have failed to live up to Enlightenment ideals, but it doesn't necessarily mean that we should abandon these precious ideas. Isn't the enormous gap between Enlightenment hopes and current realities more than sufficient evidence that a fundamentally different strategy for social reform is urgently needed? My answer will be a definitely no. Instead, we should get hold on to them and rethink about them. Those great thinkers’ hopes to present societies still constitutes humanity's best chance for serious social reform. Whether we people will ever succeed in returning to the very nature described and blessed by Enlightenment thinkers remains to be seen. But if we give up the very nature of our ancestors and ourselves, we are totally lost.