THE AGE OF REASON (The Enlightenment)

Versailles, outside of Paris, is a symbol of the Age of Reason.
To a large extent, modern European thought (or "the Age of Reason" or "Enlightenment" as it has been variously called) begins with a rejection of tradition. While medieval thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas had taken great pains to incorporate and reconcile ancient writings, early modern thinkers such as Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes encouraged their readers to make a clean sweep of the past. Previous thinkers had been deluded by "Idols," errors in thinking, or had relied too heavily on authority. In the modern age, the wisdom of the past was to be discarded as error-prone. As Descartes' observed in his Meditations,

Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had subsequently based on them. I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last.

This quest to establish a stable intellectual foundation on which to build something "likely to last" characterized Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century European thought. "British Empiricists," such as Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, and Mary Wollstonecraft found such a foundation in sensory experience and developed their thought on that basis. On the other hand, the "Contintental Rationalists," philosophers such as Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, and Immanuel Kant, thought the senses inadequate for such a task. They considered reason superior to experience and sought to establish their philosophies on the basis of more certain principles. The Age of Reason culminated in the thought of Immanuel Kant who sought to combine these two approaches and in so doing developed a uniquely influential system of philosophy.

Contemporary thinkers in the West are still trying to come to grips with these elightenment thinkers. For better or for worse, their ideas have influenced virtually all areas of Euro-American civilization. The subtlety and clarity with which these thinkers wrote continues to demand careful study even in a "post-modern" age.

MAPS AND TOURS:

LINKS:

General:

Enlightenment Thought:

Specific Thinkers:

  • Descartes: Includes a brief biography and some links to etexts and sites.
  • Pascal: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Pascal's Wager.
  • Spinoza: The site for Studia Spinoziana which includes links to everything Spinoza.
  • Locke: Includes a brief biography and some links to etexts and sites.
  • Leibniz: Also includes a brief biography and some links to etexts and sites.
  • Leibniz: On Leibniz as a mathematician.
  • Berkeley: For Berkeley studies with links and other information.
  • Hume: The HumeArchives include virtually everything about Hume (or at least links toeverything).
  • Kant: Clearly laid out-agreat place to begin further study.

By Forrest Baird © 2000 by Prentice Hall from Philosophic Classics, Volume III