Age of Enlightenment: Difference between revisions

Browse history interactively ← Previous edit Next edit →Content deleted Content addedVisual WikitextInline

Revision as of 01:23, 11 August 2009 edit68.225.207.237 (talk)No edit summary← Previous edit		Revision as of 01:24, 11 August 2009 edit undo68.225.207.237 (talk) ←Blanked the pageNext edit →
Line 1:		Line 1:
	{{History of Western philosophy}}
	The '''Age of Enlightenment''', or simply '''The Enlightenment''', is a term used to describe a time in ] and cultural life centered upon the eighteenth century, in which ] was advocated as the primary source and ] for ].<ref>John Locke claims in his book, The Second Treatise of Government, that man was endowed with reason and hence has the right to decide the form of government that he should be under, while Jean Jacques Rousseau claims that reason is what has led man astray from the state of happiness and bliss that he led under nature.</ref>

	Developing more this is very important stuff
	of the Citizen]], and the Polish-Lithuanian ], were motivated by "Enlightenment" principles.

	== The Intellectual Interpretation ==
	====Principles====
	The ] and philosophical developments of that age (and their impact in moral, social, and political reform) aspired toward more freedom for common people based on ], ], ], central emphasis on ], ], ], and the principles of ]. These principles were a revolutionary departure from ], ], ], and the ]. The Enlightenment marks a principled departure from the ] of religious authority, guild-based economic systems, and censorship of ideas toward an era of rational discourse and personal judgment, ], ], ], scientific method, and ].<ref>http://74.125.45.132/search?q=cache:DA2b3S-6dVoJ:www.sparknotes.com/history/european/enlightenment/context.html+enlightenment+departure+from+middle+ages&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=safari</ref>

	==== Use of the term ====
	The term "Enlightenment" came into use in ] during the mid-nineteenth century,<ref>Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd Edn (revised)</ref> with particular reference to French philosophy, as the equivalent of a term then in use by ] writers, ''Zeitalter der Aufklärung'' (Age of the clearing-up), signifying generally the philosophical outlook of the eighteenth century. However, the German term ''Aufklärung'' was not merely applied retrospectively; it was already the common term by 1784, when ] published the influential essay "Answering the Question: ]"

	The terminology '''Enlightenment''' or '''Age of Enlightenment''' does not represent a single movement or school of thought, for these philosophies were often mutually contradictory or divergent. The Enlightenment was less a set of ideas than it was a set of values. At its core was a critical questioning of traditional institutions, customs, and morals. Some classifications of this period also include the late seventeenth century, which is typically known as the ] or Age of Rationalism.<ref>{{cite web\|url=http://history-world.org/age_of_enlightenment.htm\|title=The age of Enlightenment\|author=Hackett, Louis\|date=1992\|accessdate=2008-01-18}}</ref>

	==== Timespan ====
	There is no consensus on when to date the start of the age of Enlightenment, and some scholars simply use the beginning of the eighteenth century or the middle of the seventeenth century as a default date.<ref>{{cite web\|url=http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/ENLIGHT/PREPHIL.HTM\|title=The European Enlightenment\|author=Hooker, Richard\|date=1996\|accessdate=2008-01-18}}</ref> If taken back to the mid-1600s, the Enlightenment would trace its origins to ]' '']'', published in 1637. At the other end, many scholars use the beginning of the ] (1804–15) as a convenient point in time with which to date the end of the Enlightenment.<ref>{{cite web\|url=http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/enlightenment_age.html\|title=The age of Enlightenment\|author=Frost, Martin\|date=2008\|accessdate=2008-01-18}}</ref> Still others describe the Enlightenment beginning in Britain's ] of 1688 and ending in the ] of 1789.

	====Influence====
	Historian ] asserts the Enlightenment broke through "the sacred circle,"<ref>{{cite book\|author=Gay, Peter\|title=The Enlightenment: An Interpretation\|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company\|date=1996}}</ref> whose dogma had circumscribed thinking. The Enlightenment is held to be the source of critical ideas, such as the centrality of ], ], and ] as primary values of society. This view argues that the establishment of a contractual basis of rights would lead to the ] and ], the ], religious ], and the organization of states into self-governing republics through democratic means. In this view, the tendency of the '']'' in particular to apply rationality to every problem is considered the essential change. From this point on, thinkers and writers were held to be free to pursue the truth in whatever form, without the threat of sanction for violating established ideas. However, the ] movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century{{Fact\|date=February 2009}} had argued that the Enlightenment elevated ] to the unwarranted status of a new authority.{{Fact\|date=February 2009}}

	No brief summary can do justice to the diversity of enlightened thought in 18th-century Europe. Because it was a value system rather than a set of shared beliefs, there are many contradictory trains to follow.{{Fact\|date=February 2009}} In his famous essay "]" (1784), ] described it simply as freedom to use one's own intelligence.<ref>{{cite web\|url=http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/ai.htm\|author=Blissett, Luther\|title=Anarchist Integralism: Aesthetics, Politics and the Après-Garde\|date=1997\|accessdate=2008-01-18}}</ref>

	A variety of 19th-century movements, including ] and ], traced their intellectual heritage back to the Enlightenment. Geometric order, rigor, and reductionism were seen as Enlightenment virtues.{{Fact\|date=February 2009}} The modern movement credits ] and ] to Enlightenment thinking.{{Fact\|date=February 2009}}

	== Social and cultural interpretation ==
	In opposition to the intellectual historiographical approach of the Enlightenment, which examines the various currents, or discourses of intellectual thought within the European context during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the cultural (or social) approach examines the changes that occurred in European society and culture. Under this approach, the Enlightenment is less a collection of thought than a process of changing sociabilities and cultural practices – both the “content” and the processes by which this content was spread are now important. ] describes it as follows:

	<blockquote>
	"This movement implies casting doubt on two ideas: first, that practices can be deduced from the discourses that authorize or justify them; second, that it is possible to translate the terms of an explicit ideology the latent meaning of social mechanisms.”<ref>Chartier, 18.</ref>
	</blockquote>

	One of the primary elements of the cultural interpretation of the Enlightenment is the rise of the ] in Europe. ] has influenced thinking on the public sphere more than any other, though his model is increasingly called into question. The essential problem that Habermas attempted to answer concerned the conditions necessary for “rational, critical, and genuinely open discussion of public issues”. Or, more simply, the social conditions required for Enlightenment ideas to be spread and discussed. His response was the formation in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of the “bourgeois public sphere”, a “realm of communication marked by new arenas of debate, more open and accessible forms of urban public space and sociability, and an explosion of print culture".<ref>James Van Horn Melton, ''The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 4. </ref> More specifically, Habermas highlights three essential elements of the public sphere: it was egalitarian; it discussed the domain of "common concern"; and it was "in principle inclusive".<ref>Jürgen Habermas, ''The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere'', translated by Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1989), 36, 37.</ref>

	] provides a good summary of the values of this bourgeois public sphere: its members held reason to be supreme; everything was open to criticism (the public sphere is critical); and its participants opposed secrecy of all sorts.<ref>Melton, 8. </ref> This helps explain what Habermas meant by the domain of "common concern". Habermas uses the term to describe those areas of political/social knowledge and discussion that were previously the exclusive territory of the state and religious authorities, now open to critical examination by the public sphere.

	Habermas credits the creation of the bourgeois public sphere to two long-term historical trends: the rise of the modern nation state and the rise of capitalism. The modern nation state in its consolidation of public power created by counterpoint a private realm of society independent of the state – allowing for the public sphere. Capitalism likewise increased society’s autonomy and self-awareness, along with creating an increasing need for the exchange of information. As the nascent public sphere expanded, it embraced a large variety of institutions, the most commonly cited being coffee houses and cafés, salons and the literary public sphere, figuratively localized in the Republic of Letters.<ref>Melton, 4, 5. Habermas, 14-26. </ref>

	Dorinda Outram provides a more nuanced description of the rise of the public sphere. The context of the rise of the public sphere was the economic and social changed commonly grouped under the effects of the ]: "economic expansion, increasing urbanisation, rising population and improving communications in comparison to the stagnation of the previous century". Rising efficiency in production techniques and communication lowered the prices of consumer goods at the same time as it increased the amount and variety of goods available to consumers (including the literature essential to the public sphere). Meanwhile, the colonial experience (most European states had colonial Empires in the eighteenth century) began to expose European society to extremely heterogeneous cultures. Outram writes that the end result was the breaking down of "barriers between cultural systems, religious divides, gender differences and geographical areas". In short, the social context was set for the public sphere to come into existence.<ref>Outram, 15, 16.</ref>

	The Habermasian model has been criticized on all fronts by historians. That it was bourgeois is contradicted by the many examples of noble and lower class participation in areas such as the coffeehouses and the freemasonic lodges. That it was independent and critical of the state is contradicted by the diverse cases of government-sponsored public institutions and government participation in debate, along with the cases of private individuals using public venues to promote the status quo.

	==== How public was the public sphere? ====

	The word “public” implies the highest level of inclusivity – the public sphere by definition should be open to all. However, as the analysis of many “public” institutions of the Enlightenment will show, this sphere was only public to relative degrees. Indeed, as Roger Chartier emphasizes, Enlightenment thinkers frequently contrasted their conception of the “public” with that of the people: Chartier cites ], who contrasted “opinion” with populace; ] with “the opinion of men of letters” versus “the opinion of the multitude”; and ], who contrasted the “truly enlightened public with “the blind and noisy multitude”. As Mona Ozouf underlines, public opinion was defined in opposition to the opinion of the greater population.<ref>Chartier, 27.</ref> While the nature of public opinion during the Enlightenment is as difficult to define as it is today, it is nonetheless clear that the body that held it (ie. the public sphere) was exclusive rather than inclusive. This observation will become more apparent during the descriptions of the institutions of the public sphere, most of which excluded both women and the lower classes.

	== Public Institutions ==

	Note: This list is by no means exhaustive.
	The general requirements for a public institution were the following:
	* It had to be relatively inclusive (ie. Public). Most of the institutions listed either were egalitarian or created hierarchies that contrasted with social hierarchies.
	* It had to participate in the “public” spread of information, often with intentions.
	* It had to allow for potentially critical thought.

	For example, using these standards, the London debating societies were part of the public sphere, because they were inclusive and egalitarian, they spread information, and they promoted critical thought.

	==== Academies ====

	The history of Academies in France during the Enlightenment begins with the Academy of Science, founded in 1666 in Paris. From the beginning, the Academy was closely tied to the French state, acting as an extension of a government seriously lacking in scientists. Beyond serving the monarchy, the Academy had two primary purposes: it helped promote and organize new disciplines, and it trained new scientists. It also contributed to the enhancement of scientists’ social status, considered them to be the “most useful of all citizens". Academies demonstrate the rising interest in science along with its increasing secularization, as evidenced by the small amount of clerics who were members (13 percent).<ref>Daniel Roche,'' France in the Enlightenment'', translated by Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 420. </ref>

	The presence of the French academies in the public sphere cannot be attributed to their membership; although the majority of their members were bourgeois, the exclusive institution was only open to elite Parisian scholars. That being said, they did perceive themselves to be “interpreters of the sciences for the people”. Indeed, it was with this in mind that academians took it upon themselves to disprove the popular pseudo-science of ].<ref>Roche, 515, 516. </ref>

	However, the strongest case for the French Academies being part of the public sphere comes the concours académiques (roughly translated as academic contests) they sponsored throughout France. As Jeremy L. Caradonna argues in a recent article in the ''Annales'', “Prendre part au siècle des Lumières: Le concours académique et la culture intellectuelle au XVIIIe siècle”, these academic contests were perhaps the most public of any institution during the Enlightenment.

	'']'' revived a practice dating back to the Middle Ages when it revived public contests in the mid-seventeenth century. The subject manner was generally religious and/or monarchical, and featured essays, poetry, and painting. By roughly 1725, however, this subject matter had radically expanded and diversified, including “royal propaganda, philosophical battles, and critical ruminations on the social and political institutions of the Old Regime.” Controversial topics were not always avoided: Caradonna cites as examples the theories of Newton and Descartes, the slave trade, women's education, and justice in France.<ref>Jeremy L. Caradonna, “Prendre part au siècle des Lumières: Le concours académique et la culture intellectuelle au XVIIIe siècle”, ''Annales. Histoire, Sciences sociales'', vol.64 (mai-juin 2009), n.3, 633-662.</ref>

	More importantly, the contests were open to all, and the enforced anonymity of each submission guaranteed that neither gender nor social rank would determine the judging. Indeed, although the “vast majority” of participants belonged to the wealthier strata of society (“the liberal arts, the clergy, the judiciary, and the medical profession”), there were some cases of the popular classes submitting essays, and even winning.<ref>Caradonna, 634-636.</ref>

	Similarly, a significant number of women participated –and won – the competitions. Of a total of 2 300 prize competitions offered in France, women won 49 – perhaps a small number by modern standards, but very significant in an age in which most women did not have any academic training. Indeed, the majority of the winning entries were for poetry competitions, a genre commonly stressed in women’s education.<ref>Caradonna, 653-654. </ref>

	In England, the ] also played a significant role in the public sphere and the spread of Enlightenment ideas. In particular, it played a large role in spreading ] ] around Europe, and acted as a clearinghouse for intellectual correspondence and exchange.<ref>Steven Shapin, ''A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England'' (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 1994.</ref> As Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer have argued, Robert Boyle was "a founder of the experimental world in which scientists now live and operate". Boyle's method based knowledge on experimentation, which had to be witnessed to provide proper empirical legitimacy. This is where the Royal Society came into play: witnessing had to be a "collective act", and the Royal Society's assembly rooms were ideal locations for relatively public demonstrations.<ref>Steven Shapin and SImon Schaffer, ''Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 5, 56, 57. This same desire for multiple witnesses led to attempts at replication in other locations and a complex iconography and literary technology developed to provide visual and written proof of experimentation. See pages 59-65.</ref> However, not just any witness was considered to be credible; "Oxford professors were accounted more reliable witnesses than Oxfordshire peasants." Two factors were taken into account: a witness's knowledge in the area; and a witness's "moral constitution". In other words, only civil society were considered for Boyle's public.<ref>Shapin and Schaffer, 58, 59.</ref>

	====The Book Industry====
	The increased consumption of reading materials of all sorts was one of the key features of the “social” Enlightenment. Developments in the ] allowed consumer goods to be produced in greater quantities at lower prices, encouraging the spread of books, pamphlets, newspapers and journals – “media of the transmission of ideas and attitudes”. Commercial development likewise increased the demand for information, along with rising populations and increased urbanisation.<ref>Outram, 17, 20.</ref> However, demand for reading material extended outside of the realm of the commercial, and outside the realm of the upper and middle classes, as evidenced by the Bibliothèque Bleue. Literacy rates are difficult to gauge, but Robert Darnton writes that, in France at least, the rates doubled over the course of the eighteenth century.<ref>Darnton, "The Literary Underground", 16. </ref>

	Reading underwent serious changes in the eighteenth century. In particular, Rolf Engelsing has argued for the existence of a “reading revolution”. Until 1750, reading with done “intensively: people tended to own a small number of books and read them repeatedly, often to small audience. After 1750, people began to read “extensively”, finding as many books as they could, increasingly reading them alone.<ref>from Outram, 19. See Rolf Engelsing, “Die Perioden der Lesergeschichte in der Neuzeit. Das statische Ausmass und die Soziokulturelle Bedeutung der Lektür”, Archiv fûr Gerschichte des Buchwesens, 10 (1969), cols. 944-1002 and Der Bürger als Leser: Lesergeschichte in Deutschland, 1500-1800 (Stuttgart, 1974). </ref> On the other hand, as Jonathan Israel writes, Gabriel Naudé was already campaigning for the “univerisal” library in the mid-seventeenth century. And if this was an ideal only realistic for state institutions and the very wealthy (and indeed, an ideal that was seldom achieved), there are records for extremely large private and state-run libraries throughout Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth-centuries.<ref>Jonathan Israel, ''Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750'' (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) 120. </ref>

	Of course, the vast majority of the reading public could not afford to own a private library. And while most of the state-run “universal libraries” set up in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuries were open to the public, they were not the only sources of reading material.

	On one end of the spectrum was the '']'', a collection of cheaply produced books published in Troyes, France. Intended for a largely rural and semi-literate audience these books included almanacs, retellings of medieval romances and condensed versions of popular novels, among other things. While historians, such as Roger Chartier and Robert Darnton, have argued against the Enlightenment’s penetration into the lower classes, the Bibliothèque Bleue, at the very least, represents a desire to participate in Enlightenment sociability, whether or not this was actually achieved.<ref>Outram, 27-29</ref>

	Moving up the classes, a variety of institutions of readers access to material without needing to buy anything. Libraries that lent out their material for a small price started to appear, and occasionally bookstores would offer a small lending library to their patrons. Coffee houses commonly offered books, journals and sometimes even popular novels to their customers. '']'' and '']'', two influential periodicals sold from 1709 to 1714, were closely associated with coffee house culture in London, being both read and produced in various establishments in the city.<ref>Erin Mackie, ''The Commerce of Everyday Life: Selections from The Tatler and The Spectator'' (Boston : Bedford/St. Martin's, 1998), 16.</ref> Indeed, this is an example of the triple or even quadruple function of the coffee house: reading material was often obtained, read, discussed and even produced on the premises.<ref>See Mackie, Darnton, ''An Early Information Society''</ref>

	As Darnton describes in ''The Literary Underground of the Old Regime'', it is extremely difficult to determine what people actually read during the Enlightenment. For example, examining the catalogues of private libraries not only gives an image skewed in favour of the classes wealthy enough to afford libraries, it also ignores censured works unlikely to be publicly acknowledged. For this reason, Darnton argues that a study of publishing would be much more fruitful as to hypothesizing reading habits.<ref>In particular, see Chapter 6, “Reading, Writing and Publishing”</ref>

	All across continental Europe, but in France especially, book sellers and publishers had to negotiate censorship laws of varying strictness. The ''Encyclopédie'', for example, narrowly escaped seizure and had to be saved by ], the man in charge of the French censure. Indeed, many publishing companies were conveniently located outside of France as to avoid overzealous French censors. They would smuggle their clandestine merchandise – both pirated copies and censured works – across the border, where it would then be transported to clandestine book sellers or small-time peddlers.<ref>See Darnton, ''The Literary Underground'', 184. </ref>

	Darnton provides a detailed record of one clandestine bookseller’s (one de Mauvelain) business in the town of Troyes. At the time, the town’s population was 22 000. It had one masonic lodge and an “important” library, though the literacy rate seems to have been less than 50 percent. Mauvelain’s records give us a good representation of what literate Frenchmen might have truly read, since the clandestine nature of his business provided a less restrictive product choice. The most popular category of books was political (319 copies ordered). This included five copies of D’Holbach’s ''Système social'', but around 300 libels and pamphlets. Readers were far more interested in sensationalist stories about criminals and political corruption than they were in political theory itself. The second most popular category, “general works” (those books “that did not have a dominant motif and that contained something to offend almost everyone in authority”) likewise betrayed the high demand for generally low-brow subversive literature. These works, however, like the vast majority of work produced by Darnton’s “grub street hacks”, never became part of literary canon, and are largely forgotten today as a result.<ref>Darnton, ''The Literary Underground'', 135 – 147.</ref>

	Nevertheless, the Enlightenment was not the exclusive domain of illegal literature, as evidenced by the healthy, and mostly legal, publishing industry that existed throughout Europe. “Mostly legal” because even established publishers and book sellers occasionally ran afoul of the law. The Encyclopédie, for example, condemned not only by the King but also by Clement XII, nevertheless found its way into print with the help of the aforementioned Malesherbes and creative use of French censorship law.<ref>Darnton, ''The Business of Enlightenment'', 12, 13. For a more detailed description of French censorship laws, see Darnton, ''The Literary Underground''</ref>

	But many works were sold without running into any legal trouble at all. Borrowing records from libraries in England, Germany and North America indicate that more than 70 percent of books borrowed were novels; that less than 1 percent of the books were of a religious nature supports a general trend of declining religiosity.<ref name="Outram, 21">Outram, 21.</ref>

	=====Natural History=====
	{{Main\|Natural History}}

	A genre that greatly rose in importance was that of scientific literature. Natural history in particular became increasingly popular among the upper classes. Works of natural history include René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur’s ''Histoire naturelle des insectes'' and Jacques Gautier d’Agoty’s ''La Myologie complète, ou description de tous les muscles du corps humain'' (1746). However, as François-Alexandre Aubert de La Chesnaye des Bois’s ''Dictionnaire de la Noblesse'' (1770) indicates, natural history was very often a political affair. As E. C. Spary writes, the classifications used by naturalists “slipped between the natural world and the social ... to establish not only the expertise of the naturalists over the natural, but also the dominance of the natural over the social”.<ref>Emma Spary, "The 'Nature' of Enlightenment" in ''The Sciences in Enlightened Europe'', William Clark, Jan Golinski, and Steven Schaffer, eds. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 281, 282. </ref> From this basis, naturalists could then develop their own social ideals based on their scientific works.<ref> See Thomas Laqueur, ''Making sex: body and gender from the Greeks to Freud'' (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1990).</ref>

	The target audience of natural history was French polite society, evidenced more by the specific discourse of the genre than by the generally high prices of its works. Naturalists catered to polite society’s desire for erudition – many texts had an explicit instructive purpose. But the idea of taste (''le goût'') was the real social indicator: to truly be able to categorize nature, one had to have the proper taste, an ability of discretion shared by all members of polite society. In this way natural history spread many of the scientific development of the time, but also provided a new source of legitimacy for the dominant class.<ref>Spary, 289-293.</ref>

	=====Journals=====
	The many scientific and literary journals (predominantly composed of book reviews) that were published during this time are also evidence of the intellectual side of the Enlightenment. In fact, Jonathan Israel argues that the learned journals, from the 1680s onwards, influenced European intellectual culture to a greater degree than any other “cultural innovation”.<ref>Israel, ''Radical Enlightenment'', 142. </ref>

	The first journal appeared in 1665 – the Parisian ''Journal des Scavants'' – but it was not until 1682 that periodicals began to be more widely produced. French and Latin were the dominant languages of publication, but there was also a steady demand for material in German and Dutch. There was generally low demand for English publications on the Continent, which was echoed by England’s similar lack of desire for French works. Languages commanding less of an international market – such as Danish, Spanish and Portuguese – found journal success more difficult, and more often than not, a more international language was used instead. Although German did have an international quality to it, it was French that slowly took over Latin’s status as the '']'' of learned circles. This in turn gave precedence to the publishing industry in Holland, where the vast majority of these French language periodicals were produced.<ref>Israel, ''Radical Enlightenment'', 143, 144.</ref>

	Israel divides the journals’ intellectual importance into four elements. First was their role in shifting the attention of the “cultivate public” away from “established authorities” to “what was new, innovative, or challenging”. Secondly, they did much to promote the “‘enlightened’ ideals of toleration and intellectual objectivity”. Thirdly, the journals were an implicit critique of existing notions of universal truth monopolized by monarchies, parliaments, and religious authorities. The journals suggested a new source of knowledge – through science and reason – that undermined these sources of authority. And finally, they advanced the “Christian Enlightenment”, a notion of Enlightenment that, despite its advocacy for new knowledge sources, upheld “the legitimacy of God-ordained authority.”<ref>Israel, ''Radical Enlightenment'', 150, 151.</ref>

	=====The Republic of Letters and Grub Street=====
	{{Main\|Republic of Letters}}
	The term "Republic of Letters" was coined by ] in 1664, in his journal ''Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres''. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the editor of ''Histoire de la République des Lettres en France'', a literary survey, described the Republic of Letters as being:

	<blockquote>
	"In the midst of all the governments that decide the fate of men; in the bosom of so many states, the majority of them despotic ... there exists a certain realm which holds sway only over the mind ... that we honour with the name Republic, because it preserves a measure of independence, and because it is almost its essence to be free. It is the realm of talent and of thought."<ref name="Outram, 21"/>
	</blockquote>

	The ideal of the Republic of Letters was the sum of a number of Enlightenment ideals: an egalitarian realm governed by knowledge that could act across political boundaries and rival state power.<ref name="Outram, 21"/> It was a forum that supported "free public examination of questions regarding religion or legislation".<ref>Chartier, 26. </ref> Immanuel Kant considered written communication essential to his conception of the public sphere; once everyone was a part of the "reading public", then society could be said to be enlightened.<ref>Chartier, 26, 26. Kant, "What is Enlightenment?"</ref> The people who participated in the Republic of Letters, such as ] and ], are frequently known today as important Enlightenment figures. Indeed, the men who wrote Diderot's ''Encyclopédie'' arguably formed a microcosm of the larger "republic".<ref>Outram, 23.</ref>

	Dena Goodman has argued that women played a major role in French salons — ''salonnières'' to complement the male ''philosophes''. Discursively, she bases the Republic of Letters in polite conversation and letter writing; its principal social institution was the salon.<ref>Goodman, 3.</ref>

	Robert Darnton's ''The Literary Underground of the Old Regime'' was the first major historical work to critique this ideal model.<ref>Darnton's work focusses primarily on the French Enlightenment. As a result, the conclusions that he draws generally cannot, without further research, be applied to other socio-cultural contexts. </ref> He argues that, by the mid-eighteenth century, the established men of letters (''gens de lettres'') had fused with the elites (''les grands'') of French society. Consider the definition of "Goût" (taste) as written by ] in the ''Dictionnaire philosophique'' (taken from Darnton): "Taste is like philosophy. It belongs to a very small number of privileged souls ... It is unknown in bourgeois families, where one is constantly occupied with the care of one's fortune". In the words of Darnton, Voltaire "thought that the Enlightenment should begin with the ''grands''".<ref>Darnton, ''The Literary Underground'', 13.</ref> The historian cites similar opinions from ] and ].<ref>Darnton, ''The Literary Underground'', 13, 17. </ref>

	Darnton argues that the result of this "fusion of ''gens de lettres'' and ''grands''" was the creation of an oppositional literary sphere, Grub Street, the domain of a "multitude of versifiers and would-be authors".<ref>Crébillon fils, quoted from Darnton, ''The Literary Underground'', 17.</ref> These men, lured by the glory of the Republic of Letters, came to Paris to become authors, only to discover that their dreams of literary success were little more than chimeras. The literary market simply could not support large numbers of writers, who, in any case, were very poorly remunerated by publishing-bookselling guilds.<ref>Darnton, ''The Literary Underground'', 19, 20. </ref> The writers of Grub Street, the Grub Street Hacks, were left feeling extremely bitter about the relative success of their literary cousins, the men of letters.<ref>Darnton, "The Literary Underground", 21, 23.</ref>

	This bitterness and hatred found an outlet in the literature the Grub Street Hacks produced, typified by the ''libelle''. Written mostly in the form of pamphlets, the ''libelles'' "slandered the court, the church, the aristocracy, the academies, the salons, everything elevated and respectable, including the monarchy itself".<ref>Darnton, ''The Literary Underground'', 29</ref> Darnton designates ''Le Gazetier cuirassé'' by Charles Théveneau de Morande as the prototype of the genre. Consider

	<blockquote>
	"The devout wife of a certain Maréchal de France (who suffers from an imaginary lung disease), finding a husband of that species too delicate, considers it her religious duty to spare him and so condemns herself to the crude caresses of her butler, who would still be a lackey if he hadn't proven himself so robust."
	</blockquote>

	or,

	<blockquote>
	"The public is warned that an epidemic disease is raging among the girls of the Opera, that is has begun to reach the ladies of the court, and that it has even been communicated to their lackeys. This disease elongates the face, destroys the complexion, reduces the weight, and causes horrible ravages where it becomes situated. There are lades without teeth, others without eyebrows, and some are completely paralyzed."<ref>Citations from Darnton, ''The Literary Underground'', 30, 31. </ref>
	</blockquote>

	It was Grub Street literature that was most read by the reading public during the Enlightenment.<ref>Outram, 22. </ref> More importantly, Darnton argues, the Grub Street hacks inherited the "revolutionary spirit" once displayed by the ''philosophes'', and paved the way for the Revolution by desacralizing figures of political, moral and religious authority in France.<ref>Darnton, ''The Literary Underground'', 35-40.</ref>

	====Coffeehouses====
	{{Main\|Coffeehouse\|English coffeehouses in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries}}

	The first English coffeehouse, named ''Angel'', was established in Oxford, by a certain Jewish entrepreneur named Jacob, in 1650. Brian Cowan argues that Oxford coffeehouses developed into "]", offering a locus of learning that was less formal than structured institutions. These penny universities occupied a significant position in Oxford academic life, as they were frequented by virtuosi, who conducted their research on the premises. According to Cowan, "the coffeehouse was a place for like-minded scholars to congregate, to read, as well as learn from and to debate with each other, but was emphatically not a university institution, and the discourse there was of a far different order than any university tutorial.”<ref>Cowan, 90, 91.</ref>

	Although coffee had been known in France since the 1640s, it was ] – François Procope – who established the first café in Paris, the ], in 1686. Although it took coffee a while to become popular, by the 1720s there were around 400 cafés in the city. The Café Procope in particular became a centre of Enlightenment, welcoming such names as ] and ], and later ], ], ] and ] during the Revolution. The Café Procope was also where ] and ] decided to create the '']''.<ref>Colin Jones, ''Paris: Biography of a City'' (New York: Viking, 2004), 188, 189. </ref>

	Like the coffeehouse in England, the café in France was a varied affaire. If the Café Procope represented a high class institution, on the end of the spectrum, ] described an affiliation between cafés and prostitution: using prostitutes, army recruiters would lure young unsuspecting men into cafés, where they would then be forced or otherwise tricked into joining up.<ref>Louis-Sebastien Mercier, ''Panorama of Paris'', ed. Jeremy D. Popkin (Pennsylvania State Press, 1999), 221. </ref> The general trend in Parisian cafés across the eighteenth century was popularization, helped by lower coffee prices.<ref>Melton, 238. </ref> Indeed, Mercier wrote towards the end of the eighteenth century that “it is no longer decent to stay in a café, because it announces a dearth of acquaintances and an absolute void of good society”, although he was probably referring to the majority of cafés rather than every café.<ref>Quotation taken from W. Scott Haine, ''The World of the Paris Café'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 7.</ref>

	The cafés earned their place in the public sphere due to the conversation that took place within them. <!-- In fact, some historians (source?) have commented on how the coffee house in general was more conducive to intelligent conversation than were previous drinking establishments, which served predominantly alcoholic beverages. --> ] in particular has studied Parisian café conversation in great detail. He describes how the cafés were one of the various “nerve centers” for ''bruits publics'', public noise or rumour. These ''bruits'' were allegedly a much better source of information than were the actual newspapers available at the time.<ref>Robert Darnton, An Early Information Society: News and the Media in Eighteenth-Century Paris, The American Historical Review. </ref>

	====Debating Societies<ref>This section is based on Donna T. Andrew, “Popular Culture and Public Debate: London 1780”, ''This Historical Journal'', Vol. 39, No. 2. (June 1996), pp. 405-423. </ref> ====

	The Debating Societies that rapidly came into existence in 1780 London present an almost perfect example of the public sphere during the Enlightenment. Donna T. Andrew provides four separate origins:

	* Clubs of fifty or more men who, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, met in pubs to discuss religious issues and affairs of state.
	* Mooting clubs, set up by law students to practice rhetoric.
	* Spouting clubs, established to help actors train for theatrical roles.
	* William Henley’s Oratory, which mixed outrageous sermons with even more absurd questions, like “Whether Scotland be anywhere in the world?”<ref>Andrew, 406</ref>

	In any event, popular debating societies began, in the late 1770s, to move into more “genteel”, or respectable rooms, a change which helped establish a new standard of sociability: “order, decency, and liberality”, in the words of the Religious Society of Old Portugal Street.<ref>From Andrew, 408.</ref> Respectability was also encouraged by the higher admissions prices (ranging from 6d. to 3s.), which also contributed to the upkeep of the newer establishments. The backdrop to these developments was what Andrew calls “an explosion of interest in the theory and practice of public elocution”. The debating societies were commercial enterprises that responded to this demand, sometimes very successfully. Indeed, some societies welcomed from 800 to 1200 spectators a night.<ref>Andrew, 406-408, 411.</ref>

	These societies discussed an extremely wide range of topics. One broad area was women: societies debated over “male and female qualities”, courtship, marriage, and the role of women in the public sphere. Societies also discussed political issues, varying from recent events to “the nature and limits of political authority”, and the nature of suffrage. Debates on religion rounded out the subject matter. It is important to note, however, that the critical subject matter of these debates did not necessarily translate into opposition to the government. In other words, the results of the debate quite frequently upheld the status quo.<ref>Andrew, 412-415. </ref>

	From a historical standpoint, one of the most important features of the debating society was their openness to the public; women attended and even participated in almost every debating society, which were likewise open to all classes providing they could pay the entrance fee. Once inside, spectators were able to participate in a largely egalitarian form of sociability that helped spread “Enlightening ideas”.<ref>Andrew, 422.</ref>

	==== Freemasonic Lodges<ref>This section is largely based on Margaret C. Jacob’s seminal work on Enlightenment freemasonry, Margaret C. Jacob, Living the Enlightenment: Free masonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. </ref> ====
	{{Main\|Freemasonry}}
	{{See also\|Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism}}

	The “cult of Enlightenment” for its devotees, freemasonic lodges originated from English and Scottish stonemasonic guilds in the seventeenth century.<ref>Jacob, 35.</ref> In the eighteenth century, they expanded into an extremely widespread collection of interconnected (to varying degrees) men’s, and occasionally women’s, associations with their own mythologies and special codes of conduct. These included a communal understanding of liberty and egality inherited from guild sociability – “liberty, fraternity, and equality”.<ref>Jacob, 49. </ref> The remarkable similarity between these values, which were generally common in Britain as on the Continent, and the French Revolutionary slogan of “liberté, égalité et fraternité” spawned many conspiracy theories. Notably, ] traced the origins of the Jacobins – and hence the Revolution – to the French freemasons.

	Freemasonry was officially established in Europe in 1734, when a lodge was set up in The Hague, although the first “fully formed lodge” appears to have met in 1721 in Rotterdam. Similarly, there are records of a parisian lodge meeting in 1725 or 1726.<ref>Jacob, 75, 89. </ref> As Daniel Roche writes, freemasonry was particularly prevalent in France – by 1789, there were perhaps as many as 100 000 French Masons, making Freemasonry the most popular of all Enlightenment associations.<ref>Roche, 436. </ref> Freemasonry does not appear to have been confined to Western Europe, however, as Jacob writes of lodges in Saxony in 1729 and in Russia in 1731.<ref>Jacob, 90.</ref>

	Conspiracy theories aside, it is likely that masonic lodges had an effect on society as a whole. Maragaret Jacob argues that they “reconstituted the polity and established a constitutional form of self-government, complete with constitutions and laws, elections and representatives”. In other words, the micro-society set up within the lodges constituted a normative model for society as a whole. This was especially true on the Continent: when the first lodges began to appear in the 1730s, their embodiment of British values was often seen as threatening by state authorities. For example, the Parisian lodge that met in the mid 1720s was composed of English Jacobite exiles.<ref>Jacob, 20, 73, 89.</ref>

	Furthermore, freemasons all across Europe made reference to the Enlightenment in general in the eighteenth century. In French lodges, for example, the line “As the means to be enlightened I search for the enlightened” was a part of their initiation rites. British lodges assigned themselves the duty to “initiate the unenlightened”. This did not necessarily link lodges to the irreligious, but neither did this exclude them from the occasional heresy. In fact, many lodges worshiped the Grand Architect, the masonic deity of a scientifically ordered universe.<ref>Jacob, 145-147. </ref>

	On the other hand, Daniel Roche contests freemasonry’s claims for egalitarianism, writing that “the real equality of the lodges was elitist”, only attracting men of similar social backgrounds.<ref>Roche, 437. </ref> This lack of real equality was made explicit by the constitution of the Lausanne Switzerland lodge (1741):

	<blockquote>
	“The order of freemasons is a society of confraternity and equality, and to this end is represented under the emblem of a level ... a brother renders to another brother the honour and deference that is justly due him in proportion to his rank in the civil society.”<ref>Quotation taken from Jacob, 147. </ref>
	</blockquote>

	Elitism was beneficial for some members of society. The presence, for example, of noble women in the French “lodges of adoption” that formed in the 1780s was largely due to the close ties shared between these lodges and aristocratic society.<ref>Jacob, 139. See also Janet M. Burke, “Freemasonry, Friendship and Noblewomen: The Role of the Secret Society in Bringing Enlightenment Thought to Pre-Revolutionary Women Elites”, History of European Ideas 10 no. 3 (1989): 283-94.</ref>

	==== Salons ====
	{{Main\|Historiography of the Salon}}

	== A Historiographical Overview<ref>The basic structure of this section has being borrowed in part from Dorinda Outram, “What is Enlightenment?”, ''The Enlightenment'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).</ref> ==

	Enlightenment ] draws its origins from the period itself, from what "Enlightenment figures" thought about themselves. Although their opinions naturally varied, a dominant element was the intellectual angle they took. ] ''Preliminary Discourse of l'Encyclopédie'' provides a history of the Enlightenment which comprises a chronological list of developments in the realm of knowledge - of which the '']'' forms the pinnacle.<ref>Jean le Rond d'Alembert, ''Discours préliminaire de l'Encyclopédie''</ref> A more philosophical example of this was the 1783 essay contest (in itself an activity typical of the Enlightenment) announced by the Berlin newspaper ''Berlinische Monatsschrift'', which asked that very question: “What is Enlightenment?” Jewish philosopher ] was among those who responded, referring to Enlightenment as a process by which man was educated in the use of reason.<ref>Outram, 1. The past tense is used deliberately as whether man would educate himself or be educated by certain exemplary figures was a common issue at the time. D’Alembert’s introduction to l’Encyclopédie, for example, along with Immanuel Kant’s essay response (the “independent thinkers”), both support the later model. </ref> ] also wrote a response, referring to Enlightenment as “man's release from his self-incurred tutelage”, tutelage being “man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another”.<ref>Immanuel Kant, "What is Enlightenment?", 1. </ref> This intellectual model of interpretation has been adopted by many historians since the eighteenth century, and is perhaps the most commonly used interpretation today.

	Dorinda Outram provides a good example of a standard, intellectual definition of the Enlightenment:

	<blockquote>
	“Enlightenment was a desire for human affairs to be guided by rationality rather than by faith, superstition, or revelation; a belief in the power of human reason to change society and liberate the individual from the restraints of custom or arbitrary authority; all backed up by a world view increasingly validated by science rather than by religion or tradition.”
	</blockquote>

	As a historical period, it is bounded by the lives of two great philosophers: ] (1646-1716) and ] (1724-1804).<ref>Outram, 3.</ref>

	Like the ], the Enlightenment has “long been hailed as the foundation of modern Western political and intellectual culture”.<ref>Daniel Brewer, ''The Enlightenment Past: reconstructing eighteenth-century French thought'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 1. </ref> Not surprisingly then, it has been frequently linked to the Revolution of 1789. However, as Roger Chartier points out, it was perhaps the Revolution that “invented the Enlightenment by attempting to root its legitimacy in a corpus of texts and founding authors reconciled and united ... by their preparation of a rupture with the old world”.<ref>Roger Chartier, ''The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution'', Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane (Duke University Press, 1991), 5. </ref> In other words, the revolutionaries elevated to heroic status those philosophers, such as ] and ], who could be used to justify their radical break with the ]. In any case, two nineteenth-century historians of the Enlightenment, ] and ], did much to solidly this link of Enlightenment causing revolution and the intellectual perception of the Enlightenment itself.

	In his ''l Régime'' (1876), ] traced the roots of the French Revolution back to ]. However, this was not without the help of the “scientific view of the world ”, which wore down the “monarchical and religious dogma of the old regime”.<ref>From Taine's letter to Boutmy of 31 July 1874, taken from Chartier, 8.</ref> In other words then, Taine was only interested in the Enlightenment insofar as it advanced scientific discourse and transmitted what he perceived to be the intellectual legacy of French classicism.

	] painted a more elaborate picture of the Enlightenment in ''L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution'' (1850). For de Tocqueville, the Revolution was the inevitable result of the radical opposition created in the eighteenth century between the monarchy and the men of letters of the Enlightenment. These men of letters constituted a sort of “substitute aristocracy that was both all-powerful and without real power”. This illusory power came from the rise of “public opinion”, born when absolutist centralization removed the nobility and the bourgeosie from the political sphere. The “literary politics” that resulted promoted a discourse of equality and was hence in fundamental opposition to the monarchical regime.<ref>Chartier, 8. See also Alexis de Tocqueville, ''L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution'', 1850, Book Three, Chapter One.</ref>

	From a historiographical point of view, de Tocqueville presents an interesting case. He was primarily concerned with the workings of political power under the Old Regime and the philosophical principles of the men of letters. However, there is a distinctly social quality to his analysis. In the words of Chartier, de Tocqueville “clearly designates ... the cultural effects of transformation in the forms of the exercise of power”.<ref>Chartier, 13. </ref> Nevertheless, for a serious cultural approach, one has to wait another century for the work of historians such as Robert Darnton (The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie, 1775-1800 - published in 1979).

	In the meantime, though, intellectual history remained the dominant historiographical trend. ] is a perfect example, writing in his ''The Philosophy of the Enlightenment'' (1932 - English translation 1951) that the Enlightenment was “ a part and a special phase of that whole intellectual development through which modern philosophic thought gained its characteristic self-confidence and self-consciousness”. Borrowing from Kant, he states that Enlightenment was/is the process by which the spirit “achieves clarity and depth in its understanding of its own nature and destiny, and of its own fundamental character and mission”.<ref>Ernst Cassirer, ''The Philosophy of the Enlightenment'', translated by Fritz. C. A. Koellin and James P. Pettegrove (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1951), ''vi''. </ref> In short, the Enlightenment was a series of philosophical, scientific and otherwise intellectual developments that took place mostly in the eighteenth century - the birthplace of intellectual modernity.

	Although ], writing in the 1960s, criticized Cassirer's work for ignoring the social context of his intellectual history, he too defined the Enlightenment as a unity, governed by a general hostility towards religion and the use of reason for the purposes of freedom and progress.<ref> Brewer, 45. Outram, 4. See also Peter Gay, "Introduction", ''The Enlightenment: A Comprehensive Anthology'' (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973. </ref> The intellectual and political chronology that Gay provides in ''Age of Enlightenment'', entitled “a history of significant events during the Age of Enlightenment”, is typical of this approach.<ref>Peter Gay, ''Age of Enlightenment (New York, Time Inc., 1966), Appendix.''</ref>

	Only in the 1970s did interpretation of the Enlightenment allow for a more heterogeneous and even extra-European vision. A. Owen Aldridge demonstrated how Enlightenment ideas spread to Spanish colonies and how they interacted with indigenous cultures, while Franco Venturi explored how the Enlightenment took place in normally unstudied areas - Italy, Greece, the Balkans, Poland, Hungary, and Russia.<ref>Outram, 6. See also, A. Owen Alridge (ed.), ''The Ibero-American Enlightenment (Urbana, IL., 1971)., Franco Venturi, ''The End of the Old Regime in Europe 1768-1776: The First Crisis'', translated by R. Burr Litchfield (Princeton, 1989), ''Europe des lumières'' traduction de Françoise Braudel (Paris: Mouton & Co., 1971). </ref>

	More than any other, however it is ] who most radically changed Enlightenment historiography. {{Fact\|date=April 2009}} Consider, for example, the following citation from ''The Literary Underground of the Old Regime'' (1982) :

	<blockquote>
	“Perhaps the Enlightenment was a more down-to-earth affair than the rarefied climate of opinion described by textbook writers, and we should question the overly highbrow, overly metaphysical view of intellectual life in the eighteenth century.”<ref>Robert Darnton, ''The Literary Underground of the Old Regime'' (Cambridge, Massachusetts: 1982), 2. </ref>
	</blockquote>

	Indeed, in this book, Darnton examines the underbelly of the French book industry in the eighteenth century, examining the world of book smuggling and the lives of those writers (the “Grub Street Hacks”) who never met the success of their '']'' cousins. In short, rather than concerning himself with Enlightenment canon, Darnton studies “what Frenchmen wanted to read”, and who wrote, published and distributed it.<ref>Darnton, ''The Literary Underground...'', 2. </ref>
	Similarly, in ''The Business of Enlightenment. A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie 1775-1800'', Darnton states that there is no need to further study the encyclopedia itself, as “the book has been analyzed and anthologized dozen of times: to recapitulate all the studies of its intellectual content would be redundant”.<ref>Robert Darnton, ''The Business of Enlightenment. A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie 1775-1800'' (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 5.</ref> He instead, as the title of the book suggests, examines the social conditions that brought about the production of the ''Encyclopédie''. This is representative of the social interpretation as a whole - an examination of the social conditions that brought about Enlightenment ideas rather than a study of the ideas themselves.

	The work of ] was central to this emerging social interpretation, although his seminal work ''The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere'' (published under the title ''Strukturwandel der Öffentlicheit'' in 1962) was only translated into English in 1989. The book outlines the creation of the “bourgeois public sphere” in eighteenth century Europe. Essentially, this public sphere describes the new venues and modes of communication allowing for rational exchange that appeared in the eighteenth century. Habermas argued that the public sphere was bourgeois, egalitarian, rational, and independent from the state, making it the ideal venue for intellectuals to critically examine contemporary politics and society, away from the interference of established authority.

	Habermas's work, though influential, has come under criticism on all fronts. While the public sphere is generally an integral component of social interpretations of the Enlightenment, numerous historians have brought into question whether the public sphere was bourgeois, oppositional to the state, independent from the state, or egalitarian.<ref>For example, Robert Darnton, Roger Chartier, Brian Cowan, Donna T. Andrew. </ref>

	These historiographical developments have done much to open up the study of Enlightenment to a multiplicity of interpretations. In ''A Social History of Truth'' (1994), for example, Steven Shapin makes the largely sociological argument that, in seventeenth-century England, the mode of sociability known as civility became the primary discourse of truth; for a statement to have the potential to be considered true, it had to be expressed according to the rules of civil society.

	Feminist interpretations have also appeared, with Dena Goodman being one notable example. In ''The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment'' (1994), Goodman argues that many women in fact played an essential part in the French Enlightenment, due to the role they played as ''salonnières'' in Parisians salons. These salons “became the civil working spaces of the project of Enlightenment” and women, as salonnières, were “the legitimate governors of potentially unruly discourse” that took place within.<ref>Dena Goodman, ''The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment'' (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 53.</ref> On the other hand, Carla Hesse, in ''The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern'' (2001), argues that “female participation in the public cultural life of the Old Regime was ... relatively marginal”.<ref>Carla Hesse, ''The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 42.</ref> It was instead the French Revolution, by destroying the old cultural and economic restraints of patronage and corporatism (guilds), that opened French society to female participation, particularly in the literary sphere.

	All this is not to say that intellectual interpretations no longer exist. Jonathan Israel, for example, in ''Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man, 1670-1752'' (2006), constructs an argument that is primarily intellectual in scope. Like many historians before him, he sets the Enlightenment within the context of the French Revolution to follow. Israel argues that only an intellectual interpretation can adequately explain the radical break with Old Regime society.<ref>Jonathan Israel, ''Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man, 1670-1752'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 4. </ref>

	==Important figures==
	* ] (1738–1766) ''German''. would later be called ] in ''Vom Tode für's Vaterland'' (On dying for one's nation).
	* ] (1717–1783) ''French''. Mathematician and physicist, one of the editors of ''Encyclopédie''.
	* ] (1634–1698) ''Dutch'', a key figure in the Early Enlightenment. In his book De Philosophia Cartesiana (1668) Bekker argued that theology and philosophy each had their separate terrain and that Nature can no more be explained from Scripture than can theological truth be deduced from Nature.
	* ] (1647–1706) ''French''. Literary critic known for ''Nouvelles de la république des lettres'' and ''Dictionnaire historique et critique'', and one of the earliest influences on the Enlightenment thinkers to advocate tolerance between the difference religious beliefs.
	* ] ''Italian''. Best known for his treatise ] (1764).
	* ] ''Irish''. Philosopher and mathematician famous for developing the theory of ].
	* ] (1674–1749), German ecclesiastical jurist, one of the first reformer of the church law and the civil law which was basis for further reforms and maintained until the 20th century.
	* ] (1740–1795) ''Scottish''. Biographer of ], helped established the norms for writing ] in general.
	* ] (1707–1788) ''French''. Author of ''L'Histoire Naturelle'' who considered ] and the similarities between humans and apes.
	* ] (1729–1797) ''Irish''. Parliamentarian and political philosopher, best known for pragmatism, considered important to both ] and ] thinking.
	* ] (1714–1799) ''Scottish''. Philosopher, ], pre-]ary thinker and contributor to ] ]. See ]
	* ] (1673-1723) ''Romanian''. Philosopher, historian, composer, musicologist, linguist, ethnographer, and geographer. He was a member of the ]. His most important works were ] and ].
	* ] (1743–1794) ''French''. Philosopher, mathematician, and early political scientist who devised the concept of a Condorcet method.
	* ]
	* ] (1755–1808), ''Spanish'' botanist and mathematician, lead the first botanic expeditions to South America, and built a major collection of plants.
	* ] (1713–1784) ''French''. Founder of the ''Encyclopédie'', speculated on ] and attachment to material objects, contributed to the theory of literature.
	* ] (1706–1790) ''American''. Statesman, scientist, political philosopher, pragmatic deist, author. As a philosopher known for his writings on nationality, economic matters, aphorisms published in ''Poor Richard's Almanac'' and polemics in favour of American Independence. Involved with writing the ] and the Constitution of 1787.
	* ]
	* ]
	* ],(1746–1818), writer and philosopher who had used for the first time in 1785 the word "communism" in a doctrinal sense.
	* ] (1737–1794) ''English''. Historian best known for his '']''.
	* ] is closely identified with Enlightenment values, progressing from '']'' and participating with ] in the movement of ].
	* ]
	* ]
	* ]
	* ] ''German''. Theologian and linguist. Proposed that language determines thought, introduced concepts of ethnic study and nationalism, influential on later Romantic thinkers. Early supporter of democracy and republican ].
	* ] (1588–1679) English philosopher, who wrote '']'', a key text in political philosophy.
	* ] (1723–1789) ''French''. Author, ] and Europe's first outspoken ]. Roused much controversy over his criticism of religion as a whole in his work '']''.
	* ] (1635–1703) ''English'', probably the leading experimenter of his age, Curator of Experiments for the Royal Society. Performed the work which quantified such concepts as ] and the inverse-square nature of gravitation, father of the science of ].
	* ] (1711–1776) ''Scottish''. Historian, philosopher and economist. Best known for his ] and ], advanced doctrines of ] and material causes. Influenced Kant and Adam Smith.
	* ] (1743–1826) ''American''. Statesman, political philosopher, educator, deist. As a philosopher best known for the '']'' (1776) and his interpretation of the '']'' (1787) which he pursued as president. Argued for natural rights as the basis of all states, argued that violation of these rights negates the contract which bind a people to their rulers and that therefore there is an inherent "Right to Revolution."
	* ] (1744–1811), Main figure of the Spanish Enlightenment. Preeminent statesman.
	* ] (1724–1804) ''German''. Philosopher and physicist. Established ] on a systematic basis, proposed a material theory for the origin of the solar system, wrote on ethics and morals. Prescribed a politics of Enlightenment in '']'' (1784). Influenced by Hume and Isaac Newton. Important figure in German Idealism, and important to the work of ] and ].
	* ] (1750–1812) ''Polish''. He was active in the ] and the Society for Elementary Textbooks, and reformed the ], of which he was rector in 1783–86. He co-authored the ]'s ], and founded the Assembly of Friends of the Government Constitution to assist in the document's implementation.
	* ] (1735–1801): '']''. Leading poet of the ], hailed by contemporaries as "the Prince of Poets." After the 1764 election of ] as ], Krasicki became the new King's confidant and chaplain. He participated in the King's famous "]" and co-founded the '']'', the preeminent periodical of the ] sponsored by the King. He is remembered especially for his '']''.
	* ]
	* ] Inventor of Calculus as we know it today and wrote ''Protogea'', amongst other scientific and philosophical works.
	* ] (1729–1781) ''German''. Dramatist, critic, political philosopher. Created theatre in the German language, began reappraisal of Shakespeare to being a central figure, and the importance of classical dramatic norms as being crucial to good dramatic writing, theorized that the centre of political and cultural life is the middle class.
	* ] (1707–1778) Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of ].
	* ] (1632–1704) ''English'' Philosopher. Important empiricist who expanded and extended the work of Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes. Seminal thinker in the realm of the relationship between the state and the individual, the contractual basis of the state and the rule of law. Argued for personal liberty emphasizing the rights of ], its this emphasis the American constitution owes much to. Among those of whom his writings influenced were ] thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. This influence is reflected in the American Declaration of Independence.
	* ]
	* ] (1751-1836) ''American''. Statesman and political philosopher. Played a key role in the writing of the ] and providing a theoretical justification for it in his contributions to ].
	* ] (1699–1782) Portuguese statesman notable for his swift and competent leadership in the aftermath of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. He also implemented sweeping economic policies to regulate commercial activity and standardize quality throughout the country. The term Pombaline is used to describe not only his tenure, but also the architectural style which formed after the great earthquake.
	* ] (1676–1764) ''Spanish'', was the most prominent promoter of the critical empiricist attitude at the dawn of the Spanish Enlightenment. See also the ] .
	* ] (1689–1755) ''French'' political thinker. He is famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers, taken for granted in modern discussions of government and implemented in many constitutions all over the world.
	* ] (1760–1828) ''Spanish''. Dramatist and translator, support of ] and free thinking. Transitional figure to Romanticism.
	* ]
	* ] (1744–1818) ''Russian''. Philanthropist and journalist who sought to raise the culture of Russian readers and publicly argued with the Empress. See ] for other prominent figures.
	* ] (1742-1811) ''Serbian''. Writer, philosopher and linguist and one of the most influential proponents of Serbian national and cultural Renaissance.
	* ] (1737–1809) ''English''. Pamphleteer, Deist, and polemicist, most famous for '']'' attacking England's domination of the colonies in America. The pamphlet was key in fomenting the ]. Also wrote '']'' which remains one of the most persuasive critiques of the Bible ever written, his writings (mainly ''Age of Reason'' and '']'') made Americans study their religion, their behaviors, and the ruling hierarchy. His work "The Rights of Man" was written in defense of the French Revolution and is the classic example of the Enlightenment arguments in favor of classical liberalism.
	* ] (1694–1774) ''French'' economist of the ]. He also practiced surgery.
	* ] (1710–1796) ''Scottish''. Presbyterian minister and Philosopher. Contributed greatly to the idea of Common-Sense philosophy and was Hume's most famous contemporary critic. Best known for his ]. Heavily influenced William James.
	* ] (1712–1778) Swiss political philosopher. Argued that the basis of morality was conscience, rather than reason, as most other philosophers argued. He wrote ], in which Rousseau claims that citizens of a state must take part in creating a 'social contract' laying out the state's ground rules in order to found an ideal society in which they are free from arbitrary power. His rejection of reason in favor of the "Noble Savage" and his idealizing of ages past make him truly fit more into the romantic philosophical school, which was a reaction against the enlightenment. He largely rejected the individualism inherent in classical liberalism, arguing that the general will overrides the will of the individual.
	* ]
	* ] (1723–1790) Scottish economist and philosopher. He wrote '']'', in which he argued that wealth was not money in itself, but wealth was derived from the added value in manufactured items produced by both invested capital and labor. He is sometimes considered to be the founding father of the ] economic theory, but in fact argues for some degree of government control in order to maintain equity. Just prior to this he wrote '']'', explaining how it is humans function and interact through what he calls ''sympathy'', setting up important context for ''The Wealth of Nations''.
	* ] (1632–1677) ''Dutch'', philosopher who is considered to have laid the groundwork for the 18th-century Enlightenment.
	* ] (1732–98), the last king of independent Poland, a leading light of the Enlightenment in the ], and co-author of one of the world's first modern constitutions, the ].
	* ] (1688–1772) Natural philosopher and theologian whose search for the operation of the soul in the body led him to construct a detailed metaphysical model for spiritual-natural causation.
	* ]
	* ] (pen name ]) (1694–1778) French Enlightenment writer, ], ] and ]. He wrote several books, the most famous of which is ], in which he argued that organized religion is pernicious. He was the Enlightenment's most vigorous antireligious polemicist, as well as being a highly well known advocate of intellectual freedom.
	* ] (1748–1830) ''German'' who founded the Order of the Illuminati.
	* ]
	* ] (1679–1754) "German"
	* ] (1759–1797) British writer, philosopher, and feminist.

	==See also==
	* ]
	* ]
	* ]
	* ]
	* ]
	* ]
	* ]
	* ]
	* ]
	* ] (American Revolution, French Revolution, Latin American Revolutions and others...)
	* ]

	==References==
	{{reflist\|2}}

	==Further reading==
	* ], ''Discours préliminaire de l'Encyclopédie''.
	* Alridge, A. Owen (ed.). ''The Ibero-American Enlightenment. Urbana, IL., 1971.
	* Andrew, Donna T.. "Popular Culture and Public Debate: London 1780". ''The Historical Journal'', Vol. 39, No. 2. (June 1996), pp 405–423.
	* ]. ''The Enlightenment Past: reconstructing eighteenth-century French thought''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
	* ]. ''Interpreting the Enlightenment: Metaphysics, Critique, and Politics'', 2004
	* ]. '' The Great Divide: The Enlightenment and its Critics''
	* Brown, Stuart, (ed.). ''British Philosophy in the Page of Enlightenment'' 2002
	* ]. ''Crowded with Genius: The Scottish Enlightenment: Edinburgh's Moment of the Mind'' 2003
	* Campbell, R.s. and Skinner, A.S., (eds.) The Origins and Nature of the Scottish Enlightenment, Edinburgh, 1982
	* ]. ''The Philosophy of the Enlightenment,'' Princeton University Press 1979
	* ]. ''The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution''. Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane. Duke University Press, 1991.
	* Cowan, Brian. ''The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergency of the British Coffeehouse''. New Haven : Yale University Press, 2005.
	* ]. ''The Business of Enlightenment. A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie 1775-1800''. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979.
	* ]. ''The Literary Underground of the Old Regime''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: 1982.
	* Davidson, Ian. ''Voltaire in Exile: The Last Years, 1753-78'', paperback ed. London: Atlantic, 2005.
	* ] ''Rameau's Nephew'' and ''First Satire.'' Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008.
	* Dieterle, Bernard and ] (eds.). ''The Dream and the Enlightenment / Le Rêve et les Lumières.'' Paris: Honoré Champion 2003, ISBN 2-7453-0672-3.
	* ]. ''The Enlightenment & the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture'' 2004
	* ].
	* ]. ''The Enlightenment: An Interpretation''. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996
	* ]. ''The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment''. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994.
	* Habermas, Jürgen. ''The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere''. Translated by Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1989.
	* ]. ''The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
	* Greensides F, Hyland P, Gomez O (ed.). "The Enlightenment" 2002
	* Herman, Arthur. ''How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of how Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It'' 2001
	* Hill, Jonathan. ''Faith in the Age of Reason,'' Lion/Intervarsity Press 2004
	* ]. ''The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments'', 2004
	* Hulluing, Mark. ''Autocritique of Enlightenment: Rousseau and the Philosophes'' 1994
	* Jacob, Margaret ''Enlightenment: A Brief History with Documents'' 2000
	* Israel, Jonathan. ''Radical Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie, 1775-1800''. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
	* Israel, Jonathan. ''Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man, 1770-1752''. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
	* ] (ed.). ''Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment''. 4 volumes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003
	* ]. "What is Enlightenment?".
	* Lilti, Antoine. ''Le monde des salons: Sociabilité et mondanité à Paris au XVIII<sup>e</sup> siècle''. Faynard, 2005.
	* Melamed, Yitzhak Y. ''Salomon Maimon and the Rise of Spinozism in German Idealism'', Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 42, Issue 1
	* Melton, James Van Horn. ''The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
	* Munck, Thomas. ''Enlightenment: A Comparative Social History, 1721–1794'' England''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
	* Outram, Dorinda. “What is Enlightenment?”, ''The Enlightenment''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
	* ]. ''The Enlightenment'' 1999
	* Redkop, Benjamin. ''The Enlightenment and Community'', 1999
	* ]. ''France in the Enlightenment''. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.
	* Shapin, Steven. ''A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century
	* ]. ''The French Revolution''.
	* ]. ''The Ancien Régime and the Revolution''.
	* Venturi, Franco. ''The End of the Old Regime in Europe 1768-1776: The First Crisis''. Translated by R. Burr Litchfield. Princeton, 1989.
	* Venturi, Franco. ''Europe des lumières''. Traduction de Françoise Braudel. Paris: Mouton & Co., 1971.
	{{Age of Enlightenment}}

	{{DEFAULTSORT:Age Of Enlightenment}}
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]

	{{Link FA\|ka}}
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]

Revision as of 01:24, 11 August 2009