Chapter 22: The Exchange of Enlightenment: Eighteenth-Century Thought
I. The Character of the Enlightenment
Experiments like those of Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis in the 1730s are characteristic of
the Enlightenment’s scientific curiosity about the physical world we live in. So is Maupertuis’
transformation from scientist of the world to an explorer of the mind and of spirituality—a
journey that was not uncommon among many great Enlightenment thinkers. Key new ideas were
that freedom could energize human goodness, happiness was worth pursuing, and reason and
science could lead to progress and better lives.
II. The Enlightenment in Global Context
A. The Chinese Example
1. The fastest-growing empire in the world, China was also better educated,
more entrepreneurial, and had a bigger economy than anywhere else. In many
ways, it was also more egalitarian.
2. Some leading European intellectuals, such as Voltaire, saw China as a source
of inspiration. Confucianism and Chinese government, for Voltaire and others
like Francois Quesnay, were models of an “enlightened despotism” that was
restrained by Confucian philosophy.
3. Others like Denis Diderot and the Baron de Montesquieu saw the Chinese
system as merely an “oriental despotism” that used fear as its guiding
principle. They argued that a system based on rule of law and constitutional
safeguards was to be preferred.
4. For either camp, China provided a basis for discussion and China had moved
beyond merely a source of porcelain and textiles to a rich mine of political and
philosophical ideas.
B. Japan
Japanese exclusion of Westerners since the 1630s limited European knowledge of their culture.
Opinion in the West was divided in the same manner that it was over China.
C. India
1. Voltaire found in India an example of a source for Western thought, as he
described in his treatise Dialogue Between a Brahmin and a Jesuit in 1756.
2. Other connections were also being noticed. Sir William Jones found that
Sanskrit shared many grammatical and linguistic characteristics with Latin
and Greek, and so they probably shared a similar root language. Little was to
be found in Indian science that Europeans admired, though inoculation against
smallpox and the numerical system used by the West had their beginnings in
India.
D. The Islamic World
1. As with China, some European thinkers found much to praise in the Ottoman
Empire: its religious toleration, generosity, good hygiene, education, and
respect for law and minorities.
Others saw it as a despotic and arbitrary government based on fear and the sultan’s mood that
promoted docility among its subjects.
III. The Enlightenment’s Effects in Asia
Although European interest in Asia transformed Europe, Europe changed Asia little.
A. The Enlightenment and China
1. China kept its traditional ambivalence and disdain to most that Europe had to
offer, though they did appreciate Jesuit knowledge of astronomy, mapmaking,
and technical skill.
2. Jesuits lectured at court about geometry, physics, and astronomy, but they
were often restricted in making converts.
3. In 1673, Jesuits were put to work in modernizing the artillery of the Chinese
military. They did this, but Chinese interest in European military innovation
waned.
4. Beyond this, Europeans failed (as Lord Macartney did famously in 1793) to
make inroads with the Chinese in business or politics. The Chinese liked
many European innovations, but still saw them as barbarians who were not
capable of knowing their place.
B. Western Science in Japan
1. The Japanese were very interested in Western science and technology, but
their limited access to foreigners left them with few ways to exploit what little
they did know.
2. There were few Western texts in Japan, and with limited knowledge of the
Dutch they were written in, it took decades for the information in them to
become known.
New ideas, such as reason through observation and that “history is the ultimate knowledge”
developed in reaction to Confucian thought, rather than from European influence.
C. Korea and Southeast Asia
1. Reaction to Confucianism was a catalyst for new thinking in Korea and
Southeast Asia, especially in emphasizing practical knowledge. World maps,
based on Western models, appeared in Korea, as did ideas about Catholicism
and women’s rights.
2. In Thailand, however, Western ideas were less well accepted.
D. The Ottomans
Here, too, Western ideas were slow to catch on; only after Western military superiority became
clear did a strong interest in the West develop.
IV. The Enlightenment in Europe
Diderot’s Encyclopedia is an excellent example of an Enlightenment project that sought to
encompass human knowledge, begin and end with mankind, and to establish something lasting.
It was popular, but enraged churches and many governments in its time. The Encyclopedia was
focused on practical knowledge, advocated reason and science as the way to truth, and was
critical of monarchy and aristocracy. Many contributors insisted on the “natural equality” of all
men, and it was uniformly hostile to organized religion.
A. The Belief in Progress
1. Part of the Enlightenment was a belief in progress and optimism about the
world and humanity. Some like the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz
even attempted to address the age-old question of good and evil, though
Voltaire famously mocked his attempt.
2. Others, such as the Marquis de Condorcet, saw humanity marching forward
now that it was freed from the constraints of tyranny and religion.
B. New Economic Thought
1. Montesquieu and others recommended political freedom, but economic
freedom was also important.
2. Because of Europe’s long history of having an imbalance of trade with Asia,
Western governments became concerned with hoarding cash and “protecting”
their markets through taxes and tariffs.
3. A French school of economists, the physiocrats, devised the “laissez-faire”
theory of leaving the market to its own devices. In similar fashion, Adam
Smith argued in his Wealth of Nations that supply and demand would take
care of the market. Taxation was wrong and self-interest would serve the
common good, Smith argued.
C. Social Equality
Smith argued that freedom would bring equality. Some argued that women were also all equal
(such as Montesquieu), and women’s voices became a part of the debate (Marie-Olympe de
Gouges and Mary Wollstonecraft), but this would be a long time coming.
D. Anticlericalism
1. One thing that many Enlightenment thinkers agreed on was that the church
was an obstacle to progress. Church doctrine was ridiculed and the vices and
corruption of certain members of the church emphasized. In France and
elsewhere, some turned away completely and became atheists, others ceased
to believe in the supernatural power of certain practices, and some monarchs
used these arguments to dispossess the church and monasteries of their lands
and riches or to take control over church wealth.
The success of science encouraged this movement against the traditional power of the church.
V. The Crisis of the Enlightenment: Religion and Romanticism
Some Enlightenment thinkers, however, were unconvinced and drifted back towards the
spiritual; it further became clear that life was not self-generated and that its origin required an
explanation. So, science did not provide all the answers.
A. Religious Revival
1. For most people, the church’s appeal was far from lost. With an ever-stronger
emphasis on faith, redemption, and emotion, large numbers of followers
returned or came into the Christian fold as a result of the sermons of Jonathan
Edwards, John Wesley, or another of the many preachers of the day.
2. The great music of George Handel’s Messiah and Wolfgang Mozart’s music
further inspired large numbers.
3. Even cultured patrons of many Enlightenment thinkers, like King Fredrick the
Great of Prussia, did not neglect to found hundreds of military chaplaincies
for his troops and to require religious instruction in the schools.
B. The Cult of Nature and Romanticism
1. All agreed that nature was greater than any human construct. Some went so
far as to value feelings or “sensibility” over reason.
2. A so-called romantic movement grew up that valued imagination, intuition,
emotion, inspiration, and passion alongside—or even ahead of—reason.
3. Landscapes from the New World played a role in developing these ideas
among the romantics.
4. Science and romanticism merged in the works of scientists like the Baron
Alexander von Humboldt, whose journeys of exploration in America began in
the 1790s. His story of suffering and frustration in pursuit of nature inspired
poets like John Keats and novelists like Friedrich von Hardenberg.
Humboldt’s engravings further inspired later romantic painters.
More than a movement that preferred nature to reason, this was a movement that sought to
elevate the feelings and enthusiasm of the populace as a source for art. It expressed itself in the
collection of folktales by the Grimm brothers and the poetry of William Wordsworth.
C. Rousseau and the General Will
1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau broke with the Enlightenment’s faith in progress and
science and asserted the natural goodness of humankind in its primitive state.
He further denounced the state and property.
2. For Rousseau, the state was a corporation in which individuals are submerged
and subjugated to the common or general will.
3. Theoretically, the general will is different from unanimity, but practically it
means a tyranny of the majority. Famously Rousseau said that “Man is born
free and everywhere he is in chains!”
D. Pacific Discoveries
1. The remarkable voyages of Captain James Cook in the Pacific Ocean charted
much of the world’s largest body of water, settled debates about the existence
of an unknown continent in the south, proposed colonization of Australia and
New Zealand, and brought back a wealth of information about new animals,
plants, and peoples.
2. Some of the peoples Europeans encountered in their voyages in the Pacific
Ocean were disparaged (such as the Australian Aborigines), but others were
celebrated as examples of uncorrupted dignity, as “noble savages.”
E. Wild Children
1. “Natural” men, untouched by civilization, were sought after by Europeans.
Found in woods, these abandoned children became experiments for scientists
to see if they could be taught language and manners, the hallmarks of culture
and society.
2. For many romantics, these children, as with the Pacific Islanders who were
paraded about, represented an innocence of nature that had been lost and then
dressed up in European finery.
F. The Huron as Noble Savage
1. Idealized by European philosophers after their virtual extinction by European
diseases, the Huron became an ideal savage people whose “natural” wisdom
was pure and uncorrupted.
For Louis-Armand de Lom de L’Arce and for Voltaire, the Huron became the grist for
philosophical satire and for comedy.
VI. The French Revolution and Napoleon (pages 757-761)
A. Background to the Revolution
1. In a desperate attempt to raise taxes, King Louis XVI called the Estates
General into session in 1789. Many deputies were filled with Enlightenment
ideas and wanted to do more than help with a fiscal crisis, they wanted reform.
Angry at being ignored, the Estates turned itself into the National Assembly and passed a
“Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen,” a revolutionary document.
B. Revolutionary Radicalism
1. Nationalization of church property and the turning of priests into public
servants came quickly, and though opposed by the pope and king, the
Assembly gained power. Opponents fled.
2. Fearful of the export of revolution, Austria and Prussia invaded in 1792. The
royal family was executed by the revolutionaries and “enemies of the people”
were executed in large numbers as well.
3. Indeed, the twisted sexual antics of the leading revolutionary the Marquis de
Sade were evidence of the excesses to which the French Revolution had
descended.
C. Napoleon
1. A Corsican by birth who rose to prominence as an artillery officer and war
hero, Napoleon’s wars in Europe began the closest thing the world had yet
seen to global conflict.
2. The Code Napoleon forms the basis of the civil and many criminal laws in
Europe and elsewhere around the world. He redrew much of Europe’s map
and instituted new governments.
3. Some saw him as instituting reason rather than ideology in politics; others as
having no moral compass. At times he depicted himself as a Roman emperor;
at other times he showed himself in the company of Germanic gods. He was
an opportunist, creator of a cruel police state, and a mass murderer, as free
with the lives of the conquered as he was with his own men.
With Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815, a political settlement would redraw the map of Europe.
VII. In Perspective: The Afterglow of the Enlightenment
The French Revolution began with “liberty, equality, and fraternity” and ended in a bloody
terror. Many saw the end of the eighteenth century in disillusion and despair. However, in
America the Enlightenment survived in the Constitution, wherein guarantees of freedom resided.
In Europe, too, the idea of progress was driven forward by the Industrial Revolution and the
growth of empire. The state of a country’s progress came to define whether a civilization was on
the move or was stagnant in the minds of Europeans and many non-Europeans.