Featuring Gerhard Rempel, with commentary by Lewis Loflin
We can call the eighteenth century the age of the enlightenment because it was both a culmination and a new beginning. Fresh currents of thought were wearing down institutionalized traditions. New ideas and new approaches to old institutions were setting the stage for great revolutions to come.
These enlightened philosophes made extravagant claims, but there was more to them than merely negations and disinfectants. It was primarily a French movement because French culture dominated Europe and because their ideas were expressed in the environment of the Parisian salon. Therefore, it was basically a middle-class movement. They, nevertheless labored for man in general, for humanity.
Clearly the feudal edifice was crumbling, but there was no real antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy as yet. One can detect the bourgeoisie struggling for freedom from state regulations and for liberty of commercial activity. It is also evident that a wave of prosperity brought a greater degree of self-confidence to the bourgeoisie. Great fortunes were made every town.
Mercantilism was loosening its hold on the economy. By 1750 the reading public came into existence because of increasing literacy. Yet the philosophes lived a precarious life. They never knew whether they would be imprisoned or courted. Yet they assumed the air of an army on the march.
From the 17th century the philosophes inherited the rationalism of Descartes, but the impulse of natural science alchemized into the Enlightenment. Newton had discovered a fundamental cosmic law which was susceptible to mathematical proof and applicable to the minutest object as well as to the universe as a whole.
Maupertuis and Voltaire made Newton common property by 1750. John Locke had denied innate ideas and derived all knowledge, opinions and behavior from sense experience. Condillac carried this to its conclusion by insisting that even perception was transformed sensation.
So the traditional anthropocentric view of the universe lay in ruins and with it the anthropomorphic conception of God. Hence Montesquieu, Voltaire, the encyclopedists and physiocrats created the synthesis of social science which was based on past progress. All of this was done in an atmosphere of religious, political and economic controversy. Biblical criticism came from Hugo Grotius.
Political economists, shocked by the difference between prosperous Holland and backward Spain, first posited precious metals as the source of wealth, then commerce, and then agricultural production (as developed by the physiocrats).
In all this controversy, social science was beginning to yield evidence—the critical and historical method of Pierre Bayle. Exotic travel literature had its effect as well. It supported the positivist, experimental mentality of the 18th century. It brought the aura of the "noble savage" into prominence.
There was a moral sense in natural man. Rousseau and the encyclopedists succumbed to this idea. But that was not the case with Montesquieu and Voltaire. By 1750 the social sciences had already become inductive, historical, anthropological, comparative, and critical.
There was great faith in the instrument of reason rather than mere accumulation of knowledge. Doctrinal substance was not as important as overall philosophy.
We need to keep this in mind if we want to understand the Enlightenment. It was not so much Descartes "reason" but rather Newton's laws—not abstraction and definition, but observation and experience were points of departure.
What placed the stamp on the Enlightenment was this analytical method of Newtonian physics applied to the entire field of thought and knowledge. Order and regularity came from the analysis of observed facts. Lessing said that the real power of reason lay not in the possession but in the acquisition of truth.
So pure analysis was applied to psychological and social processes. From here on out the doctrine of historical and sociological determinism (the application of the principle of causality to social science) was generally accepted. Many historicists have ridiculed this naive scientific positivism. By facile dogmatism the philosophes frequently ignored their own method.
Their new ideal of knowledge was simply a further development of 17th century logic and science. But there was a new emphasis on
Except for David Hume's skepticism, the philosophes' faith in reason remained unshaken.
It was an age of reason based on faith, not an age of faith based on reason. The enlightenment spiritualized the principle of religious authority, humanized theological systems, and emancipated individuals from physical coercion. It was the Enlightenment, not the Reformation or the Renaissance that dislodged the ecclesiastical establishment from central control of cultural and intellectual life.
By emancipating science from the trammels of theological tradition the Enlightenment rendered possible the autonomous evolution of modern culture. Diderot said, if you forbid me to speak on religion and government, I have nothing to say.
Hence natural science occupied the front of the stage. Most of the philosophes wrote on natural science. To Diderot, d'Holbach and the encyclopedists all religious dogma was absurd and obscure. LeMettrie and d'Holbach were consistent determinists.
Voltaire disagreed with them and said they had a dogmatism of their own. Diderot too insisted on the free play of reason. But he was an unashamed pagan and believed in a kind of pantheism or pan-psychism, not pure atheism or materialism. He was humanistic, secular, modern and scientific. He expected from his method a regeneration of mankind.
English deism, however, was more pervasive in the Enlightenment. It emphasized an impersonal deity, natural religion and the common morality of all human beings.
Deism was a logical outgrowth of scientific inquiry, rational faith in humanity, and the study of comparative religion. All religions could be reduced to worship God and a commonsense moral code. There was a universal natural religion.
Yet, it was David Hume, the Englishman, who cut the ground from under his deist friends (Natural History of Religion). Natural religion rested on the basic assumption that man is guided by the dictates of reason. Mind is the scene of the uniform play of motive.
The motives of man are quantitatively and qualitatively the same at all times and in all places. An empirical study of the nature of man, said Hume, reveals not an identical set of motives but a confusion of impulses, not an orderly cosmos but chaos.
The elemental passion, hopes and fears is the root of religious experience. Religions may be socially convenient but being rooted in sentiment they lack the validity of scientific generalization.
A rational religion is a contradiction in terms. Hume here comes close to demolishing the entire rationalist philosophy of the Enlightenment—its natural rights, its self-evident truths and its universal and immutable laws of morality.
Voltaire is in the middle between the materialism of the Encyclopedists and the skepticism of Hume. His ruthless and comic deflation of theological sophism prevented him from recognizing the deepest drives of Catholicism.
He conveyed the power of intellect to his generation, but also saw the limitations of reason. Reason was, after all, a poor instrument, but it was the only weapon that raised man above the animals. He believed in the argument from design or "first cause." But this no longer sufficed Diderot and Hume.
Voltaire accepted the classical ideal of the brotherhood of man and the universal morality of man. He was essentially a humanist—the greatest humanist of the Enlightenment. He had not the depth of David Hume or Immanuel Kant, but they could not have done his work. Voltaire had only one absolute value: the human race.
The central theme of the Enlightenment is the effort to humanize religion. All philosophes rejected original sin. Here Pascal became a problem for them. For Pascal used their method of analytic logic to prove the existence of original sin and the utter inability of the unaided human reason to solve the problem without accepting the authority of faith.
How do you explain the "double nature" of mankind? It becomes intelligible only through the doctrine of the fall of man. Pascal haunted Voltaire all his life. The cruel laughter of the Candide could not suppress the problem of evil.
In the upshot he accepted Pascal's analysis of human nature. By becoming an agnostic he became prisoner of Pascal's argument—reason without faith ends in skepticism.
Rousseau had a more original solution to Pascal's problem. In his two discourses he painted a picture of depravity of society that would have delighted Pascal.
If he accepted degeneration how was he to explain radical evil? He discovered a new agent of degeneration—the "fall of man"—not god or individual man but society. Thus salvation comes through the social contract.
Man must save himself. In social justice is the meaning of life. It was neither a theological or metaphysical solution but a modern solution.
Gerhard Rempel does a solid job mapping out the 18th-century Enlightenment—French-driven, big on Newton, and shaking up the old order. It’s an interesting shift, no doubt. But as a deist, I’ve always leaned more toward the Age of Reason, back in the 17th century. That’s where you get a cleaner, more level-headed take—think Descartes laying out a rational God, nothing too fancy, just order and logic. The Enlightenment, well, it took things further than I’m comfortable with—French Deism sliding toward atheism, Rousseau chasing social utopias. I’ve got more on that in my pages: French Deism shows the wild side, while English Deism—folks like Toland—keeps it steady, which suits me better. The Deism Mainpage ties it all together.
The Age of Reason had a simplicity I appreciate—reason as a tool, not a crusade. The Enlightenment philosophes, though, turned it into something louder, almost like missionaries going after the Church and crowns with their own big ideas. Newton’s laws were fine on their own—why dress them up with “noble savages” or grand social fixes? I’d rather stick with the earlier deism, where God’s just a quiet force, no preaching needed. Hume’s skepticism is sharp, I’ll give him that, but Voltaire’s humanism and Rousseau’s dreams feel like they’re reaching too far. Rempel mentions the revolutions coming—fair point; things got messy when reason ran loose.
I’ve never been big on missionaries, whatever the flavor. The Age of Reason didn’t push its ideas like a sales pitch; the Enlightenment couldn’t help itself. By 1750, more folks could read—why not let them figure it out instead of handing them a new gospel? I’d take the 17th century’s calm clarity over the 18th’s bold swings any day.
Acknowledgment: I’d like to thank Grok, an AI by xAI, for helping me draft and refine this article. The core content is Gerhard Rempel’s, preserved as written, with my commentary added. Final edits and perspective are mine.
