General direction of the concept One took the practice to indicate under this expression the philosophy of Europe of the XVIIIe century (the “Age of Enlightenment” in French, die Aufklärung or the Enlightment in German and English), characterized by confidence in the reason (by means of which the men can, only, to reach knowledge), the criticism of the traditional authorities (religious and political), the invitation to be thought and judge by oneself, the optimism which understands the movement of the history like the parallel progress of the knowledge, happiness and the virtue. According to this usual presentation, these features constitute a horizon of thought divided by principal philosophies of this time, in spite of their differences. Like Taine in the “Origins of contemporary France says it”:
“With the approaches of 1789, it is allowed that one saw in the “Age of Enlightenment”, in the Age of Enlightenment, that before mankind was in childhood, that today it became major.” This expression draws its direction from the use illustrated of the term “light”, itself supported on a series of traditional comparisons in philosophy: knowledge is compared with the vision (one then seeks to describe the act of knowledge) or with the illumination (one then seeks to characterize the effect of knowledge). These metaphors find their base philosophical maximum in the theories intuitionalists of knowledge where direct contemplation is regarded as the completed form of the knowledge. But the usual use is looser, and sticks to the approximate comparison of “seeing” and “knowing”. To the XVIII E century, the direction of this expression is determined by the distinction, resulting from Christian theology, between the natural light and the supernatural light. Two reigns (thus at Leibniz) or two orders were traditionally distinguished: the reign of nature and the reign of the grace. So within nature (created) the men have the reason (the natural light), this one, although relatively autonomous, remains a limited faculty, which requires the assistance of the supernatural light lastly (that of the Creator): the revelation. The reason remains from such a point of view subordinate to the revelation: only the latter is likely to provide a true knowledge. In such problems, philosophy is the maidservant of theology (ancilla theologiæ). That this supernatural assistance has suddenly been understood either like a “light” but, within the framework of an antireligious combat, like an obscuration, that the natural light (reason) autonomise, at the point to become sufficient for knowledge, without the assistance of the revelation being necessary: this double transformation leads to the concept of lights in vogue to the XVIII E century. The religion and theology are then thought like the principal places of irrationality and the obscurantism. Reason and autonomy
The expression “philosophy of the Lights” is not the late invention historians of the ideas in search of synthetic formulas: some of the philosophers of the XVIII E century, among the principal ones, explicitly registered their reflection in this horizon.
Is it the case of Kant (1724-1804), in an article of 1784, What the Lights? : “What Lights. The exit of the man of his minority of which it is itself responsible. Minority, i.e. incapacity to make use of its understanding without the direction of others; minority of which it is itself responsible, since the cause lies about it not in a defect of the understanding, but in a lack of decision and courage to make use of it without the direction of others. Sapere Aude! IEA courage to serve to you as your own understanding. Here is the currency of the lights.”
It is the case also of Diderot, which notes in the Addition with the philosophical Thoughts: “If I give up my reason, I do not have any more a guide: it is necessary that I adopt as a blind man a secondary principle, and that I suppose what is in question. Mislaid in an immense forest during the night, I have only one small light to act. An unknown occurs which says to me: “My friend, blows the candle for better finding your way.” This unknown is a theologist.”
Such an ideal of autonomy was to necessarily meet the social question and policy: “For these lights it is nothing necessary other but freedom, and to tell the truth the most inoffensive freedom of all that can bear this name, namely that to make a public use of the reason in all the fields. But I intend at present to shout on all sides: “Do not reason!” The officer known as: “Do not reason, carry out!” The financier: “Do not reason, pay!” The priest: “Do not reason, believe! ”… There is limitation of freedom everywhere” (Kant, What Lights?).
Al' horizon of this claim is profiled the republican question: it is under this concept of republic, and not under that of democracy, which is thought a mode which owes its institutions and its laws only with the autonomous will of its citizens. The naivety (undoubtedly feints) of Kant here, it is only to think that this freedom is “inoffensive”. Indeed, the philosophy of the Lights can be only one combat, against the authorities and the prejudices. To listen to the speeches of this time, one would even go so far as to speak about “mission”: “Hasten we to make philosophy popular. If we want that the philosophers walk ahead, let us approach the people of the point where are the philosophers” (Diderot).
A problematic concept
The concept of “philosophy of the Lights”, in spite of the generalized use which in is made, poses however problem, and that for several reasons:
1. Is the unit thus supposed of various philosophies of the XVIIIe century effective? Is there really business with a convergence, a unit, if not doctrines, at least of the philosophical problems? The reference to the reason thus constitutes, around 1750, a true “commonplace”. But is this well with the same concept of reason that refer, for example, of Alembert and Diderot, the two principal promoters of the Encyclopedia? The first fits explicitly in the Cartesian tradition, develops the rigor and clearness mathematics; the second is wary of mathematics, and, anxious to accompany the projections by incipient biology, asserts the right of the conjecture, scientific imagination, the dream and the approximation.
The unit postulate implied in this concept is likely to make forget diversity, the divergences and the conflicts which make this philosophy a “battlefield” (Kant). In this order of ideas, it is necessary to remember for example virulent criticisms of Rousseau with regard to the optimism of its contemporaries: will it be said that Rousseau does not belong to the philosophy of the Lights, whereas its thought of the State very whole is directed against the complex théologico-policy? Or transformations of a philosophy like that of Diderot, which seeks its way between the deism and atheism, empiricism and the materialism: is this when it comes from there to conceive the life and the conscience like the products of the transformations of the matter that Diderot is really a philosopher of the Lights? The place of a philosopher as Montesquieu is it also singular: unlike its contemporaries, who reflect on the social life and policy within the framework of the theories of the contract, by putting the question of the origin of the company (of the passage of the state likely to it social state), Montesquieu, questions to him on the “principles” which connect between them the “facts” of the policy. The problems are radically different.
2. To even suppose that there exist a unit and a specificity of the XVIII E century in philosophy, it adequately is conceived does while speaking about philosophy of the Lights? Isn't this concept too coward? Isn't this rather any philosophy which, in the Socratic line, could be characterized like philosophy of the Lights? The use seems on this particularly floating point; thus certain historians, or unquestionable philosophical, they speak readily about Aufklärung Greek: the O C front century J. - C. (Dilthey). Is this to say that the history “lights” each time the reason seeks to become emancipated theological supervision? Is it then about a constant tendency (effort of the reason towards autonomy), present in all the history of the philosophy which would open out to the XVIII E century? But what is this then which specifies this time of philosophy, if it is recognized that there exist different “Ages of Enlightenment”, or that this “tendency” is constant? It appears in any case that the reference to the only “lights” could not be enough.
3. One frequently confuses, while resorting to a very loose direction of the word “philosophy”, ideology of the Lights and philosophy of the Lights. So by ideology one understands a system of representations and values, dominating in a given time, one will recognize without sorrow a “ideology of the Lights” to the XVIII E century, whose most frequent topics are indeed confidence in the reason, the devalorization of religious dogmatism, the belief in a happy future of humanity under the direction of sciences and technology in progress. Such ideological constants are not enough to define a philosophical horizon. If one seeks the philosophical direction of the concept of “philosophy of the Lights”, it is necessary to wonder which philosophical economic situation, with which specific problems, to which given concepts this expression returns.
The transformation of the concept of philosophy
Thus speaks about Alembert in its Elements of philosophy (1759): “Our century was called par excellence the century of Philosophy (...). If one examines without prevention the actual position of our knowledge, one cannot disconvenir progress of philosophy among us. The Science of nature acquires day in day of new richnesses; the Geometry, while moving back its limits, carried the torch in the parts of Physics which were more close to it; the true system of the world was known (...). The invention and the use of a new method to philosophize, the species of enthusiasm which accompanies the discoveries (...), all these causes had to excite in the spirits a sharp fermentation.”
The examples chosen in this text are lighting: progress of “philosophy”, they are initially those of positive sciences, and, by evoking a “new method”, it is probable that of Alembert refers here to Newton, and its Principles of natural philosophy. At Alembert, this reference converges with a criticism of traditional metaphysics, “philosophy first”, or “sciences of the principles”: “That we is essential at the bottom to penetrate the gasoline of the bodies, provided that the matter being supposed such as we conceive it, we can deduce from the properties which we look like primitives, the other secondary properties whom we see in it, and which the general of the phenomena, always uniform and continuous system, does not present to us nowhere contradiction? We thus stop, and let us not seek to decrease by subtle sophisms the number already too small of our clear and unquestionable knowledge. It is a sad fate for our curiosity and our self-esteem; friends, it is the fate of humanity. We must at least conclude from it that the systems, or rather the dreams of the philosophers on most metaphysics questions, do not deserve any place in a work intended to contain the real knowledge acquired by the human spirit” (D' Alembert, COp cit.).
D' Alembert is probably Cartesian of the philosophers of the XVIII E century. But one understands at his place how the Cartesian inspiration is turned over against Descartes himself: the rule which wants that the spirit sticks to clear knowledge “and some” forces to give up two projects (interdependent) which are constitutive of Cartesian philosophy: that of a knowledge of the gasoline of the things (of the first principles) and that of a system of the universal knowledge. These projects appear as as many phantasms which threaten the progression of the effective knowledge.
Without going until saying that the philosophy of the Lights represents one moment of rupture in the history of philosophy, one can make the assumption of an important change: the metaphysics, which constitutes since Aristote the philosophical research center and common denominator, becomes problematic. It is more obvious only it is even possible. At the very least (because of Alembert is one of those which push this criticism further), it changes direction and of statute. Which are new contours?
Among the tasks which hold the attention of the philosophers of the Lights, two appear particularly important: to introduce in philosophy the concept of experiment and that of history.
The idea of “experimental philosophy”
It is the Cartesian thesis, according to which all good science must be a priori, which is called in question. Many are those which, to the XVIII E century, earlier will take again on their account the project formulated by Bacon one century, of a “experimental philosophy”. One indicates by there, on the one hand, a new manner of practicing physics, but beyond, a new attitude of thought. Cassirer speaks on this subject about a transformation in the method, and about a passage of the deduction to the analysis. Thus Voltaire (who contributes with Mrs. of Châtelet to introduce Newton in France) then Buffon will dissociate idea clearly that physics can be physical a priori. In the foreword of its Natural history (1749), Buffon is guarded against the risk of romantic” and imaginary physics a “: “The only means of knowing is that of the reasoned and followed experiments.” The principles are not any more to discover a priori, by the “inspection of the spirit”, but to release, gradually, of the multiplication of the experiments. Such is the movement of the analysis.
If philosophy remains conceived like a system, many are criticisms formulated against the “systematic mind”. It is the principal reproach which Condillac addresses to philosophies previous centuries: to have proceeded deductively starting from a concept arbitrarily set up in theory. The philosopher, it is that which can be held remotely of any system, including his clean.
It is the statute even “ideas” which is then transformed: empiricism develops highly to the XVIII E century, while being based on work of Locke. It is necessary to reflect on the origin of the ideas, to explain their genesis. It is to what Condillac sticks, and it is from this point of view that the “ideologists” of the end of the century will be registered. Beyond Cartesian dualism opens the prospect for a materialism, which is given for goal to derive the thought, including its most abstract principles (like the laws morals and the religion), of the matter and nature (Helvétius, Mettrie, of Holbach). The concept of matter itself is given in building site; one refuses the Cartesian identification of the matter and the extent to introduce the dynamism and vitality there. The references to Leibniz and Spinoza are frequent (at Diderot and Maupertuis for example): they are used as something to lean on to exceed the Cartesianism.
It is seen that the project of the Encyclopedia (or reasoned Dictionary of sciences, arts and the trades), whose drafting starts in 1745 and the publication in 1751, corresponds perfectly to this new design of the reason; to be systematic without being abstract, it is necessary to expose the effective work of the reason, in all the fields where she is exerted. The choice of the alphabetical order, which is already that of Bayle in its Dictionary (published in 1696-1697, it is used as work tools all to the philosophers of the time), indicates, by its arbitrary even, that no order determines a priori the positive work of the reason.
The thought of the history
The second determining task, it is the thought of the history. That the history is not only any more one account, having for function to immortalize the large ones and beautiful actions, but that it becomes, except for whole, a science, charged like physics to release from the laws, such is the horizon of one time work which discovers with the history a “new continent”.
It is initially the hesitant emergence of the idea of a history of nature. The concept seems acquired about the middle of the century, and the Natural history of Buffon (which goes back to 1759) makes an effort, independently of any theological postulate, to make an inventory of the reigns of nature (from where the importance of the questions of classification) and their transformations.
What is it then of the history of the men? Is the human society, like nature, also subjected to laws? Can one assign a reason with the various transformations which affect the human society? New objects are constituted: the history of “manners” in Voltaire, and the attempt to release “the spirit of time” (the Century of Louis XIV and especially the Test on manners), and with them take shape the prospect for an including historical rationality. Philosophy tends to becoming a philosophy of the history. But the difficulty is immediate: if the history comprises laws, is this to say that it reigns there, as in nature, a need? To think as isn't a historian, precisely to reintroduce the contingency and the indetermination including in the comprehension of nature? Would a nature perfectly regulated by laws have a history?
It is in this line that the thoughts of the progress are registered, which sees in the advent of the Lights the possibility of a happier and more virtuous humanity: thus Condorcet, in its Draft of progress of the human spirit. But optimism is from the start a problem for philosophy; Rousseau will endeavor to think together the progress of the Lights and that of the constraint and misfortune (Speech on Sciences and Arts). That the man is by perfectible nature does not imply that its history has overall the form of a progress towards best: it is also necessary to think progress, paradoxically like the movement towards worst.
Limits of the philosophy of the Lights
This question was put, from the start. It is it already, of the interior of the philosophy of the Lights, by holding of the critical thought. By different ways, Berkeley, Rousseau, Smell and Kant wonder indeed about the limits of the reason. The rationalism of the Lights is a critical rationalism with regard to the powers of the reason. But it is especially Hegel who will carry out against the Lights a violent criticism (the Phenomenology of the spirit, VI E left). The principal reproaches aim at sectarianism and the abstraction; sectarianism, because the philosophers of the Lights would have operated a division sliced between the rational one and the irrational one (religious obscurantism), incompetent to conceive rationality with work in the religious culture. The abstraction, because, carried by the claim of autonomy, they would have neglected to think the positive conditions of execution of freedom. Attempts to set up a “natural religion”, “within the limits of the simple reason”, would testify to this formalism, which would have had of another effect only to cause the mysticism and the romantic return of the feeling. At the bottom, the will “to think by oneself” is not, in itself, a sufficient guarantee of rationality. “To stick to the authority of the others or its own conviction differs only by vanity inherent in the second manner.” Nothing is thus played when the autonomy of the reason was proclaimed: still it is necessary that the contents of thought become indeed rational.
The rationalism of the Lights one can reproach a certain naivety: not sufficiently not to have questioned its own limits and to have reflected on its clean presupposed. It is clear for example that this rationalism takes part for a share of the belief (in the value of the reason) and that the belief in a historical progress sometimes replaced the old eschatology. “Free thinkers” would they be, like says it sometimes Nietzsche, only theologists who are unaware of themselves?
It has been in any case for two centuries made up a “mythology of the Lights”. To take back without examining it would amount betraying the requirements first of the philosophers of this time. One of the most advanced forms this examination is in the analyzes that Adorno and Horkheimer, philosophers of the school of Frankfurt, devoted to the history of rationality: “From time immemorial, the purpose of Aufklärung, to the full extent of thought in progress, was to release the men of the fear and to make them sovereign. The purpose of the program of Aufklärung was to release the world of the magic. She proposed to destroy the myths, to bring to imagination the support of the knowledge. But ground, entirely “lit”, gleams under the sign of calamities triumphing everywhere.” And yet, when it is a question of founding the criticism of alienation and the reification, it is always with the principle of autonomy that Adorno and Horkheimer refer. Would the philosophy of the Lights be indépassable?
“We are today conscious of what the rationalism in the XVIIIe century, its way of wanting to ensure solidity and the behavior necessary for European humanity, was a naivety. But is it necessary to give up at the same time as this naive rationalism and even, if one thinks it until the end, contradictory, also the authentic direction of this rationalism?”
(Husserl, the Crisis of European sciences)