Events
1748
Hume publishes An Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding
1762
Rousseau publishes The Social Contract
1770
Rousseau finishes Confessions
Key People
-
David Hume
Scottish
thinker and pioneer in skepticism who questioned the human ability to
know anything with certainty
-
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Swiss-French writer and philosopher who espoused
democracy in The Social Contract and inspired the
Romantic movement with Confessions and other works
New Movements
As the Enlightenment progressed into the mid-1700s,
a noticeable shift occurred away from the empirical,
reason-based philosophies of most of the leading French and English
thinkers. The new philosophies that developed tended to take one
of two major directions. Romanticism, a philosophy
strongly attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, stressed
emotion and a return to the natural state of man instead
of the confines and constructs of society. Skepticism, which
gained prominence under Scottish philosopher David Hume and
was later elevated by German philosopher Immanuel Kant (see Kant, p. 33),
questioned whether we as human beings are truly able to perceive
the world around us with any degree of accuracy. These two movements,
along with Church anti-Enlightenment propaganda and increasing unrest
as the French Revolution neared, marked a departure from those thoughts
that dominated the peak of the Enlightenment.
Hume
David Hume (1711–1776)
was a Scottish writer and philosopher who paved the way for the
future of the skeptical school of thought. A dogmatic skeptic, he
devoted a substantial portion of his work to investigating the limits
of human reasoning. Hume began his career in law but soon decided
to devote himself to writing and philosophy. His first major work
was A Treatise of Human Nature (1739),
a book that, though now highly regarded, went widely ignored because
of its complicated prose. Hume made up for this oversight in An
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748),
in which he rearticulated much of the same material in a more approachable
manner.
Hume’s studies, which have since become fundamental in
modern Western philosophy, focus on reason, perception, and especially morals.
Hume questioned whether the senses, and thus perception, could be
trusted for a consistent view of the world around us. In considering
morality, Hume felt that if a person found a particular action reasonable,
then that action was a morally appropriate thing to do. By adding
this introspective, individual layer to the issues of perception
and morality, Hume stripped the philosophical world of its generalizations.
Indeed, the unrelentingly skeptical Hume believed that
everything was subject to some degree of uncertainty—an idea that turned
the intellectual world on end. Regardless of how he himself felt
about Enlightenment ideas, he kept returning to one thought: because
we will never know anything beyond a doubt, why
bother? Hume also applied his skeptical approach to science and
religion, saying that even though neither was capable of fully explaining
anything, science was stronger because it could admit that it would never
be absolutely correct.
Rousseau
Orphaned in Geneva at an early age, the nomadic and self-taught Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (1712–1778)
drifted about for most of his youth, contributing intellectually
however he could. He devised a new system for musical composition
(since rejected), submitted articles to Diderot’s Encyclopédie,
and composed essays on various topics. It was one of these essays, Discourse
on the Arts and Sciences in 1750,
which first earned him renown. He followed it up with Discourse on
the Origin of Inequality (1755),
which solidified his reputation as a bold philosopher. This work
charted man’s progression from a peaceful, noble state in nature
to an imbalanced state in society, blaming the advent of various
professions and private property for the inequality and moral degradation.
Rousseau moved around quite a bit during the next few years but
still found time to write two more pivotal works. The novel Julie,
ou la Nouvelle Héloïse (1761) told
the story of a forbidden love, while Émile (1762)
provided a revolutionary dissertation on the proper way to rear
and educate a child.
Émile set the stage for Rousseau’s best-known
and arguably most influential work, The Social Contract (1762).
In it, Rousseau describes what he sees as the perfect political
system: one in which everyone articulates their wants but ultimately
compromises for the betterment of the general public. This “general
will” would thus contain traces of every citizen’s individual
will and thus would in some way serve everyone. Rousseau ended his
career in solitude, though not before releasing the deeply intimate Confessions (1765–1770), an
autobiographical piece that chronicled his struggle to stick to
his principles in the face of mounting fame and wealth.
