The Enlightenment (1650–1800)

Events

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.