HS-102 Readings

The Enlightenment

WHAT WERE THE NATURE AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE 18TH CENTURY?

The Enlightenment, an intellectual movement in 18th century Europe, was stimulated by the scientific revolution.

Stunning successes in understanding the physical world through processes of logic and observation encouraged the belief that similar progress might be made in the area of political economy and social relations.

Like the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment involved an application of the natural, humanistic attitudes typical of theRenaissance.

The Enlightenment or the Age of Reason are names given to the predominant intellectual movement of the eighteenth century. It was an intellectual movement among the upper and middle class elites. It involved a new world view which explained the world and looked for answers in terms of reason rather than faith, and in terms of an optimistic, natural, humanistic approach rather than a fatalistic, supernatural one.

These are characteristics which it shared with the earlier intellectual movement known as the Renaissance. Indeed, the Enlightenment may be understood as a logical continuation of the Renaissance. There is, however, an important difference. While the Renaissance was closely related to a search for the accumulation of past knowledge, the Enlightenment clearly involved a conscious effort to break with the past.

This statement must, however, be qualified by saying that the period of the High Renaissance also broke new ground, , in particular, in art and literature. It must also be said that, in spite of the optimistic, future-oriented view of the Enlightenment, the rejection of the value of the past is selective. The comparatively recent medieval past was thoroughly condemned, but the classical past of the ancient Greeks and Romans was venerated.

A major cause for the Enlightenment was the Scientific Revolution which, because of its many achievements in science, gave rise to the expectation that similar breakthroughs might be achieved in the social and political arena if only the same methods were applied.

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The Enlightenment - Suffolk County Community College

Although there is no consensus about the exact span of time that corresponds to the American Enlightenment, it is safe to say that it occurred during the eighteenth century among thinkers in British North America and the early United States and was inspired by the ideas of the British and French Enlightenments. Based on the metaphor of bringing light to the Dark Age, the Age of the Enlightenment (Sicle des lumires in French and Aufklrung in German) shifted allegiances away from absolute authority, whether religious or political, to more skeptical and optimistic attitudes about human nature, religion and politics. In the American context, thinkers such as Thomas Paine, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin invented and adopted revolutionary ideas about scientific rationality, religious toleration and experimental political organizationideas that would have far-reaching effects on the development of the fledgling nation. Some coupled science and religion in the notion of deism; others asserted the natural rights of man in the anti-authoritarian doctrine of liberalism; and still others touted the importance of cultivating virtue, enlightened leadership and community in early forms of republican thinking.At least six ideas came to punctuate American Enlightenment thinking: deism, liberalism, republicanism, conservatism, toleration and scientific progress. Many of these were shared with European Enlightenment thinkers, but in some instances took a uniquely American form.

The pre- and post-revolutionary era in American history generated propitious conditions for Enlightenment thought to thrive on an order comparable to that witnessed in the European Enlightenments. In the pre-revolutionary years, Americans reacted to the misrule of King George III, the unfairness of Parliament (taxation without representation) and exploitative treatment at the hands of a colonial power: the English Empire. The Englishman-cum-revolutionary Thomas Paine wrote the famous pamphlet The Rights of Man, decrying the abuses of the North American colonies by their English masters. In the post-revolutionary years, a whole generation of American thinkers would found a new system of government on liberal and republican principles, articulating their enduring ideas in documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers and the United States Constitution.

Although distinctive features arose in the eighteenth-century American context, much of the American Enlightenment was continuous with parallel experiences in British and French society. Four themes recur in both European and American Enlightenment texts: modernization, skepticism, reason and liberty. Modernization means that beliefs and institutions based on absolute moral, religious and political authority (such as the divine right of kings and the Ancien Rgime) will become increasingly eclipsed by those based on science, rationality and religious pluralism. Many Enlightenment thinkersespecially the French philosophes, such as Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderotsubscribed to some form of skepticism, doubting appeals to miraculous, transcendent and supernatural forces that potentially limit the scope of individual choice and reason. Reason that is universally shared and definitive of the human nature also became a dominant theme in Enlightenment thinkers writings, particularly Immanuel Kants What is Enlightenment? and his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. The fourth theme, liberty and rights assumed a central place in theories of political association, specifically as limits state authority originating prior to the advent of states (that is, in a state of nature) and manifesting in social contracts, especially in John Lockes Second Treatise on Civil Government and Thomas Jeffersons drafts of the Declaration of Independence.

Besides identifying dominant themes running throughout the Enlightenment period, some historians, such as Henry May and Jonathan Israel, understand Enlightenment thought as divisible into two broad categories, each reflecting the content and intensity of ideas prevalent at the time. The moderate Enlightenment signifies commitments to economic liberalism, religious toleration and constitutional politics. In contrast to its moderate incarnation, the radical Enlightenment conceives enlightened thought through the prism of revolutionary rhetoric and classical Republicanism. Some commentators argue that the British Enlightenment (especially figures such as James Hutton, Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith) was essentially moderate, while the French (represented by Denis Diderot, Claude Adrien Helvtius and Franois Marie Arouet) was decidedly more radical. Influenced as it was by the British and French, American Enlightenment thought integrates both moderate and radical elements.

American Enlightenment thought can also be appreciated chronologically, or in terms of three temporal stages in the development of Enlightenment Age thinking. The early stage stretches from the time of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to 1750, when members of Europes middle class began to break free from the monarchical and aristocratic regimeswhether through scientific discovery, social and political change or emigration outside of Europe, including America. The middle stage extends from 1751 to just a few years after the start of the American Revolution in 1779. It is characterized by an exploding fascination with science, religious revivalism and experimental forms of government, especially in the United States. The late stage begins in 1780 and ends with the rise of Napolon Bonaparte, as the French Revolution comes to a close in 1815a period in which the European Enlightenment was in decline, while the American Enlightenment reclaimed and institutionalized many of its seminal ideas. However, American Enlightenment thinkers were not always of a single mind with their European counterparts. For instance, several American Enlightenment thinkersparticularly James Madison and John Adams, though not Benjamin Franklinjudged the French philosophes to be morally degenerate intellectuals of the era.

Many European and American Enlightenment figures were critical of democracy. Skepticism about the value of democratic institutions was likely a legacy of Platos belief that democracy led to tyranny and Aristotles view that democracy was the best of the worst forms of government. John Adams and James Madison perpetuated the elitist and anti-democratic idea that to invest too much political power in the hands of uneducated and property-less people was to put society at constant risk of social and political upheaval. Although several of Americas Enlightenment thinkers condemned democracy, others were more receptive to the idea of popular rule as expressed in European social contract theories. Thomas Jefferson was strongly influenced by John Lockes social contract theory, while Thomas Paine found inspiration in Jean-Jacques Rousseaus. In the Two Treatises on Government (1689 and 1690), Locke argued against the divine right of kings and in favor of government grounded on the consent of the governed; so long as people would have agreed to hand over some of their liberties enjoyed in a pre-political society or state of nature in exchange for the protection of basic rights to life, liberty and property. However, if the state reneged on the social contract by failing to protect those natural rights, then the people had a right to revolt and form a new government. Perhaps more of a democrat than Locke, Rousseau insisted in The Social Contract (1762) that citizens have a right of self-government, choosing the rules by which they live and the judges who shall enforce those rules. If the relationship between the will of the state and the will of the people (the general will) is to be democratic, it should be mediated by as few institutions as possible.

At least six ideas came to punctuate American Enlightenment thinking: deism, liberalism, republicanism, conservatism, toleration and scientific progress. Many of these were shared with European Enlightenment thinkers, but in some instances took a uniquely American form.

European Enlightenment thinkers conceived tradition, custom and prejudice (Vorurteil) as barriers to gaining true knowledge of the universal laws of nature. The solution was deism or understanding Gods existence as divorced from holy books, divine providence, revealed religion, prophecy and miracles; instead basing religious belief on reason and observation of the natural world. Deists appreciated God as a reasonable Deity. A reasonable God endowed humans with rationality in order that they might discover the moral instructions of the universe in the natural law. God created the universal laws that govern nature, and afterwards humans realize Gods will through sound judgment and wise action. Deists were typically (though not always) Protestants, sharing a disdain for the religious dogmatism and blind obedience to tradition exemplified by the Catholic Church. Rather than fight members of the Catholic faith with violence and intolerance, most deists resorted to the use of tamer weapons such as humor and mockery.

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Age of Enlightenment Scientists - Windows to the Universe

I'm simply saying that there is a way to be sane. I'm saying that you can get rid of all this insanity created by the past in you. Just by being a simple witness of your thought processes.

It is simply sitting silently, witnessing the thoughts, passing before you. Just witnessing, not interfering not even judging, because the moment you judge you have lost the pure witness. The moment you say this is good, this is bad, you have already jumped onto the thought process.

It takes a little time to create a gap between the witness and the mind. Once the gap is there, you are in for a great surprise, that you are not the mind, that you are the witness, a watcher.

And this process of watching is the very alchemy of real religion. Because as you become more and more deeply rooted in witnessing, thoughts start disappearing. You are, but the mind is utterly empty.

Thats the moment of enlightenment. That is the moment that you become for the first time an unconditioned, sane, really free human being. Osho

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Quotes About Enlightenment (635 quotes)

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. (...) Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding! That is the motto of Enlightenment. Originalin German: Aufklrung ist der Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbst verschuldeten Unmndigkeit. [] Sapere aude! Habe Mut, dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen! ist also der Wahlspruch der Aufklrung. Immanuel Kant, Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?[1]

The Enlightenment or The Age of Enlightenment (an approximation of the German Aufklrung) was an era in the 17th to 18th century that occurred following the Renaissance, and describes the period when Western philosophy switched to advocating reason as a primary source of authority. Its impact on Western thought, and indeed Western civilization in the long term, can hardly be overstated, although some people sort of missed out on this period. It marks a time when philosophers across Europe as well as in the North American colonies presented a fundamental challenge to many long-held beliefs and traditional dogmas, resulting in significant societal upheaval, most notably the American and French Revolutions.

Enlightenment philosophy is an umbrella term for many divergent schools of thought, and being philosophers, those who adhered to it loved nothing better than to quibble with each other. It is nevertheless possible to make out some general features of this broader trend: at the center of Enlightenment thought is the human capacity for critical reasoning, an ability which philosophers of the time considered to have so far been underutilized and rendered impotent by unquestioning adherence to tradition and superstition, as well as deliberate suppression at the hands of traditional elites.[2] This leads directly to the fundamental importance of freethought as well as the ability to voice one's opinions freely in the public square, without having to fear repercussions from those in power. An important goal of the Enlightenment was to offer opportunities for education to the broader populace, so they might be empowered to engage in free and public debates as well.

Historian Johnathan Israel differentiates between two forms of Enlightnment thought:

Enlightenment philosophers, most notably John Locke, developed the modern form of the notion that all human beings possess certain universal and unalienable rights that are independent of the society in which they live. Drawing on the work of Thomas Hobbes and his concept of the social contract, Locke argued that humans have a natural right to life, liberty, and the ownership of property.[4] Spinoza identified the concept of right with power or capability to do something, and saw this as a fundamental aspect of citizenship and believed that outcomes were better when reason played a larger role in political decision-making.[5]

While the establishment of a sovereign government is in the rational interest of the would-be subjects, it can only be legitimate if it serves to uphold and defend these rights, and is therefore constrained by them. In the USA, this sentiment was echoed in the Declaration of Independence and codified in the subsequent constitutional Bill of Rights, as far as US citizens are concerned. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 takes a more explicitly universalist approach.[6]

The aforementioned notion of natural human rights, most importantly liberty, that exists independently from the state has sweeping implications for the legitimacy of any government. Both Locke and Thomas Paine argued that revolution is permissible if a government does not respect the fundamental rights of its citizens.[7] This served to justify both the American and French revolutions and subsequent successful (at least in the US) attempts to establish orders based on the explicit consent and participation of the governed, an important precedent in the development of modern democracy. It should be noted that Enlightenment thinkers were not unanimously in favour of this development; notably, Immanuel Kant rejected any right to a revolt against even a dictatorial government and praised the "enlightened absolutism" of his native Prussia. Other influential philosophers of the time supplied additional underpinnings of modern liberal democracy: Jean-Jacques Rousseau put forward the notion of popular sovereignty and reaffirmed a republican model of the state,[8] while Montesquieu developed the doctrine of the separation of powers as a safeguard against tyranny.[9] Montesquieu's analysis was that each of the differing types of governments democracy, monarchy, and despotism had strengths but were subject to specific weaknesses, and that the best way to remedy the weaknesses with each type was to combine elements of each into a republican form of government, with checks and balances among the different branches.

While the scientific revolution predates the Age of Enlightenment, this period saw significant advances in the circulation and availiability of scientific knowledge, mostly due to the rapid proliferation of books and newspapers among an increasingly literate populace.[10] Debate societies, book clubs and coffehouses sprang up in the cities, exposing broader social strata to the newest ideas and bringing the academic ideals of open debate into the public sphere. In their role as salonnires, women began to participate and play an important part in these debates, although only a small number of them had this opportunity. The first edition of the Encyclopdia Britannica was published in 1768 and became an instant hit despite its severely constrained editability. First attempts were made to apply the scientific method to the study of patterns in human behaviour, most notably by Adam Smith, generally considered to be the father of economics.

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Age of Enlightenment - RationalWiki

Background The Enlightenment developed as an extension of the Scientific Revolution. During the Scientific Revolution, Europeans discarded traditional beliefs and began using reason to explain the world around them. While the Scientific Revolution focused on the physical world, the Enlightenment attempted to explain the purpose of government, and describe the best form of it. The most influential Enlightenment thinkers were Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Voltaire, Baron de Montesquieu, and Jean Jacques Rousseau.

Enlightenment Thinkers

Later Developments During the Enlightenment, political philosophers, especially in France and England, proposed alternatives to monarchy as a form of government. The French philosophes, as they were known, suggested mankind needed government, but not an absolute monarchy like that of Louis XIV under which they lived.

Where the political philosophers disagreed, was on what kind of government was the best. Some said monarchy was best, while others claimed it was democracy. A few claimed that a monarchy with democratic elements would work best. Still others, believed that economics played a major role in what kind of government people chose.

In the end, the philosophes could not agree upon the merits of any single form of government. It was from those discussions that the American Founding Fathers derived many of their ideas about equality, freedom and the sanctity of life.

Impact Enlightenment ideas helped to stimulate people's sense of individualism, and the basic belief in equal rights. This in turn led to the Glorious Revolution is Britain, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Latin American Revolutions. Some of these revolutions resulted in government based upon the ideas of the Enlightenment. On the other hand, several failed revolutions resulted in even stricter government control of everyday life.

Elsewhere, a few monarchs retained absolute control of their countries while also enacting reform based on Enlightenment ideas. These monarchs are called Enlightened Despots. In Austria, Maria Teresa and her son Joseph II both introduced reforms based on Enlightenment ideas. They reduced the tax load on the peasants, provided free education, and ended censorship in their empire. In Russia, Catherine the Great introduced similar reforms. She enacted laws for religious toleration and free education, and also sought the advice of nobles and peasants in the running of government. However, these reforms seldom outlived the monarchs who had enacted them.

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[Regents Prep Global History] Political Systems: Enlightenment

THE PHILOSOPHIES OF ENLIGHTENMENT

The period of Enlightenment refers to the European culture of the 18th century. The People of Enlightenment believed the almightiness of human knowledge and defied the tradition and the pre-established thoughts of the past. this is the period in which the humans became overconfident in the human Reason an rationality. Philosophers and Scientists committed the fallacy of argumentum ad ignorantiam. Anything which cannot be understood by rational knowledge and the current status of sciences was defied as meaningless or superstitious. Philosophy became very popular among the intellectuals and people read philosophical opera. However, the general concerns were about the practical use of our knowledge. In other words, The Two Fundamental Characteristics of the Philosophy of Enlightenment are: 1) faith in the European Reason and human rationality to reject the tradition and the pre-established institutions and thoughts; 2) Search for the practical, useful knowledge as the power to control nature.

John Locke is considered generally as the founder of Enlightenment movement in philosophy. However, in England, both characteristics of Enlightenment, namely the defiance of the tradition and the search for the knowledge as the practical, useful power to control nature, were not so emphatically visible due to the nationality and the social conditions in England. So it is generally agreed that the philosophy of Enlightenment will be divided into a) the Philosophy of Enlightenment in England, that in France and Germany. Therefore, a) is normally called as the British Empiricism and it s development. Distinguished from this, we consider the Philosophy of Enlightenment and its movement with the emphasis of the phases in France and Germany.

1. The relation of Descartes to the philosophy of Enlightenment In France and in England, all the philosophical thoughts from the middle of 17th century through the 18th century were under Descartes's influences. Fontenelle (1657-1757) The admirer of Descartes' physics and his radical rationalism threatened the Christianity and the established Church. Fontenelle's philosophy did not accept the Cartesian spiritualism and overemphasized the positive elements of the Cartesian philosophy. Thus, Fontenelle merely criticized the Ancient oracles as superstition, but this was immediately applied to the miracles of Christianity. Bayle (1647-1706) Starting with the Cartesian rationalism, Bayle considered that to believe in Christianity means to abandon Reason and the human rationality and to surrender to the miraculous phenomena. The opposition between philosophy (rationalism) and religion set up by Bayle created an anti-religious movement against Christianity as well as prepared for the development of the 18th Century philosophy. The Enlightenment Movement in France is a synthesis of the Cartesian philosophy of the mechanistic understanding of nature and the British Empiricism. In the 17th century, British philosophers such as Bacon, Hobbes and Locke came to France and were strongly influenced by the French Philosophies. In the 18th century, the French philosophers visited England and were strongly influenced by the British Empiricism and advocated empiricism rather than idealism in France upon their return. 2. The influences of British Empiricism on the French Philosophies The most conspicuous example of the philosophers who were influenced by the British Empiricism was Voltaire.

Voltaire (1694-1778) Voltaire was a French man of thought who was most strongly influenced by British Empiricism and attacked the philosophers of Continental Rationalism. Voltaire was the author of Candid, which made fun of Leibniz' optimism. Voltaire attempted to refute Descartes' metaphysics on the basis of Locke's Empiricism and attacked Descartes' physics, employing Newton's mechanics. Voltaire mocked Descartes' innate ideas by referring to Locke's theory of the empirical origin of ideas which refuted the innate idea. Following Locke, Voltaire, too, considered man's desire to pursue one's happiness as inborn. Voltaire further maintained that while Descartes created a novel about the human spirit, Locke wrote the history of the human spirit. Voltaire praised Locke in how he was able to explain the origin and the process of the development of human spirit. Voltaire accused of Descartes in the following points: 1. Descartes by reducing physics to geometry denied the absoluteness of motion and argued for its relativity (i.e. motion is no other than the change of place, in other words, a portion of matter changes its place in relation to the portion of the other matter which is immediately touched to the former) 2. Descartes did not recognize gravitation (=the weight as the unique quality) by reducing matter to extension 3. Descartes by failing in recognizing the universal gravitation had to explain by the celestial vortex the motions of the celestial bodies. Thus Descartes explained the motion of solar planets by a heliocentric vortex. In that sense he did not disagree with Copernicus. In contrast, Newton proposed the universal gravitation by which he explains all the motions of celestial bodies. Voltaire became Newton's follower in physics and astronomy. Against the universal gravitation being a hidden(occult) power, Voltaire argued that the cosmic turbulence (vortex) is more a hidden power than gravitation because the law is verified and the phenomena are explained. In his letter in 1728 Voltaire writes, "When a French went to London, he discovers a lot of things different. So are there a big difference in philosophy. When he was in Paris, the universe is full of something like turbulent ether, upon his arrival in London he discovers that the same space is empty." Following the fashion of his time, Voltaire considers a systematic approach less valuable than a fragmental expression of insights. Voltaire was successful in making philosophy more popularized (journalistic). Voltaire discussed on may topics such as on God, freedom, immortality of soul. Voltaire holds that it is the true religion that one loves God and loves others like one's own siblings and that less dogmas it has, the better and true it becomes. Thus Voltaire fought against the traditional established Christianity. On the other hand, he criticized d'Hollbach's La Systeme de la nature, and attacked Pascal's Christianity. Influenced by British Deism, Voltaire maintained that religion must be a moral, rationalistic natural religion. He did not support the cosmological and teleological argument and yet considered the moral argument for the existence of God to be most useful. Voltaire maintained that without God morality is not possible, therefore God must exist. "If God did not exist, we must invent God!" Voltaire considers that it is not possible to theoretically demonstrate the immortality of soul and yet without the immortality of soul, morality is also not possible.(VERY KANTIAN) Voltaire contends that the basis of metaphysics consists in morality and that the obscurity and incompleteness of metaphysics will be clarified by morality. In his early period, Voltaire held the freedom of will, but abandoned it in his later years as meaningless and recognized only the freedom of action. According to Voltaire, freedom is when one can do what one wants to do. Whether or not what one wants is free, the answer is not, but what wants to desire is to necessarily desire. Otherwise, we desire to do something without reason or cause, that is impossible.Thus Voltaire proposed the psychological determinism. Regarding the problem of evil, he was optimistic, but after Lisbon's earthquakes Voltaire abandoned optimism. In relation to politics and society, Voltaire insisted freedom of reason, freedom of consciousness and particularly the freedom of research which contributed the further development of the contemporary european culture. Voltaire was the representative of the 18th century Enlightenment Spirit and enormously influenced the intellectuals of the days, according to Thomas Carlyle. Du Bois-Reymond said, "The reason why we do not consider Voltaire as a very important Enlightenment philosopher is because we unconsciously and implicitly have been a Voltaire ourselves. What Voltaire had fought and won such as culture, freedom of spirit, the dignity of humanity and justice have become some of the essential elements of our natural everyday life today." Voltaire was highly treated by Friedrich the Great at Prussian Sansoun Palace as an important guest. There are two poems of Voltaire; Le mondaine Defense du mondain ou l'apologie du luxe He loved gambling! Lettres sure les Anglais or Lettres philosophiques(1734) Elements de la philosophie de Newton Dictionnaire philosophique La philosophie ignorant Candid

Montesquieu (1689-1755) Montesquieu went to England and was also influenced by John Locke. He was deeply impressed by Locke's three division of the government. His main work is L'esprit des lois (1748) Recognizing the peculiarity and uniqueness of each nation, Montesquieu attempted to explain the legal system of the each nation from the geographic conditions and the social conditions of the given nation. In stead of seeking the foundation of the legal system of a certain nation in the rational, universal principles, Montesquieu tried to find the causes of the legal system of a given nation in the particular climates, the nature of soil, the largeness of the land, the living conditions of the people, religion, passions of the people, the degree of wealth and poverty, population and the historical conditions such as customs. He emphasized the uniqueness and the accidental nature of the legal system of a given nation.

The differences of the systems of government are due to the peculiarity of the given nation. the republic = the subject has the right to govern all the subjects = democracy a portion of the subjects = aristocracy the monarchy = the government by one ruler based on the constitution the constitutional monarchy the despotism = the government by one ruler by his will

There are the basic passions which motivate each of these forms of government

the republic = virtue the monarchy = honour

And the size of a country will affect the nature of the government. etc.

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One of the problems in explaining enlightenment is that we have to use words. Words are only symbols and dont give the real understanding. The letters of a word are merely a code that the mind translates into meaning. Words only have meaning if you already have an experiential knowledge of what the words mean. If you were blind could you understand color through just words? Can you describe music to someone using only words? Can you describe the emotion of love only using the symbols of words? Words are only effective at communicating experience if the experience is already known. You know color, music, and emotion because you have perceived them directly. Enlightenment is not an experience that one already has a reference for and so a word description is not likely to be meaningful enough to convey an understanding.

Through years of schooling we are taught to believe that if we can describe something accurately with words then we know it. This is a very limited kind of knowing. Its like reading someones experience of surfing and assuming you know what it is like. Or reading the flight manual for an airplane and assuming you know how to fly because you know what is in the book.

The best we can do in explaining enlightenment in everyday language is to accurately give words to the experience. Perhaps for some the description will inspire their imagination and give them the desire to experience it themselves. This is just like a good flying story that inspires others to reach for the sky.

If youve ever had an epiphany you have had a little awakening. In that moment of realization your mind stopped thinking and you knew and felt beyond an intellectual logic. You perceived something directly in a way that transcended word descriptions. It is the kind of knowing that makes you look at the world, or yourself in a brand new way. Those little awakening experiences are moments when our previous assumptions or belief paradigms burst. My high school science teacher would say the light went on. Enlightenment is the big light bulb. It is the direct perception of knowing the nature of the world in one great continuous epiphany.

The Divine Comedy When you have the spiritual awakening of enlightenment it is like seeing the funniest joke ever played. It appears that you are at a costume party and everyone is role playing the character they dressed up as. Except their costume is the personality made up of all their beliefs about what they are, should be, shouldnt be, should do, and shouldnt do. Their personality mask is a big set of agreements about themselves. The most hysterical part is that behind the mask is actually a being of infinite consciousness that is wearing the personality.

The Infinite Consciousness is so powerful that their intent to play the personality role at the party of life keeps them in the role for years, sometimes even a whole life time. In this way they have completely thrown themselves into the role of their costumed personality. They are acting in a silly personality of pretend and are ignoring the consciousness and power of their Divine make up.

Seeing something all knowing and powerful pretending to be a human personality is a phenomenal performance of folly. One of the particularly funny aspects is how seriously the personality believes everything when another part of their consciousness knows it is just made up.

I went to see a hypnotist once. During one of the sessions he took a group of people and hypnotized them into believing they were in the first day of kindergarten. I was rolling off my chair laughing at adults really believing and acting like they were children. In another session he had a man acting like a chicken. You know these people are capable adults just temporarily believing they are something they are not. It is belly aching funny to watch. The difference with people in the world is that they hypnotized themselves by believing their thoughts or someone else's suggestion.

Seeing with Enlightened Eyes is Funny My explanation with words certainly isnt that funny but direct perception is. Thats because you cant explain what is funny. What makes us laugh is not logical. Its like a Far Side cartoon that rocks you with laughter. When you try to explain it with words the direct perception is lost in the symbols. Humor cant be explained with the logic of words. The symbols of words start engaging the mind and analytical thinking takes over. When the analytical program of the personality is engaged our opportunity for direct perception is lost to the mind.

When we are laughing at something funny our internal dialogue is generally turned off. We are not analyzing or being logical with our thinking mind. We directly perceive and we know something is funny. We may not be able to explain what is funny, but we know by direct experience. Having a quiet mind allows a person to perceive directly and is an attribute of an enlightened state.

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Enlightenment | What is enlightenment | How to become ...

The Age of Enlightenment, sometimes called the Age of Reason, refers to the time of the guiding intellectual movement, called The Enlightenment. It covers about a century and a half in Europe, beginning with the publication of Francis Bacon's Novum Organum (1620) and ending with Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781). From the perspective of socio-political phenomena, the period is considered to have begun with the close of the Thirty Years' War (1648) and ended with the French Revolution (1789).

The Enlightenment advocated reason as a means to establishing an authoritative system of aesthetics, ethics, government, and even religion, which would allow human beings to obtain objective truth about the whole of reality. Emboldened by the revolution in physics commenced by Newtonian kinematics, Enlightenment thinkers argued that reason could free humankind from superstition and religious authoritarianism that had brought suffering and death to millions in religious wars. Also, the wide availability of knowledge was made possible through the production of encyclopedias, serving the Enlightenment cause of educating the human race.

The age of Enlightenment is considered to have ended with the French Revolution, which had a violent aspect that discredited it in the eyes of many. Also, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who referred to Sapere aude! (Dare to know!) as the motto of the Enlightenment, ended up criticizing the Enlightenment confidence on the power of reason. Romanticism, with its emphasis upon imagination, spontaneity, and passion, emerged also as a reaction against the dry intellectualism of rationalists. Criticism of the Enlightenment has expressed itself in a variety of forms, such as religious conservatism, postmodernism, and feminism.

The legacy of the Enlightenment has been of enormous consequence for the modern world. The general decline of the church, the growth of secular humanism and political and economic liberalism, the belief in progress, and the development of science are among its fruits. Its political thought developed by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1704), Voltaire (1694-1778) and Rousseau (1712-1788) created the modern world. It helped create the intellectual framework not only for the American Revolutionary War and liberalism, democracy and capitalism but also the French Revolution, racism, nationalism, secularism, fascism, and communism.

The intellectual leaders of the Enlightenment regarded themselves as a courageous elite who would lead the world into progress from a long period of doubtful tradition and ecclesiastical tyranny, which had resulted in the bloody Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) and the English Civil War (1642-1651). This dogmatism took three forms:

(A later, religious reaction against the church's dogmatic outlook was the Pietist movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.)

Enlightenment thinkers reduced religion to those essentials which could only be "rationally" defended, i.e., certain basic moral principles and a few universally held beliefs about God. Aside from these universal principles and beliefs, religions in their particularity were largely banished from the public square. Taken to its logical extreme, the Enlightenment resulted in atheism.

In the seventeenth century, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) pointed out intellectual fallacies of the older tradition, and Ren Descartes (1596-1650) made doubting the first principle of philosophy; and these set much of the agenda as well as much of the methodology for those who came after them. The age of Enlightenment is typified in Europe by the great system-buildersphilosophers who present unified systems of epistemology, metaphysics, logic, and ethics. Immanuel Kant later classified his predecessors into two schools: The rationalists and the empiricists. This division may be an oversimplification, but it has continued to be used to this day, especially when writing about the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The three main rationalists are normally taken to have been Ren Descartes, Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), and Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716). Building upon their English predecessors Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), the three main empiricists were John Locke (1632-1704), George Berkeley (1685-1753), and David Hume (1711-1776). The former were distinguished by the belief that, in principle (though not in practice), all knowledge can be gained by the power of reason alone; the latter rejected this, believing that all knowledge has to come through the senses, from experience. Thus the rationalists took mathematics as their model for knowledge, and the empiricists took the physical sciences.

The spirit of the Age of Reason also affected Christianity. Depending on how much it affected Christianity, there occurred two distinguishable schools in the religion of the Enlightenment: Rational supernaturalism and Deism.

Rational supernaturalists included William Chillingworth (1602-1644), John Tillotson (1630-1694), and John Locke. While they understood the unique role of revelation and differentiated between what could and what could not be rationally established, they were convinced that revelation could still be defended by reason. For them, while revelation may be above reason, it is not contradictory to reason. In his The Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered in the Scriptures (1695), Locke argued that while the miracles recorded in the Bible can indicate their divine origin, reason has the last word in explaining and accepting them. Rational supernaturalists also believed that Christian revelation can be reduced to a few doctrinal essentials about God, which can provide the divine sanctions for morality.

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Age of Enlightenment - New World Encyclopedia