How the Enlightenment Shaped our World Today

In this essay I will attempt to examine specific ways in which the age of Enlightenment has shaped the world as we know it today. The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement in Britain, France and Germany during the eighteenth century, whose influences on the contemporary world seem to touch every corner of western and non non-western civilizations in aspects like secularism and atheism, nationalism and nation states, science and sociology, feminism, slavery, colonisation and decolonization, etc.

In this short essay I will examine briefly yet more closely three main consequences; secularism, Orientalism and feminism.

Secularism is perhaps one of the most fundamental influences on the Enlightenment. Although the classical era, the Renaissance, and the Reformation were primary educators in emphasizing the importance of man, the Enlightenment thinkers were still believers of God. Nonetheless, this establishment of a secular approach was a key ingredient to later substantial influences. Descartes’ work became a central theme in the Enlightenment by sketching a background for rational thought (Hamilton: 21). Another theme was the idea of empiricism – through the works of Galileo and Newton (Evans 2007:24). These themes were further developed by the philosophers. One important development was the establishment of the Encyclopédie (Hamilton: 28). Another, no less crucial, is the emergence of the social science through the work of Saint-Simon and Comte (Hamilton: 56). Later on, Comte’s ideas were to reappear in Durkheim’s development of Sociology, and of other thinkers’ approaches such as Weber, Marx, Mill and others (Hamilton: 57).

One central consequence on western history is the separation of the educational system and the state from religion. At the same time, the effects are numerous, and are as vivid as the everyday lives of westerners who enjoy modernity, equality of men (and some women), self determination, democracy, individualism, freedom of speech, freedom of belief, and the many consoling possibilities of self realization.

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The Enlightenment has shaped our world today sometimes delicately, but in others roughly. It is crucial to distinguish the western world from the non-western world, for the latter has taken a different ride on the course of history. The causes for these effects are wide and debatable subjects, but the Enlightenment and the western world’s “side effects” are imperative on slavery, colonization, and decolonization - “anti-protagonists” that shaped the non-western world.

There are major influences of the East on the Enlightenment thought, which have not been mentioned neither by Hamilton nor Evans, and which are crucial to understand the Enlightenment’s later effects on the East.

The works of the Enlightenment have been greatly influenced by Eastern cultures like China and India (Clarke 1997:42). This relationship has been colourful and magical, but at the same time it gave the feeling of danger and threat (Clarke 1997:3). In that same manner, the Enlightenment has been greatly enriched by Eastern cultures, yet it tended to reconstruct their narratives and portray them in different contexts (Eze 1997:43), and even juxtaposed them as inferiors (Hamilton 1992:45). This had a later effect on expeditions and the colonization of the Americas and Africa (Clarke 1997:39).

Western supremacy was even more evident in the works of Enlightenment philosophers in regard to the race of Africans and Native Americans. It appears in the widely read works of Hume, who supposes that all non-white species are inferior (Eze 1997:33), of Kant who glorifies nature in its perfection of the white race (Eze 1997:63), and of others. These philosophies were major designers of racism throughout Europe for the following 300 years, resulting in slavery, colonization, and anti-Semitism (Evans 2006:29).

In his theory of Orientalism, Said argues that Orientalism became not only a reconstruction of narrative, but a systematic conduct of the west which has taken rather extreme forms of power infliction (Said 1995:3). Furthermore, the immense effects of such Orientalism are still evident in matters of racism, nationalism, science, feminism and more (Clarke 1997:96).

The age of Enlightenment has seen no women philosophers. Women were considered to be merely decorations in the salons of the intellectual elite. It was only through the work of Laqueur, that women became seen as a distinct gender, and not just a badly drawn mutation of man (Evans 2006:35). Yet, women were not free, nor were they equal to men. On the contrary, as Rossi documents, “In proving woman’s inferiority antifeminists then began to draw not only upon religion, philosophy, and theology, as before, but also upon science – biology, experimental psychology, etc.” (1988:683)

In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote her ‘Vindication of the rights of woman’ in which she argued that women should be granted equal education in order to enable them to fill their roles as mothers and wives and do a better job in the upbringing of the next generation. Although, Wollstonecraft was ahead of her time, her flaws in feminist thought were many, and her exclusion of non-bourgeoisie women was unjust.

It was only in the 1900’s that feminism became a more powerful discourse and women’s state began to go through drastic historical changes. One major influence on this discourse is the work of philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, whose contribution to ‘the distinction between sex and gender’ (Butler 1986:35) is still evident today. Judith Butler makes a more contemporary analysis of de Beauvoir’s work; “One is not born a woman, but rather becomes one”, Butler argues that the ambiguous meaning of ‘becomes’ indicates a conscious and deliberate act, even though the usual perception of gender today is “passively determined, constructed by a personified system of patriarchal or phallogocentric language which precedes and determines the subject itself” (1986:36). Instead, Butler identifies gender as “the kind of choice we make and only later realize we have made” (1986:40). Butler’s notions bring a new view on feminist critique, philosophy, and the life of women who have the privileged access to these contents.

In western societies, and quasi-western societies, gender-conscious women are able to inflict and think up their own philosophies regarding themselves. For them, “to ‘choose’ a gender is (…) to interpret the cultural history which the body already wears. The body becomes a choice, a mode of enacting and reenacting received gender norms which surface as so many styles of the flesh” (Butler 1986:48).

In conclusion, the Enlightenment has brought great progress to the world in social, scientific, technological, and individualistic terms. However, it has also enhanced superiority based, patriarchal and Orientalist ideologies that have resulted in approximately 300 years of attempted liberations of humanity, apart from the bourgeoisie European man who is pretty much enjoying a nice walk in the park.

Bibliography:

Butler, J. (1986) ‘Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex’ in Yale French Studies No. 72 Simone de Beauvoir: Witness to a Century, Yale University Press.

Clarke, J. J. (1997) Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter between Asian and Western Thought. London and New York: Library of Congress.

Evans, M. (2006) a Short History of Society: The Making of the Modern World McGraw-Hill/Open University Press, Basingstoke.

Eze, E. C. (1997) Race and the Enlightenment – A Reader Blackwell Publishers, Oxford.

Hamilton, P. (1992) ‘The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science’ in Hall, S. & Gieben, B. The Formations of Modernity: Understanding Modern Societies Polity Press, Oxford.

Rossi, A. S. (1988) The Feminist Papers: from Adams to de Beauvoir New York: Columbia University Press.

Said, E. (1995) Orientalism – Western Conceptions of the Orient, Pantheon Books.

Wollstonecraft, M. (1929) ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’ Everyman’s Library Edition.