[PEN-L:1409] Enlightenment

["Ricardo Duchesne" <RDUCHESN@xxxxxxxx>]

So much hogwash has been said about the enlightenment in pen-l that
perhaps it is time someone set out to answer "what is the
enlightenment?" First, contrary to what everyone in pen-l thinks, the
enlightenment is NOT about science. The enlightenment is a phenomenon
of the eighteenth century. Do not confuse it with the scientific
revolution of the seventeenth century. If we divide the enlightenment
into three stages, then the early stage directly reflects the
influence of Galileo, Kepler, Boyle, Newton and others. But the
enlightenment strictly speaking begins with the publication of
Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws (1748).  Enlightenment thinkers
greatly admired the rigors of the scientific method, and insisted that
humans must discover truth *for themselves* through logical reason
and experimentation, not religious dogma.  But what makes enlightment
thinkers like Voltaire, Kant and Diderot unique is their claim that
POLITICAL institutions should be subjected to the self-legislated
criteria of reason. Where the enlightenment falls short is in not
realizing that two different learning processes are involved in
ethical and scientific judgements; hence the confusion of pen-l.

(The third stage may be said to begin with Rousseau and his turn to
romanticism)