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What has survived from the Age of Enlightenment and its philosophical concepts?

The light of human thought illuminated Europe and, to a lesser extent, the world from the 16th to the 17th century; an astonishing array of brilliant thinkers, emancipated to varying degrees from their circumstances and education, reflected on man and the world with an encyclopaedic, rationalist and scientific logic.

Even today, our modern society is still largely based on these strong human concepts. Recently, however, the question has arisen as to whether the lights of postmodernism still illuminate the world.

| RENÉ DESCARTES : The Doubting Philosopher

René Descartes is the founder of modern philosophy par excellence. The themes he developed in his writings and their impact on Western thought were of great importance: the thinking subject and its relationship to the world and reality formed the foundations of the Enlightenment from then on.

He was born in 1596 in La Haye, Touraine. He came from a family of the lesser nobility and studied at the Jesuit university of La Flèche. The education he received there was strongly influenced by mediaeval scholasticism, which, as a reaction to this heritage, was to be decisive for the development of his thinking. After studying law, he began a life of travelling through Europe. He settled in The Netherlands to escape the religious pressure of the church in relation to his work. During his scientific research (mathematics, optics, physics) he shaped his thinking. His main philosophical works are: ‘Rules for the Direction of the Mind’ (1628), ‘Discourse on Method’ (1637), ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’ (1641) and ‘Passions of the Soul’ (1649). He died in Sweden in 1649, where he had been appointed by Queen Christina.

Descartes proposed a method to achieve certainty. He assumed that “common sense is the best distributed thing in the world.” The world was no longer a condensed mystery, but an expanse that was open to understanding by anyone who used their powers of reasoning. However, only mathematics and its deductive method offered him the seed of certainty. This is what he called universal mathematics: the unity of knowledge around mathematics revolutionises the way we approach the world: it is no longer the world that imposes itself on us, but our unified mind that projects its light onto it.

This is the famous “I think, therefore I am” Modern philosophy was born: man is defined by his thinking, his reason. The thinking subject, consciousness, now becomes the primary condition for any accessible truth.

What will remain of all this in 2024? Has rationality triumphed? Everything that is “irrational” is immediately labelled a “conspiracy theory” Our individual rationality, however, is difficult to generalise to all population groups: hatred and wars continue relentlessly.

| BLAISE PASCAL : Bridging Faith and Reason

Blaise Pascal was exceptionally precocious in science (treatise on geometry at 16, calculating machine at 19, mathematical method at the origin of probability theory at 30); he died at 39, after years characterised by illness, which he regarded as a natural trial and a useful burden.

In his short life he was a mathematician, inventor, philosopher, moralist and theologian.

He had a truly mystical experience, which can be seen as a formal conversion to Catholicism, late in life, at the age of 31.

He described an intense vision in a simple note entitled ‘Memorial’, with a mysterious statement that he concluded with “I will not forget your teachings. Amen.” He sewed this document into his coat and carried it with him until his death.

This overwhelming “encounter” led him to join Jansenism, a theological movement that combined morality and religious practise in an innovative way.

This doctrine also represents a challenge to royal absolutism, which is incompatible with the idea of God as the only conceivable monarch. In this respect, he can be seen as an early forerunner of the ideas of the Enlightenment.

In his ‘Thoughts’, a kind of posthumous intellectual code, his mathematical rigour collides with an incontestable formulation. This task was already a contradiction for Pascal, who made a postulate: no certainty is really accessible to man. The “truth” is unattainable. It is too uncertain to support absolute proof, as it initially depends only on intuition.

Believing in God harbours fewer risks than ignoring him. If he exists, gain after death is assured. Otherwise, there is no loss, and immediate benefit is the virtue in the world of men.

The “wager” is “reasonable”,” it springs from reason rather than uncertain submission, and is therefore worth making.

In his search for truth in all things, Pascal undertakes an intellectual endeavour by bringing together reason, faith and morality.

Today, these concepts no longer harmonise: the secularism demanded by politicians is at odds with the faith of some, and morality has disappeared from school curricula… The world seems to be searching for a path, for a meaning for our development.

| BARUCH SPINOZA : The Rationalist Pantheist

Baruch Spinoza’s ‘Ethics’ has always fascinated minds because it presents itself as a perfect rational edifice in which every proposition is an indispensable element of the whole system and every argument claims the validity and objectivity of a geometrical proposition. I quote: “… if men clearly understood the whole order of nature, they would find all things as necessary as they are discussed in mathematics.”

Spinoza begins his foundational work, ‘Ethics’ (posthumous 1677), with an analysis of God, the supreme being; this is ontology, not morality.

Spinoza’s God is absolutely infinite: he is the infinity of conceivable things that can exist in all possible forms, he is the absolute truth, he is the infinity of possibilities that are realised in action: He is the OMNIPOTENT BEING; and because He is omnipotent, because He can do everything, because He is everything, because He contains everything: by definition, there is nothing outside of Him. He is unique, he is eternal and immutable.

In contrast to Platonic, Cartesian or Kantian ontologies, Spinoza’s ontology is not dualistic and contrasts God and the world, but monistic, because this first, infinite and self-sufficient being is not distinct from the world; it is its inner truth, it is its immanence, “the essence of everything”. He could therefore write: “DEUS SIVE NATURA” (God or Nature).

Today, more and more people are in favour of a more or less esoteric “personal development”, the opening of the mind, a “return” to spirituality, the search for the divine; perhaps we should read Spinoza.

| JOHN LOCKE : The Father of Liberalism

John Locke was born on 29 August 1632 in Wrington, in the county of Somerset, England. The son of a clerk and captain in the parliamentary army, he studied at Westminster and then at Oxford University. The discovery of the writings of Descartes, followed by those of Thomas Hobbes and Francis Bacon around 1659, led him to philosophy.

He became friends with Lord Ashley Cooper, later Chancellor of England, who entrusted him with the education of his son and offered him several diplomatic missions. John Locke spent part of his life travelling and settled for a time in Montpellier, France. His main work is ‘An Essay Concerning Human Understanding’, which he wrote between 1689 and 1693.

With his works, which were influenced by Cartesian rationalism, John Locke turned against the scholasticism of his student days at Oxford and became the founder of philosophical empiricism.

Empiricism defines man as a blank slate, a “tabula rasa” who acquires his knowledge through experience. It was a forerunner of liberalism and was taken as a model by the French philosophers of the Enlightenment.

For Locke, all actions of which we have an idea are initially reduced to two: thought and movement.

For man, freedom is the power to do or refrain from a certain action, depending on whether the action is actually favoured by the mind, i.e. depending on what man himself wants. So it is obvious that will is only one power or faculty and freedom is another power or faculty.

The stage is set, but what follows will show that it is not so simple, because there can be, for example, a thought, a will, where there is no freedom.

To the question of what determines the will, the true answer is: the mind.

The mind has the power to suspend the realisation and satisfaction of any desire: It therefore has the freedom to study the object, to examine it from all sides and to compare it with others. Therein lies human freedom. The misuse of this freedom gives rise to many human errors, aberrations and mistakes.

In our modern societies, freedom is of fundamental importance; Locke helps us to understand that rights also come with duties and that free will is only valuable through the wisdom of that which determines it.

Why not dare to say that the rights of man now have an indisputable consequence: the duty to protect the planet… A human being who had all the rights without having individual and collective duties in return would be nothing more than a spoilt and petulant child who wants his neighbour’s territory and ever more powerful weapons. Does this mean that our dear dictators have somewhat forgotten their duties towards their fellow human beings?

| JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU : Champion of Individual Freedom

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva in 1712 and grew up first with his father and then – less happily – with an uncle and an aunt. At the age of sixteen, he fled Switzerland and became secretary and companion to a wealthy Catholic philanthropist, Louise de Warens. She persuaded him to convert to Catholicism, but above all she helped him to complete his education. This enabled him to earn a living as a tutor, music copyist, playwright, musician and writer, first in Lyon and then in Paris.

in 1750, he was awarded the prize of the Academy of Dijon for his treatises on the sciences and arts. This brought him fame, but his difficult and unpredictable character made a presentation to King Louis XV difficult.

In 1762, Rousseau published his two most important books: “Emile, or On Education”, in which he presented his concept of the nature of education, and “The Social Contract”, his most famous philosophical work. These two publications provoked enormous hostility from the political and religious authorities. As a result, Rousseau led a wandering life, estranged from his former friends of the Enlightenment, including Diderot and Voltaire. At the invitation of the philosopher Hume, he sought refuge in England.

He returned to France in 1770, lived in poverty and solitude and wrote his last works, “The Confessions” and “The Reveries of the Solitary Walker”. He died in Ermenonville on 2 July 1778. It was only after the French Revolution that his works were recognised and celebrated. In 1794, his mortal remains were transferred to the Pantheon by decree.

From Socrates’ “Know thyself” to René Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am”,” consciousness has always occupied a central place among philosophers. However, these two concepts of consciousness are fundamentally opposed: on the one hand, the material and perishable body of the animal, which is driven by the instincts of nature, and on the other, the spiritual principle of human being, who possesses an “immortal and celestial” soul, which is directed by God and is therefore divine and metaphysical par excellence.

By combining these two concepts (instinct/divine), Rousseau emphasises the special nature of man, who is not a creature like the others. According to him, man possesses an innate quality that elevates him above nature, a kind of moral instinct that serves as a guide for life, a kind of infallible judge. The moral conscience is therefore indelibly anchored in man. However, Rousseau’s definition of moral conscience is accompanied by an ambivalence: to be “intelligent and free” and yet not to possess all knowledge.

In his view, intelligence refers to “the intelligence of the heart”,” i.e. the innate feelings of good and evil that enable us to make good use of our freedom and free will, since man is not born with acquired knowledge. This leads to the following conclusion: “We can be human without having learnt!”

Climate change, deforestation, ecological genocides – the myth of the “noble savage” has suffered a severe blow! Could the philosopher have foreseen that his object of study would have shrunk to the size of a confetti on a planet with 9 billion people by the 21st century?

| GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ : Architect of Rationalism and Optimism

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz © Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) was born in Germany. He first studied philosophy, then law and finally mathematics. He became a “counsellor at the Supreme Court” and was then sent on diplomatic missions. One could say that his work was to promote political and religious unity in Europe. However, Leibniz lived at a time when Europe was ravaged by religious wars and trying to unite all of this was no easy task. He travelled extensively and met with both great philosophers and the greatest scientists of his time. Like Pascal, he invented infinitesimal calculus in his spare time between meetings. In 1676, he began publishing his first philosophical works. Back in Germany, he was appointed librarian in 1677 and later court counsellor in Hanover.

As a curious and marvelling mind, he believed that reason is everywhere and that reality is inexhaustible. In this he contradicted Descartes, who was, of course, also a rationalist, but he did not oppose matter and spirit. Leibniz succeeded in the challenge that was to inspire his entire philosophy, namely to reflect on diversity without giving up unity. He had the diplomatic task of uniting Europe, of creating a single great whole without renouncing the individuality of the individual peoples.

For Leibniz, what really exists is what he calls “individual substance”,” which corresponds to the first level of uniqueness; it is the unique, individual thing that he calls “monad” (Greek for unity). His entire philosophy is based on this concept of the monad, the primary unit of measurement from which all reality is composed, and from which he develops a philosophy of “harmony” and the idea that we live in “the “best of all possible worlds”.

It is interesting to refer to Diderot’s letter about those “born blind” who suffer a misfortune that they do not deserve. Diderot says: “Either God is good, but then he is not omnipotent, because then he would forbid this! Or God is omnipotent, and this is even worse, because then he is not good!” But according to Leibniz (and this is an essential difference to Descartes’ philosophy, where God is above the “truths of reason” – “God could have made 2+2 equal 5”, says Descartes), God is subject to rationality. God created the world according to rational principles; he is a completely rationalistic God.

Free will is therefore only a “supreme illusion”, an illusion that must be overcome in order to attain wisdom. Leibniz suffered from the paradox of the “good professor”: everyone knows that he is learned, moderate, insightful and very intelligent… but after the brilliantly demonstrated lesson, everyone leaves the class and forgets his brilliant demonstration! And what if humanity was ultimately just a very bad student who does not listen to his teacher?

| VOLTAIRE : Wit, Tolerance and the Critique of Optimism

François-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire, believed that man, as a finite being, with his body and his intelligence, is caught between the two infinities that make up the reality of the universe: the infinitely large and the infinitely small. This particular situation condemns man to ignorance. Voltaire fought against all fanaticism because he equated religion with fanaticism, just as he preached tolerance against social fanaticism. His view of religion was:

a. God imposes himself through reason.

b. This belief favours social order.

c. Religions, the inventions of men, are an obstacle to happiness.

In this ‘Age of Enlightenment’, the fabric of our societies in 2024 is woven with these ideas, but the pattern may not be as vibrant as we’d like.

“Eppur, si muove” (And yet it moves.) This phrase in Italian is famously attributed to the scientist Galileo Galilei, although there is no historical evidence that he actually said it. The context is that Galileo was forced in 1633 by the Catholic Church to recant his belief that the earth moves around the sun, which contradicted the church’s geocentric model.

And, yes, the world turns. Yet everyone on this planet feels, to varying degrees, that something is not quite right. You are sitting in your taxi on the way to Heathrow Airport, thinking back fleetingly to various people you have bumped into over the past few months. That young bartender in Cape Town, originally from Malawi, who stunned you with the clarity of his judgement and the intelligence of his words with a few generic conversational phrases. It was as if this 20-year-old already understood a lot about the meaning of humanity. Then there was this filling station attendant on the road to Maurienne in the direction of Courchevel, who unceremoniously proclaimed some truths about humanity that were somewhat humorous but terribly realistic. And then there was this middle-aged Englishman sitting at a bar on holiday in Faro, Portugal, whose comments were filled with deep philosophical empathy. And finally, this old lady in Greece, on a street near the Parthenon, who had hardly ever been to school and had travelled very little, but whose sad depth of language showed her great understanding of the world.

Individual human intelligence is ultimately fairly evenly distributed across the planet, but the fundamental conundrum remains unsolvable: we are collectively failing to apply what we all believe to be the good, peacefully and ethically, to this planet. We see the path, but we are unable to walk it together, guided by reason and the philosophy of enlightenment.