Enlightenment in Western secular tradition

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Enlightenment in Western secular tradition refers mainly to the European intellectual movement known as the Age of Enlightenment, also called the Age of Reason referring to philosophical developments related to scientific rationality in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Enlightenment is wisdom or understanding enabling clarity of perception. However, the English word covers two concepts which can be quite distinct: religious or spiritual enlightenment and secular or intellectual enlightenment. This can cause confusion, since those who claim intellectual enlightenment often reject spiritual concepts altogether.

Some times, Enlightenment is seen as a time period in which ideas, based on one's reason, were spread throughout Europe, as well as America.^[1]

It is difficult to say when this phenomenal movement actually began or ended. Some historians believe it is accurate to use a date closely tied to the publication of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica. Others believe that the time frame in which this movement came to completion was marked by the end of the French Revolution of 1789.^[2]

The concept of enlightenment is not isolated within any one particular belief system. Most if not all organized religions are centered around a "revealed truth" in which it's followers cite evidence to support this truth. Enlightenment happens to an individual in that religion when an internal realization takes place that these stated truths are indeed reality. An individual may experience multiple moments of enlightenment throughout his or her lifetime.

Outside of religious definitions, today's jargon refers to instances of personal enlightenment as "ah-ha!" or "lightbulb" moments where a previously undiscovered fact is suddenly understood. To be enlightened, one truly has to use reason and be open to differing opinions. One must be tolerant of others and must not be viewed as ignorant, but rather as someone is learned.^[3]

Kant's definition of "enlightenment"

In his 1782 essay What Is Enlightenment?, Immanuel Kant wrote the following in response to The Age of Enlightenment:

Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is the incapacity to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. Such tutelage is self-imposed if its cause is not a lack of intelligence, but rather a lack of determination and courage to use one's intelligence without being guided by another. (I am sorry to alter things here but I do think that both LACK'S deserve the same "a". Z

Kant reasoned that although a man must obey in his civil duties, he must make public his use of reason. His motto for The Enlightenment is Sapere aude! or "Dare to know." See the full text here.

Adorno's and Horkheimer's definition of "enlightenment"

In their controversial analysis of the contemporary western society, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944, revised 1947), Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer developed a wider, and more pessimistic concept of enlightenment. In their analysis, enlightenment had its dark side: while trying to abolish superstition and myths by 'foundationalist' philosophy, it ignored its own 'mythical' basis. Its strivings towards totality and certainty led to an increasing instrumentalization of reason. In their view, the enlightenment itself should be enlightened and not posed as a 'myth-free' view of the world.

Enlightenment and the understanding of good and evil

In Human, All Too Human, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had this to say about enlightenment and the understanding of good and evil:

The man who wants to gain wisdom profits greatly from having thought for a time that man is basically evil and degenerate: this idea is wrong, like its opposite, but for whole periods of time it was predominant and its roots have sunk deep into us and into our world. To understand ourselves we must understand it; but to climb higher, we must then climb over and beyond it. We recognize that there are no sins in the metaphysical sense; but, in the same sense, neither are there any virtues; we recognize that this entire realm of moral ideas is in a continual state of fluctuation, that there are higher and deeper concepts of good and evil, moral and immoral. A man who desires no more from things than to understand them easily makes peace with his soul and will err (or "sin," as the world calls it) at the most out of ignorance, but hardly out of desire. He will no longer want to condemn and root out his desires; but his single goal, governing him completely, to understand as well as he can at all times, will cool him down and soften all the wildness in his disposition. In addition, he has rid himself of a number of tormenting ideas; he no longer feels anything at the words "pains of hell," "sinfulness," "incapacity for the good": for him they are only the evanescent silhouettes of erroneous thoughts about life and the world.

Dr. Richard Bucke, in his 1901 book Cosmic Consciousness^[4], names a few dozens of people who, in his studied opinion, had experienced some degree of enlightenment, including Walt Whitman and Blaise Pascal. Bucke also attempted to analyze what commonalities these personalities shared. His study has become part of the foundation of transpersonal psychology.

There are some thinkers such as U. G. Krishnamurti, who refute any existence of the very concept of enlightenment (despite being considered enlightened by his followers).

See also

Notes and references