Paste your essay in here…Paste your text in here…The enlightenment writers that I have chosen to focus on will reflect Voltaire’s views on individualism, Hume’s views on relativism, and Rousseau’s views on rationalism. Although many different writers and thinkers had strong views on these themes during the enlightenment, I will examine how the following individuals promoted specific themes of their time.
Following the Renaissance, human reason, a sense of self-confidence, and self-discipline were all reawakened and celebrated with the Age of Enlightenment. A number of the major thinkers of that time “applied reason to human nature and society to infer natural rights of liberty, equality, and property for all mankind” (Philosophy.wordpress.com, 2010). Voltaire, in particular, believed that both the political system as well as the Church had restricted opportunity and access to human reason, essentially engaging in a conspiracy to keep the common people poor and without knowledge. As a talented writer, Voltaire was able to expound upon the views of social reform that he supported. With his satirical style, Voltaire was able to make his positions known, particularly his criticism of Catholic dogma, without having to face the harsh penalties associated with censorship prohibitions.
Voltaire was arguably quite outspoken when it came to his opinions, so much so that after being briefly imprisoned on two occasions, he was exiled to England. According to Kagan et al (2013), “There he visited its best literary circles, observed its tolerant intellectual and religious climate, relished the freedom he felt in its moderate political atmosphere, and admired its science and economic prosperity” (p. 516). Upon his return to France, Voltaire took the opportunity to praise the virtues of the English, their religious liberty in particular, and ultimately identified and chastised French society for its abuses of its people. Kagan et al note, “Voltaire believed human society could and should be improved, but he was never certain that reform, if achieved, would be permanent” (p. 516).
Perhaps one of the best-known proponents of rationalism is Rousseau, particularly given
his formulation of social contract theory. Neidleman writes, “Rousseau captured the hypothetical account of consensus with his idea of the ‘general will’ (where associates reach consensus by privileging their collective interest over their particular interest) and the ‘will of all’ (where the particular interests associates are aggregated without regard for the collective interest)” (2012). Rousseau utilized social contract theory beyond its original intentions, namely, extending it to the international arena. Rousseau, as noted by Neidleman, “calls this contract a confederation, in which each party relinquishes any aspiration it may have for conquest in exchange for a guarantee that they will not be attacked by any of the contracting parties: ‘it is good for [the Powers of Europe] to renounce what they desire in order to secure what they possess’” (2012).
Rousseau, like many others the supported rationalism, believed that man began in a peaceful state in nature, and only became disrupted and imbalanced when interacting with society. Essentially, for Rousseau, such a breakdown was sparked by inequality and moral degradation, which was the result of the rise of certain professions and the drive for possession of private property. In a perfect political world, Rousseau believed that everyone acknowledges their own wants and needs, but is willing to negotiate a compromise for the good of the general public. This notion of “general will” would reflect aspects of every citizen’s individual will and ultimately find a way to serve everyone in some fashion (Kagan et al, 2013)..
It is interesting to note that, despite the fact that Hume was not actually a relativist, many of his arguments were instrumental in supporting a number of elements of relativism. Moral relativism, according to Westacott, “is the view that moral judgments are true or false only relative to some particular standpoint (for instance that of a culture or a historical period) and that no standpoint is uniquely privileged over all others” (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Hume’s argument suggested that it was not reason, but rather emotion or sentiment, upon which moral beliefs are based (Rachels, 2018).
Due to the fact that Hume had unwavering support for naturalism, he was freed from establishing ethical authority of the moral sense on the basis of religion. According to Thordarson, “Hume opened to the door to moral skepticism and relativism, for if a moral sense is the ultimate source of morality, then it seems impossible to establish moral facts, except insofar as the person with whom we seek to establish these fact shares our particularly constituted moral sense” (2017).
Trying to synthesize the views of specific writers of the enlightenment has proven to be a complex task, given the complexities of the individual writers as well as the themes about they were writing.