Introduction
The Enlightenment was an ideology trend linked with the battle of the growing bourgeoisie and masses against feudalism during the transition from feudalism to capitalism. In a number of Western European nations where the age expanded in the 18th century, the movement was so widespread and popular that its contemporaries saw the Enlightenment replacing the dark Middle Ages. The historiography of the European Enlightenment, in general, and the British Enlightenment, in particular, is flourishing within the frameworks of classical and modern social history. It focuses on the difficulties of the establishment of civil society and the rule of law, the growth of social institutions, and the reform of the state-legal machinery during the Enlightenment.
The works of R. Porter, P. Gay, E. Pagden, and many others are most notable within the scope of this approach of historical inquiry. This trend is represented by a large number of works, indicating a rich historiographical examination of this issue. Anthony Pagden is right in that his views with Peter Gay diverge in that he believes that the Enlightenment is of universal value to people.
General Understanding of the Enlightenment
The urge to discover a plausible explanation for all occurrences of nature and human existence was formed among educated people. They stopped relying on religion in their study. The human intellect was recognized for its ability to comprehend and explain the world completely. The rationalist worldview holds that knowledge is the primary means of cognition and criterion of truth rather than supernatural revelation and experience.
The dominance of rationality in the minds of educated people provided a great incentive for the accumulation of information. In the 17th century, science still required a specific specialization: scientists were not divided into mathematicians, physicists, or philosophers. They worked in several disciplines at the same time. They developed new scientific research ideas; science obtained information by experimentation and spoke the language of mathematical formulae.
Science’s popularity grew to the point that a special organization was founded in England under the guidance of the monarch himself, and the Academy of Sciences was established in France on the initiative of the government. The developing scholarly authority is more convinced of the power of the human mind. Belief in reason grew prevalent in the XVIII century: people felt that in everything, they should only listen to him. They thought that reason should be fostered by mental activity and the study of art. This will assist a person in changing the environment around him to make it more logical and fairer.
Enlightenment came to be known as the spread of the intellect. Many educated individuals believed that the Enlightenment would lead to human pleasure. The primary ethos of society became one of optimism. People believed in progress, in the idea that history was changing for the better, that we were progressing from an unfair system to a good society. The man of the 18th century, more than any other time in history, saw himself as the master of his own fate.
Comparison of Gay and Pagden’s Interpretations of the Enlightenment
Similarities in Views
In their publications, Anthony Padgen and Peter Gay express some comparable perspectives of the Enlightenment. First, like Gay, Pagden’s purpose is to show how the Enlightenment transformed Europeans into modern people. They emphasized the Enlightenment’s submission to reason and belief that only logical explanations could be accurate. The Enlighteners denounced and condemned all biases and superstitions, belief in magic, and witches. Some even renounced religion since it was incompatible with science, despite the fact that the majority of the enlighteners still believed in God.
The writers also discovered that the enlighteners placed a high value on education since it may provide information and empower people against superstition. The enlighteners created works on pedagogy and pondered on how to teach a rational person, demonstrating the rise and approach of the European people to civilization and Enlightenment. Pagden’s goal was to follow the evolution of a number of concepts that emerged in the second half of the seventeenth century. According to Pagden, the Enlightenment achieved enormous achievements and enabled a society in which God was no longer a part of people’s lives.
In his massive book, Peter Gay, like Anthony Pagden, portrays the Enlightenment as the result of the activity of a very small and extremely tightly-knit group of individuals he refers to as the party of humanity and notes the following shared commitments, which comprise the spirit of the Enlightenment. Among these are criticisms of injustice and inefficiency, as well as the liberation of man from the shackles of ignorance, bigotry, and the priesthood’s death grip.
They may also include developing optimism for a better future and trust in the prospect of a better society, as well as a focus on real action that can result in fairer laws and gentler government, as well as the establishment of religious tolerance and intellectual freedom. According to the writers, the Enlightenment was intended to foster economic prosperity and the construction of a logical and competent government, as well as to enhance people’s individual self-awareness.
When discussing the Enlightenment as the foundation of European culture and understanding it primarily as a relatively holistic social movement that allows applying this ambiguous collective term for scientific purposes, it is important to recognize how diverse, varied, and sometimes mutually exclusive ideas are united in it. Gay was able to perceive the age as a cohesive, united movement, stating that while there were many philosophers in the eighteenth century, there was only one Enlightenment and a rather closely related collection of thinking. He, like Padgen, does not deny the presence of conflicts among the Enlighteners, emphasizing that their unity did not imply unanimity, but he nevertheless views the Enlightenment as a unified objective, combining disparate ideas in a cohesive intellectual movement, a type of party of humanity.
However, for Pagden, there was only one Enlightenment marked by skepticism, the notion of universalism. The author claimed that philosophy could consistently and reliably analyze universal human nature. The majority of economic progress has been led by a very small number of investors, entrepreneurs, designers, and their political, administrative, legal, and social thinking equivalents. Practitioners who believed they were immune to intellectual trends were typically captives of some non-existent Enlightenment ideology. What is clear from Gay’s perspective is that the author was convinced that the influence of major financial interests was greatly overstated in comparison to the gradual invasion of ideas.
According to Gay, the philosophers’ intrinsic drive for conformance to the principles of good manners and shrewdness in political economics had a part in toppling mercantilism, but only in isolation. The Enlightenment could not complete the task it had begun, and the increase in commerce and productivity led to the emergence of the notion of a dynamic global economy. He was unable, however, to provide a convincing explanation for the extent to which the Baconian theory of knowledge and the Industrial Enlightenment was responsible for trade growth and productivity increases.
In this way, the technological component of the Industrial Enlightenment relates back to political economics, as does the political component that promoted and supported innovation. This is the type of positive feedback loop that is required for long-term economic progress. Padgen, like Gay, emphasizes the development of society and economic expansion as having a substantial impact on the construction of contemporary European society.
Differences in Views
However, the authors disagreed and had opposing viewpoints on the Enlightenment. One of the most significant disagreements between Gay’s and Pagden’s views of the Enlightenment is their evaluation of the movement’s limits. Gay emphasizes the Enlightenment’s inability to completely eliminate social and economic injustices, whereas Pagden emphasizes universal ideals. The development of the state exacerbated the situation, creating a conspiracy of the rich. Political disparity accompanied property inequality. According to Gay, the introduction of options such as studying and expressing oneself via the arts has exacerbated the influence of inequality on society. For Pagden, the appearance of such commodities meant just the creation of value on which to capitalize.
Pagden’s work focuses far greater emphasis than Gay’s on the importance of contemporary natural law ideas in forming the Enlightenment. It provides an outstanding explanation of how these theories suggested the science of man. These hypotheses were founded on and tested on the unusual peoples and bizarre traditions experienced by travelers across the Pacific. The author demonstrates how the West was able to cleanse itself of superstition and illogical biases and grow into the liberal democracies that exist today.
Personal Opinion
Both writers’ and their interpreters’ points of view are valid in specific ways, but Padgen’s point of view resonates more with me. According to the author, the Enlightenment period ingrained the concept of natural law in people. The Enlightenment held that all human beings were endowed with inherent rights, notably the right to life, liberty, and equality. This claimed that all existing social disparities (between the affluent and the poor, rulers and subjects) were not formed by God but by humans themselves, meaning they had to modify what they had created.
However, the author also points out that while the advantages gained by people cause inequality, they also fuel progress. People’s dwellings got more comfortable throughout this period. Mirrors were a popular interior decoration, the most renowned being the Palace of Versailles’ mirrored hall. Chinese porcelain – bowls, statuettes, and vases – became popular. People began to experiment with art in new areas, and education improved. This time, I feel, impacted the establishment of modern society. People would have lived in inhumane conditions for a long time without the Enlightenment. Human development would have slowed down, and the works of many philosophers would not exist, which would have significantly affected people’s opinions and lives in the present.
Conclusion
In summary, the Enlightenment was a grandiose endeavor to reorganize all elements of human existence on logical principles. However, it cannot be denied that the process of initial capital accumulation was accompanied by the most brutal exploitation of peasants and plebeian masses of cities, the violent expropriation of small producers’ means of production, and the formation of massive masses of workers deprived of the means of production. During the Age of Enlightenment, new social forces emerged: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
The growing bourgeoisie, whose expansion was hampered by feudal decentralization and class barriers, frequently participated in broad anti-feudal activities. The development of capitalism in the depths of the feudal economy led to the formation of truly bourgeois states (Holland, England), as well as the growing crisis of the feudal mode of production, which indirectly prepared the crisis of worldview and, as a result, the social structure of the world at the time. However, nascent capitalism provided a great incentive for the creation of new industrial methods, the growth of scientific and experimental ideas, and the formation of a distinctive culture of “reason.”
Thus, Peter Gay’s and Anthony Padgen’s views of the Age of Enlightenment may be comparable because both authors emphasize how greatly the period shaped modernity. However, I am more sympathetic to Padgen’s point of view since he views the advantages individuals gain and the changes that occur to be of universal worth to the person. Gay, conversely, feels that this development has worsened inequality, which is a permanent result. However, because individuals had abandoned the powerful influence of God in their lives, they realized that society had produced all of the issues on its own. Thanks to this realization, I believe humanity has become more conscious of its actions and provoked a great impetus in its development and improvement.
References
Gay, Peter. The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. New York: Norton, 1966.
Jun, Tian. “Petroleum Exploration History and Enlightenment in Tarim Basin.” Xinjiang Petroleum Geology, no. 42(2021): 272. Web.
Pagden, Anthony. The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters. New York: Random House, 2013.
Woloch, Iseer and Brown, Gregory. Eighteenth-Century Europe: Tradition and Progress, 1715-1789, 2nd ed. New York : W.W. Norton & Co, 2012.
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