The Age of Enlightenment is primarily an intellectual movement associated with developing scientific, philosophical, and social thought based on rationalism and free-thinking. The idea of the free individual, which was intensively developed during the Renaissance, gained recognition during the Enlightenment. Everyone should think not only about himself but also about others, about his place in society. The Enlighteners sought to understand the specificity of inter-human relations. At the center of their attention were the problems of the best social order. They developed programs of social transformation, as much as possible, corresponding to human nature. According to many Enlighteners, man is part of nature, an entirely human material being, and is not qualitatively distinguished from it.
Man is not evil by nature, and society makes a person that way through imperfect relationships and faulty upbringing. To change man, it is necessary to change the culture, in which a properly educated person will act on the principle of rational selfishness. In proposing a transformation of society on the principles of reason and justice, the French Enlighteners advocated, in general, ways of reforming society peacefully, coming from above from enlightened rulers. According to this approach, the justice system should work to defeat the imperfection of human behavior. The punishment is imposed according to a committed crime, notwithstanding individual circumstances. The sentence should be based only on the precedent of proclaiming the same one in analogic cases. According to this philosophy, the judicial system works to eliminate crimes, not criminals. The personality, rational by nature, cannot be changed individually. Delinquency can be defeated only when the society’s system is reorganized according to the principles of equality, consciousness, and rationalism.
References
Slović, S. (2020). From modernism towards post-modernism: Rationalism and the enlightnment era. Bastina, 50, 121–131.