The Enlightenment, the Constellation of Social Forces, and the Rise of Conservatism

The Enlightenment

ITS SIGNIFICANCE IN EUROPEAN HISTORY

Friends and foes of the Enlightenment are in agreement on at least one point: it constitutes, for better or worse, a decisive turning point in European history, one which may be defined as the definitive break with the "medieval view of the world." Individuals and even small groups (for example, many Renaissance humanists), had completed this break long before the eighteenth century; but a break on a mass scale, possessing an irreversible character, was the distinctive new development characterizing the "age of Enlightenment."

What were the key elements of the medieval Weltanschauung now being repudiated? They included — if a very rough and stereotyped sketch may be permitted — in the religious field, supernatural revelation and the preoccupation with salvation and the life to come; in psychology, belief in the sinful nature of man and the consequent need of supernatural grace to attain salvation; in science, a mysterious universe animated by the will of God and (insofar as God permitted) his foe, the Devil; in history, the conception of Providence which guided the world from a known beginning (described in the Book of Genesis) to a foreseeable and possibly imminent end (foretold in the Book of Revelation). Medieval man further believed — if unquestioned acceptance may be equated with belief — that the structure of society and the substance of law were essentially static and eternal. He accepted the king's authority without thinking about defining it precisely in either absolutist or constitutional terms (a polarity of concepts still unknown); he accepted a society dominated by a landowning aristocracy and a Church owning vast properties and exercising broad jurisdictions. It is of crucial importance to recognize that medieval people believed that the existing pattern of politics and economics constituted a permanent and natural order sanctioned by God; social change was neither desired nor expected nor, in most cases, even contemplated as a possibility. Man did not see himself as an autonomous creature destined to achieve, by his own unaided efforts, happiness in this world: his destiny was rather to serve God for that brief mortal life — a mere second of eternity — which constituted but the vestibule before the infinitely more important life to come.

The Enlightenment brought about a sharp break with all these views. The rise of rational or natural religion led to a de-emphasis or even abandonment of divine revelation; a new mood of secularist hedonism robbed the Hereafter first of its terror, then of its relevance; man now believed himself to be good, hence felt no need for any supernatural grace to achieve "salvation" (a concept easily watered down and soon neglected without being necessarily repudiated); science — the mechanical-mathematical science of Newton — provided an explanation of the universe from which God had retired after an initially necessary, but now very remote, act of creation; belief in the Devil was dismissed as the product of the diseased imagination of an earlier superstitious age, and so-called "miracles of nature" were viewed as promising areas for future scientific research. Man now began to see himself as the master of his political and economic life and believed he could manipulate both to serve the needs of his terrestrial happiness. The stranglehold of tradition — now seen for the first time as a hostile force — must be broken through a rationally conceived and deliberately implemented program of social planning. Traditional monarchy must either become "enlightened" or be superseded by self-government; a broadly conceived catalogue of the "rights of man" must be respected by the state; religious toleration must be established and clerical privilege broken; the hierarchic structure of society, with landowning aristocrats at the apex of the social pyramid, must yield to the principle of social equality; while the traditional collectivist regulation of the economy, oriented to the end of preserving a social pattern viewed as divinely created and therefore just, must give way to a laissez-faire system based upon the self-asserting energies of free men. History was no longer viewed as the unfolding of the providential will of God but rather, in Gibbon's famous phrase, as the record of the crimes and follies of mankind — a dark picture yet one relieved by the belief that progress, long moving at a snail's pace, had at last accelerated as the distinctive hallmark of the eighteenth century. The prevalent mood became one of optimism and even complacency. Life was already good for some and ultimately destined to be good for all; death was a regrettable fact about which it was unprofitable to brood. The task here and now was to maximize happiness through the spread of the principles of Enlightenment: rationalism, secularism, science, natural rights, equality, and laissez-faire.

The Enlightenment challenged, in short, Europe's traditional religion, its traditional social organization, and its traditional system of government — and it did this with such ceaseless persistence as to throw every area of life into permanent crisis. It ended, presumably forever, the quasi-unanimous acceptance of the status quo which had characterized — at least outside the field of religion — the previous fifteen centuries of European history. The ensuing fact of unceasing ferment constitutes one of the greatest transformations in human affairs — certainly the greatest since Christianity, with its supernatural, ascetic, and unilinear view of the world, replaced the secular, hedonist, and cyclical outlook characteristic of Greco-Roman civilization. A passive acceptance of the world yielded to an activist desire to change it; the right of rebellion replaced the duty of resignation; the fanning of discontent became the recognized, and not necessarily disreputable, function of radical intellectuals.

It is important to note that the Enlightenment...