Enlightenment

Abstract

Much of the eighteenth century is often referred to as the Enlightenment or the Age of Enlightenment. Frequent reiteration does not make these terms any easier to define. This has become more difficult as attention has turned away from a concentration on the writings of a small number of French thinkers to an assessment of the situation throughout Europe. The political, social and religious setting varied in different states, and it is not therefore surprising that statements advanced with reference to prominent thinkers in France are inappropriate for Italy and Scotland, Russia and the Empire. Even in France the views of those generally classed as Enlightened were far from uniform. Furthermore, Enlightened thinkers were generally challenged by writers who would rank as intellectuals but who did not share their views.

There is not a Sicilian in the polite circle, but can ask you how you do in three languages, talk of Newton and Descartes; tell you that Theocritus was their countryman, and Palermo once called Panormus; but this their knowledge is to such a wonderful degree superficial … the men seem universally to affect a tone of society foreign to their real characters, their dress, their manner, their conversation ever put me in mind of poor tinselled strolling players, who were delivering a speech of fustian or humour, with all the affectation of outrageous theatrical grimace, the meaning of which they themselves understood not.

(Sir William Young, 1772)¹