Essay About Enlightened Understanding Of Human Nature And Jean Le Rond Dalembert

18th Century European Enlightenment
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The Enlightenment is a name given by historians to an
intellectual movement that was predominant in the Western world during
the 18th century. Strongly influenced by the rise of modern science
and by the aftermath of the long religious conflict that followed
the Reformation, the thinkers of the Enlightenment (called philosophes
in France) were committed to secular views based on reason or human
understanding only, which they hoped would provide a basis for
beneficial changes affecting every area of life and thought.
The more extreme and radical philosophes–Denis Diderot, Claude
Adrien Helvetius, Baron dHolbach, the Marquis de Condorcet, and
Julien Offroy de La Mettrie (1709-51)–advocated a philosophical
rationalism deriving its methods from science and natural philosophy
that would replace religion as the means of knowing nature and destiny
of humanity; these men were materialists, pantheists, or atheists.
Other enlightened thinkers, such as Pierre Bayle, Voltaire, David
Hume, Jean Le Rond Dalembert, and Immanuel Kant, opposed fanaticism,
but were either agnostic or left room for some kind of religious
faith.
All of the philosophes saw themselves as continuing the work of
the great 17th century pioneers–Francis Bacon, Galileo, Descartes,
Leibnitz, Isaac Newton, and John Locke–who had developed fruitful
methods of rational and empirical inquiry and had demonstrated the
possibility of a world remade by the application of knowledge for
human benefit. The philosophes believed that science could reveal
nature as it truly is and show how it could be controlled and
manipulated. This belief provided an incentive to extend scientific
methods into every field of inquiry, thus laying the groundwork for
the development of the modern social sciences.
The enlightened understanding of human nature was one that
emphasized the right to self-expression and human fulfillment, the
right to think freely and express ones views publicly without
censorship or fear of repression. Voltaire admired the freedom he
found in England and fostered the spread of English ideas on the
Continent. He and his followers opposed the intolerance of the
established Christian churches of their day, as well as the European
governments that controlled and suppressed dissenting opinions. For
example, the social disease which Pangloss caught from Paquette was
traced to a “very learned Franciscan” and later to a Jesuit. Also,
Candide reminisces that his passion for Cunegonde first developed
at a Mass. More conservative enlightened thinkers, concerned
primarily with efficiency and administrative order, favored the
“enlightened despotism” of such monarchs as Emperor Joseph II,
Frederick II of Prussia, and Catherine II of Russia.
Enlightened political thought expressed demands for equality and
justice and for the legal changes needed to realize these goals. Set
forth by Baron de Montesquieu, the changes were more boldly urged by
the contributors to the great Encyclopedie edited in Paris by Diderot
between 1747 and 1772, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Cesare Beccaria, and
finally