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Exploration and Imperialism
In addition to scientific milestones, political and cultural change was taking place in Europe as the result of exploration and the extension of overseas empires, especially in the Americas. In addition to the brand-new discovery of America, European explorers also used new transportation technologies to explore previously known locales in Africa and Asia in greater depth than ever before.
As these explorers returned from across the world with stories of unknown peoples and cultures, Europeans were introduced to drastically different lifestyles and beliefs. Some explorers brought foreign visitors to Europe, which introduced common people—who wouldn’t otherwise be able to travel—to these foreign influences. Asia especially mystified Europeans; their religions, familial relationships, and scientific discoveries astounded Westerners to such a degree that the emulation of Chinese culture briefly came into fashion. All in all, this worldlier perspective provided Enlightenment-era thinkers with the inspiration and impetus for change.
The Declining Influence of the Church
Yet another major change in the lives of Europeans prior to the Enlightenment was the weakening of traditional religious authority. Religious doubt can largely be traced to the tensions created by the Protestant Reformation, which split the Catholic Church and opened new territory for theological debate. Additional seeds were planted by Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), a Jewish philosopher from Amsterdam who called into question the tenets of both Judaism and Christianity. While he believed in God, he denied that the Bible was divinely inspired and rejected the concept of supernatural religious phenomena. He claimed that ethics determined by rational thought were more important as a guide to conduct than was religion.
As other 17th-century thinkers similarly questioned the authority of organized religion, it became much more common in European intellectual circles to question religious beliefs. Although the Church’s influence still remained strong, especially among the lower classes, the ideas of Spinoza, combined with the new discoveries of the Scientific Revolution, threatened the supremacy of Church doctrine considerably. Most devastating was the philosophical approach many scientists were taking, which often led to conclusions that God either did not exist or, at least, did not play much of a role in daily life.
Moreover, these advances in thought coincided with anti-church and anti-government sentiment that was already growing among European commoners. The Catholic Church at the time was famously corrupt, often ruling using intimidation, fear, and false knowledge, and was violently intolerant toward dissenters and heretics. Subsequently, when Enlightenment philosophers came along praising liberty and self-empowerment, they found willing ears.
The Thirty Years’ War
Another major change in Europe prior to the Enlightenment was an increase in questioning how just the absolute monarchy was. For centuries, the common citizens of Europe had little or no role in their governments. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, developments occurred that caused the authority of divine right—the idea that monarchs were infallible because their titles were granted by God—to weaken. Perhaps the most immediate catalyst of the Enlightenment in this regard was the Thirty Years’ War, which broke out in 1618 when Bohemian Protestants revolted against their incoming Catholic king. The ensuing battle between Protestants and Catholics spread into Germany, and over the course of the next 30 years, nearly a third of the German population was killed.
The First Enlightenment Thought
The atrocities that the German public endured over those three decades inspired leading European thinkers and writers to decry war as an institution. Czech reformer John Comenius (1592–1670) questioned the necessity of war, emphasizing the similarity of man by writing that “we are all citizens of one world, we are all of one blood.” Meanwhile, Dutch thinker Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) wrote that the right of an individual to live and exist peacefully transcends any responsibility to a government’s idea of national duty. Grotius’s desire for humane treatment in wartime was expressed in his On the Law of War and Peace (1625), which proposed such wartime policies as the declaration of war, the honoring of treaties, and humane treatment of war prisoners.
Comenius’s and Grotius’s antiwar sentiments were the first developments of the Enlightenment in the sense that they defied tradition with a humanistic approach to the atrocities in the world. Grotius was perhaps most significant for defining the God-given duties of man and then showing how war infringed upon them, thus “proving” that war is wrong. Comenius, for his part, went so far as to question the idea of nationalism and the obligation to give one’s life for one’s country.
Individualism, Relativism, and Rationalism
Ultimately, from this slew of scientific, cultural, social, and political developments emerged three fundamental ideas that encompassed everything the Enlightenment would stand for. First among these was individualism, which emphasized the importance of the individual and their inborn rights. The second, relativism, was the concept that different cultures, beliefs, and value systems had equal merit. Finally, rationalism was the conviction that, with the power of reason, humans could arrive at truth and improve the world.
These three ideas reveal the fundamental concepts that would pervade the Enlightenment—people’s ability to reason, to look past the traditions and conventions that had dominated Europe in the past, and to make decisions for themselves. Moreover, these ideas represented the separation and autonomy of human intellect from God—a development that opened the door to new discoveries and ideas that threatened the most powerful of Europe’s long-standing institutions.
Events
1618
Thirty Years’ War begins
1625
Grotius publishes On the Law of War and Peace
1648
Thirty Years’ War ends
Key People
Baruch Spinoza
Dutch-Jewish thinker who questioned many tenets of Judaism and Christianity
John Comenius
Czech reformer who questioned necessity for war
Hugo Grotius
Dutch scholar who explored concepts in international relations and outlined laws of “fair” warfare
