5.4. Philosophy of Enlightenment

Enlightenment appeared to become an ideological development of the Modern Ages period. The second half of the 18th century was an epoch of acute aggravation of the conflict between the feudal and bourgeois worldviews in most European countries and in the North America. Common features characterizing representatives of this era theories are the following::

• strong criticism of the feudal order and the ideology of the Catholic Church, the desire for democratization of all spheres of public life, and, accordingly, the declaration of the necessity to involve the masses of people into economic and political activity;

• the intensive formation of the National Education (which gave the name of the epoch);

• swift progressive development of science and technology, which accelerated other processes of social life and led the optimistic faith in limitless progress of reason and knowledge.

While in England Empiricism and Sensualism dominated, the majority of French Enlightenment representatives preferred rationalism They proclaimed mind as the higher authority in solving social life problems. Many thinkers of this era were freethinking deists and considered Christian Church one of the main factors that hinder social progress. Other factors lagging behind were called absolute power of a monarch and feudal relations. This conflict came to a head in the bourgeois revolution. Ideologically, it was prepared in the works of the 18th-century French philosophers: Voltaire (1694-1778), Rousseau (1712-1778), Diderot (1713-1784), La Mettrie(1709-I751), Helvetius (1715-1771) and Holbach (1723-1789). They resolutely fought against religion and the socio-political order in contemporary France.

The creation of the French Encyclopedia in the middle of the eighteenth century was a major publishing event, and brought together a number of vital philosophers, primarily under the leadership of Denis Diderot and including Holbach, Rousseau and Voltaire among others. Because of its free thinking and challenging character the publication of the Encyclopedia was suspended in 1759 but eventually was finished in 1772, in seventeen volumes of letterpress and a further eleven of plates.

The main streams of the 18^th century French philosophy were deism, atheism, materialism and Utopian-socialism.

Deism (from Latin “deus” meaning God) the philosophical doctrine that reduces the role of God to a mere act of creation and held that after the original act God virtually withdrew and refrained from interfering in the process of nature and the ways of man. Francois-Marie Arquet Voltaire (1694-1778) was a passionate and gifted critic of intolerance and of the outmoded institutions of the ancient regime. But his plans for tolerance were not anti-religious. His awe before the Divine in a vast universe was tempered by the thought that God is not benevolent and indeed his theism was considerably out of accord with the Christian revelation and the Church. He was appalled by the cruelty of the Inquisition, the backwardness of the Church and the disaster of the close alliance between Church and State. He was against the dominance of the Catholic Church in all spheres of human individual and public life and demanded the secularization of the church. All social vices, in his opinion, have the religious fanaticism and superstitions as their source. Voltaire was an advocate of rational forms of religion. Following positions of deism, he believed God to be "legislator of nature, the first cause in the world development and theguarantee of its unity." Without religion, society becomes an unruled crowd. So he wrote that ”if there was no God, then He would have to be invented". According to Voltaire there is no antagonism between rational forms of religion and science. Both rationalized religion and science penetrate into the essence of objects and phenomena by the ways inherent in their nature. It is important that they do not impede each other. Voltaire found a practical application of the most important slogan of the Enlightenment “Reason, nature, humanity”. He opposed reason to ignorance, nature – to belief in supernatural forces, humanity – to the religious-ethical norms of feudalism. If morality, religion and law are based on reason, one can say that they have true character.

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