William Bristow writes:
"...Controversy
regarding the truth-value or reasonableness of religious belief in general,
Christian belief in particular, and controversy regarding the proper place of
religion in society, occupies a particularly central place in the
Enlightenment."
"It's as
if the terrible, violent confessional strife in the early modern period in
Europe, the bloody drawn-out wars between the Christian sects, was removed to
the intellectual arena in the Enlightenment and became a set of more general
philosophical controversies..."
"Alongside
the rise of the new science, the rise of Protestantism in western Christianity
also plays an important role in generating the Enlightenment. The original
Protestants assert a sort of individual liberty with respect to
questions of faith against the paternalistic authority of the Church. The
“liberty of conscience,” so important to Enlightenment thinkers in general, and
asserted against all manner of paternalistic authorities (including
Protestant), descends from this Protestant assertion. The original Protestant
assertion initiates a crisis of authority regarding religious belief, a
crisis of authority that, expanded and generalized and even, to some extent, secularized,
becomes a central characteristic of the Enlightenment spirit."
THE
METHOD OF SKEPTICISM
"The
tendency of natural science toward progressive independence from metaphysics
in the eighteenth century is correlated with this point about method. The rise
of modern science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries proceeds through
its separation from the presuppositions, doctrines and methodology of theology;
natural science in the eighteenth century proceeds to separate itself from
metaphysics as well... The characteristic Enlightenment suspicion of all
allegedly authoritative claims the validity of which is obscure, which is
directed first of all against religious dogmas, extends to the claims of
metaphysics as well. While there are significant Enlightenment thinkers who are
metaphysicians – the general thrust of Enlightenment thought is
anti-metaphysical..."
"John
Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) exerts tremendous
influence on the age, in good part through the epistemological rigor that it
displays, which is at least implicitly anti-metaphysical. Locke undertakes in
this work to examine the human understanding in order to determine the limits
of human knowledge; he thereby institutes a prominent pattern of Enlightenment epistemology...
Locke exerts great influence in the French Enlightenment..."
"Thomas
Reid, a prominent member of the Scottish Enlightenment, responds to this
epistemological problem in a way more characteristic of the Enlightenment in
general. He attacks the way of ideas and argues that the immediate objects of
our (sense) perception are the common (material) objects in our environment,
not ideas in our mind. Reid mounts his defense of naïve realism as a defense of
common sense over against the doctrines of the philosophers. The defense of
common sense, and the related idea that the results of philosophy ought to
be of use to common people, are characteristic ideas of the Enlightenment,
particularly pronounced in the Scottish Enlightenment..."
