"Historians place the Enlightenment in Europe (with a strong emphasis on France) during the late 17th and the 18th centuries, or, more comprehensively, between the Glorious Revolution in 1688 and the French Revolution of 1789. It represents a phase in the intellectual history of Europe and also programs of reform, inspired by a belief in the possibility of a better world, that outlined specific targets for criticism and programs of action.?"
IOW, a green light for Europe to decimate "lesser" cultures during a period of unbridled greed. How very "enlightening".
Enlightenment and EmpireFrom its very beginnings in the late seventeenth century, the Enlightenment—a term used to describe a host of transformations in European cultural, social, economic, and political thought that placed a great deal of emphasis on reason and empirical knowledge—has been intimately connected to the expansion of European empire. Enlightenment thinkers valued highly and thrived on public political debate. As the modern German philosopher Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929) has described it, new social institutions like coffeehouses and the wider circulation of newspapers and political pamphlets made this kind of debate possible; it also, Habermas has argued, created a social revolution by creating a "public sphere," dominated by the urban, male middle-class and increasingly differentiated from the domestic, or the private, sphere.
Both in person and print, this newly expanding world of politics, particularly in Great Britain, was increasingly dominated by overseas affairs and imperial conflicts. |
