The philosophes were educated men who had the means to spend their time contemplating things such as education, slavery, and of course religion. These were issues undoubtedly on the minds of common people, but not at the top of their priorities when compared with survival and fulfilling their assigned role in society. The increasingly widespread access to the writings of philosophes was good in the sense of the masses having another opinion other than that of the church or their king's, but I don't think it was the catalyst for a widespread craving of knowledge. In my opinion, the majority of people during the Enlightenment didn't start to form their own ideas, but instead chose a philosophe who they mostly agreed, and followed. It was not the "maturing" of people as Kant had hoped, they were simply choosing to rely on a different source. I think this can be attributed to the lack of widespread recorded knowledge, and don't blame the philosophes. But I also don't think they should be given credit for sparking a large scale thirst for learning and philosophical movement.
I believe the age we live in today is the first truly enlightened time, as we have achieved the pinnacle of Diderot's Encyclopedia with the advent of the Internet. It is now much more difficult to remain "immature" with access to the greatest resource and exchange of knowledge in history at our fingertips. So, perhaps "now you have two choices instead of one" is a better motto for the Enlightenment. It's just as catchy, right?
Interesting perspective. I think you are describing the phenomenon that Kant refers to when he argues that most people will choose to remain immature and let others think for them since it is easier. I would also argue that, just as we saw with Dr. Storch, just because the ideas are out there does not mean that they have been adopted and put into practice. For example, primary education was not made available to all citizens until the 19th century so how would people learn to think differently until they are given the opportunity? I would also argue that an abundance of information does not necessarily equal a critical reading public. Just because something is on the internet (or in the papers or printed in the book) does not mean that it represents TRUTH, unequivocally. The trick is using this access to information to think critically about the world around us.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you and this reminds me of what we talked about the other day. We compared or began to compare education now with education then. When you think about it they are similar in a way. People did not or may not have craved education then because of their need for survival and education did not seem to fit into that equation. People have great access to education now, but choose to only take what is given to them. People do not want to invest their time into research in order to learn how they may better themselves or society. Most people choose to just get a piece of paper that says they are educated in order to get a good job and survive in this society. Changing the world is not at the top of people's priority lists, they merely want to survive.
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