history of Europe

Sources of Enlightenment thought

In a cosmopolitan culture it was the preeminence of the French language that enabled Frenchmen of the 17th century to lay the foundations of cultural ascendancy and encouraged the philosophes to act as the tutors of 18th-century Europe. The notion of a realm of philosophy superior to sectarian or national concerns facilitated the transmission of ideas. “I flatter myself,” wrote Denis Diderot to the Scottish philosopher David Hume, “that I am, like you, citizen of the great city of the world.” “A philosopher,” wrote Edward Gibbon, “may consider Europe as a great republic, whose various inhabitants have attained almost the same level of politeness and cultivation.” This magisterial pronouncement by the author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–88) recalls the common source: the knowledge of Classical literature.

The scholars of the Enlightenment recognized a joint inheritance, Christian as well as Classical. In rejecting, or at least reinterpreting, the one and plundering the other, they had the confidence of those who believed they were masters of their destiny. They felt an affinity with the Classical world and saluted the achievement of the Greeks, who discovered a regularity in nature ... (200 of 166,670 words)