Enlightenment and its Discontents
While the European Enlightenment produced a number of outliers — including skeptics and materialists — this intellectual movement in American tended to be more moderate and coherent, at least insofar as it affected culture and politics. American philosophes, to be sure, varied in terms of their opinions regarding Christianity and their faith in the possibility of human progress, but they tended to share a general confidence in the ability of human reason to identify universal human values and rights and thereby to improve both personal and social life. The founding documents of the United States and its constituent republics embodied these Enlightenment values, and they also reflected the different levels of engagement with Christianity that characterized the American Enlightenment. (For instance, while the Massachusetts constitution of 1780 asserted the duty of everyone to worship the creator and empowered the legislature to support churches through taxation, the U.S. Constitution included no mention of a deity, and with the ratification of the first amendment forbade Congress from establishing religion.) In ways that the founders did not anticipate, however, the Enlightenment principles embedded in these documents generated conflict for later generations.
Although historians (including, most notably, Henry May) have identified multiple stages or versions of the Enlightenment in America, the movement generally accepted a creed that might be boiled down as follows: the rational and benevolent creator God (whether the Judeo-Christian Father or the less anthropomorphic “Nature’s God”) made an orderly, law-abiding universe, within which fairly rational and good-natured human beings might live freely and happily, if only they could organize their societies and governments to harmonize with the divine laws of nature. Such a vision was versatile: it could mix as easily with Christian millennialism as with market capitalism, and for many Americans it informed both.
Although Enlightenment modes of thought became pervasive in American culture, they did not by any means fully displace older Christian ways of thinking and seeing. Many Americans still believed in an interventionist God whose grace worked in their hearts and whose millennial plan for making earth into heaven was slowly unfolding. Those who did embrace Reason found that their idol often came up short. In politics, for instance, onetime democrat Orestes Brownson was stunned at how easily “the people” had been fooled during the election of 1840. In the realm of religion, a variety of ministers, former ministers, and writers, who became known as Transcendentalists, began to turn to the intuition (or “the heart”) for spiritual knowledge, rather than relying exclusively on the empirically observed world for information.
While the Enlightenment was doubtless liberating for some Americans, for others it had quite the opposite effect. As Herman Melville tried to show in his 1853 short story “Bartleby the Scrivener,” to be reasonable could mean embracing one’s own oppression (see page 13, line 37). Thus, black and white abolitionists turned against the federal constitution that permitted slavery. Small numbers of women began to question the reasonableness of their exclusion from political privileges. And various reformers began to question the logic of the market revolution that seemed to enrich some while making others dependent or impoverished.
Writing in the early 1920s and sounding much like a latter-day Henry David Thoreau, D. H. Lawrence lashed out at the pretensions of the Enlightenment (symbolized for him by Benjamin Franklin):
We do all like to get things inside a barbed wire corral. Especially our fellow men. We love to round them up inside the barbed wire enclosure of FREEDOM, and make ‘em work. “Work, you free jewel, WORK!” shouts the liberator, cracking his whip. Benjamin, I will not work. I do not choose to be a free democrat. I am absolutely a servant of my own Holy Ghost.
The Enlightenment made many promises. The question was whether or not they could or would be kept.
October 1st, 2007 at 9:12 am
When we think of the Enlightenment, we think of a period in time where our country was able to move forward and when we began to use science more freely to understand nature and people. I do believe that the enlightenment kept many of the promises is made. People still feel comforted by the fact that they can freely worship the God they chose and our society continutes to move forward.
I believe that the enlightenment was one of the main reasons for the emancipation of slaves and women. And a way that people were able to really convince others that women and blacks were “allowed” this “freedom” was to use God and say to our society that freeing them was God’s will…
October 2nd, 2007 at 7:59 am
The promise of the “community on the hill” as envisioned by the Puritans was probably limited by much of the same baggage that held back progress through the enlightenment and which still manages to restrain people from buying into new ideas. Humans resist change not because we don’t want it but because it can have unknown negative effects. We can only be sure changes will occur and we must adapt. We often believe something new to be more than it can produce and we are disappointed when the progress is slower than we anticipated. The opportunities that were presented in early America usually came with an equal and opposite negative impact; wretchedness from capitalism, slavery from liberty. Progress has opened the door to a forum of natural, spiritual and rational discussion that should not be corralled or repressed, otherwise we will have not progressed as fast as Franklin or Paine had hoped. Because both had to exercise restraint so as not to lose their constituency of readers, they played the best hand available for the greatest advantage to the future. Human reason is fallible but it is reasoning from observation that guides the spirit of justice.
October 2nd, 2007 at 11:31 am
Reading the excerpts from the writings of Channing it is very obvious that he and other Unitarians had a very Enlightened approach to viewing Christianity. A lot of what he wrote about was based on God being reasonable and endowing his peoples with a natural good sense of being. Channing used his own reasoning to dissect the problems, or peculiarities as he called them, that he saw with the Calvinist view of God. Essentially he viewed Calvinists as people who acted like slaves to God, people who only worshipped out of fear. To Channing, this was not the right way in which God should be viewed. Channing’s view was almost definitive of the Enlightenment in America, to him it was the goodness of people and their ability to rationalize thoughts that should be used to prove one’s faith to God.
October 2nd, 2007 at 12:09 pm
I do agree with Erica on the point that the Enlightenment lead to the support for the emancipation of slaves. People began to think and see everyone as an equal during the time of the Enlightenment. Although I do not believe many promises that were made by the American philosophes were kept. Promises of the Enlightenment were not kept because the philosophes lied, but because the philosophes were engaging in something they did not fully understand. The complexity of the society in which they were in pursuit went and goes far beyond the problems of slavery and gender equality. The Enlightenment did bring light to the oppressed masses in the world and America; in which questions were asked and reform movements took place.
October 2nd, 2007 at 12:35 pm
I agree with most of what is stated above. The enlightment did give hope to all of those whom were at the lower end of the social scale. Hope is most if not all these people really had. If this hope was lost what did this people really have? It was an excuse for hope among these people for progress not only socially among people. Also though among property goods and increase in standard of living. In a sort of trickle down effect.
October 2nd, 2007 at 12:51 pm
It was interesting to note the theme of reason in all of the readings for class. Channings statement about how God gave us all reason and let us each account for it as well. This statement clearly defines the Enlightment because it was all about using your own reason even when it came to interpereting the Bible. Channings stated that although God never contradicts himself within the passages of the Bible man, each with their own rational, has created many different interpritations of the Bible. Although this may seem counter intuitive, it did define the spirit of the Enlightenment.
October 2nd, 2007 at 12:56 pm
I found Channing’s description of God in “Likeness to God” quite interesting. He describes our relationship to God in a different light. God is perfection and he says that we are told to be more like God by others. Channing tells us that we share no common qualities with God. He describes God as an “all-communicating parent.” We are all made in his image and he (like a parent) guides us through life.
October 3rd, 2007 at 6:01 pm
I really agree with alot of what has already been said. I also think that the Philosophes and their enlightened thinking have made a big impact on religon not only during their time but right now also. I think alot of religons these day seem a bit less strict in their ways than back before the time of the enlightenment. I would also like to say that I completly agree with Erica about the enlightenment leading to the eventual emancipation of the slaves and women. You had to have the thoughts of reason in your mind at that time in our history in order to be against slavery and for women who were strongly segregated.
October 11th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
Enlightenment ideas certainly progressed society to the eventual emancipation of blacks, and much later women’s rights. However I think it is important to verify who exactly made up the early Enlightenment population. Jefferson and Franklin were arguably the founders of the Enlightenment in America, and were also the only two of the founding fathers who were not Presbyterian, Congregationalist, or any established sect of Christianity at the time. Channing would not have been able to write his essay “Likeness to God” prior to a religious practice which concurred with human’s ability to reason, and recognized a strong correlation between nature and the self, which became Unitarianism. A religion which spawned from enlightened Americans such as Jefferson and Franklin. However, knowing that Unitarianism remained largely constricted to the North East, more specifically Boston, I doubt enlightenment ideas were prevalent outside of the same area, for example the South, or the West, thus further contributing to the exponentially growing division between Southern Slave, and Northern Industrial economies.
October 15th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
The Enlightenment in America helped changed views from all American people. It’s interesting to read works from Ben Franklin and Tom Paine about how they viewed the importance of religion. The Enlightenment also shows the disagreement with many people and there attempt to liberate themselves. Channing showed many people a different side of God’s rational nature. As most people have commented, I agree that the Enlightenment helped emancipate slaves in the South. The Enlightenment made it possible for people to realize how important religion was to them.
October 19th, 2007 at 11:20 am
One can see that the founding fathers tried to make sure they do not mention a God from a particular religion. I think that the Founding Fathers felt that the people would not be ready not to have a God in the documents. If the founding fathers would have been able to see into the future, perhaps they would have acted differently. You can see how the country is split between a God and no God at all. If the Founding Fathers would have done a better job with keeping God out of the Government. We would have fewer problems today