capitalism

Enlightenment 147
post-Enlightenment era is often dated from the successful
resolution of the American Revolution in the 1780s—or,
alternatively, from the collapse of the French Revolution
and the rise to power of Napoleon Bonaparte in the 1790s.
Between Locke and Newton at the end of the 17th century
and the American and French Revolutions at the end of
the 18th century, there occurred 100 years of unprecedented
intellectual activity, social ferment, and political
and economic transformation.
Fundamental to the achievements of Locke and Newton
was confident application of reason to the physical world,
religion, human nature, and society. By the 1600s, modern
thinkers began to insist that perception and reason are the
sole means by which men could know the world—in contrast
to the premodern, medieval reliance on tradition, faith,
and revelation. These thinkers started their investigations
systematically from an analysis of nature, rather than the
supernatural, the characteristic starting point of premodern
thought. Enlightenment intellectuals stressed man’s autonomy
and his capacity for forming his own character—in
contrast to the premodern emphasis on dependence and
original sin. Most important, modern thinkers began to
emphasize the individual, arguing that the individual’s
mind is sovereign and that the individual is an end in
himself—in contrast to the premodernist, feudal subordination
of the individual to higher political, social, or religious
authorities. The achievements of Locke and Newton represent
the maturation of this new intellectual world.
Political and economic liberalism depend on confidence
that individuals can run their own lives. Political power and
economic freedom are thought to reside in individuals only
to the extent that they are thought to be capable of using
them wisely. This confidence in individuals rests on a confidence
in human reason—the means by which individuals
can come to know their world, plan their lives, and socially
interact.
If reason is a faculty of the individual, then individualism
becomes crucial to our understanding of ethics.
Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) and Two
Treatises of Government (1690) are landmark texts in the
modern history of individualism. Both link the human
capacity for reason to ethical individualism and its social
consequences: the prohibition of force against another’s
independent judgment or action, individual rights, political
equality, limiting the power of government, and religious
toleration.
Science and technology more obviously depend on confidence
in the power of reason. The scientific method is
a refined application of reason to understanding nature.
Trusting science cognitively is an act of confidence in reason,
as is trusting one’s life to its technological products. If
one emphasizes that reason is the faculty of understanding
nature, then the epistemology that emerges from it, when
systematically applied, yields science. Enlightenment
thinkers laid the foundations of all the major branches of
science. In mathematics, Newton and Gottfried Leibniz
independently developed the calculus, Newton developing
his version in 1666 and Leibniz publishing his in 1675.
The monumental publication of modern physics, Newton’s
Principia Mathematica, appeared in 1687. A century of
investigation led to the production of Carolus Linnaeus’s
Systema Naturae in 1735 and Species Plantarium in 1753,
jointly presenting a comprehensive biological taxonomy.
The publication of Antoine Lavoisier’s Traité Élémentaire
de Chimie (Treatise on Chemical Elements) in 1789, proved
to be the foundational text in the science of chemistry. The
rise of rational science also brought broader social
improvements, such as the lessening of superstition and, by
the 1780s, the end of persecutions of witchcraft.
Individualism and science are consequences of an epistemology
predicated on reason. Both applied systematically
have enormous consequences. Individualism when applied
to politics yielded a species of liberal democracy, whereby
the principle of individual freedom was wedded to the principle
of decentralizing political power. As the importance
of individualism rose in the modern world, feudalism
declined. Revolutions in England in the 1640s and in 1688
began this trend, and the modern political principles there
enunciated spread to America and France in the 18th
century, leading to liberal revolutions in 1776 and 1789.
Political reformers instituted bills of rights, constitutional
checks on abuses of government power, and the elimination
of torture in judicial proceedings.
As the feudal regimes weakened and were overthrown,
liberal individualist ideas were extended to all human beings.
Racism and sexism are obvious affronts to individualism and
went on the defensive as the 18th century progressed. During
the Enlightenment, antislavery societies were formed in
America in 1784, in England in 1787, and a year later in
France; in 1791 and 1792, Olympe de Gouges’s Declaration
of the Rights of Women and Mary Wollstonecraft’s A
Vindication of the Rights of Women, landmarks in the movement
for women’s liberty and equality, were published.
Free markets and capitalism are a reflection of individualism
in the marketplace. Capitalist economics is based on
the principle that individuals should be left free to make
their own decisions about production, consumption, and
trade. As individualism rose in the 18th century, feudal and
mercantilist institutions declined. With freer markets came
a theoretical grasp of the productive impact of the division
of labor and specialization and of the retarding impact of
protectionism and other restrictive regulations. Capturing
and extending those insights, Adam Smith’s Wealth of
Nations, published in 1776, is the landmark text in modern
economics. With the establishment of freer markets came
the elimination of guilds and many governmental monopolies,
and the development of modern corporations, banking,
and financial markets.