Secondly, I don't see how the fact that a significant population is for all intents and purposes uneducated on these values can matter. In the 18th century (or 19th century for that matter), universal education was nonexistent, yet those are commonly associated with the Enlightenment. Surely, today's near universal levels of education in rich societies compares very favorably? -- $E(X_t|F_s) = X_s,\quad t > s$
1) World view: The Enlightenment was primarily a change in world view which came to see and explain the world in naturalistic terms rather than in religious terms. It incorporated the humanistic emphasis of the renaissance, "man is the measure of all things." with a newly found confidence in the ability of the human mind to understand the workings of the natural world.
The development of science from Copernicus to Newton provided the foundation for this shift. Voltaire, among others, assimilated an understanding of Newton and an appreciation of his impact while cooling his heels in England in the early part of the 18th century. Locke provided a rationale for governmental authority separate from Divine Right, which had been the prevailing view. This was a practical necessity in England after the beheading of Charles I.
The Enlightenment Project, so called, came to include replacing all arguments from authority and all explanations involving Divine Intervention with naturalistic ones. This was Adam Smith's great contribution. He developed a comprehensive account of moral and economic organization and behavior that was independent of any Divine Supervision. These were set forth most notably in The Theory of the Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations Smith did for the social sciences what Newton had done for physics.
In all spheres of knowledge men sought to determine the Laws of Nature. The nature of God changed from that of a theistic divinity to which one prayed directly to a deistic divinity who, if he really existed, had created, or was embodied in, the Laws of Nature. This was known as The Clockwork Universe. God created it, wound it up and let it go. He retired from the world.
It came to be assumed, among the educated, that The Laws of Nature could be studied and apprehended by man. This was a profound change from a world view in which God was the immediate author of all things and man was assumed to be incapable of understanding his inscrutable ways. But this process was hesitant and proceeded over a long period of time.
2) Reason and History. The worship of reason during the French Revolution became infamous. Most of the Philosophers sensed the inadequacy of reason alone as a guide to man in society. In their heart of hearts they might have believed that there was no God, but Hume, Diderot and others refused to publish some of their best works during their lifetimes: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion in Hume's case and Le neveu de Rameau in Diderot's case.
Reason showed them the absurdities of religion and led them to doubt the existence of God, but they had little confidence that they had an adequate replacement. They could see that an omnipotent, omniscent and omnibenificent deity was an absurdity, given the state of the world, but they had no satisfactory replacement. It was as though God had absconded during the night, leaving mankind in the lurch. Hume said of his work: "It is true, but men cannot live by it."
Hume turned from philosophy to the study of history, economics and politics. They came to study useful arts and sciences and to compile these into Diderot's Encyclopédie and in England the Encyclopedia Britanica. Experience had to supplement abstract reason. As Priestly said: "Without history the advantages of our rational nature must have been rated very low." Gibbon, Hume, Voltaire, Montesquieu and Herder all produced histories. These histories were written to teach by example. They sought to see through history the universal nature of man.
Per Becker, what they really did was to create a new religion. "The essential articles of the religion of the Enlightenment may be stated thus: (1) man is not natively depraved; (2) the end of life is life itself, the good life on earth instead of the beatific life after death; (3) man is capable, guided solely by the light of reason and experience, of perfecting the good life on earth; and (4) the first and essential condition of the good life on earth is the freeing of men's minds from the bonds of ignorance and superstition and their bodies from the arbitrary oppression of the constituted social authorities.
3) The uses of posterity: The philosophers saw the future as a better world they were building and they looked to posterity for justification for their actions. They sought to reclaim the world from the misery into which they saw Christianity as having sent it. "For the love of God they substituted the love of humanity; for the vicarious atonement the perfectibility of man through his own efforts; and for the hope of immortality in another world the hope of living in the memory of future generations."
This is but a poor Cliff Notes of Becker's work and already too long. The great virtue of Becker is his brevity, 168 pages. The Heavenly City was written in 1932 and there are newer works available, notably by Peter Gay. But I believe Becker remains the best introduction to the subject. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
Yet upon reading your comment, I do not feel as if the current world is leaving Reason behind, which was my impression from some of the comments in this diary.
Technologically and scientifically, the world is essentially the same, only with less philosophy and more practical application.
The importance of education remains both high and widely recognized to be high. Throughout the world everybody, especially the poor, sees education as key to success.
There are comparatively few societies left around the world in which social status is rigidly based on blood or caste, as opposed to merely wealth.
It's true that religion remains a formidable motive force in the world, as it always has been. However, the number of nonbelievers remains significant and shows no sign of actually vanishing. This is a net "win" for Enlightenment given how it started.
It's easy to lose sight of the big picture though, from the bleatings of the media, which likes to scare us with terrorism, war with enemy empires, and assorted religious issues of the day. So I'm still unconvinced that we have entered a post-Enlightenment world.
(*) somewhat off-topic, but you might find this interesting if you don't know it already: Newton's contribution was, in various ways, a dead end for physics. Without taking anything away from his achievements, his ideas about forces are in most cases unworkable, and must be replaced by ideas about fields and least energy, which were actually proposed as alternatives by thinkers on the continent. -- $E(X_t|F_s) = X_s,\quad t > s$
There is or was a tag line: "Our knowledge has exceeded our wisdom." Gains in technical knowledge, unless classified, are described in technical journals and or patent applications and thereby become relatively permanent in nature. Many can see and apply the advances. With the social sciences and the humanities is is very different.
There have been advances in the social sciences, but they have not been adopted on the basis of their usefulness to society at large, but rather on the basis of their utility to those occupying the seats of power. Worse, they often are no more accessible to the average citizen than are the findings of the hard sciences.
One of the great weaknesses of Enlightenment thought which persisted into the Enlightenment's child, Modernity, is the over valuation of the importance and power of reason. This is not to diminish the importance of reason, but to put it into perspective against the scope of the problem facing those of us who are awake.
Reason has so little scope in the effective decisions of so many people that the consequences are, or should be, frightening. Consider Germany in 1932 or Russia in 1918. There were people who understood what was happening and tried to do what they could to bring about a good outcome. They were like leaves in a hurricane. So often, especially in times of crisis, society at large is more like a vast ocean of unreason. I am reminded of the prayer from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer: "Lord, thy ocean is so vast and my boat is so small!" Our reason is like a boat upon the ocean, but one that was not designed for ocean going voyages. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
