The Enlightenment and Religion: Disenchantment and Secularization
The Enlightenment and Religion
Introduction: The Disenchantment of the World
The Weberian expression “disenchantment of the world” seems particularly appropriate to describe the goal pursued by the Enlightenment. Religious tradition, presented as the ultimate source of legitimacy for virtually everything, sparked a radical debate during the Enlightenment. The French Enlightenment, in particular, reached unprecedented levels of radicalism in Western culture, engaging in an intense debate against the Christian tradition, leading the 18th century to be called the anti-Christian century.
Why did the French Enlightenment engage in such a radical battle?
The immediate cause lies in the legitimacy that religious tradition provided to values associated with the old regime, hindering the spread of Enlightenment principles. However, to fully address this issue, we must delve deeper into Christianity’s role in the Western world’s evolution. Following the collapse of ancient culture, the Church took on not only the religious and moral education of Western man but also filled the cultural vacuum left by the ancient world. This created a difficult confrontation with modern culture, as the Church had to gradually relinquish control over various fields of human activity demanding autonomy and shed its early ecclesiastical guardianship.
With the advent of modern culture, a process of secularization began, initially affecting external aspects like ownership, political activity, science, and education. Inevitably, this process impacted consciousness itself. Protestantism adapted more easily to the challenges posed by modern culture to Christianity. In contrast, the Catholic world tended to retreat into itself, like a fortress, to confront the new situation.
All major representatives of the French Enlightenment, including the more nuanced Rousseau, were hostile or at least critical of Christianity. Furthermore, the division within Christianity caused by the Reformation and the opening to new countries and continents—facilitating contact with people who had no specific religion or possessed a different moral framework, even atheism, like China—challenged the universal validity of Christian religion and morals.
While the defense of religion had previously relied on force, doctrinal intransigence, or even torture (Inquisition), a new requirement emerged: treating different ways of thinking or believing with tolerance. The representatives of the Enlightenment were hostile to religion because it legitimized the values they fought against, hindering the spread of Enlightenment principles of human autonomy and the secularization of culture (science, arts, etc.). Their positions ranged from deism to atheism, including Rousseau’s theism. In other words, they encompassed natural religion in various forms (deism and theism) as well as atheism.
Atheism
D’Alembert and Diderot, who defined deism as the belief of someone who hasn’t lived long enough or learned enough to be an atheist, initially embraced deism but later became atheistic materialists. Most other Encyclopedists, including D’Holbach, Helvétius, La Mettrie, Sade, and Condillac, also transitioned from deism to materialistic atheism. This shift towards materialism became more pronounced in the latter half of the century. The most powerful expression of this materialism is D’Holbach’s “System of Nature” from 1770. D’Holbach argues:
- God is redundant in a materialistic and mechanistic conception of the world because a single, necessary principle is sufficient to explain it: understanding the efficient causes of phenomena. Efficient causes are understood as mechanical reasons (an event we call a cause leads to the appearance of another event we call an effect), and gravity is the efficient cause of the fall of heavy objects. These relationships or laws can be mathematized (expressed in mathematical language). There is no room for a divine, final cause. This doctrine is called materialistic atheism because God is not needed and the explanatory principle lies within matter itself.
- In addition to being superfluous, God is also inimical to human happiness and progress. Faith in God, instead of making people happy, increases their anxiety and fear. For Meslier, religions are nothing more than errors, illusions, and lies.
They were unaware of the warning Kant would later make in the “Critique of Pure Reason”: if it was impossible to find clear demonstrations of God’s existence, it was equally impossible to prove otherwise.
Furthermore, the division within Christianity caused by the Reformation and the opening to new countries and continents—facilitating contact with people who had no specific religion or possessed a different, even atheistic, moral framework, like China—challenged the universal validity of Christian religion and morals. While the defense of religion had previously relied on force, doctrinal intransigence, or even torture (Inquisition), a new requirement emerged: treating different ways of thinking or believing with tolerance. The representatives of the Enlightenment were hostile to religion because it legitimized the values they fought against, hindering the spread of Enlightenment principles of human autonomy and the secularization of culture (science, arts, etc.). Their positions ranged from deism to atheism, including Rousseau’s theism. In other words, they encompassed natural religion in various forms (deism and theism) as well as atheism.
Atheism
D’Alembert and Diderot, who defined a deist as someone who hasn’t lived long enough or learned enough to be an atheist, initially embraced deism but later became atheistic materialists. Most other Encyclopedists, including D’Holbach, Helvétius, La Mettrie, Sade, and Condillac, also transitioned from deism to materialistic atheism. This shift towards materialism became more pronounced in the latter half of the century. The most powerful expression of this materialism is D’Holbach’s “System of Nature” from 1770. D’Holbach argues:
- God is superfluous in a materialistic and mechanistic conception of the world because a single, necessary principle is sufficient to explain it: understanding the efficient causes of phenomena. Efficient causes are understood as mechanical reasons (an event we call a cause leads to the appearance of another event we call an effect), and gravity is the efficient cause of the fall of heavy objects. These relationships or laws can be mathematized (expressed in mathematical language). There is no room for a divine, final cause. This doctrine is called materialistic atheism because God is not needed and the explanatory principle lies within matter itself.
- In addition to being superfluous, God is also inimical to human happiness and progress. Faith in God, instead of making people happy, increases their anxiety and fear. For Meslier, religions are nothing more than errors, illusions, and lies.
They were unaware of the warning Kant would later make in the “Critique of Pure Reason”: if it was impossible to find clear demonstrations of God’s existence, it was equally impossible to prove otherwise.