Developments and Legacy of Enlightenment

Developments and Legacy of the Enlightenment

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The Enlightenment was far more than a revolution in philosophy and science — it reshaped nearly every dimension of European life, from how societies organised their economies and legal systems to how they treated women, children, and workers, and even how they composed music. This wide-ranging transformation did not stop at Europe’s shores: it directly inspired the American Revolution and the French Revolution, reshaped the very idea of monarchy through the phenomenon of Enlightened Absolutism, and left behind a legacy — both constructive and cautionary — that continues to shape the modern world. This article traces these diverse developments across economics, law, industry, women’s rights, humanitarianism, and music, before examining the Enlightenment’s complex political legacy: its influence on enlightened despots, its darker undercurrent of pseudo-scientific frauds, its role in birthing two of history’s most consequential revolutions, and its enduring long-term impact on Western civilisation.

Developments in Economics, Law, Industrialisation, Women’s Rights, and Music

The Enlightenment was not limited to innovations in philosophy, literature, mathematics, and science; across Europe, it encompassed new thought and developments in a wide variety of other academic, artistic, and social fields. Among the most notable of these achievements were developments in economics, law, industrial technology, women’s rights, humanitarianism, and music.

Economics

• A common complaint among 18th-century European intellectuals was that politics was too closely tied to economics.
  • Serfdom, which bound peasants to disadvantageous feudal contracts, remained prevalent, as did the use of tradition and class hierarchy to determine occupations.
• Probably the most disadvantageous economic development of the era was mercantilism — a much-touted system under which governments closely monitored their import-to-export ratio to maintain a favourable balance of trade, exercising an extraordinary degree of control over their economies in the process.
• The impetus for change arrived when French economist François Quesnay (1694–1774) argued, in his Tableau Économique (1758), that a natural order of trade, with limited government intervention, would be far more beneficial to both society and the individual.
  • He became the centre of a group of scholars and publicists who styled themselves “the economists,” known to history as the Physiocrats.
  • “Laissez-faire” (“hands-off”) became the slogan of this new economic liberty espoused by Quesnay and his disciples.
• This idea was subsequently elaborated upon and popularised by Scottish economist Adam Smith (1723–1790) in his landmark work, The Wealth of Nations (1776), which established the nature of economics through three laws:
  1. People work more productively when motivated by self-interest.
  2. Competition leads to a balanced marketplace.
  3. True supply and demand are a product of free trade.
• Smith’s advocacy of this laissez-faire economics was revolutionary at the time — he insisted that individuals would be most prosperous when least burdened by trade regulation, since a free system would allow the economy’s “invisible hand” to operate.
  • Smith’s ideas in The Wealth of Nations had an enormous influence on the Western world, establishing economics as a science; numerous modern nations, most notably the United States, implemented his policies and benefited from considerable economic growth.

Law

• The state of European law in the 18th century was chaotic — laws were not always written down, and court rulings and sentences were often arbitrary and unfair.
  • Aristocratic privilege and religious affiliation provided safeguards against prosecution, while speaking out against either institution was a near-certain invitation to prosecution.
• During the Enlightenment, Italian scholar Cesare Beccaria (1738–1794) emerged as a prominent voice for legal reform, questioning in his treatise On Crimes and Punishments (1764) how such atrocious legal unfairness and cruelty could be overlooked in an ostensibly “enlightened” age.
  • Beccaria demanded that firm legal codes be established based on reason rather than arbitrary decision, that trials be open to the public to ensure fairness, and that punishments for guilt be standardised and never involve torture.
  • His work proved highly influential, and he lived to see a number of European countries adopt his ideas.
• The French satirist Voltaire also contributed to the fight for legal reform — though using a caustic, satirical voice rather than a scholarly one to highlight injustices.

The Industrial Revolution

• The Industrial Revolution in the Western world in the late 1800s had its roots in Enlightenment-era Europe. Beginning in the mid-1700s, industrialisation truly accelerated in 1769, when Scottish inventor James Watt (1736–1819) substantially improved the steam engine, enabling the development of a primitive factory system.
  • Afterward, Europe saw the number of industry-related patents increase tenfold before 1800.
• The industrial boom had several positive effects: it attracted capitalist investors, who in turn precipitated further growth; it created jobs providing greater stability for families; and, as a result, it prompted population growth.
• Industrialisation, however, was not without its downsides.
  • When factories first opened, there was no industrial regulation in place; factory smokestacks polluted the European landscape so severely that some regions have yet to fully recover.
  • Poor, willing workers quickly found themselves working gruelling eighteen-hour workdays, receiving unfair wages, and facing brutal disciplinary measures.
  • With no age restrictions on work, it was frequently young children who had to endure such conditions.
  • When workers attempted to organise early labour unions, they were met with death threats and other forms of intimidation — until such unions eventually grew large and well-organised enough to command respect, workers had little choice but to tolerate this mistreatment.

Women’s Rights

• The progressive thought of the Enlightenment also brought calls for greater women’s rights and equality.
  • Olympe de Gouges, a writer and feminist activist in late-18th-century France, solidified this movement with her 1791 Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen — a deliberate counterpart to the French Revolution’s 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
  • Gouges’s declaration called for equal rights and liberty for women, including greater control over marriage.

Humanitarianism

• The push for women’s rights was emblematic of the broader changes taking place within European society during the Enlightenment.
  • Beyond heightened respect for women, the era also marked the beginning of the end for such atrocious practices as slavery and witch burning.
  • Children, previously treated essentially as miniature adults, began to enjoy greater contact and affection with their parents — a shift owing much to Rousseau’s Emile and his other Romantic writings.
  • Jews, long ignored or vilified across much of Europe, began to receive a warmer welcome as well.

Music

• Given that the Enlightenment had already reinvented nearly every other field of human endeavour, it is little surprise that the era also produced some of Western music’s most revered composers.
  • Working during the early Classical period of the late 1700s, these composers synthesised styles and influences across a wide range of sacred and secular genres.
• Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) of Germany quickly built a reputation as a master organist, but was also an enormously prolific composer — a fact not fully appreciated until after his death. His major works spanned both church and secular purposes.
• George Frideric Handel (1685–1759), by contrast, found enormous fame as a composer during his own lifetime. Born in Germany but working primarily in England, Handel was a celebrated court composer who won numerous commissions and wrote hugely popular operas.
• The major figure in music at the tail end of the Enlightenment was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), who ushered in the Classical era.
  • A child prodigy of nearly unfathomable gifts, Mozart was composing music by age six, touring Europe by eight, and writing full-length operas by twelve.

Legacy of the Enlightenment

Enlightened Absolutism

• In the later years of the Enlightenment, absolute monarchs in several European countries adopted some of the ideas of Enlightenment political philosophers.
  • However, although some changes and reforms were implemented, most of these rulers did not fundamentally change absolutist rule.
• Enlightened absolutism (also called benevolent despotism or enlightened despotism) is a form of absolute monarchy or despotism inspired by the Enlightenment.
  • Enlightened monarchs particularly embraced its emphasis on rationality, tending to allow religious toleration, freedom of speech and the press, and the right to hold private property.
  • Most also fostered the arts, sciences, and education.

Russia: Catherine the Great

• In Russia, Empress Catherine the Great, a subscriber to the ideas of Beccaria and de Gouges, decried torture while greatly improving education, health care, and women’s rights, and clarifying the rights of the nobility.
  • She also insisted that the Russian Orthodox Church become more tolerant of outsiders.
  • However, she continued to imprison many of her opponents, and maintained censorship and serfdom.

Austria: Maria-Theresa and Joseph II

• In Austria, monarchs Maria-Theresa and Joseph II worked to end the mistreatment of peasants by abolishing serfdom, and also promoted individual rights, education, and religious tolerance.
  • Joseph proved over-enthusiastic, announcing so many reforms with so little popular support that his regime became a “comedy of errors” — revolts broke out, and all his programmes were ultimately reversed.

Prussia: Frederick the Great

• An admirer of Voltaire, Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, supported the arts and education, reformed the justice system, improved agriculture, and created a written legal code.
  • However, although these reforms strengthened and streamlined the Prussian state, the tax burden continued to fall disproportionately on peasants and commoners.
• There was often a real difference between the “enlightenment” of a ruler personally, versus that of his or her regime.
  • Frederick the Great, who ruled Prussia from 1740 to 1786, had been tutored in the ideas of the French Enlightenment in his youth and maintained those ideas in his private life as an adult, but in many ways was unable or unwilling to effect enlightened reforms in practice. Enlightened absolutism was itself the theme of an essay written by Frederick the Great, defending this system of government.
  • Frederick was an enthusiast for French ideas — he ridiculed German culture and was largely unaware of the remarkable intellectual advances Germany was itself undergoing at the time.
  • Voltaire, who had been imprisoned and maltreated by the French government, eagerly accepted Frederick’s invitation to live at his palace, believing that enlightened monarchy was the only realistic path for society’s advancement.
  • Frederick himself explained: “My principal occupation is to combat ignorance and prejudice … to enlighten minds, cultivate morality, and to make people as happy as it suits human nature, and as the means at my disposal permit.”

Portugal: Marquis of Pombal

• Other rulers, such as the Marquis of Pombal, Prime Minister of Portugal, used the Enlightenment not only to achieve genuine reforms but also to enhance autocracy, crush opposition, suppress criticism, further colonial economic exploitation, and consolidate personal control and profit.

Spain: Charles III

• Spain maintained a great deal of censorship during the early Enlightenment, but when Charles III ascended the throne in 1759, he implemented a number of significant reforms.
  • During his tenure, Charles III weakened the influence of the Church, enabled land ownership for the poor, and vastly improved transportation routes.

Enlightenment-Era Frauds

• Not all the aftereffects of the Enlightenment were productive.
  • Despite genuine advances in literacy, thought, and intellectual discussion, middle- and upper-class citizens often mistakenly carried this new open-mindedness to an excessive degree — manifesting, in many cases, as pure gullibility, as supposedly well-educated Europeans fell prey to “intellectual” schemes and frauds resting on nothing more than superstition and clever speech.
• During the 18th century, for instance, self-styled phrenologists convinced many Europeans that a person’s character could be analysed through the study of the contours of their skull.
  • Similarly, the quack field of physiognomy claimed to predict psychological characteristics — such as a predisposition to violence — by analysing facial features or body structure.
  • Similar medical hoaxes were common throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.
• Although many of these misguided Enlightenment-era practitioners genuinely believed their methods could work, many others were charlatans who knew exactly what they were doing.
  • The world was wide-eyed and eager for new knowledge, but as yet lacked the fact-checking capabilities needed to separate real discoveries from pure deception.

The American Revolution

• Across the Atlantic, the Enlightenment had a profound impact on the English colonies in America, and ultimately on the infant nation of the United States.
• The colonial city of Philadelphia emerged as a chic intellectual hub of American life, strongly influenced by European thought.
  • Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) was the consummate philosophe: a brilliant diplomat, journalist, and scientist who travelled back and forth between Europe and America, acting as a conduit of ideas between the two continents.
    • He played a pivotal role in the American Revolution, which began in 1775, and in the subsequent establishment of a democratic government under the Thomas Jefferson-penned Declaration of Independence (1776).
• The political writer Thomas Paine (1737–1809) also brought Enlightenment ideas to bear on the American Revolution.
  • An Englishman who immigrated to America, Paine was inspired by his adopted country and wrote the influential political pamphlet Common Sense (1776), which encouraged the secession of the colonies from England.
  • Later in life, Paine’s religious views and caustic demeanour alienated him from much of the public, and he died in somewhat ill repute.
• In many ways, the new United States was itself the Enlightenment in practice, for its leaders could actually implement many of the ideas that European philosophers could only theorise about.
  • Americans were exposed to, and contributed to, the leading works of science, law, politics, and social order, yet lacked the entrenched traditions and conservatism that impeded the European countries from truly changing their ways.
• Indeed, the Declaration of Independence borrows heavily from Enlightenment themes — even taking passages from Locke and Rousseau — while the U.S. Constitution implements almost verbatim Locke’s and Montesquieu’s ideas on the separation of powers.
  • America was founded as a deist country, giving credit to some manner of natural God while allowing diverse religious expression, and it continued along the social and industrial lines that had begun in Europe.

The French Revolution

• Just a decade after the revolution in America, France followed suit with the French Revolution, which began in 1789.
  • Empowered by the political philosophies of the Enlightenment, the French citizenry overthrew the monarchy of Louis XVI and established a representative government directly inspired by Enlightenment thought.
• This harmonious arrangement, however, soon fell prey to internal dissent, and leadership changed hands repeatedly over the years that followed.
  • The instability reached a violent climax with the ascent of Maximilien Robespierre, an extremist who plunged the revolution into the so-called Reign of Terror (1793–1794), beheading more than 15,000 suspected enemies and dissenters at the guillotine.
• Distraught Frenchmen and other Europeans reacted to the tyranny of the Reign of Terror — and to the subsequent oppressive governments in France — by placing the blame squarely on the Enlightenment itself.
  • These critics claimed that the Enlightenment’s attacks on tradition and its questioning of established norms would always inevitably lead to instability.
  • Many critics among the nobility saw the violence of the Reign of Terror as proof positive that the masses, however “enlightened,” could never be trusted to govern themselves in an orderly fashion.
• Indeed, most historians agree that the French Revolution effectively marked the end of the Enlightenment.
  • France itself reacted against the violence of the revolution by reverting to a military dictatorship under Napoleon, which lasted for fifteen years.

Long-Term Influence

• Despite the brutalities of the French Revolution and the lingering resentment towards many of the philosophes, the Enlightenment had an indisputably positive effect on the Western world.
  • Scientific advances laid an indestructible foundation for modern thought, while political and other philosophies questioned and ultimately undermined oppressive, centuries-old traditions across Europe.
• After several transitional decades of instability, nearly everyone in Europe — along with an entire population in the United States — emerged from the Enlightenment in a better position.
  • The movement resulted in greater freedom, greater opportunity, and generally more humane treatment for individuals across society.
• Although the world still had — and arguably still has — a long way to go, the Enlightenment can reasonably be said to mark the first time that Western civilisation truly began to become civilised.

Conclusion

The Enlightenment’s legacy extended far beyond its famous philosophers and scientists — it transformed the very architecture of European economic thought through Adam Smith’s laissez-faire principles, reshaped legal systems through Beccaria’s demand for rational, humane justice, powered the Industrial Revolution, and expanded the moral circle of European society to include women, children, and religious minorities. At the same time, its legacy was genuinely mixed: it inspired both the reforming impulses of Enlightened Absolutism and its outright abuses, gave rise to pseudo-scientific frauds that exploited the era’s own intellectual optimism, and ultimately produced two of history’s most consequential political upheavals — the American and French Revolutions — the latter of which, through the Reign of Terror, also came to symbolise the movement’s own potential excesses and contradictions. Yet for all its complications, the Enlightenment’s long-term legacy remains overwhelmingly positive: it laid the intellectual foundations of modern science, law, economics, and human rights, marking, in a very real sense, the beginning of the modern, “civilised” world.