The Age of Reason as the Inception of Personal Preference and Choice

When we go to the supermarket to buy milk, we have a choice of some five brands, three sizes, and four degrees of fat concentration. When engaging in small talk to a new person we meet, it is most appropriate to ask him his hobbies, the activities he chooses to engage in. Society's preoccupation with personal preference and choice, while it has a long history, has one of its most fundamental roots in the Age of Reason. It was in the eighteenth century's Enlightenment period that a flurry of ideas emerged that defended freedom of choice as a natural right of men, an important change in humankind's view on life. These ideas included the scientific method and its discoveries. Its power in explaining the world as well as creating technological progress caused a shift in human thought from believing in dogma and superstition that tended to be unopen to dissent to developing personal viewpoints or mere hypotheses that did not claim much authority or certainty. Related to this was an intellectual war waged on Christianity, which dominated peoples' lives in the European continent with its resrictive and authoritarian character. Finally, the Age of Reason marked the emergence of the ideas of free government and free markets. All these ideas had a strong impact in establishing freedom of choice as a natural right.

Before the Age of Reason, Christianity could claim much authority both in explaining the natural world and in explaining the goal and purpose of our lives. Besides doctrine, superstitions were most often used to explain the world and its events. The effect of science would be to create a new authority in explaining the world and creating rules on how life ought to be lived. While scientific ideas do not directly prescribe or encourage personal preference and choice (quite on the contrary), it was precisely its failure to prescribe anything regarding what humans should want that lead to the spread of choice in so many spheres of our lives.

An important reason why personal choice had little relevance prior to the Age of Reason was the power of the church and its doctrine. An important aspect of religion at the time was the belief that man was born in sin. The purpose of life consisted of being forgiven for one's sins by repenting and suffering. The alternative was eternal suffering without a chance of being forgiven. Christianity taught men to seek happiness and enjoyment not in the present life, but in the afterlife. Seeking pleasure was generally regarded as immoral.

Another reason was the monopoly that superstitions had in explaining the world. Some superstitions led to major world events such as witch trials. The majority of them were more mundane, but just as discouraging of critical thought and inquiry. For example, there was no census in earlier centuries in Europe because of the superstition that it was evil to count human souls (Manuel, 9). Contemplation of how the world works was regarded as evil because the external world could only be a source of sin (Manuel, 26). This left little room for critical thought and hence individual viewpoints.

One way in which science asserted its influence was through technology. By the eighteenth century, new technologies were invented rapidly enough that it was clear to many that society was progressing. Earlier centuries had already seen impressive progress in ship building and navigational equipment. The Age of Reason itself coincided with the industrial revolution that brought inventions such as the spinning jenny and the steam engine, as well as the agricultural revolution, which coincided with developments such as improved plows, seed drills, and the technique of crop rotation.

A second way consisted of scientific discoveries. The number of important discoveries that contradicted earlier beliefs and that were more consistent with experience gave science a greater degree of respect and authority. Global navigation during earlier centuries had already proved that the earth was round rather than flat. Another major discovery whose truth could not be denied for long was that the earth circles around the sun instead of the other way around. Perhaps most important was Newton's work, which played a prominent role in spreading the view that the world was purely mechanical, uninfluenced by supernatural powers or wills.

A third way in which scientific thought gained power was through widespread agreement regarding its content. What one scientist discovered and claimed to be true could be contradicted by another scientist, but not for long. As long as reason and candid observation were used to come to conclusions it would mostly be the same conclusions that different scientists would come to. The same could not be said for either religious or superstitious techniques for explaining the world. Ecclesiastic authorities had numerous disagreements in which no one could convince the other. In addition, the bible itself contained many contradictions that intellectuals found difficult to reconcile.

A fourth way consisted of the way in which scientific thinkers sought to encompass moral philosophy into the body of scientific knowledge. This attitude rendered religions as unneeded even in the sphere of ethics and morality. French philosopher Claude Helvetius exemplified this viewpoint when he stated "I believed that morals should be treated like all other sciences, and that one should arrive at a moral principle as one proceeds with an experiment in physics" (Manuel, 39).

Because science and Christianity contradicted each other's tenets and because ecclesiastic authorities had traditionally used imprisonment and torture to deal with those who disagreed, a major conflict arose. Many philosophers, including the prominent Voltaire, criticized religions very directly. Voltaire showed that religions contradicted themselves both in their doctrine and in their actions, which included many unjust wars and persecutions. Another important aspect for criticism was Christianity's intolerant attitude towards enjoyment of life. As the war went on and religious ideas became less convincing, churches had to rely more and more on verbal defense and less on physical force. An old ideological authority became gradually replaced with a new one, which was a lack of one, which due to its intolerance of authority may be regarded as an authority itself.

This new authority that fought against authority was expressed in many ways, of which the discussion of the economic and political ways is postponed for later. In the social sphere, John Locke made one of the most powerful arguments with his idea of the blank slate. Scientific observation is consistent with the notion that all we are is what society has taught us to be. The justification for any authoritarian rules imposed on us would be to point to our intrinsic nature which makes these rules necessary. If we are only the product of our social environment, then no authoritarian or oppressive idea is very convincing because it would seem that the real solution is to create a more benign environment for us.

An important new paradigm for arriving at truth that was particularly effective in discrediting superstitious thought was Francis Bacon's inductive method of reasoning. In this method, conclusions are drawn based on patterns and statistics observed in the world. Specifically, it advocates the technique of conducting experiments in order to arrive at and verify truths. Anything beyond what can be perceived in nature was part of the supernatural realm, and therefore pure speculation without any rational basis. A subtle and crucial part of this technique lay in the requirement that the hypothesis under test should not come before the observation, but after. This was in direct contradiction of the way superstitions could be confirmed, since given a superstition, it is often possible to find examples in real life that confirm it.

The overall effect of scientific ideas was to encourage individual thought. According to science, it was by critical thought that people could hope to find truth. As Diderot wrote in the Encyclopedia, "We think that the greatest service to be done to men is to teach them to use their reason, only to hold for truth what they have verified and proved" (Manuel, 28). Thus, science encouraged critical thinking in all facets of life, leading to a greater diversity of opinion on issues than ever before.

The overall effect of the weakening of religious dogma was an increased pursuit of enjoyment in life. This made the Age of Reason the precursor of romanticism, which emphasized romantic love over heaven as a worthwhile pursuit in life. While earlier literature focused more on happiness in the afterlife, the eighteenth century saw a high increase in stories that depicted man's achievement of happiness here on earth (Manuel, 37). The emphasis on enjoying what we do here on earth was a crucial one in spreading the idea that we all should seek fulfillment according to what we individually choose and prefer rather than following a prescribed routine that will one day get us to heaven.

The importance of the political and economic ideas during the Age of Reason is that they were actually put into practice. Regarding governmental organization, Montesqieu argued in On the Spirit of the Laws, that there was no ideal government for every nation, but that for each nation an individual type of government would be suitable. The main idea in his argument is that there should be choice, but not choice in which one option is tyranny. To reduce such a possibility he suggested a separation of powers that would soon be put into practice in the United States. The United States's declaration of independence shows a good example of how important individual choice had become because it explicitly mentions the right to pursue happiness as one of its motives.

Perhaps even more significant was Adam Smith's exposition of the free market. Typically the majority of the time that humans are awake has and still is spent working or conducting business in some way. Thus, the economic system within which we live determines much of how we live. Smith's argument that a regulated, command-driven economy was less efficient than one that allows everyone to do the business they choose, combined with the effectiveness with which it worked in practice, led to the adoption of his laissez-faire system by many states. It is hard to imagine an economic theory that could give people more choice in what work they should be doing, where, and for whom.

The Age of Reason instigated great change in our views of life. The tradition and influence of dogmatic and superstitious ways of thinking had been quite strong and change would necessarily be slow and gradual. Despite this, the power of scientific thought showed an alternative, which was to doubt everything we wanted to doubt. If doubt was allowable, then the choice of what to think was infinite. During this age of obedience and repression, a major trend became to view as the aim of life to find it for ourselves, to do what we enjoy and makes us happy. This meant achieving greater freedom of choice in our social, political, as well as economic environments.

King, Margaret L. Western Civilization: A Social and Cultural History. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2000.

Manuel, Frank E. The Age of Reason. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1951.

Thackeray, Frank W., and John E. Findling. Events that Change the World in the Eighteenth Century. Westport and London: The Greenwood Press, 1998.