Daisy’s Reviews > The Birth of the Modern Mind: The Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Centuries > Status Update

We see that the foundation of 18th-century optimistic natural philosophy and natural theology derived from two wonderfully confident conclusions that the 18th century inherited from the intellectual revolution of the 17th century. One, the belief that we possessed natural faculties ... . And two, we now knew that nature and human beings interacted to the benefit of humanity through the providential designs of God…. One of the most dramatic challenges to optimistic natural philosophy and natural theology came from David Hume, in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. This work challenges the fundamental premise of natural religion: that by inference from the phenomena of nature, we are obliged to infer a cause analogous to a human mind from the order and benevolence of nature, and that this cause is an intelligent, wise, omnipotent, and good God.
Philo points out in the Dialogues that any effort to base religion upon inference from experience has fatal flaws. It leaves religion merely probable at best, since knowledge from experience is not logically necessary but determined by ongoing experience. It proceeds on the basis of an extremely weak analogy, since the dissimilarities between the universe and the works of men are far more striking than any similarities

How can the evil produced by nature's general laws be reconciled with the providence of God? In his "Poem on the Lisbon Earthquake," Voltaire argued that evil is real and incomprehensible. Rather than attempt to understand God, we should devote our love and attention to suffering humanity. Rousseau responded that Voltaire has "betrayed God's providence" by doubting that this is the best of all possible worlds.

Enlightenment thinkers entered into fundamental conflict with the Roman Catholic Church in France. Most were deists and held that God spoke to mankind through nature alone, and that the priests had usurped and falsified God's voice in sectarian religions. Their argument with the Church centered on the critical issue of tolerance and censorship. It centered on differing histories and analyses of their societies. They debated over the status of traditional authority and supernatural claims. They argued over the priority of secular over religious concerns. Both the philosophes and the churchmen regarded each other as their deepest foe.

On Crimes and Punishments defined the criteria by which to judge institutions and their reform, and it set out a bold plan of necessary reform. All issues of government must be based on natural judgment and evidence, not tradition.
The only just criterion in matters of society is utility, "the greatest happiness of the greatest number."
Society must be understood as a social contract in which individuals give up the least necessary portion of their freedom in return for the greater happiness of safety and civil order. This conclusion teaches us the legitimate ends and limits of government: because individuals entered society to secure greater
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happiness, all authority is justified by that result alone. All law and power must justify itself by demonstrating that it secures the greatest happiness of the greatest number…. He seeks to eliminate theology from law, both in defining crimes (categories and severity) and in determining punishment. All punishment must be minimal and purposeful. To allow us to use our natural faculties to pursue happiness, we need a government of laws, not of men. Beccaria argues insistently against judicial discretion. The main function of the judicial system is to protect the accused. Equality before the law must be respected.

The legacy of the Enlightenment is to change a civilization.
... Its legacy is a free science; the primacy of a secular society; the ideal of religious toleration; the view that government exists in the service of citizens, not that citizens exist in the service of government.