The Enlightenment

Another name for Enlightenment is the “age of reason”. There are actually two different concepts that are thought of through the enlightenment: religious or spiritual enlightenment and secular or intellectual enlightenment. There are a few people in the book that help to prove the philosophy of enlightenment are John Locke, Giambattista Vico, and David Hume.

The first is John Locke who was an English philosopher during the enlightenment. Locke’s ideas were mainly that the mind was a blank slate, and that the only way to define one is through consciousness. In Locke’s mind we construct the world around us through languages (323).

Giambattista Vico expressed much of his feelings through his writings while writing about human thought, language, and culture. He was both a humanist and he also had pedagogic concerns. The reason for Vico’s thinking is because of the assertion he has from the past philologists.

David Hume was an empiricist like John Locke and George Berkeley. Hume also has a skeptical view of aesthetic standards. Hume also believes the religious bigotry which happens to certain works of art. He believes that the poet must be the one that looks at things to see how they really are.