The Enlightenment and the Idea of Europe

Abstract

In the seventeenth and eighteenth century, some of the major intellectual developments took place that defined the self-understanding of modern Europe and gave to it the means to interpret its own heritage in a more secular age. This chapter looks at three ways of looking at what can be termed a cognitive shift in European consciousness leading to the emergence of a new cultural model. The first is the Enlightenment, including the Romanticism of the nineteenth century. The second is the idea of Europe itself. The third is the idea of modernity. The argument of the chapter is that it is the latter, the idea of modernity, that should be seen as the context in which to view the emergence of the idea of Europe and that the Enlightenment is also best understood as a movement that forms part of European modernity. From c.1800, it makes more sense to speak of Europe in terms of a model of modernity than in terms of a civilization, since the civilizational basis of Europe did not lead to a lasting political or cultural framework; it should rather be seen as providing orientations that were differently appropriated. The notion of modernity is better equipped to capture the contested nature of political community and divergent interpretations of the European heritage. This is because the idea of modernity signals a greater recognition of conflicting interpretations of the world than does the idea of a European civilization, however pluralized it may be understood. The cultural model of modernity was shaped by the ideas of both the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the romanticism of the nineteenth century.