This is not a comprehensive article about what enlightenment is. I actually question what the enlightened state might be, and might not be, or in what context one might view it. For too long we have accepted a general definition of enlightenment as it was traditionally passed on. When one starts to ask questions, it becomes much more complicated, but also more interesting. I think it is high time to start a discussion of what enlightenment really is.

What Is Enlightenment

Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology

The logic of leviathan

Pacific Century: The Emergence of Modern Pacific Asia

China in Early Enlightenment Political Thought

This article addresses questions concerning Enlightenment universalism and cultural diversity by focusing on the views of China held by Pierre Bayle and the Baron de Montesquieu. In contrast to the characterizations of Enlightenment thought as insufficiently attentive to cultural diversity and as providing pretexts for imposing European values on non-European cultures, recent scholarship has sought to uncouple Enlightenment thought from imperialism and colonialism. An examination of the perspectives, positive and negative, of Bayle and Montesquieu on China suggests that Enlightenment thinkers attempted to reconcile ethical universalism and cultural diversity, but also shows the limitations of such attempts. Thus, while dismissals of Enlightenment thought as universalistic and even imperialistic fail to consider Bayle’s and Montesquieu’s subtle engagements with Chinese culture, their accounts of China arguably fall short of being robust cross-cultural or anti-colonial perspectives.

Enlightenment Universalism? Bayle and Montesquieu on China

Thomas Hobbes is notable as a philosopher not least for having grounded his political thought on his system of nature. Clearly, he thought that his civil philosophy could be taught with minimal ref...

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Necessitating Justice: Hobbes on Free Will and Punishment

It should be hardly surprising to discover that eighteenth-century European perspectives of other cultures were shaped to a large extent by concerns internal to European political life. Objective or unprejudiced accounts of non-European cultures are rarely found among travellers, missionaries, and philosophers of the time. While the insights of Enlightenment political thinkers on the non-European world may shed little light on the cultures being commented upon, they are useful for assessing the nature of the Enlightenment's engagement with cultural traditions external to Europe. In particular, Enlightenment conceptions of China were extremely varied and reflective of the debates between Enlightenment thinkers, especially on the proper relation between religion and politics. I shall argue that Montesquieu's account of Confucianism in The Spirit of the Laws (De l’esprit des lois, first published in 1748) was in part influenced by his critique of Bayle's position on the role of religion in society as expound...

Simon Kow

Papers

China in Early Enlightenment Political Thought

Enlightenment Universalism? Bayle and Montesquieu on China

Necessitating Justice: Hobbes on Free Will and Punishment

Confucianism, Secularism, and Atheism in Bayle and Montesquieu

Debating ethical nominalism in Early Enlightenment thought on China