Placing the enlighment

1

Introduction The Enlightenment—Questions of Geography

Placing the Enlightenment

Thinking Geographically about the Age of Reason

ch a r les w. j. w ithers

The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London

This book is about understanding the Enlightenment—or to use one parallel term among many, the Age of Reason—geographically. It is, in several senses, an argument about and extended review of the Enlightenment’s “where,” about how we may “place” the Enlightenment, and about why it matters that we think about the Enlightenment in geographical ways. The Enlightenment was that period—conventionally the “long” eighteenth century in Europe, ca. 1685–ca. 1815—when the world was made modern. For its contemporaries it was then, and for modern scholars it is now, an intellectual movement distinguished by critical, analytic, and scientific concerns and by claims that the power of reason could improve the human condition. Rather than being a fi xed set of beliefs, the Enlightenment—as a moment and a movement—was a way of thinking critically in and about the world. Ancient authority and tradition were open to challenge. Philosophical inquiry would yield useful practical ends; science social benefit. So understood, the Enlightenment is usually approached in one or more of several ways. Much is known about its defining features and principal characters—its “what” and its “who.” The Enlightenment’s origins and motivations—its “how” and its “why”—fascinate given the continuing importance of ideas of reason, truth, and scientific progress. For the same reasons, the Enlightenment’s legacy—its “so what”—is an enduring concern. In one significant respect, however, the Enlightenment has been neglected. The Enlightenment, a historical phenomenon, was also a geographical one. The Enlightenment—the ideas embraced by the term, the people who formulated them, and the things they did—was a moment and a movement in space as well as time. To consider it thus is in keeping