WI: No Enlightenment

So what would happen if the Enlightenment never occurred? How would the history of ideas, political thought, and technological innovation be different? And what, if any, effect might this have on political structures, societal organisation, and international relations?
 
What do you mean by "Enlightenment"? if you want to prevent the main political implications (meaning the age of revolutions), that can be achieved, but only be actually having various monarchs actually embracing Enlightenment ideas, and introducing certain reforms. (Think basic human rights, constitutionally limited monarchy, etc.)

Actually preventing the Enlightenment is not really possible without going back to the early middle ages. Enlightenment ideas had precursors throughout the middle ages (which really got going during the Renaissance), and those precursors were often based on the study of works from Classical Antiquity. So to prevent Enlightenment altogether, you'd basically need to wipe out all the knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome. A daunting task.
 
What do you mean by "Enlightenment"?

I mean the replacement of Platonic/Aristotelian realism with the new "mechanistic" philosophy, the focus on the here-and-now at the expense of more otherworldly concerns, and the epistemological individualism and scepticism of authorities.

Actually preventing the Enlightenment is not really possible without going back to the early middle ages. Enlightenment ideas had precursors throughout the middle ages (which really got going during the Renaissance), and those precursors were often based on the study of works from Classical Antiquity. So to prevent Enlightenment altogether, you'd basically need to wipe out all the knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome. A daunting task.

Gotta disagree here. Sure there were ideas in ancient and mediaeval philosophy which were retained or reinvented during the Enlightenment, but the overall tenor of philosophy before the 17th century was much more otherworldly and less individualistic than it was afterwards. There was nothing about Greek and Roman philosophy which made the Enlightenment the inevitable result of studying it.
 
I mean the replacement of Platonic/Aristotelian realism with the new "mechanistic" philosophy, the focus on the here-and-now at the expense of more otherworldly concerns, and the epistemological individualism and scepticism of authorities.

Conflating Platonic and Aristotelian ideas is really not a good idea. Metaphysically, Plato was the one with the "otherworldly" interpretation (namely that our world is merely a shadow of a more 'real' World of Forms/Ideas). Aristotle argued that our world was the real one. See also: the problem of Universals, for instance.

During the middle ages, Aristotle was widely embraced by the Catholic Church. Thomas Aquinas didn't get his ideas out of thin air, and make no mistake: his ideas were one of the precursors to the Enlightenment. This shaped Catholic doctrine (which was, in a philosophical sense, far more complex and intellectual than those talking about "the dark ages" like to believe). See the School of Salamanca, which advocated natural law and human rights, as well as responsible government and the sort of free trade economics closely associated with Enlightenment thought.

Sure there were ideas in ancient and mediaeval philosophy which were retained or reinvented during the Enlightenment, but the overall tenor of philosophy before the 17th century was much more otherworldly and less individualistic than it was afterwards. There was nothing about Greek and Roman philosophy which made the Enlightenment the inevitable result of studying it.

There are no inevitabilities, really. But there are probabilities. There was much in classical thought that could serve as a basis for further reflection and innovation, and did. And not just once. Thomas Aquinas wasn't the only guy coming up with the type of ideas that he did. See also: Hugo de Groot (Grotius), Desiderius Erasmus and Dirck Volkertsz. Coornhert in the Netherlands. Utterly separate, influenced by Protestantism instead of Catholic doctrine, but still re-interpreting many of the same sources. Which led to similar philosophical and moral conclusions.

And then you get Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Bacon, Newton etc. etc. They didn't get their ideas from a single source that you can just remove. They studied the classics, as well as the aforementioned thinkers (and many others like them, which I have not mentioned by name). They didn't suddenly come up with notions of individualism, empiricism and stuff like "the right to revolution against tyrants".

Many of those ideas were previously explored, if in a cursory fashion, by men such as Aquinas, Grotius, Erasmus, Coornhert and the great thinkers of the Salamancan School. The development was gradual, and what we call "Enlightenment" was not a sudden thing. It was a tipping point, when such ideas really became "mainstream" in intellectual circles... but that was a matter of time.

You can't just "erase" men like Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Bacon, Newton etc. without first erasing men like Aquinas, Grotius, Erasmus, Coornhert etc. And to erase men like those, you need to get rid of the ideas and sources on which they based themselves: the philosophy, science and corpus of law of the Classical world.

Sure, you can delay the Enlightenment, and the earlier you start changing the TL, the more effective you will be at it. But to prevent it? You'd need to prevent so much that came before and led up to it....
 
I'm well aware of the differences between Platonic and Aristotelian thought, and of the fact that that Enlightenment thinkers did study previous philosophers. However, you're ignoring the very real ways in which much of Enlightenment thought was actually a reaction to what had come before -- by, for example, abandoning Aristotle's four causes in favour of the mechanistic philosophy, generally embracing nominalism/conceptualism over realism, and so forth. There was nothing inevitable about this reaction, or that it would take the form that it did; nor was it inevitable for Enlightenment ideas to become as philosophically mainstream as they did IOTL. Lots of people have studied the likes of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Grotius and so on without coming to the same conclusions as Descartes et al., both before and after the Enlightenment, so your claim that it's not possible to have the former set without the latter doesn't hold water.
 
I'm well aware of the differences between Platonic and Aristotelian thought, and of the fact that that Enlightenment thinkers did study previous philosophers. However, you're ignoring the very real ways in which much of Enlightenment thought was actually a reaction to what had come before -- by, for example, abandoning Aristotle's four causes in favour of the mechanistic philosophy, generally embracing nominalism/conceptualism over realism, and so forth. There was nothing inevitable about this reaction, or that it would take the form that it did; nor was it inevitable for Enlightenment ideas to become as philosophically mainstream as they did IOTL. Lots of people have studied the likes of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Grotius and so on without coming to the same conclusions as Descartes et al., both before and after the Enlightenment, so your claim that it's not possible to have the former set without the latter doesn't hold water.

I must beg to disagree. As I said, there are no inevitablities, but there are probabilities. A lot of people did reach such conclusions, and they reached them independently from one another. This indicates that such intellectual steps were very probable, and would not likely be removed altogether. So what would you propose? Remove one (or more) of the thinkers I mentioned? That would have an effect, but the later in time you get, the more precursors are already in place.

Hence my statement that the earlier you start changing the TL, the more effective you will be at it. Still, a lot of the Enlightenment simply stemmed from a better understanding of the world. And that's pretty close to inevitable. So as I said: you need to back to the middle ages. Somehow remove Thomas Aquinas and prevent the Reformation. That would have a major effect. But in my opinion, it would still just delay things. Any eventual Enlightenment would be radically different, but you can't keep mankind in the dark forever.

Ultimately, your questions (which you asked in your original post) cannot be answered, because to prevent the Enlightenment completely, you'd have to go so far back that the resulting would would be butterflied into something unrecognizable. We could not know anything substantial about the history of ideas, political thought, and technological innovation, political structures, societal organisation and international relations of such a world.
 
I must beg to disagree. As I said, there are no inevitablities, but there are probabilities. A lot of people did reach such conclusions, and they reached them independently from one another. This indicates that such intellectual steps were very probable, and would not likely be removed altogether. So what would you propose? Remove one (or more) of the thinkers I mentioned? That would have an effect, but the later in time you get, the more precursors are already in place.

If you're talking about Erasmus and Grotius, they might have reached their conclusions independently (although how could you prove that neither of them had read Aquinas?), but they aren't usually considered to be Enlightenment thinkers. The Enlightenment proper is usually held to stem from the works of Descartes (hence his title "the father of modern philosophy"), who was largely responsible for the mechanistic philosophy which became popular during the Enlightenment. Removing this philosophy and keeping the philosophical mainstream in a more Aristotelian or Platonic position would probably butterfly away the Enlightenment, IMHO.

Still, a lot of the Enlightenment simply stemmed from a better understanding of the world. And that's pretty close to inevitable.

Which aspects in particular are you talking about?
 
If you're talking about Erasmus and Grotius, they might have reached their conclusions independently (although how could you prove that neither of them had read Aquinas?), but they aren't usually considered to be Enlightenment thinkers. The Enlightenment proper is usually held to stem from the works of Descartes (hence his title "the father of modern philosophy"), who was largely responsible for the mechanistic philosophy which became popular during the Enlightenment. Removing this philosophy and keeping the philosophical mainstream in a more Aristotelian or Platonic position would probably butterfly away the Enlightenment, IMHO.



Which aspects in particular are you talking about?
Descartes vanishing isn't going to stop the advance of scientific knowledge/theorizing.

Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, etc. are still leading to drastic shifts in the scientific worldview and discrediting old ideas. This in turn leads to a more mechanistic approach, because it's easier to square with the observations, and useful in a way that traditional philosophy really wasn't. That's what really lays the groundwork for a lot of the changes, by demonstrating that the old ways of thinking didn't work for natural philosophy, and thus prompting questioning of other traditional beliefs.
 
Descartes vanishing isn't going to stop the advance of scientific knowledge/theorizing.

Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, etc. are still leading to drastic shifts in the scientific worldview and discrediting old ideas. This in turn leads to a more mechanistic approach, because it's easier to square with the observations, and useful in a way that traditional philosophy really wasn't. That's what really lays the groundwork for a lot of the changes, by demonstrating that the old ways of thinking didn't work for natural philosophy, and thus prompting questioning of other traditional beliefs.

A common myth, but a myth all the same. Whilst Copernicus et al. did lead to the abandonment of geocentrism, it's hardly as if the old philosophy stood or fell on the idea that the sun revolves around the earth. Nor is it the case that mechanistic philosophy was easier to square with scientific findings (in fact the original mechanistic account of causation -- that is, the "one billiard ball knocking into another" model -- was discredited within fifty years or so when Newton discovered gravity), or even that it was somehow "more useful" than traditional philosophy (whilst older philosophers hadn't generally conducted as many scientific or technological experiments as their 17th-century equivalents, this was due to differing interests rather than the old philosophy being inherently less useful, whatever that might mean).

A better explanation for the Enlightenment would be the religious wars which were sweeping Europe, combined with the Protestant idea of Sola Scriptura. The first led many thinkers to associate religious enthusiasm with violence and disorder, whilst the latter bled over into a general epistemological individualism and a disregard for custom and authority which reached its extreme conclusion during the early days of the French Revolution, and Protestants' inability to reach agreement in their personal interpretations of the Bible led to scepticism as to the possibility of detailed religious knowledge at all. The generally poor standards at many European universities didn't help much either: there was little intellectual debate, at least where students were concerned, and teaching mostly consisted of reading summaries of other people's works. Not surprisingly, many came away with the impression that the old philosophers were all dull and stultifying.

So to butterfly away the Enlightenment, higher standards of teaching at universities would be quite easy to do. The other two main factors would be harder, but still doable. With regards the religious wars, whilst it's unlikely that the Reformation could have happened without bloodshed, it didn't need to be as bloody as it ended up being. If, say, the Hapsburg victory during the first stage of the Thirty Years' War ended up being less convincing, Denmark, Sweden and France might have felt less need to intervene, and the Bohemian revolt wouldn't have metamorphosed into a destructive and ruinous Europe-wide conflict. With regards the sola scriptura issue, this might be difficult to do without butterflying away the Reformation entirely. Maybe if instead of adopting the full sola scriptura the Protestants went down a more "Western Orthodox" route, recognising the authority of the Bishops and Church Councils but not giving the Pope any higher status than as "first among equals", we might see religious wars and the establishment of national Churches as IOTL, but avoid the epistemic individualism and doctrinal chaos which came with sola scriptura.
 
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