Why was the Enlightenment not such a revolutionary movement?

The pejorative view of the Enlightenment flows from the philosophy of G W F Hegel right through to the critical theory of the mid-20th-century Frankfurt School. These writers identify a pathology in Western thought that equates rationality with positivist science, capitalist exploitation, the domination of nature – even, in the case of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, with Nazism and the Holocaust.

But in holding that the Enlightenment was a movement of reason opposed to the passions, apologists and critics are two sides of the same coin. Their collective error is what makes the cliché of the ‘age of reason’ so powerful.

The passions – embodied affects, desires, appetites – were forerunners to the modern understanding of emotion. Since the ancient Stoics, philosophy has generally looked on the passions as threats to liberty: the weak are slaves to them; the strong assert their reason and will, and so remain free. The Enlightenment’s contribution was to add science to this picture of reason, and religious superstition to the notion of passionate enslavement.

However, to say that the Enlightenment was a movement of rationalism against passion, of science against superstition, of progressive politics against conservative tribalism is to be deeply mistaken. These claims don’t reflect the rich texture of the Enlightenment itself, which placed a remarkably high value on the role of sensibility, feeling and desire.

Explanation:

the correct answer is b.