Lecture 1 The European Enlightenment, Religion and Moral Values

第一講　歐洲啟蒙運動，宗教和道德價值觀

Stewart J. Brown

《神學與教會》 42卷1期 (2017/01) Pp. 86-101

https://doi.org/10.6888/TC.201701_42(1).0007

摘要

十七世紀末和十八世紀的歐洲啟蒙帶來了個人自由，人的能力，社會倫理和人類進步的新概念。它促進了民主的增長、法律下的平等、普世人權、性別平等、人道的刑罰政策、自由市場、世界貿易、世界觀、普遍教育、政教的分離、宗教思想和崇拜的自由，以及宗教容忍。促成啟蒙運動的主要因素之一則是歐洲對歐洲以外其他文化和宗教的逐漸察覺和好奇。學者們現在意識到啟蒙運動的主流其實是一個宗教運動，且大多數啟蒙運動的思想家都持守著基督教信仰。儘管大多數思想家都接受說，沒有宗教信仰也可以過著有道德的生活。但是，他們仍視宗教為道德行為的重要支持。他們信奉一種理性的宗教，是重視道德生活培養的宗教，其中包括對他人的社會服務和同情心。許多人都認為上帝給每個人一個先天的道德感，這使得人們知道如何對社會中的其他人表現。有些人試圖重新解釋聖經，以強調其中的倫理信息。此外，在他們對其他宗教的研究中，他們相信所有主要的世界信仰都有類似的道德教義，且世界文明形成了一個相互關聯的網絡。儘管他們強調宗教的道德方面可能過於簡化，但在啟蒙運動中有更多吸引力的是其對於社會性和普世價值觀的強調，以及對其他信仰和文化的價值的開放。

並列摘要

The European Enlightenment of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a diverse and complex cultural movement that fundamentally changed perceptions of the nature and destiny of humankind. It brought new conceptions of individual freedom, human capacity, social ethics, and human progress. It contributed to the growth of democracy, equality under the law, universal human rights, gender equality, humane penal policies, free markets, world trade, cosmopolitan attitudes, universal education, the separation of Church and state, freedom of religious thought and worship, and religious toleration. For those who embraced the Enlightenment, humankind was at last entering the clear light of day. The natural world was no longer a dark place of mystery, in which spirits exercised power over human and natural events. They believed that they were uncovering universal truths – and coming to a better understanding both of the natural laws that shaped the physical universe and of the social laws that shaped human nature, political institutions and social structures. Theirs was, they believed, not simply a European intellectual movement; rather, the Enlightenment was a world movement, which would promote unity among peoples and civilisations through an international 'republic of letters' - led by 'self-appointed' intellectuals who put themselves forward as 'guides towards modernity and reform'. This republic of letters was not a political reform movement, but rather a collective intellectual effort to deepen understanding of the nature, history and destiny of humankind in its global context. Along with their cosmopolitan ideals, Enlightenment thinkers envisaged a new basis for morality. For them, individual and social ethics were to be based, not, as long believed, on God's laws as communicated through the Christian Scriptures or the authority of the Christian Church, with rewards and punishments in an afterlife, but rather on conceptions human nature, social utility, and what constitutes human flourishing in this world. For centuries, Europeans had believed theirs was a Christian civilisation with a social ethic based on divine revelation through the Bible. Europe was Christendom, and its different kingdoms and principalities ruled their inhabitants in accordance with divine law. However, with the Enlightenment a growing number of Europeans came to believe it was possible to live a moral life, and to flourish in the world, without knowledge of Christianity. This is not to say that the Enlightenment was opposed to religion. Most European thinkers of the Enlightenment believed in a God who had created the world and in an afterlife with rewards and punishments. Most perceived of themselves as religious and accepted many aspects Christianity. One of the most important fields of Enlightenment scholarship during the past two decades has been the study of its religious aspects, including theology, and such scholarship has demonstrated that the mainstream or moderate Enlightenment was fundamentally religious. And yet, many Enlightened thinkers came to accept that Christianity was not necessary for the ordering of a stable, moral society in this world.