Enlightenment I, Liberals vs. Conservatives. Both classes have just passed through a historical period that requires some mention in passing, specifically The Enlightenment. In both classes, we read important figures from this movement (Hume in Intro to Philosophy, Kant in Intro to Ethics, Descartes also counts as an important forerunnger of the movement), but I haven't really discussed the period as a whole.

The Enlightenment was characterized by a few tendencies which would, at first, not seem to work together terribly well. An obvious example is both a general skepticism and a belief in the power of human reason. The latter tended to manifest itself in a fascination with empirical science. These two trends can work together. After all, a healthy skepticism about received truths would require some method for testing and refining those truth. The scientific method fits that need well. On the otherhand, carried to its conclusion, challenges the assumptions of the scientific method. David Hume brings the skepticism out to that point.

skepticism was not limited to the truths of the natural world. In ethics and politics, Enlightenment skepticism manifested itself in questioning our understanding of what constitutes a good life. Unlike natural science however, there was no obvious method for testing various conceptions of the good life. This lead to different sorts of responses, classical liberalism and classical conservatism. (We live in the United States, a country founded by Enlightenment intellectuals, its no coincidence that these terms have come to have an important part in our political discourse. On the otherhand, current usage tends to differ how I'm using them.)

Enlightenment liberals doubt that there's a method to discover the form of a good life that applies to all people. Hence, one should try to maximize the liberty allowed to each person in pursuing their own conception of the good life. Kant was an enlightenment liberal, though from conceiving as individuals soly as autonomous agents, and the only value as maximizing the liberty of each agent, he derives some very specific and strict restrictions on human nature. John Locke and Thomas Jefferson are other important representatives of this position.

Enlightenment conservatives share Enlightenment liberals skepticism about the ability of human reason to discover a substantive theory of the good life. The enlightenment conservative doesn't just doubt that we can discover a single model for how to live, but also that particular individuals have any ability to discover how life should be lived. We have a current form of government and current ideas about how to live. If we're lucky and live in a prosperous, well established state, then the values and customs that make up those ways of living have been tested over time. Since we don't have any particularly trustworthy method of figuring out exactly what it is about our customs that make them successful, we should be very careful about changing them. David Hume is generally considered an Enlightenment Conservative, though the position is most famously associated with Edmund Burke.

Far from being two diametrically opposed philosophies, these two positions are both reflections about the same sorts of doubts about the universal application of human reason. (Contrary to what many people will tell you, Enlightenment thinkers expressed at least as much concern about the application of reason as they did optimism.) Certainly, there are many positions which don't share this skepticism and most have less in common with either of these two positions than they do with each other.
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