ABSTRACT
One of the central endeavours of the Enlightenment was to analyse the workings of society in the detached spirit of disinterested enquiry which had been so conspicuously successful in the natural sciences. The Enlightenment’s emphasis on universal laws of nature and a form of reason which transcended national and cultural divides tended to emphasise the points of similarity rather than the distinctiveness between different countries. The Enlightenment was a movement which sought to emphasise the cosmopolitan elements of European civilisation in the face of a growing trend towards the consolidation of state structures. The ideals of the Enlightenment helped to maintain the cosmopolitan character of the Republic of Letters with the addition of a sense of social and political engagement which was often foreign to the scholarly erudits of the seventeenth century. The academies with their cosmopolitan connections were the major repository of the belief in the Republic of Letters.
