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The Age of Reason & Enlightenment

The Age of Reason & Enlightenment. Europe in the 18 th Century. Dare to know! Have the courage to make use of your own understanding. Immanuel Kant – “What is Enlightenment?”. Origins of Characteristics. Scientific Revolution Ideas of natural law and science from Newton

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The Age of Reason & Enlightenment

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  1. The Age of Reason & Enlightenment Europe in the 18th Century

  2. Dare to know! Have the courage to make use of your own understanding. Immanuel Kant – “What is Enlightenment?”

  3. Origins of Characteristics • Scientific Revolution • Ideas of natural law and science from Newton • “Newtons” of statecraft, justice and economics • Faith in reason, secularism, utilitarianism, tolerance and progress came from thinkers like Descartes

  4. John Locke • Letter on Toleration (1689) • Two Treatises of Government, (1690) • Some Thoughts ConcerningEducation (1693) • The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695)

  5. John Locke’s Philosophy • The individual must become a “rational creature.” • “Tabula Rasa” • Virtue can be learned and practiced. • Human beings possess free will. • Favored a republic as the best form of government. • Legislators owe their power to a contract with the people. • Neither kings nor wealth are divinely ordained. • The doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings was nonsense. • There are certain natural rights that are endowed by God to all human beings. • Inalienable rights

  6. Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794) • Progress of the Human Mind, 1794 • Every individual guided by reason could enjoy true independence. • A free and equal education, constitutionalism, and equal rights for women.

  7. The “Big Three” They dominated with their ideas about society, religion and politics.

  8. Voltaire (1712-1778) Francois Marie Arouet • Essay on the Customs and Spirit of Nations (1756) • Candide (1759) • Philosophical Dictionary (1764)

  9. Voltaire’s “Wisdom” • Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do. • God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. • If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. • It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. • Love truth and pardon error. • Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers. • Men are equal; it is not birth, but virtue that makes the difference. • Prejudice is opinion without judgment. • The way to become boring is to say everything. • I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

  10. The Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) • Persian Letters (1721) • On the Spirit of Laws (1758) • Three types of government: • Monarchy • Republic • Despotism • A separation of political powers ensures freedom and liberty.

  11. Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) • A Discourse on the Sciences and Arts (1750) • Emile (1762) • The Social Contract (1762)

  12. Rousseau’s Philosophy • Question Does progress in the arts and sciences correspond with progress in morality? • NO! • As civilizations progress, they move away from morality. • Science & art raised artificial barriers between people and their natural state. • Therefore, the revival of science and the arts had corrupted social morals, not improved them! • Virtue exists in the ”state of nature,” but lost in “society.” • Government must preserve “virtue” and ”liberty.” • Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains. • The concept of the”Noble Savage.” • Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. • Civil liberty  invest ALL rights and liberties into a society.

  13. Rousseau’s Philosophy • In The Social Contract: • The right kind of political order could make people truly moral and free. • Individual moral freedom could be achieved only by learning to subject one’s individual interests to the “General Will.” • Individuals did this by entering into a social contract not with their rulers, but with each other. • This social contract was derived from human nature, not from history, tradition, or the Bible. • People would be most free and moral under a republican form of government with direct democracy. • However, the individual could be “forced to be free” by the terms of the social contract. • He provided no legal protections for individual rights. • Rousseau’s thinking: • Had a great influence on the French revolutionaries of 1789. • His attacks on private property inspired the communists of the 19c such as Karl Marx.

  14. Ideas of the Enlightenment “Best of the Rest”

  15. EconomicsLaissez Faire Capitalism • Francois Quesnay (1694-1774) • Founder of “physiocrats” • Land is the only source of wealth. • Attacked mercantalists • Adam Smith(1727-1790) • Wealth of Nations (1776) • Father of capitalism – first articulated laissez faire capitalism • Manufacturing is the true source of wealth.

  16. Justice • Cesare Beccaria(1738-1794) • Essays on Crimes and Punishments (1764) • Punishment should serve as deterrent not retribution. • Justice should be speedy • “Crimes are more effectively prevented by the certainty than by the severity of the punishment”

  17. Education • Attacked the method of book drill and punishment • Learning should be based on inquiry and rational thought. • Wide spread education and literacy so all can function rationally.

  18. The American “Philosophes” John Adams(1745-1826) Thomas Jefferson(1743-1826) Ben Franklin(1706-1790) life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…………...

  19. Women’s Rights • Mary Wollstonecraft • A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) • Women are not naturally inferior to men, no proof scientific or otherwise. • To achieve progress in a society based on enlightenment principles it is irrational to subjugate women

  20. Limits on Rationalism Challenges to Enlightenment Thought

  21. Philosophical • Critique of Pure Reason (1781) • “What is Enlightenment?” (1784) • Metaphysical Foundations ofNatural Science (1786) Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

  22. Kant’s Philosophy • Dare to Know! • He introduced the concept oftranscendentalism some things are known by methods other than empirically. • The belief in the existence of a non-rational way to understand things. • The existence of neither time nor space is determined by empirical understanding. • These type of things area priori. • They transcend sensory experience. • They are pure, not empirical [concepts like faith, pre-existence, life after death].

  23. The Natural History of Religion (1755]) • Belief in God rested on superstition and fear rather than on reason. • Skeptical of dependence on reason and emphasized need for empirical observation • Though idea of natural laws governing human activity was ridiculous David Hume (1711-1776)

  24. Quakers – George Fox Pietism Methodism – John Wesley(1703-1791) Religious

  25. Denis Diderot (1713-1784) • All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone’s feelings. • We will speak against senseless laws until they are reformed; and, while we wait, we will abide by them.

  26. Diderot’s Encyclopédie

  27. Pages from Diderot’s Encyclopedie

  28. Subscriptions to Diderot’s Encyclopedie

  29. Reading During the Enlightenment • Literacy: • 80% for men; 60% women. • Books were expensive (one day’s wages). • Many readers for each book (20 : 1) • novels, plays & other literature. • journals, memoirs, “private lives.” • philosophy, history, theology. • newspapers, political pamphlets.

  30. An Increase in Reading

  31. An Increase in Reading

  32. “Must Read” Books of the Time

  33. Literature • The novel becomes a widespread genre. • Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) • Satire flourishes as many of the philosophes use it a method of criticizing the Ancien Regime without fear of punishment • Voltaire’s Candide (1759) • Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) • History becomes a serious area of study with an attempt to look at the past objectively • Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-88) • Poetry shifts to ‘serious’ subjects that examine the human condition. • Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

  34. Culture of the 18th Century Dominated by Neoclassicism a revival of the classical style of Greece and Rome. Often too constrained by rules and proportions.

  35. Architecture Neoclassic Based on dignity and restraint in form took off after 1750 Rococo an offshoot of Baroque more elaborate and intimate flourished until about 1750

  36. Painting Jean Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) Merry Company in the Open Air

  37. The Legacy of the Enlightenment? The democratic revolutions begun in America in 1776 and continued in Amsterdam, Brussels, and especially in Paris in the late 1780s, put every Western government on the defensive. Reform, democracy, and republicanism had been placed irrevocably on the Western agenda.

  38. The Legacy of the Enlightenment? New forms of civil society arose –-- clubs, salons, fraternals, private academies, lending libraries, and professional/scientific organizations. 19c conservatives blamed it for the modern “egalitarian disease” (once reformers began to criticize established institutions, they didn’t know where and when to stop!)

  39. The Legacy of the Enlightenment? It established a materialistic tradition based on an ethical system derived solely from a naturalistic account of the human condition (the“Religion of Nature”). Theoretically endowed with full civil and legal rights, theindividualhad come into existence as a political and social force to be reckoned with.

  40. The Legacy of the Enlightenment?Political Beliefs • People should be ruled by law not by rulers. • Powers of the government should be separated to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of the few. • Popular sovereignty – legal authority should be in the hands of the people and exercised only with the consent of the people. • It is the responsibility of the ruler(s) to look after the welfare of the people.

  41. How enlightened? How despotic? In your group please complete the following tasks: • Define enlightened despotism. • For your assigned ruler, list what reforms they undertook and how these reforms were characteristic of the Enlightenment. • Give your ruler a score. 1 = TOTAL DESPOT to 5 = VERY ENLIGHTENED. • Explain your score and provide specific evidence to back it up.

  42. “Enlightened Despotism” Monarchs who made notable attempts to practice some of the reforms advocated by philosophes.

  43. Frederick the Great of Prussia (r. 1740-1786) • 1712 -– 1786. • Succeeded his father, Frederick William I (the “Soldier King”). • He saw himself as the“First Servant of the State.”

  44. Catherine the Great (r. 1762-1796) • German Princess Sophie Friederike Auguste of Anhalt-Zerbst. • 1729 -– 1796.

  45. Reformer? OR Despot? 1767:Catherine summons theLegislative Commission. 1768-1774:Russo-Turkish War. 1771-1775:Pugachev Rebellionis suppressed. 1772: First partition of Poland. 1785:Charter of Nobility. 1793: Second partition of Poland. 1795: Third partition of Poland.

  46. Reformer? OR Despot?

  47. The Partitions of Poland

  48. Russian Expansionism in the Late 18c

  49. Joseph II of Austria (r. 1765-1790) • 1741 -– 1790. • His mother was Maria Theresa.

  50. Habsburg Family Crest

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