Aim: How did the Enlightenment spread and eventually splinter?

1. Aim: How did the Enlightenment spread and eventually splinter? • Core Beliefs of the Enlightenment: • Reason • Scientific Method • Progress

2. Spread of the Enlightenment (1715-1776) • Perfect conditions in France • Cultural center of Europe • Absolutism is strong enough to provide a catalyst for enlightenment thought, but not strong enough to destroy it. • Strong nobility and middle class exist to challenge the power of the monarchy.

3. Spread of the Enlightenment (1715-1776) • Reading Revolution • More books are going to be published on a wider range of subjects. • Seventeen-volume Encyclopedia (edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rondd’Alembert, 1751-1765). Seventy two thousand articles placing the entire body of enlightenment thought at the fingertips of readers. • Reading becomes a more informal, individual act. People become more likely to question and debate what they read

4. Spread of the Enlightenment (1715-1776) • Rise of the Salons: • Regular social gatherings held by wealthy Parisian women in their drawing rooms. • Opportunity for philosophes, aristocrats, wealthy middle class individuals, high-ranking officials and famous foreigners to discuss literature, science and philosophy. • How did the salons serve the goals of the Enlightenment. Do you think we have anything similar to the salons today?

5. Later Enlightenment Thinkers • Later Enlightenment thinkers splinter the movement and introduce ideas that are not always consistent withthe original core beliefs • David Hume (1711-1776): Leading figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. • Believed it was the senses that provide with all of our ideas, and are thus the source of all knowledge. • How is this still linked to the Enlightenment? • How does this deviate from Enlightenment beliefs?

6. Later Enlightenment Thinkers • Baron Paul d’Holbach (1723-1789) • Hostile atheist who argued against the existence of god and free will • How is this still linked to the Enlightenment? • How does this deviate from Enlightenment beliefs?

7. Later Enlightenment Thinkers • Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) • Came to believe that Enlightenment philosophy was flawed because it emphasizes reason over emotion. Rationalism, civilization and social institutions can corrupt the individual, and only a combination of warm, spontaneous emotions and intellect can lead to progress. • Emile (1762): Book on child-rearing. Argues that a young boy should receive fresh air and exercise, enjoy life, play, explore the world. Girls should prepare for lives as wives and mothers.

8. Later Enlightenment Thinkers • Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) • The Social Contract (1762): People enter into a social contract to form a government in order to escape the state of nature. The purpose of the government is to uphold the general will of the people (what is best for them in the long-term). How is this different from the way other Enlightenment thinkers looked at government? How can this idea be abused? • Rousseau’s ideas represent the transition from the Enlightenment to the Romantic Movement in the late eighteenth century.