The Enlightenment

1. The Enlightenment SapereAude! Dare to know! - Immanuel Kant (1784)

2. One day, BossuetThe next, Voltaire • Bishop Bossuet, Politics drawn from Holy Scripture (late 17th c.) • The grounds of authority: God, Bible, King • These ordered society, gender and social relations, attitudes to nature, wealth, non-Christian cultures, science • Hierarchical, paternal, sacred power • Monarchy as the best form of government

3. Bossuet • ‘How I hate these philosophers who, making their own intelligence the measure of God’s purposes, would regard Him merely as the creator of a certain general order which He, then, left to develop as best it might. As if God’s aims were vague and confused generalities.’

4. Bossuet • ‘I see… preparations for a great onslaught on the Church in the name of Cartesian philosophy. From the womb of that philosophy, from its principles, to my mind imperfectly understood, I foresee the birth of more than one heresy .’

5. Voltaire (1694-1778) • Rule of law • Commercial prosperity • Religious Toleration • Arts and Sciences • Civil liberties

6. The Old Regime:An enchanted, hierarchical world • Witches, the devil • Intercession of saints • Preparing for death and the afterlife • The great chain of being • Hierarchy and privilege

7. What was the Enlightenment? • A new way of thinking, a profound epistemological shift • Climate of opinion, the ‘public sphere’ • Campaign to transform state and society

8. Galileo’s telescope • De-centered the earth • De-stabilised humans’ self-conception • Challenged religious authorities’ monopoly on knowledge

9. Descartes • Skepticism, radical doubt • Individual reason – hierarchies set aside • Rationalism – truth found through reason

10. Spinoza - Bayle • Freedom of conscience • Religious toleration (they were from religious minorities) • Secular foundations for political authority • Rational foundations for society rather than tradition or superstition • God and nature are one. The quest to understand Nature’s laws is to become close to God.

11. Locke, Newton, Montesquieu • Repudiation of metaphysical ‘systems’ • Knowledge through the senses – empiricism • Locke’s blank-slate • Newton’s laws of nature – induction, not deduction • Montesquieu’s laws of society found in history

12. Newtonian thinking was • open-ended… could change with the introduction of more facts • focused on relations and patterns, not inherent essences • Implications: authorities could not claim to master eternal truths.

13. The problem of ‘Evil’ • With the ‘devil’ removed from the cosmic scheme, how does one account for ‘evil’ in the world? • Best of all possible worlds (Leibniz, 17th c.) • Historical, universal progress (18th) • Stoicism and utility: ‘we must cultivate our gardens’ (Voltaire, Candide, 1759)

14. Lisbon Earthquake, 1755 • How could ‘nature’ prove to be so evil, including ‘human nature’? • 40-50K killed • 80-90% of the buildings destroyed • What are we to learn from it? • Voltaire: cultivate one’s garden • Rousseau: cities are bad, providence good

15. The Encyclopédie • French, edited by Diderot and d’Alembert, 17 vols. • Published over 20 years in mid 18th c. • Most famous philosophers of the age • Aim: to spread practical knowledge in society • With amusing ‘digs’ at authorities from time to time (e.g.: ‘knowledge of God’ and ‘black magic’ are treated together on the tree of knowledge)

16. Rousseau: the dissenting voice • First Discourse on the Sciences and Arts • Second Discourse on the Origins of Inequality • Civilisation is corrupting • The ‘arts and sciences’, consumption and urban living alienate the individual from his/herself

17. Rise of Critical Public Sphere • Jürgen Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Bourgeois Public Sphere (1962) • New ideology of family • from necessity and coercion to morality and sentiment • This notion of the family was projected on ‘society’ through public institutions

18. Public Sphere • Print: a reading revolution • Literacy rates rise dramatically in 18th c. • Shift from devotional literature to novels • Shift of intensive, reverential reading to extensive critical reading • Seditious literature – libels, pornography • draw on Enlightenment epistemology to ridicule church and state

19. Public Sphere • Salons • Increasing independence from the Court • Theatres • Official and market-driven ones • Who determines playbills? Public asserts itself • Pubs, cafés • owners subscribed to newspapers • Freemasonry

20. Tribunal of Public Opinion • The authority of ‘public opinion’ • Authorities unwittingly contribute to its rise • By policing • Through propaganda • By invoking the concept

21. The ‘public’ vs. the ‘people' • Rise of popular agitation in late 18th century • peasant revolts • urban rebellions • Fear of the masses intensifies • Solution: transform the people into a public • How? More enlightenment!

22. Enlightenmentas‘modern’ • The ‘Ancients vs. Moderns’ debate • The printing press, firearms and compass • Debate within the official French Academy • Enlightenment: a ‘narrative’ about progress • Universal history • Kant’s Perpetual Peace • Marx’s theory of history

23. The mission to modernise • Imperialism • Civilizing missions of the 19th century • Universal education • Only way out of class disorder: education (and discipline) the masses

24. Modernity:Good or Bad?

25. Charles-Louis RichardExposition of the doctrine of the modern philosophers (1785) • The results of modern philosophy • The corruption of faith and morals • The destruction of religion and every idea of duty, of obligation, of law, of conscience, of justice and injustice • “What a picture! What goals! What effects!”

26. Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789

27. Guillotine

28. Modernity:Progress or Pathology? • WWI and WWII: Is Europe Civilised? Is ‘Civilisation’ healthy? • Freud, Civilisation and Its Discontents (1929) • Horkheimer and Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947) • Reinhart Koselleck, Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society (1959)

29. Is the Enlightenment a myth? • Too all embracing as a concept? • Is it helpful to thinking of the Enlightenment as at the origins of ‘modernity’? • Is modernity a useful concept? • What Enlightenment is is still open to debate.