Mr. Cleon M. McLean Department of English Ontario High School

1. Mr. Cleon M. McLeanDepartment of EnglishOntario High School A Few More Points on the 18th century ENLIGTENMENTPeriod Big idea: Reason Is The Path to Truth

2. Objective and Subjective • Objective (logos): not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on FACTS, evidence, and/or use of the five SENSES, reason; unbiased • Subjective (mythos):placing excessive emphasis on one's own moods, attitudes, opinions, FEELINGS, intuitions, and SENSIBILITIES.

3. Enlightenment Philosophers • philosophy— • “philos” comes from the Greek philos, which means “loving” or “dear” • “—sophy” comes from the Greek sophia, which meanswisdom; or from sophos, which means wise • So, the word “philosophy” means “love of wisdom”. It is a word used interchangeably to refer to scientists, philosophers, or to denote someone who is sapiential.

4. Deism • Premise: reason is the path to truth. • Deism—a new form of theism (study of religion), based entirely on reason and Newtonian science. • Enlightenment philosophers wanted every single person to grasp the truths unveiled by science and learn to reason correctly. • Premise was built on… • Galileo’s mechanistic science • Newton’s cosmic laws • (Philosopher) Rene Descartes’ quest for autonomous certainty (cogito ergosum= I think, thereI am)

5. Contradictions • There was a paradox in the Enlightenment: Philosophers insisted that individuals must reason for themselves; yet, individuals were only permitted to think in accordance with the scientific method. • A scientist will first form a theory and then seek to prove it experimentally; religion works the other way around, and its insights come from practicalexperience.

6. Shifting Religion • When he became the First Consul, Napoleon reinstated the Catholic Church. But the symbolism of God’s dramatic abdication in favor of Reason linked the idea of atheism with revolutionary change. From that point onwards, in Europe, atheism associated with the hope for a more just and equal world.

7. Tension between the Poles • Most people retained traditional Christian beliefs but did their best to purge them of “mystery” • The polarity of natural versus supernatural was just one of the dualism (mind v. matter, church v. state, reason v. emotion) that would characterize modern consciousness as it struggled to master the ironies and other paradoxes of reality.

8. Enlightenment Philosophers • Scottish Philosopher David Hume (1711—1776): We could never achieve objective knowledge and absolute certainty, because the human mind imposed its own order on the chaotic mass of sense data. • German Philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724—1804): he agreed that our understanding of the natural world was deeply conditioned by the structure of our minds and that it was impossible to achieve the knowledge of the reality we call God, which lay beyond the reach of the senses.

9. Considering the idea of “Truth” • Objective truth aspires to be independent of historical context and is assumed to be the same in any period or culture. Thus, currently, we project what we believe and find credible back onto the past or onto civilizations whose symbols might be different from our own.

10. Considering the idea of Knowledge • For the Philosopher/Enlightenment Thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau, knowledge in the 18th century had become too cerebral (brains). For him, the “heart” (mythos) was not equivalent to emotion; rather, it referred to a receptive attitude of silent waiting.