The Age of Enlightenment

1. The Age of Enlightenment The Triumph of Reason

2. The Age of Reason • Two major themes in the Western Experience are defined by intellectual and religious life • The Scientific Revolution and the Age of Reason that it brought caused a sharp break in both themes • Not since pagan times had religion been so directly challenged • Philosohes became the spokesmen of the educated elite in 18th century society

3. The Enlightenment • 17th century science, religious skepticism, and appreciation of classical culture led to 18th century intellectuals with a new spirit • They popularized science by applying the scientific method to other disciplines • Natural History became popular • Combo of geology, zoology, botany • G.L. Buffon- Natural History of the Earth • Ignored Creationism but his theories were at odds with it

4. Moving Past Christianity • Biblical Authority was shot • Liberal theologians tried to remove superstition from religion • Devil became moral evil instead of a red guy with horns and a pitchfork • This helped some intellectuals maintain their faith but for the most part it weakened the authority of the church • Christian ethics called into question • Could people of other faiths live moral lives?

5. Deism • Voltaire- religion’s worst enemy • “Every sensible man, every honorable man must hold [Christianity] in horror” • He hoped that educated men would abandon Christianity for Deism • God was like a clockmaker • Man lives on its own in a divinely ordered world • Some philosophes went beyond deism into philosophical atheism

6. The Philosophes • French thinkers that ralied around science and secularism • Shared a critical spirit where all assumptions must stand the tests of reason, experience, and utility • Invoked the spirit of classical paganism • Referrred to the middle ages as “the dark ages” • Edward Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire declared that the church had stopped the Roman world from achieving a life of reason instead of myth • Philosophes, like the humanists before them, put man at the center of their thought

7. Some Thinkers to Think About • Montesquieu- expanded Cartesian thought to natural law and claimed that like the physical, political phenomena were also subject to natural law • Marquis de Condorcet- universally valid truths in ethics, economics, and government like science and math • Adam Smith- The Wealth of Nations- sought natural law as the universally binding force behind political affairs and promoted capitalism • David Hume- expanded Locke’s theories and his main concern was causality. If A always follows B can we conclude that B causes A? NO • Immanuel Kant- proposed a complete philosophical approach- we can have reliable knowledge but true knowledge cannot transcend experience • Categorical imperative: “act only according to the maxim which you at the time will to be a universal law.” • Denis Diderot- wrote a 35 volume encyclopedia which was the largest compendium of contemporary social, philosophic, artistic, scientific and technological knowledge ever produced in the west

8. The end of “baroqueness” • Rococo- tail end of the baroque period which found pleasure in a refined, elegant style • “From the ponderous baroque to the delicate and playful rococo” • The movement was based on leisure with a feeling of classicism • The birth of the orchestra

9. Rococo Painting- Watteau’s Departure from the Island of Cythera- The pursuit of pleasure

10. Rococo Architecture-Fischer’s Benedictine Abbey at Ottobeuren, Bavaria- walls disappear behind “frosting”

11. Rococo Sculpture- Clodion’s Intoxication of Wine- Dionysus

12. Rococo Music- a challenge to Bach and Handel- dropped the dense textures for light graceful melodies in short distinct phrases • Compare • Handel’s Messiah • Bach’s Art of the Fugue • Haydn’s Surprise

13. Handel’s Messiah

14. Art of the Fugue

15. Surprise