The Enlightenment

1. The Enlightenment

2. Think carefully first about what it means to study/trace a history of ideas and philosophies. • Philosophies and ideas like a river? A dialectic not of rock, water, mud, and plants but of events, culture, art, and literature. • Like energy and matter, ideas don’t come from nothing and don’t simply cease to be. • Periods or eras (like the Renaissance, Enlightenment, Romanticism, Modernism, Post-Modernism etc. eras) are named for the set of ideas that DOMINATED a particular time—i.e. the rule not the exceptions. • History doesn’t feel like history when one is experiencing it.

3. What’s going on? • Unpredictable Danger • Outbreaks of disease—especially Bubonic Plague (“black death”) which killed up to a 1/3 of Europe’s total population. • Starvation. • Native Americans. • Lawlessness. • A New World • America? • Changing demographics (by 1775, ½ New England is of non-English origin) people bring new ideas, new goals. • Factionalizing

4. War • Catholics vs. Protestants • English Civil War (1640s and 1650s). • German Thirty Years War (1618-1648). • French Fronde (civil war) from 1648-1653 • Franco-Spanish War (1653-1659)

5. Explanations to make sense of it all? • The human struggle. (Hobbes: “Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”) • Powerful Government: trust us. • Powerful religion: trust God. • Key to life, then, is faith (believe in and rely on what you can’t know, can’t predict, and can’t control).

6. But while all this is happening, some start seeing things…. • Galileo (Italy) and Kepler (Germany):Heliocentrism • Isaac Newton (England): Laws of motion and gravity. • Francis Bacon (England):Knowledge emanates not from Church or books, but from observation and generalization (empiricism). • Rene Descartes (France):the only thing we really know is that we think (“I think; therefore, I am”); therefore, reason (not faith) is the building block for knowledge. • Locke (England):Tabula Rasa. People born as blank slates and learn by observation and environmental conditions. People are born equal.

7. Thus begins an age of “reason” and “rationality” (i.e. Enlightenment) • What does it mean to be rational and to become “enlightened?” • Empiricism. • Information, understanding, insight….etc. REASON. What is reason? • “See” the workings of the universe, the natural world (birth of “natural philosophy”).

8. Taking the past into the future… • Reason + Theology= Deism. • Creation (the universe) presupposes a creator (first mover). • Scientific observation shows mathematical exactness and regularity in universe. • Reason/rationality are God’s creation and what allow humans the ability to access Truth through observation (“natural philosophy”). • No divine revelation; no intervening God.

9. Reason over Emotion • Passion is dangerous. • The orderly mind vs. religious “enthusiasm.” • Reject religious superstition; become intellectually free to see the order of the universe.

10. Being Human and Human Beings • Experience, not God, inscribes knowledge on the blank slates that we are. • Unique experiences create unique knowledge carried by unique people. • Therefore, every individual has value.

11. If an individual is inherently valuable, the he/she has “natural rights” that protect this value—that is, rights given by God not by government; • A government should exist to protect the individual’s natural right to pursue and possess truth.

12. Machine metaphor dominates: government rules as a machine • Injustice is product of “malfunctioning” gov. [see “checks and balances” of US Const.]; sick person is victim of mechanical breakdown.

13. Rigorous Questioning of…. • The power of the mind to find truth vs. the power of the Church to dictate it or the government to enforce a version of it.

14. Paine • “But it is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.” (643) • Why not accept as true what has been revealed to others? Was Mary a virgin? Did God appear to Moses?

15. “That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in His works, and is the true theology. As to the theology that is now studied in its place, it is the study of human opinions and of human fancies concerning God. It is not the study of God Himself in the works that he has made, but in the works or writing that man has made.” (646)

16. What’s up with triangles?

17. Jefferson • “Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion, by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only.” (662)

18. Jefferson • “Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of [social/cultural critic] over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.” (663)

19. According to these precepts, then, what would it mean to be “religious” and “faithful?” • How might such a shift in thinking affect the ways people think about the meaning and purpose of human life in general and about their own lives in particular?

20. Is there evidence that we have embraced or rejected or built on enlightenment ideas? How “enlightened” are we? • Were the ideas of the enlightenment good for society and people? • Where do Paine and Jefferson get it particularly right or wrong?