TIM BLANNING

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TIM BLANNING

• THE ENLIGHTENMENT

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The Enlightenment

• Les lumières
• Die Aufklärung
• illuminismo
• La illustraciòn, el Siglo de las Luces
• ???????????

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Pierre Bayle (1647-1706)It is liberty that
reigns in the Republic of Letters. This republic
is a state which is entirely free. The only rule
to be recognised there is that of truth and
reason.
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The anonymous editor of a literary survey
published in 1780 entitled A History of the
Republic of Letters in FranceIn the midst of
all the governments that decide the fate of men
in the bosom of so many states, the majority of
them despotic there exists a certain realm which
holds sway only over the mind that we honour
with the name republic, because it preserves a
measure of independence, and because it is almost
its essence to be free. It is the realm of talent
and of thought.
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ORIGINS
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Sir Isaac Newton and the triumph of empiricism
and the mechanical view of the universeThe
best and safest method of philosophising seems to
be, first, to inquire diligently into the
properties of things and to establish those
properties by experiments, and to proceed later
to hypotheses for the explanation of things
themselves.
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Natural laws and the disenchantment of the world
Benjamin Franklin flies a kite during an
electrical strom June 1752
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The accumulation of knowledge about non-European
and non-Christian civilisations and the
development of cultural relativism
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A reaction against religious conflict and
persecution
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The success of toleration
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Joseph von Sonnenfels, 1784At the threshold of
our temple the prince puts aside his crown, the
noble dispenses with his rank, and within our
fraternal circles they rejoice in their humanity.
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AXIOMS
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REASONJohn LockeReason must be our last judge
and guide in everything.
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Ernst CassirerThe basic idea underlying all the
tendencies of Enlightenment was the conviction
that human understanding is capable, by its own
power and without recourse to supernatural
assistance, of comprehending the system of the
world and that this new way of understanding the
world will lead it to a new way of mastering it.
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Criticism

• Diderot in the preface to the Encyclopédie
• Everything must be examined, everything must be
  shaken up, without exception and without
  reservation

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Systematic doubtRené Descartesto place our
knowledge on foundations which are genuinely
secure, we must doubt all of our beliefs,
retaining them only if they are absolutely
indisputable
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Sensationist epistemologyJohn Locke, An Essay
concerning Human UnderstandingAll ideas come
from sensation or reflection. Let us then suppose
the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of
all characters, without any ideas- How comes it
to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast
store which the busy and boundless fancy of man
has painted on it with an almost endless variety?
Whence has it all the materials of reason and
knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from
EXPERIENCE. In that all our knowledge is founded
and from that it ultimately derives itself.
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anthropocentric

• Alexander Pope, Essay on Man (1733)
• Know then thyself, presume not God to scan
• The proper study of mankind is man.

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secular - from this (Melk Abbey, 1702-38)
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to this (The General Hospital, Vienna, opened in
1784)
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Cosmopolitanism
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Denis Diderot to David HumeMy dear David, you
belong to all nations I flatter myself that I
am, like you, a citizen of the great city of the
world.
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Christoph Martin WielandOnly the true
cosmopolitan can be a good citizen, only he can
do the great work to which we have been called
to cultivate, enlighten, and ennoble the human
race.
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Edward GibbonIt is the duty of a patriot to
prefer and promote the exclusive interest and
glory of his native country but a philosopher
may be permitted to enlarge his views, and to
consider Europe as a great republic, whose
various inhabitants have attained almost the same
level of politeness and cultivation.
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FrancophoneVoltaireThe French language has
become the language of Europe. The French
language is of all languages that which expresses
with the greatest ease, exactness and delicacy
all subjects of conversation which can arise
among gentlefolk and it thus contributes
throughout all Europe to one of the most
agreeable diversions of life.
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TolerationThe Calas family in prison
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Voltaire, A treatise on toleration on the
occasion of the death of Jean CalasNatural law
is that which nature reveals to all men Human
law can be founded on no other basis than the law
of nature and in every part of the globe, the
great principles, the universal principle of both
is Do nothing which you would not like done to
yourself. But in following this principle, it is
impossible to see how one man can say to another
believe that which I believe, and which you
cannot believe, or you will perish.
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Meritocratic
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The Salon of Madame Geoffrin in 1755

• Baron Grimm wrote of Madame Geoffrin All ranks
  are mixed the noble, the official, the writer,
  the artist, all are treated the same, so that no
  rank remains except that of good society

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Anti-clericalScenes from four different editions
of Thérèse philosophe, by the Marquis dArgens.
Here Father Dirrag conducts spiritual exercises
with Eradice
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Is your mind at ease, my little saint? he
asked, as a sort of sigh escaped him. As for me,
I see the heavens opening, and sufficient grace
is carrying me aloft, I.Oh, Father! cried
Eradice. Such pleasure is penetrating me! Oh,
yes, Im feeling celestial happiness. I sense
that my mind is completely detached from matter.
Further, Father, further! Root out all that is
impure in me. I see the angels. Push forward
push now Ah!... Ah!... Good St. Francis! Dont
abandon me! I feel the cord the cord the cord
I give up Im dying!
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Jean-Jacques Rousseauand the revolt
againstrationalism
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Rousseau, The Confessions The summer of that
year 1749 was excessively hot. Vincennes is
some six miles from Paris. In no condition to pay
for cabs, I walked there at two in the afternoon
when I was alone, and I went fast so as to arrive
early. The trees along the road, always lopped
according to the custom of the country, hardly
gave any shade and often I was so prostrated
with heat and weariness that I lay down on the
ground, unable to go further.
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One day I took the Mercure de France and,
glancing through it as I walked, I came upon the
question propounded by the Dijon Academy for the
next years prize Has the progress of the
sciences and arts done more to corrupt morals or
improve them? The moment I read this I beheld
another universe and became another man.
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Johann Wolfgang von Goetheand Strassburg
Cathedral
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As I encountered this building on what had once
been German soil, as it had been constructed
during authentically German times and as the name
of the architect on his modest tomb-stone was
also of native sound and origin, so I dared -
responding to the challenge posed by the quality
of this work of art - to change the usual
description the Gothic style of architecture'
and to claim it instead for our nation as German
architecture.
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THE ENDIF YOU HAVE A QUESTION ABOUT THIS
LECTURE, PLEASE VISIT ME IN MY OFFICE (NO. 3 ON
THE FLOOR ABOVE)AFTERWARDS OR SEND ME AN
EMAILtcb1000_at_cam.ac.ukNext lecture in this
courseFriday, 16 NovemberThe Struggle for
Mastery in Europe (Andrew Thompson) My next
lecture in this courseFriday, 18 January
French Revolutionary Politics 1789-99