The Age of Reason & Enlightenment

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The Age of Reason Enlightenment

• Europe in the 18th Century

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Dare to know! Have the courage to make use of
your own understanding.

• Immanuel Kant What is Enlightenment?

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Origins of Characteristics

• Scientific Revolution
• Ideas of natural law and science from Newton
• Newtons of statecraft, justice and economics
• Faith in reason, secularism, utilitarianism,
  tolerance and progress came from thinkers like
  Descartes

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John Locke

• Letter on Toleration (1689)
• Two Treatises of Government, (1690)
• Some Thoughts ConcerningEducation (1693)
• The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695)

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John Lockes Philosophy

• The individual must become a rational creature.
• Tabula Rasa
• Virtue can be learned and practiced.
• Human beings possess free will.
• Favored a republic as the best form of
  government.
• Legislators owe their power to a contract with
  the people.
• Neither kings nor wealth are divinely ordained.
• The doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings was
  nonsense.
• There are certain natural rights that are endowed
  by God to all human beings.
• Inalienable rights

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Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794)

• Progress of the Human Mind, 1794
• Every individual guided by reason could enjoy
  true independence.
• A free and equal education, constitutionalism,
  and equal rights for women.

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The Big Three

• They dominated with their ideas about society,
  religion and politics.

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• Voltaire (1712-1778)
• Francois Marie Arouet

• Essay on the Customs and Spirit of Nations
  (1756)
• Candide (1759)
• Philosophical Dictionary (1764)

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Voltaires Wisdom

• Every man is guilty of all the good he didnt do.
• God is a comedian playing to an audience too
  afraid to laugh.
• If God did not exist, it would be necessary to
  invent him.
• It is dangerous to be right when the government
  is wrong.
• Love truth and pardon error.
• Judge a man by his questions rather than by his
  answers.
• Men are equal it is not birth, but virtue that
  makes the difference.
• Prejudice is opinion without judgment.
• The way to become boring is to say everything.
• I may not agree with what you have to say, but I
  will defend to the death your right to say it.

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The Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755)

• Persian Letters (1721)
• On the Spirit of Laws (1758)

• Three types of government
• Monarchy
• Republic
• Despotism
• A separation of political powers ensures freedom
  and liberty.

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Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

• A Discourse on the Sciences and Arts (1750)
• Emile (1762)
• The Social Contract (1762)

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Rousseaus Philosophy

• Question? Does progress in the arts and sciences
  correspond with progress in morality?
• NO!
• As civilizations progress, they move away from
  morality.
• Science art raised artificial barriers between
  people and their natural state.
• Therefore, the revival of science and the arts
  had corrupted social morals, not improved them!
• Virtue exists in the state of nature, but lost
  in society.
• Government must preserve virtue and liberty.
• Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains.
• The concept of the Noble Savage.
• Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.
• Civil liberty ? invest ALL rights and liberties
  into a society.

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Rousseaus Philosophy

• In The Social Contract
• The right kind of political order could make
  people truly moral and free.
• Individual moral freedom could be achieved only
  by learning to subject ones individual interests
  to the General Will.
• Individuals did this by entering into a social
  contract not with their rulers, but with each
  other.
• This social contract was derived from human
  nature, not from history, tradition, or the
  Bible.
• People would be most free and moral under a
  republican form of government with direct
  democracy.
• However, the individual could be forced to be
  free by the terms of the social contract.
• He provided no legal protections for individual
  rights.
• Rousseaus thinking
• Had a great influence on the French
  revolutionaries of 1789.
• His attacks on private property inspired the
  communists of the 19c such as Karl Marx.

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Ideas of the Enlightenment

• Best of the Rest

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EconomicsLaissez Faire Capitalism

• Francois Quesnay (1694-1774)
• Founder of physiocrats
• Land is the only source of wealth.
• Attacked mercantalists
• Adam Smith (1727-1790)
• Wealth of Nations (1776)
• Father of capitalism first articulated laissez
  faire capitalism
• Manufacturing is the true source of wealth.

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Justice

• Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794)
• Essays on Crimes and Punishments (1764)
• Punishment should serve as deterrent not
  retribution.
• Justice should be speedy
• Crimes are more effectively prevented by the
  certainty than by the severity of the punishment

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Education

• Attacked the method of book drill and punishment
• Learning should be based on inquiry and rational
  thought.
• Wide spread education and literacy so all can
  function rationally.

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The American Philosophes
John Adams(1745-1826)
Thomas Jefferson(1743-1826)
Ben Franklin(1706-1790)
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...
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Womens Rights

• Mary Wollstonecraft
• A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)
• Women are not naturally inferior to men, no proof
  scientific or otherwise.
• To achieve progress in a society based on
  enlightenment principles it is irrational to
  subjugate women

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Limits on Rationalism

• Challenges to Enlightenment Thought

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Philosophical

• Critique of Pure Reason (1781)
• What is Enlightenment? (1784)
• Metaphysical Foundations ofNatural Science
  (1786)

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
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Kants Philosophy

• Dare to Know!
• He introduced the concept of transcendentalism ?
  some things are known by methods other than
  empirically.
• The belief in the existence of a non-rational way
  to understand things.
• The existence of neither time nor space is
  determined by empirical understanding.
• These type of things are a priori.
• They transcend sensory experience.
• They are pure, not empirical concepts like
  faith, pre-existence, life after death.

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• The Natural History of Religion (1755)
• Belief in God rested on superstition and fear
  rather than on reason.
• Skeptical of dependence on reason and emphasized
  need for empirical observation
• Though idea of natural laws governing human
  activity was ridiculous

David Hume (1711-1776)
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Religious

• Quakers George Fox
• Pietism
• Methodism John Wesley (1703-1791)

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Denis Diderot (1713-1784)

• All things must be examined, debated,
  investigated without exception and without regard
  for anyones feelings.
• We will speak against senseless laws until they
  are reformed and, while we wait, we will abide
  by them.

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Diderots Encyclopédie
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Pages from Diderots Encyclopedie
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Subscriptions to Diderots Encyclopedie
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Reading During the Enlightenment

• Literacy
• 80 for men 60 women.
• Books were expensive (one days wages).
• Many readers for each book (20 1)
• novels, plays other literature.
• journals, memoirs, private lives.
• philosophy, history, theology.
• newspapers, political pamphlets.

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An Increase in Reading
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An Increase in Reading
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Must Read Books of the Time
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Literature

• The novel becomes a widespread genre.
• Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe (1719)
• Satire flourishes as many of the philosophes use
  it a method of criticizing the Ancien Regime
  without fear of punishment
• Voltaires Candide (1759)
• Jonathan Swifts Gullivers Travels (1726)
• History becomes a serious area of study with an
  attempt to look at the past objectively
• Edward Gibbons History of the Decline and Fall
  of the Roman Empire (1776-88)
• Poetry shifts to serious subjects that examine
  the human condition.
• Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

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Culture of the 18th Century

• Dominated by Neoclassicism a revival of the
  classical style of Greece and Rome. Often too
  constrained by rules and proportions.

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Architecture
Neoclassic Based on dignity and restraint in form
took off after 1750
Rococo an offshoot of Baroque more elaborate and
intimate flourished until about 1750
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Painting
Jean Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) Merry Company in
the Open Air
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The Legacy of the Enlightenment?

• The democratic revolutions begun in America in
  1776 and continued in Amsterdam, Brussels, and
  especially in Paris in the late 1780s, put every
  Western government on the defensive.

• Reform, democracy, and republicanism had been
  placed irrevocably on the Western agenda.

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The Legacy of the Enlightenment?

• New forms of civil society arose -- clubs,
  salons, fraternals, private academies, lending
  libraries, and professional/scientific
  organizations.

• 19c conservatives blamed it for the modern
  egalitarian disease (once reformers began to
  criticize established institutions, they didnt
  know where and when to stop!)

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The Legacy of the Enlightenment?

• It established a materialistic tradition based on
  an ethical system derived solely from a
  naturalistic account of the human condition (the
  Religion of Nature).

• Theoretically endowed with full civil and legal
  rights, the individual had come into existence as
  a political and social force to be reckoned with.

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The Legacy of the Enlightenment?Political Beliefs

• People should be ruled by law not by rulers.
• Powers of the government should be separated to
  prevent the concentration of power in the hands
  of the few.
• Popular sovereignty legal authority should be
  in the hands of the people and exercised only
  with the consent of the people.
• It is the responsibility of the ruler(s) to look
  after the welfare of the people.

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How enlightened? How despotic?

• In your group please complete the following
  tasks
• Define enlightened despotism.
• For your assigned ruler, list what reforms they
  undertook and how these reforms were
  characteristic of the Enlightenment.
• Give your ruler a score. 1 TOTAL DESPOT to 5
  VERY ENLIGHTENED.
• Explain your score and provide specific evidence
  to back it up.

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Enlightened Despotism

• Monarchs who made notable attempts to practice
  some of the reforms advocated by philosophes.

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Frederick the Great of Prussia (r. 1740-1786)

• 1712 - 1786.
• Succeeded his father, Frederick William I (the
  Soldier King).
• He saw himself as the First Servant of the
  State.

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Catherine the Great (r. 1762-1796)

• German Princess Sophie Friederike Auguste of
  Anhalt-Zerbst.
• 1729 - 1796.

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Reformer? OR Despot?
1767 Catherine summons the Legislative
Commission. 1768-1774 Russo-Turkish
War. 1771-1775 Pugachev Rebellion is
suppressed. 1772 First partition of
Poland. 1785 Charter of Nobility. 1793 Second
partition of Poland. 1795 Third partition of
Poland.
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Reformer? OR Despot?
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The Partitions of Poland
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Russian Expansionism in the Late 18c
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Joseph II of Austria (r. 1765-1790)

• 1741 - 1790.
• His mother was Maria Theresa.

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Habsburg Family Crest
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Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor
1772 First partition of Poland. 1778-1779 He
failed to annex Bavaria to Austrian
lands. 1781 Declared the Toleration
Patent. 1781 Abolition of serfdom and feudal
dues. 1785 He failed to exchange the Austria
Netherlands for Bavaria. 1787-1792 Austria
joined Russia in the Russo-Turkish
War, but little was gained. 1795 Third partition
of Poland.
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Joseph II of Austria