The Enlightenment

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The Enlightenment

• An age of Reason

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Historical Steps Toward Enlightenment

• Dark Ages a period of history dominated by
  tradition, irrationality, superstition, and
  tyranny
• Revolution of physics systematic thinking could
  apply to all forms of human activity, including
  thinking

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European Enlightenment thinkers

• called themselves Enlightenment thinkers,
  believing that they were breaking from the past
  of darkness, obscurity, and ignorance of European
  thought with the light of truth

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Enlightenment thinkers

• advocated Reason as a method by which one could
  establish an authoritative system of
• Aesthetics (emotional value)
• Ethics (behavioral code)
• Government (ruled by the people)
• Logic (thought and reason)

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Enlightenment belief

• Enlightenment thinkers believed that through the
  big four (aesthetics, ethics, govt., logic),
  human beings could discover objective truth about
  the universe.

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Specifics of Enlightenment belief (slide 1)

• The universe is fundamentally rational and can be
  understood by reason aloneimplications
• Truth can come through empirical (observable)
  observations, the use of reason, and systematic
  doubtimplications
• Human experience is the foundation of human
  understanding of truth authority is not to be
  preferred over experienceimplications

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Specifics of Enlightenment belief (slide 2)

• All human life, both social and individual, can
  be understood in the same way the natural world
  can be understood once understood, human life,
  both social and individual, can be manipulated or
  engineered in the same way the natural world can
  be manipulated or engineeredimplications
• Human history is largely a history of progress

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Specifics of Enlightenment belief (slide 3)

• Human beings can improve through education and
  the development of their rational facilities
  (logic)implications
• Religious doctrines have no place in the
  understanding of the physical and human
  worldsimplications
• Although God created the universe, he has no
  place in running itimplications

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Rene Descartes

• The Big Man of the Enlightenment
• Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am)
• Subjective truth holds a higher place than
  objective truth
• What is truth and how do we know?
• Radically changed how people look at truth,
  knowledge, and the question of existence

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Whats the big deal?

• Objective truth
• Commonly shared truth
• Grounded in belief that higher being develops
  truth

• Subjective truth
• Individuals perception of truth
• Individual experience is the foundation of truth

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Big Men of the Enlightenment

• Thomas Hobbes (The Leviathan)
• Human law derives from natural law
• Monarchs rule by the consent of the people
• John Locke
• tabula rasa
• The only knowledge is empirical (that which can
  be observed)

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Enlightenment thought comes to the New World

• America was forged in a revolution and built
  almost entirely upon Enlightenment ideas.
• The final legacy of the Enlightenment in the
  eighteenth century would be the establishment of
  a fully functioning Enlightenment government
  based, theoretically at least, on secular values
  and the notions of right and equality.

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• Rousseau concerned himself mostly with the idea
  of liberty (civilization has robbed us of our
  natural freedoms)
• The govt and the people are in a social
  contract
• The governed agree to be ruled
• The govt will protect their rights, property,
  happiness
• The Social Contract "Man is born free but
  everywhere is in chains."

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A broken social contract

• The govt and her people are in a social contract
• When the govt breaks the social contract
  (doesnt protect the people), the people are
  entitled to new rulers
• It would not be an exaggeration to say that
  Rousseaus concept of the social contract sparked
  the American Revolution

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Rousseau on Education

• Emile
• Emile outlines the best way to educate people
• Rousseau wanted an education that maximized the
  human potential

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Enlightenment Thinkers in America

• Thomas Paine (Common Sense)
• "These are the times that try men's souls."
• Paine communicated the idea that the colonists
  needed a revolution to break from England
• Benjamin Franklin
• Thomas Jefferson (Declaration of Independence)

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The Declaration of Independence

• The DoI outlines the social contract the govt
  has with the citizens of the United States
• The DoI is largely based on Rousseaus theory of
  the social contract

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Sources

• http//www.wsu.edu/dee/ENLIGHT/ENLIGHT.HTM
• http//www.ushistory.org/paine/