The Age of Reason &

Enlightenment

Pre-Enlightenment Thought

How did these eras change intellectual thought?

Renaissance...

Reformation…

Scientific Revolution…

Origins: 18th Century Politics

Britain…

France…

Prussia, Hapsburg Empire, Russia…

Ottoman Empire…

Origins: Political Origins Revulsion against political abuses arising in the 1680s

James II of England

Louis XIV of France

Resolution in England => Glorious Revolution

John Locke (1632-1704)

American Philosophes

Thomas Paine (1737-1809); John Adams (1745-1826); Ben

Franklin (1706-1790); Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Enlightenment Giants:

John Locke (1632-1704)

Enlightenment Giants:

John Locke (1632-1704) John Locke’s Philosophy

The individual must become a “rational creature.”

Virtue can be learned and practiced

Human beings possess free will

Legislators owe their power to a contract with the people

Neither kings nor wealth are divinely ordained

There are certain natural rights that are endowed by God to all

human beings

Favored a “Republic”

Origins: Scientific Origins

New standards for arriving at truth

The empirical and the practical

Universal mathematical formulas

Presence of alternatives

Origins: Religious Origins

Physico-theology

Support of “rational” religion

Deism

Unitarianism

Pantheism

THE BIG DEBATE

RELIGION VS. REASON

What is the Enlightenment?

REASON

& LOGIC

TRADITIONS &

SUPERSTITIONS

• Rationalism

• Empiricism

• Tolerance

• Skepticism

• Deism

• Nostalgia for past

• Organized religions

• Irrationalism

• Emotionalism

Centers of the Enlightenment

Questions of the Enlightenment

What is the purpose of Man?

What are the goals of Education?

What is the right social/political order?

What is the role of religious institutions?

What is the relationship of man to God?

What is the humanitarian approach?

How should society be reformed?

What are the “natural laws” in a perfect society?

Core Enlightenment Ideas

Universe is rational

Man is also rational and can understand the universe

Human society is governed by natural laws

These laws may be discovered through observation & reason

Man might progress until he eventually achieve perfection

Enlightenment Values 1. Scientific Values

2. Interaction between disciples of math and science

3. Rationality = reasoning

4. Rights of Man

5. Change and Reform

6. Natural Laws

7. Questioning the Church (estab. Religious Institutions)

8. Emphasis on knowledge and learning

9. Science and Faith work together

The “Modern World View” Progress

Secularization

Reason

Education

Nature

Liberty

Purpose of Life

The Philosophes

Who were they?

The Salons

Effect on Enlightenment

Cross-National Movement

Class based movement

Nationalism vs. Class

Economic effects?

The Salons

The Salons

Salonnieres

Madame Geoffrin (1699-1777)

Mademoiselle Julie de Lespinasse

(1732*-1776)

Madame Suzanne Necker

(1739-1794)

Enlightenment Giants:

Voltaire (1712-1778)

Enlightenment Giants:

Voltaire (1712-1778)

Greatest of the Enlightenment writers

Admired English life and institution

Tolerant of Christians

“God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh”

“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong”

“Men are equal; it is not birth, but virtue that makes the difference”

“I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”

Enlightenment Giants:

Denis Diderot (1713-1784)

Enlightenment Giants:

Denis Diderot (1713-1784)

The Encyclopedie

Complete cycle of

knowledge…change the

general way of thinking

Explained most advanced

ideas

Designed for secular

learning

Focused on humanity and

reason

Enlightenment Politics:

Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755)

The Spirit of the Laws

No set of political laws

worked at all times in all

places

Advocated division of

power

Enlightenment Economics:

Adam Smith

Wealth of Nations

Response to mercantilist

failures

Profit motive

Division of Labor

Private ownership of

property

Law of Supply & Demand

Law of Competition

Free Trade (Laissez-faire)

Enlightened Absolutism

Frederick the Great (Prussia)

Catherine the Great (Russia)

Joseph II (Austria)

Other Big Names in the Enlightenment

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Discourse on the Origins and

Inequality of Mankind

The Social Contract

Marquis de Condorcet

The Progress of the Human

Mind

Baron Paul d’Holbach

Atheism and Materialism

Systems of Nature

Legacy of the Enlightenment

Revolutions

Reform

New forms of civil society

“Egalitarian Disease”

Materialism

The emergence of the Individual