Chapter 17 Vocabulary
The Age of the Enlightenment
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) and Richard Steele (1672-1729) began publishing The Spectator in
1711 to foster the value of polite conversation and encourage the reading of books.
François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778) was born in Paris to a minor treasury official. His penname was
“Voltaire" came from an anagram. Imprisoned briefly in the Bastille, he went into exile in England in
1726 and witnessed the English literary circles. He was impressed with the English climate of
intellectual and religious tolerance and enjoyed the political freedom (not known in France) and
admired England’s scientific achievements and economic prosperity. When he returned to France, he
published Letters on the English (Lettres philosophiques sur les Anglais) which praised English
Constitutional Monarchy, religious toleration and respect for human rights. The Parlement of Paris
had the book condemned and burned. Voltaire was harassed and fled to Cirey in Eastern France.
While there, he lived with the Countess Emile de Chatlet who became his mistress and with her help
in 1738 published Elements of the Philosophy of Newton, which helped popularize Newton on the
continent. From 1750 to 1752, he lived at the court of Frederick the Great which went well until
Voltaire made fun of one of Frederick’s scientists at the Berlin Academy. He moved to Switzerland but
quarreled with the Calvinist clergy over his sponsoring plays in his home. He then he moved to Ferney,
just across the French border, where for the rest of his life producing plays, writing essays and stories
that made him the literary dictator of Europe. For the rest of his life he would direct his literary venom
at the French Court and the Catholic Church, which he held responsible for fanaticism, intolerance and
incalculable human suffering; his cry was ecrasez l’infame, “crush the damned thing!” referred to the
Catholic Church. He also remarked that his trade was to say what he thought.
In 1755, a terrible earthquake struck Lisbon, Portugal, killing approximately 60,000 people. Voltaire
wrote a deeply pessimistic poem, Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne (Poem on the Lisbon Disaster),
for which he was criticized for not being more optimistic. So in 1759, he wrote in reply his most
famous work, Candide. In it, Voltaire ridicules religion, theologians, governments, armies,
philosophies, and philosophers through allegory and what he considered unwarranted optimism about
the human condition. Like most of his fellow Philosophes, Voltaire believed that human society could
and should be improved but he was never certain that if improvement were achieved it would be
permanent. Most importantly, Voltaire would be the leading voice against religious persecution and in
favor toleration. In 1778, he returned in triumph to Paris and died later the same year.
Mary Astell (1666–1731), working on John Locke’s thinking, attacked the absolute sovereignty of the
male head of the household. She dared to ask that 'If all men are born free, why are all women born
slaves?'
The Marquis Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794) published Concerning Crimes and Punishments in 1764
in which he applied critical analysis to the problem of making punishments both effective and just.
Beccaria held that punishments must have a deterrent, not a retributive function; that punishment
should be proportionate to the crime committed; that procedures of criminal trials should be public; and
finally, that to be effective, punishments should be prompt. Overarching these lesser principles were his
opposition to torture and the death penalty. The purpose of laws, he felt, was not to impose the will of
God or some other ideal of perfection, but to secure the greatest good or happiness for the greatest
number of human beings. Beccaria is considered the father of modern penology.
1
Jean Calas was a Huguenot merchant who was tortured and publically strangled to death, supposedly
because he had murdered his son for wanting to convert to Catholicism. Seeing this as a clear case of
religious persecution, Voltaire took up Calas’ case and published his Treatise on Tolerance in 1763.
He then harassed the authorities and managed to get the conviction overturned in 1765.
Catherine the Great of Russia, whom we met in the last chapter was like Frederick the Great and
admired Enlightenment thinking so long as it did not threaten her authority. She was the most able of
Peter the Great’s successors. She was born a German princess who became Tsarina after the death of
her Tsar-husband, Peter III, the grandson of Peter the Great. Except for her determination to hold on to
her autocracy, she was a follower of Enlightenment principles. She continued Peter’s reforms and was
responsible for the Russian Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century. Yet she cooled towards reform as
a result of Pugachev’s Rebellion and the French Revolution.
Countess Emile de Chatlet (1706-1749) was the mistress of Voltaire and a brilliant author,
mathematician and physicist whose crowning achievement was her translation and commentary on
Isaac Newton's work Principia Mathematica published ten years after her death.
Denis Diderot (1713 –1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer; and he is best known as
the as co-founder and chief editor of and contributor to one of the greatest monumental undertakings of
the Enlightenment, the Encyclopedia (Encyclopédie)
Frederick the Great was arguably most famous King of Prussia. He reigned from 1740-1786 and
made Prussia a key player in European politics as a result of the Seven-Year’s War. He forged a
Prussian state that commanded the loyalty of the military, the Junker nobility, the Lutheran clergy,
university professors and a growing middle class. Frederick had swamps drained and introduced new
crops, especially turnips and potatoes. He often compelled peasants to move to areas where their skills
or labor were needed. He codified Prussian Law; he established credit associations to help landowners
raise money. However, taxation was high and most Prussians did not prosper during his reign.
Frederick also worked to make the bureaucracy more “enlightened” which also made them more
efficient and his monarchy stronger. Frederick was comfortable with the Enlightenment as long as it did
not affect his authority. Frederick admired Voltaire and got him to come to Berlin to establish an
Academy of Science. He favored the growth of universities and allowed professors wide latitude to
discuss new ideas. In return, Prussian academics strongly supported their king. And so Prussian
Enlightenment figures supported the state rather than criticized it.
Frederick had a vision of a united Germany and, although he exerted extremely tight control of his
Prussian subjects and used daring military strategies to expand the size and strength of his kingdom, he
nevertheless saw himself as the “first servant of the state.” He was as tough on himself as on any
subordinate. He implemented the principle of promotion based of merit not on privilege of birth. Like
earlier Hohenzollern rulers, he protected the political interests of the Prussian nobility and their role in
the army.
Frederick was tolerant of all expressions of religion and boasted that in his kingdom everyone could go
to heaven in his own way. He encouraged talented artisans, engineers and bureaucrats who faced
religious persecution on their own countries to come to Prussia. Frederick was especially tolerant of
Catholics and Jews living in a predominately Lutheran country – and made special efforts to connect
with the Catholic majority in Silesia which he had seized in the War of the Austrian Succession. He
even declared that he would build mosques for Turks should they come to Prussia. Nevertheless in spite
of his genuine toleration, Frederick continued to appoint Protestants to key positions in the government
and the army.
2
Madame (Marie-Thérèse) Geoffrin (1699-1777) was the most famous Salonière (hostesses of the
Salon) who in the 1750s in Paris invited the brightest and best of philosophers, artists and musicians.
The young Mozart performed in her Salon and Denis Diderot was a regular. Madame Geoffrin
corresponded with Catherine II of Russia and the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria.
Other Salonière, especially Julie de Lespinasse (1733-1776) and Claudine de Tencin (1689-1749),
(who hosted Montesquieu frequently and promoted his work, The Spirit of the Laws,) not only wrote
their own novels but helped to bring the Philosophes increased social status and boost the sales of their
works. The Marquise de Pompadour (1721-1764), the mistress of Louis XV, played a key role in
overcoming efforts to censor Diderot’s Encyclopedia and she also hindered the publication of works
attacking the Philosophes.
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) was the English historian who in 1776 wrote The Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire. Gibbon argued that Christianity came into being and evolved not because of piety
and the influence of miracles but because of natural causes and human achievements. Although he was
deeply intolerant of Christianity because he believed that it contributed to the fall of the Roman
Empire, he did write favorably about Muhammad’s leadership and Islam’s successes in conquering
such a vast territory in its first century.
Johannes Gutenberg created the modern printing press in 1468 which created an explosion of
continent wide written materials. The result was that books and pamphlets became common place,
literacy rates began to climb and new ideas began to spread: humanistic, secular and personal. Without
the printing press, the fruits of the Renaissance would have been stunted; the Protestant Reformation
might have taken a much more conservative direction and the Counter Reformation never occurred.
David Hume (1711-1776) was the Scottish philosopher who attacked religion and wrote On Miracles
in which he claimed that there was not empirical evidence for the miracles that were foundational to
Christianity. Hume believed that the greatest “miracle” of all was that anyone even believed in miracles
at all.
Joseph II (1741-1790) was the son of the Austrian Empress, Maria Theresa, the great opponent of
Frederick the Great and the brother of Marie Antoinette. As the Holy Roman Emperor, he ruled jointly
with his mother from 1765 until her death in 1780 – and then alone until his death ten years later. He
was an unusual person to say the least. He was austere and humorless; for much of his life he slept of a
straw bed.
Joseph prided himself on a narrow, passionless rationality, which he sought to impose on his Hapsburg
domains. He was perhaps the greatest of the Enlightenment monarchs and no eighteenth-century ruler
was more honestly steeped in Enlightenment principles than he. Joseph even traveled among his
subjects in disguise to learn their problems and increase his efforts to improve their lives, which earned
him the title of the Peasant Emperor. He gave freedom of worship to Protestants and Jews, ended
censorship, curbed the Catholic Church and abolished serfdom. After his death, his brother and
successor Leopold canceled his reforms.
Immanuel Kant was the German philosopher who described the Enlightenment in two Latin words:
sapere aude, (dare to think) – or the courage of the individual to use his or her reasoning ability. He
meant that philosophes dared to use critical, informed and scientific thinking about social issues and
problems and that - chief among their goals - was intellectual freedom, by which they meant freedom of
thought, opinion and expression. Kant also – like Gibbon - vigorously attacked religion and in 1793
wrote treatise that summed up such radical attacks, Religion within the Limits of Reason alone.
3
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729 –1781) was a German philosopher, writer and playwright, who is
1799, wrote Nathan the Wise which was plea for religious tolerance. (Its performance was forbidden
by the church during Lessing's lifetime and not performed until two years after his death.) The play is
set in Jerusalem during the Third Crusade and describes how a wise Jewish merchant Nathan, the wise
Muslim Sultan Saladin, and Christian Crusaders manage to bridge the gaps and misunderstanding
between Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Its major themes are friendship, tolerance, relativism of God,
a rejection of miracles and a need for communication.
Moses Mendelsohn (1729-1786) was a German Jew who was a pioneer for the assimilation of Jews
into modern European life. He was one of the leading figures of Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) and
known as the Jewish (of German) Socrates. Like Spinoza, he advocated the entry of Jews into
European culture but unlike Spinoza he argued that a Jew could retain loyalty to Judaism and still
pursue rational thought and Enlightenment values. He was influenced by Gotthold Lessing and in his
play Nathan the Wise, Lessing modeled the Jewish merchant Nathan on Mendelsohn himself, who had
helped Mendelsohn come to his moderating conclusions. Mendelsohn was a rationalistic Jew loyal to
Judaism who fought for toleration of Judaism by European society. Although he himself was a
practicing orthodox Jew, his Enlightenment values have caused many historians to refer to him as the
father of Reformed Judaism.
(Charles Louis de Secondat) Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) was a noble of the robe who was
well to do in French society, but he still saw the need for reform. About a decade after he wrote Persian
Letters, Montesquieu visited England and was deeply impressed with Great Britain’s political
institutions. So in 1748, he published The Spirit of the Laws in which he held up the British
Constitution as a the best model for regulating the power of government. In the Spirit of the Laws
Montesquieu examined political laws – ancient to modern – and concluded that no one set of laws
worked well for all nations in all circumstances such as size, population, social and religious customs,
natural resources and climate. Only by rational examination, he felt, could the best form of government
be chosen for any one nation.
For France, Montesquieu favored monarchy – but tempered by limiting groups such as the aristocracy,
towns and other bodies. He saw the role of Parlements as that of both limiting the monarch and
preserving the liberty of his subjects. Thus Montesquieu was a political conservative and he
championed conservatism’s steady slow reform over more radical solutions to prevent the monarchy
from degrading the life of the French people.
One of Montesquieu’s most influential ideas was his concept of division of power within
government. His model was that of Great Britain where governmental power was divided between the
king, Parliament and the judiciary. Executive power resided in the king; legislative power resided in
Parliament and judicial power in the courts. Montesquieu believed that any two branches check and
balance the power of the third. His theory was good but inaccurate because he failed to see how royal
patronage and corruption allowed powerful aristocrats to dominate the government and he was not
aware of Britain’s emerging Cabinet System. In the future, the United States would create a
government even closer to the principles Montesquieu inspired.
Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1672) who was the wife of the British ambassador to the Ottoman
Empire wrote Turkish Embassy Letters in which she noted many of the good points about Ottoman
society such as the wide use of vaccination against smallpox. It was her opinion that Ottoman
architecture was more handsome than European and better than any in Western Europe. And she
criticized the misinformation in Western Society about Ottoman society and Islam.
4
Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher,
alchemist, and theologian, who in his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy reasoned that all
physical objects in the universe moved through mutual attraction or gravity. What Newton did was not
only to explain why the planets moved through space in an orderly manner but also demonstrated the
importance of empirical (existential) data which came from observation. Thus, by using the power of
the human mind, he proved that ancient and medieval scientific ideas were often incorrect and needed
to be challenged. Newton also built the first practical reflecting telescope and was knighted by Queen
Anne in 1705. The bottom line was that Newton’s emphasis on concrete experience became a key
feature of Enlightenment thought.
Alexander Pope (1688-1704) was an English poet known for his satire and translation of Homer who
grew wealthy providing example of how to make a profession of being a writer for younger colleagues.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was a strange and troubled man, who yet had a vision that
transcended the political thought of his day challenging the social fabric of his day. For Rousseau it
seemed impossible for people to be able to achieve moral, virtuous or sincere lives. He argued that the
processes of civilization and the Enlightenment had corrupted human nature and blamed much of the
evil in the world on the uneven distribution of property. He questioned the morality of true progress of
a society in which commerce and industry were considered to be the most important human activities.
Unlike most other Philosophes, who believed that the human condition would improve if people were
properly educated and/or enjoyed more material benefits, Rousseau questioned this assumption and
asked – in the manner of Socrates – what constitutes the good life – an audacious and haunting question
that still haunts Western society.
Rousseau envisioned a society in which each person could maintain personal freedom while continuing
to be a loyal member of the state. He drew on classical Judeo-Christian principles (especially Calvin
and Plato) and defined freedom as obedience to the law. But the difference was that for Rousseau that
the law that was to be obeyed was that law created by the general will or consent. Thus in a society
which possessed virtuous customs and mores, members of society would have adequate information
about the law in order to make decisions for the good of the larger community and bind the individual
to that larger community. Rousseau even went so far as to argue that some people must be forced to be
free (obey the general will) and thereby justifying radical actions against individual deemed not free.
Rousseau was not influential in his own time. Other Philosophes questioned his viewpoints of society
and aristocrats did not appreciate his ideas of radical democracy. His ideas only became more popular
after his death. Leaders of the French Revolution (which began only a few years after his death)
embraced his ideas that questioned the very foundations of society and his influence of nineteenth and
twentieth century philosophers was profound.
George Sale was the English academic and oriental scholar who made the first translation of the
Qur’an (Koran) into English in 1734.
Adam Smith (1723-1790) was the Scottish economist who revolutionized economic thinking when he
produced the most important economic work of the Enlightenment in his Inquiry into the Nature and
Causes of the Wealth of Nations (or simply The Wealth of Nations) in 1776. Smith believed that
economic liberty was the foundation of a natural economic system. He advocated the abolition of the
Mercantilist system in Great Britain which gave favored merchants and industries tariff protection,
trading monopolies and government regulation that favored them over workers. The best way to make a
nation wealthy, he argued, was to unleash individuals to pursue their own (yes, even selfish) economic
interests. This would create and expanding economy and meet the needs of consumers as manufacturers
and merchants competed for their business.
5
Smith challenged the Mercantilist idea that the earth’s resources were limited and substituted the
concept that all the resources– water, air, soil and minerals – were without limit. He said that resources
needed to be exploited for the enrichment and comfort of mankind; in effect he was saying that Europe
need not be poor. Smith is regarded as the father of Laissez-faire Economics in which government
encourages private enterprise and plays only a limited and yet supporting role. Contrary to popular
modern opinion, Smith argued that the state did have a role in the economy because the state needed to
provide legal systems, schools, armies, navies and roads – and should lead the way in the undertaking
of dangerous new trade routes or new economic enterprises that were initially risky or dangerous.
Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was a Dutch Jew who was a pioneer for secularizing Judaism. He
believed that reason could reshape (re-conceptualize) traditional thought. When he was twenty-four, his
own synagogue excommunicated him and he lived the rest of his life apart for the Jewish community in
the Netherlands. Ironically, his excommunication made many Philosophes consider him a martyr for
rationality against superstition. He became a symbol of Jews who separated themselves from traditional
Judaism and entered the mainstream of Western society with diminishing regard for the faith of the
ancestors. It has been said that because of Spinoza Philosophes both championed toleration of the Jews
and – at the same time – held Judaism in contempt. It was a pattern that would characterize European
culture for generations to come.
John Toland (1617-1722), a rationalist philosopher and freethinker, was the author of one of the
earliest deist works, Christianity Not Mysterious, published in 1696 and in it he argued that divine
revelation found in the Bible contained no real mysteries because they could be understood by the
application of the natural and the rational (as opposed to the supernatural and the mystical).
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), a self-educated woman, published an essay in 1792, A Vindication
of the Rights of Women, in which she attacked Rousseau and argued that women possessed all rights
that men possessed. Moreover she asserted that education for all women would actually make them
better mothers and wives and prepare them for professional occupations and even participation in
political life.
----------------------------------------------------------An Essay Concerning Human Understanding was written by John Locke in 1690 and argued that the
mind at birth was a blank slate (tabula rasa – Latin for blank slate, although Locke did not actually use
the Latin words) which is filled during life through experience. Thus, personality is the result of the
sensations from the external world that make an impression on the individual, so that only experience
shapes a person’s character. Locke’s theory is essentially Behaviorism (i.e., behavior is what we do,
think or feel) and implies that not only is human nature changeable by modifying physical and social
environment but also that the Christian Doctrine of Original Sin (all humans are flawed) is incorrect
and that human beings can – without God or his grace - take charge of their own fate or destiny.
The Age of Enlightenment (or the Age of Reason) was a movement of intellectuals that arose between
1650 and 1800 and which sought to harness the power of reason to reform society and advance
knowledge by promoting science the and exchange of ideas while opposing superstition, intolerance
and abuses in the church and in the state.
Deism believed in the existence of a god (note the lower case a and the lower case g), but denied the
supernatural teachings of Christianity, such as Jesus’ Virgin Birth and his resurrection. Deists held that
a powerful god set the universe in motion and established natural laws to govern it, but did not take a
personal interest in its development or intervene in its affairs. A favorite simile of the deists was that of
a watchmaker, who did not need to interfere constantly in his creation, since it operated by itself
according to natural and rational laws.
6
The Encyclopedia (edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert) was a general
compendium of information of as much knowledge as possible and was published in France between
1751 and 1772, with later supplements, revised editions, and translations. It was a twenty-five year
work-in-progress as Diderot collected and published the works of the leading philosophes and scientists
of the day, whose purpose was to change the way ordinary people thought.
The Encyclopedia was a collective plea for freedom of expression and its articles often had to be
disguised under the guise of obscure articles. Although many contributors had no interest in reforming
society, the work as a whole pointed that way. It denied that the teachings of the Church could be
authoritative in matters of science and some articles talked about changing social and political
institutions that in such a way society would be improved for everyone. Nevertheless, the Encyclopedia
also contained articles and illustrations that dealt with the practical like shipbuilding, manufacturing,
canal construction, mathematics, music and improvements in agriculture.
Ethics Demonstrated in the Geometric Manner or simply Ethics was written by Baruch Spinoza and
published by his friends after his death. Many people condemned Ethics for too closely identifying the
spiritual and material worlds when Spinoza declared that God is Nature and Nature is God. They felt
that he was either atheistic (there is no God) or pantheistic (god is a part of everything in the universe)
that there was no such thing as God’s revelation via the Hebrew or Christian scriptures. Such ideas
horrified traditional thinkers in that Spinoza seemed to hold that there could no individual or personal
immortality after death.
Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet (Le fanatisme, ou Mahomet le Prophete) a play written in 1736
by Voltaire that examines religious fanaticism and self-serving manipulation based on the life of
Muhammad in which Muhammad orders the murder of his critics. It is important to understand that
Voltaire was not condemning Islam per se but found in Islam one more example of religious
fanaticism for which he had condemned Christians.
The Four Stage Theory of human social and economic development says that human societies
(supported by Adam Smith and most Scottish economists) can be of four types: hunter/gatherings;
pastoral; agricultural; and commercial. Hunter/gatherers were migratory and had no settled life; pastoral
societies were semi-nomadic but had some private property and occasional, small urban areas;
agricultural societies were settled with some urban areas and clear-cut property arrangements; and
commercial societies were states which had sophisticated urban areas, skilled manufacturing centers,
far-reaching trading networks and elaborate forms of property and financial institutions.
The obvious conclusion to the Four State Theory is not only that is provides an explanation for the
development of complex societies and civilizations but also a measuring stick by which a rational
scientist could look at another culture and estimate its level of advancement. It unfortunately led to
European ideas about their own superiority when the Europeans of Northwest Europe saw that they had
the highest level of human achievement. Such thinking would allow Europeans to portray themselves
as bringing the fruits of civilization to less sophisticated and technologically advanced areas of the
world and a justification for economic, political and even religious imperialism – even racism - which
would blossom in the nineteenth century.
The Glorious Revolution of 1688 which drove the Stuart monarch James II from the throne and
brought William III and Mary II to the throne not only brought constitutional monarchy but gave Great
Britain unequaled political stability and feeling of toleration which had a profound impact on the
Enlightenment because Great Britain provided a living example of a society which appeared to benefit
most of its people.
7
High Culture/Low Culture: High Culture authors were read and accepted in the upper levels of
society while Low Culture authors, not able to write for upper society, made a marginal living writing
for whatever newspapers or journals that would pay them. The Low Culture authors bitterly resented
their lack of success and blamed royal patronage and governmental corruption. Thus, they often
espoused radical ideas and passed them on to the lower classes who struggled to make a living.
Jerusalem or Religious Power and Judaism was published by Moses Mendelsohn in which he argued
for both religious toleration and the importance of Jewish self-identification. He maintained that many
religions tolerated in one country did no harm to civil loyalty to the government and that Jews should
have the same civil rights as other subjects. In the spirit of the Deists, he said that Judaism was one of
many religious paths to a revealed God. Jewish law and custom were intended to raise the moral stature
of the Jewish people and could do the same for others as well.
Persian Letters was a play written in 1721 the Baron de Montesquieu telling of the experiences of
two Persian noblemen, Usbek and Rica, who were traveling through France and exchange letter with
friends back in Persia on numerous aspects of Western, Christian society, particularly French politics
and mores (social customs), ending with a biting satire of John Law and the Mississippi Bubble.
The Philosophes (the French word for philosophers) were the great intellectuals of the 18th century
Enlightenment. But most were not really philosophers; rather they were intellectuals who applied
reason to the study of many areas of learning, including philosophy, history, science, politics,
economics and sociology. Philosophes were never an organized group and often disagreed among
themselves, but nevertheless considered themselves part of a grand family or “Republic of Letters"
that transcended political boundaries. They strongly endorsed progress and tolerance, distrusted
organized religion and faded away during the violence of the French Revolution in 1793. German
philosophes were mostly university professors but the great majority of Philosophes were free agents
who might be found in London coffee houses, Edinburgh drinking spots, the parlors of Parisian
salonnières, the country houses of enlightenment noblemen or the courts of enlightened monarchs.
The Physiocrats were a group of economists who believed that wealth was derived solely from the
value of the land. They believed that Mercantilism (or the accumulation of gold and maintaining a
favorable balance of trade) actually hampered the development of trade, manufacture and agriculture.
Led by François Quesnay (1694-1774) and Pierre DuPont de Nemours (1739-1817), Physiocrats
believed that the primary role of the government was to protect private property and permit its owners
to use it without restraint. They argued the all economic production depended on agriculture and
favored the consolidation of small peasant farms into larger and more productive farms.
Print Culture was a direct outgrowth of Gutenberg’s Printing Press which replaced scribal culture and
oral tradition. By the seventeenth century, books, journals, newspapers and pamphlets appeared in
greater and greater numbers; during the eighteenth century Europe was awash in printed material,
especially in Great Britain. Moreover prose became as valued as poetry and the novel emerged as a
distinct literary genre (category of literature).
The Social Contract was published by Rousseau in 1762 and was an abstract work that does not
advocate specific reforms but outlines the kind of political forms that he believed would overcome the
evils of contemporary politics and society. Following the tradition of John Locke, most Philosophes
saw human beings and society as a collection of individuals pursuing personal selfish goals – and
wished to liberate them from governmental strictures. Rousseau, on the other hand, suggested that
society is more important than its individual members because they are what they are only by virtue of
their relationships to the larger community.
8
Theologico-Politico Treatise (Tractatus Theologico-Politicus) of 1670 was written by Baruch Spinoza,
in which he described the origins of religion in naturalistic terms and taught that the Hebrew Bible
provided the Jews with rules and regulations (legislation) but not theological knowledge. Thus he was
calling on both Jews and Christians to use their own reason and study the Bible as they would other
ancient books. The treatise completely rejected the Jewish notions of "chosenness" (i.e., that the Jews
were God’s chosen people) and caused an uproar when it declared the both Christianity and Judaism
led people away from the original teachings of scripture.
Philosophe’s Attitudes towards Women of the Enlightenment
It is important to understand that in spite of much female support for Enlightenment ideals, the
Philosophes - for the most part - did not reciprocate and clung to many traditional attitudes towards
women and did not equally apply Enlightenment ideals to women.
Most of the articles in Diderot’s Encyclopedia often suggested ways to improve women’s lives but
more often emphasized women’s physical weakness and inferiority usually connected to menstruation
or childbearing. Almost all contributors were men and Diderot saw little reason to add contributions by
women. Although some contributors favored social equality for women and a few opposed it, most
were indifferent. The consensus seemed to be that women were frivolous and unconcerned with
important issues; that women needed to devote themselves to being wives and mothers.
Montesquieu was more enlightened even though he believed that women were in inferior because of
climate, politics, culture and woman’s physiology, he nevertheless believed that women were NOT by
nature inferior to men and argued that they should have a wider role in society. He criticized the sexism
of his day and in The Persian Letters he talked about the repression of women in a Persian Harem
which, of course, was symbolic of the social repression of women in Europe. On one hand in The Spirit
of the Laws, he championed equality of the sexes; he still urged a traditional view of marriage and
family life advocating that men were the unquestioned head of the family. In like manner, although he
supported the right of women to divorce and the removal of laws that oppressed women, he upheld the
ideal of female chastity (i.e., the double standard).
Rousseau had surprising opinions about women. This great critic of inequality urged a traditional role
for women. In his 1762 novel Émile, he set forth a radical version of the view that men and women
should occupy separate spheres. He said that women should be educated for lives subordinate to men
and emphasized women’s functions in bearing and raising children. He believed that women were
inferior to men and felt a woman’s chief role to make herself pleasing for men. There was no place for
a woman in Rousseau’s world of political life. But he felt that men and women ought to work together
in their interpersonal relationships and the family. Rousseau’s views deeply influenced many leaders of
the French Revolution who denied the political rights for which they were fighting to women.
The Rococo style of architecture, interior design, painting along with music, literature and theater
emerged after the death of Louis XIV and took root when the aristocracy spent less time at Versailles
and more times enjoying the diversions of Paris. Wealthy French aristocrats began to build marvelous
estates and houses called Hôtels which were small, elaborately decorated mansions. Compared to the
Baroque which was symmetrical and of grandly formal, the Rococo was asymmetrical, less formal and
yet still ornate making strong usage of creamy, pastel-like colors, curved edges and surfaces with much
gold leaf. Unlike the politically focused Baroque, the Rococo had more playful and often witty artistic
themes. The 1730s represented the height of Rococo development in France.
9
Parisian hostesses and Salonière entertained the Philosophes in such hotels. Antoine Watteau (16841721) was considered the first great Rococo painter and had great influence on Francois Boucher
(1700-1770) who was known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes and
decorative allegories of classical or pastoral themes. He painted many portraits of Madame de
Pompadour, his patroness. Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour both painted in the Rococo style and
so the Rococo became known as the Style of Louis XV. A third French Rococo painter of importance
was Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806) who was a painter and printmaker and whose genre
paintings were distinguished by remarkable exuberance, eroticism and hedonism.
Left: St Peter attempting to
walk on Water by Boucher.
It is a religious subject but
highly romanticized. Note the
creamy, pastel-like colors.
It is important to remember that whether it was the lighthearted French approach or the more
conservative English approach, or even a religious approach the Rococo was associated with the
political inequalities of the Ancien Regime.
10
Right: Portrait of Madame de
Pompadour (1759) by Bouchet.
Again, note the creamy, pastel-like
colors.
Below: Pilgrimage on the Isle of
Cythera by Watteau depicts a
romantic departure from the island
of Cythera in the Aegean Sea, the
birthplace of Venus and
symbolized the shortness of love.
11
Left: The Swing, 1767 by JeanHonoré Fragonard
Right: The Secret Meeting, 1771
also by Jean-Honoré Fragonard
12
In Great Britain, the Rococo was always thought of
as the "French taste" and was never widely adopted
as an architectural style, although its influence was
strongly felt in such areas as silverwork, porcelain,
and silks. Thomas Gainsborough’s Robert Andrews
and His Wife (look back to Chapter 15 to see this
painting) is representative of the more subdued
English Rococo.
Perhaps Gainsborough’s most famous painting is
found at the Huntington Library in San Marino,
California,
The Blue Boy (right), painted in 1770 and thought to
be a portrait of Jonathan Buttall, the son of a wealthy
hardware merchant.
One of the most spectacular Rococo
interiors was the Imperial Hall
(Kaisarhaal) in Würzburg, Bavaria
designed by Balthazar Neumann (16871753) with ceilings painted by the Venetian
painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (16961770).
Left: The Apotheosis of Spain, a
ceiling painted by Tiepolo in The
Royal Palace of Madrid.
13
The Neoclassical Style of art and architecture arose around the mid eighteenth century and was rooted
in a new admiration for the art of the ancient world. In 1755, Johann Joachim Winkelmann, a
German archeologist, published Thoughts on the Imitation of Greeks Works in Painting and
Sculpture followed in 1764 by The History of Ancient Art. In both works he criticized the
superficiality (shallowness/non substantial) of the Rococo and praised the seriousness of ancient art and
architecture. He was inspired by the discoveries between 1738 and 1748 on the ancient Roman cities of
Herculaneum and Pompeii (both of which had been buried in an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79
A.D.) and the treasures that were brought to light. Winkelmann’s books and these discoveries directly
led to the rise of Neoclassicism in art and architecture.
Rome became a destination for artists and aristocratic tourists and the home of the neoclassical
movement. Figures in Neoclassical paintings rarely suggested movement and were historical and
didactic rather than emotional or playful. The subject matter – often taken from Greek and Roman
History – dealt with the responsibilities of public life or public morals rather than intimate sensuality or
frivolity. . Perhaps the most representative painter of Neoclassicism was Jacques Louis David
especially seen in his 1784 painting The Oath of the Horatii and his 1787 painting The Death of
Socrates. David would record the French Revolution in his Tennis Court Oath (1792) and Napoleon
in his Coronation of Napoleon (1806)
14
The Oath of the Horatii, 1784
The Death of Socrates, 1787
15
The Tennis Court Oath, 1791
The Coronation of Napoleon, 1807
16