The Enlightenment
It is a foundation of American Democracy
Sapere aude!
“Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own
intelligence”
The people of the Scientific and Enlightenment
Revolution challenged the way people thought
It became the AGE OF REASON
By using the Scientific method of observation
and reason, the Enlightenment philosophers
hoped to figure our ways to improve the
conditions of people
the biggest idea change? Men are born free and
equal and gov’t ought to reflect that
Beginning with
the ancients
Let’s Begin With The
Ancients
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Athens and Rome
•Democracy = Demos (people) + Kratia
(rule)
•The
In Greecepower
wasn’t
held
in
hand
of
Athenian Democratic experiment
one
person
or
even
a
few
but
in
the
hands
didn’t last too long before Phillip of
of
5000
citizens.
First
come
first
serve
(no
Macedonia invaded and these noble
saving
seats)
to
the
main
legislative
body,
and enlightened Greeks were crushed
the
Assembly.
by the brutal, armed, and dumb....
•Jury duty was considered a civic honor
(chosen from a pool of 6000)
•Even judges chosen from this pool (that
• could be anyone!)
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Athens and Rome
• Rome enjoyed a representative form of
gov’t
• Many of our Founding Fathers borrowed
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ideas such as bicameral legislature,
emphasis on republicanism and civic
virtue
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and an
obsession
with
English Govt
The Magna Carta
The English Petition
of Rights
The English Bill of
Rights
The Magna Carta
1215 the wealthy English barons refused to give
King John the money he needed to wage war
against the French until he signed the Magna
Carta. This document codified that no man was
above the law (no one said there were not people
below the law....)
• Limited power of the gov’t
• Fundamental rights
• trial by jury
• due process of law
• habeas corpus
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The English Petition of
Rights
1628 English Petition of Rights
• Men have rights and establishes concept of rule
of law
• Basic rights
• guarantee of trial by jury
• protection against marshal law
• protection against quartering of troops
• protection of private property
doesn’t seem to be much rule of law in Pakistan today
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Age of Reason
or
The
Enlightenment
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Before the
Enlightenment (in
the dark ages
when they threw
the dead bodies
in the drinking
water) people’s
rights were very
limited and
selective. They
were special
privileges enjoyed
by certain groups
of people.
• There is a painful separation of faith and reason
in man’s thinking...
• But first let me tell you about
• - and how a particularly gruesome form of
torture led to one of the modern day
foundations: “I may not agree with what you say
but I will defend to my death your right to say it”
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But what about that world of torture?
The Enlightenment - an age of arrest and torture
imposed on citizens who expressed opinions that
stood in opposition to prevailing religious, social,
political views
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Though it might seem easy, today, to criticize such a passionate emphasis
on reason, remember that Voltaire's society tortured people who went
against the accepted norm.
WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO PAY THAT PRICE TO CHANGE SOCIETY
IN WAYS YOU DEEM NECESSARY?
Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t 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.
I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to my death your right to
say it.
• This is the foundation world of our
founding fathers...
• and these are the philosophers who so
profoundly influenced what would
become our “little social experiment”
known as the United States of America
The grandaddy of them
all...
introducing the one...
the only.....
John Locke
John Locke
• Locke’s political philosophy is called the
natural rights philosophy
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What do you think?
1. What are some examples of conflicts that might occur when
one individual’s rights to life, liberty, property conflict with
those of another individual?
2. Should some rights be given more protection than other
rights? Why?
3. The natural rights philosophy claims that gov’t is based on
consent. How do we give consent? How do we withdraw it?
4. Many people today believe the rights to life, liberty, and
property include the right to public education and health care.
Would the founders have agreed? Do you agree? Why?
• Human rights
• political and economic rights
• consumer rights
*•
In describing
the
concept
of
natural
rights,
philosophers
like
parental rights
Locke were making a bold departure form the previous term of
what we would see as “limited” rights today.
* Locke and others did not think rights were limited to situations
of birth.
The individual not the group was the most important unit.
Society is only a collection of individuals, all whom share the
same right to pursue his/her own welfare.
* Natural rights of life, liberty, and property were the essence of
humanity.
* Gov’ts and societies based on natural rights guarantee
specific rights to preserve our natural rights.
* Under the US Constitution, you possess civil rights, securing
such things as freedom of conscience and privacy, and
protecting you from unfair discrimination by gov’t or others
* You also possess certain political rights like the right to vote
or run for office, which give you control over gov’t.
Such civil and political rights serve to protect natural rights to
life, liberty, and property
* For Locke and others the greatest problem was finding a way
to protect each person’s natural rights (since not all people are
good.)
* The best way to solve this is for each individual to agree with
others to create and live under a gov’t and to give it power to
enforce laws. This kind of agreement is called a social
contract.
* Of course you have to give up your absolute right to do
anything to receive the protection. You have to agree to obey
the limits put on you by the laws created by the gov’t.
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And a few
more....
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