Chapter 17
The Eighteenth Century:
An Age of Enlightenment
Timeline
The Enlightenment
Paths to Enlightenment
Popularization of Science
• Bernard de Fontenelle (1657 – 1757), Plurality of Worlds
A New Skepticism
• Attacked superstition, religious intolerance, and dogmatism
• Skepticism about religion and growing secularization
• Pierre Bayle (1647 – 1706)
The Impact of Travel Literature
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Travel books became very popular
Captain James Cook, Travels
Literature on China
Cultural relativism
Captain James Cook
The Legacy of Locke & Newton
Newton
Reason could discover natural laws that govern
politics, economics justice, religion, and the
arts
Locke, Essay Concerning Human
Understanding
Knowledge derived from the environment
Denied Descartes’ belief in innate ideas
The Philosophes and their Ideas
Came from all walks of life
Paris was the “capital”
Desire to change the world
Call for a spirit of rational criticism
3 French Giants: Montesquieu, Voltaire,
and Diderot
Map 17.1: The Age of Enlightenment in Europe
Montesquieu and Political Thought
Charles de Secondat,
baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755)
Persian Letters, 1721
Attacks traditional religion,
advocacy of religious toleration, denunciation
of slavery, use of reason
The Spirit of the Laws, 1748; comparative study
of government
Voltaire and the Enlightenment
Francois-Marie Arouet, Voltaire (16941778)
Criticism of Traditional Religion
Philosophic Letters on
the English, 1733
Treatise on Toleration, 1763
Deism
Diderot and the Encyclopedia
Denis Diderot (1713-1784)
Encyclopedia, 28 volumes
Attacked religious superstition
and advocated toleration
Lowered price helped to spread
the ideas of the Enlightenment
The New “Science of Man”
David Hume
David Hume (1711 – 1776)
Treatise on Human Nature
Physiocrats
François Quesnay (1694-1774)
• Leader of the Physiocrat – natural economic
laws
• Rejection of mercantilism
• Supply and demand
François Quesnay (NEW PICTURE!!)
Adam Smith & Laissez-Faire
Economics
Adam Smith (1723-1790)
The Wealth of Nations,
1776
Attack on mercantilism
Advocate of free trade
Government has only three basic functions
• Protect society from invasion
• Defend individuals from injustice and oppression
• Keep up public works
The Later Enlightenment
Baron Paul d’Holbach (1723 – 1789)
System of Nature, 1770
Marie-Jean de Condorcet (1743 – 1794)
The Progress of the Human Mind
Rousseau and the Social Contract
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
Discourse on the Origins of the Inequality of Mankind;
preservation of private property had enslaved the mass
of society
Social Contract, 1762; Tried to harmonize individual
liberty with governmental authority
Concept of General Will
Emile, 1762; important work on
education
Major influence on the development
of Romanticism
The “Woman’s Question” in the
Enlightenment
Mary Astell
Most philosophes agreed that
the nature of women make
them inferior
Mary Astell (1666-1731)
A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, 1697
Better education and equality in marriage
Mary Wollstonecraft
Vindication of the Rights of Woman,
1792
Subjection of women by men wrong
Mary Wallstonecraft
Social Environment of the Philosophes
18th Century French Salon
Salons
The Influence of Women
Marie-Thérèse de Geoffrin
(1699 – 1777)
Marquise du Deffand (1697 – 1780)
Other social centers of the Enlightenment:
coffeehouses, cafes, clubs, libraries,
societies
Innovations in Art
Rococo Art
Antoine Watteau (1684-1721)
Fragility and transitory nature of
pleasure, love, and life
Watteau: Love in the French Theater
Watteau: Return From Cythera
Baroque-Rococo architectural style
Balthasar Neumann (1687-1753)
Secular and spiritual interchangeable
Continuing Popularity of Neoclassicism
Neumann: Church of the 14 Saints (Vierzehnheiligen)
Jacques Louis-David - Neoclassicism
Oath of the Horatii
Death of Marat
Innovations in Music and Literature
Baroque Music
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
George Frederick Handel (1685-1759)
Franz Joseph Haydn (1756-1809)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
The Development of the Novel
W.A. Mozart
Samuel Richardson (1689 – 1761)
Henry Fielding (1707 – 1754)
The Writing of History
A broader scope
Weakness of philosophe-historians
F.J. Haydn
J.S. Bach
The High Culture of the
Eighteenth Century
High Culture Versus Popular Culture
Expansion of Publishing and Reading
Public
Development of magazines and newspapers for
the general public
Education and Universities
Secondary schools
• Curriculum
Crime and Punishment
Punishment in the Eighteenth Century
Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794), On Crimes and Punishments
Punishment should serve only as deterrent
Punishment moved away from spectacle towards
rehabilitation
The World of
Medicine
Hierarchy of Practitioners
Physicians
Surgeons
Apothecaries
Midwives
Faith healers
18th c. Surgeon’s Kit
An 18th century Physician's medicine cabinet. The cabinets were carried
on board ships and into battle and were considered portable hospitals.
Various powders, a measuring scale, and small items wrapped in oil soaked
paper are visible.
Popular Culture
Nature of Popular Culture
Collective and public
Carnival
Indulgence and release
Taverns and Alcohol
Community centers
Cheap alcohol
18th Century Carnival in Venice
Gin became very popular in England after the government allowed unlicensed gin production and at the same time
imposed a heavy duty on all imported spirits. This created a market for poor-quality grain that was unfit for brewing
beer, and thousands of gin-shops sprang up all over England. By 1740 the production of gin had increased to six times
that of beer, and because of its cheapness it became extremely popular with the poor. Of the 15,000 drinking
establishments in London, over half were gin-shops. Beer maintained a healthy reputation as it was often safer to
drink the brewed ale than unclean plain water. Gin, though, was blamed for various social and medical problems, and
it may have been a factor in the high death rate that caused London's previously increasing population to remain
stable. The reputation of the two drinks was illustrated by William Hogarth in his engravings Beer Street and Gin
Lane (1751). This negative reputation survives today in the English language, in terms like "gin-mills" to describe
disreputable bars or "gin-soaked" to refer to drunks, and in the phrase "Mother's Ruin," a common British name for
gin. - Source: Wikipedia
Literacy and Primary Education
Chapbooks
Literacy rates
Primary education
Beer Street (William Hogarth)
Gin Lane (William Hogarth)
Religion and the Churches
The Institutional Church
Conservative nature of mainstream churches
Church-state relations
“Nationalization” of the Catholic church
Toleration and Religious Minorities
Toleration and the Jews
• Experiences of Ashkenazic Jews
• Experiences of Sephardic Jews
• Some Enlightenment thinkers favored acceptance of the Jews
Joseph II
• Limited reforms toward the Jews
Map 17.2: Religious Populations of
Eighteenth-Century Europe
Popular Religion in the
Eighteenth Century
Catholic Piety
Centrality of the local parish
Popular devotion
Protestant Revivalism
Pietism
John Wesley (1703-1791)
• Methodist societies
John Wesley