Age of Enlightenment
Enlightenment, “aufklarung”: A German word c.1850 to describe
18th C. French Philosophy, “The Clearing,” refers to the postrenaissance growth of exploration, capitalism, middle class,
science, urbanization, industry, and printing and education.
Enlightenment, an “Awakening” in Science, Philosophy, Politics
(for example?), and Art.
Charles Wilson Peale, “The
Artist in his Museum,” 1822
•Though coming at the end
of the age of
enlightenment, this picture
captures the Enlightenment
Mindset of codification.
•Peale, 1741 – 1827.
American Painter, Inventor,
Ethnographer, Writer,
Curator, Taxidermist,
Portraitist
•Codify and preserve, to
study, understand, and
transcend death (founding
fathers, Franklin)
•Portraitist of the
Revolution
•He, and America,
encapsulates the values of
the “Enlightenment,” both
are products of
Enlightenment.
Foundations of the Enlightenment
• Rise of Scientific Method
– Age of Categorization
• Science and Experimentation
(Francis Bacon, 1561-1626, created the “new science” which utilized
the “Baconian Method” of observation and understanding.)
• Lead to Experimental Philosophy
• Reordered our understanding of the Practical World
– resulted in the Post-Renaissance use of Knowledge, the
organization and institutionalization of the sciences
• Rise of Rationalism
(Rene Descartes, 1596-1650, Mathematician and Philosopher, father of
modern philosophy, invented the Cartesian Coordinate System which was
key in the Scientific Revolution in physics, astronomy, biology, geology,
etc.)
• “Rationalism”: deduction, “I think therefore I am”
…Foundations of the Enlightenment continued…
•Scientists and Philosophers (like Hobbes, Bacon, Newton) illustrated how
enlightenment contradicted the traditional and religious schema of the world
(otherwise known as “The Great Chain of Being”)
—Religion replaced by reason…
—Well, to an extent since this also resulted in means to integrate
the two.
—Rise of Natural Sciences also resulted in a new sense of History
and nature, one seen as dark and destructive.
—geology and “Earth as a Graveyard”
-- manifested itself in art as “catastrophism”
(example of blending of natural science and religion)
John Martin, 1789-1853
“The Deluge”
"The Great Day of His Wrath"
"The Last Man"
•
…foundations of Enlightenment cont…
•The idea of the Natural Man / Benevolent man
(Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1712—1778, Philosopher)
—believed in the Noble Savage, Man in his natural state
—man is born Free and Benevolent, has a right to freedom and equality
—man is corrupted by society (through his dependence upon others)
—It is possible to live in a civil society w/a social contract based upon
general will
—counter to the established social order (chain of being) since there is no
mobility, still based upon feudalism
--consider how this was influenced by and influenced European
explorers contact with indigenous people during this growing age of
exploration
--consider this in terms of the debate about slavery
…foundations of The Enlightenment…
•Empiricism
Belief in Experiential Knowledge  “I feel therefore I am”
(John Locke, 1632-1704)
“Reason must be our last judge and guide to everything”
[Look to Wollstonecraft, pg 160]
—rejected medieval “superstition” for experience and sensation.
Locke believed:
i. Man is peaceful by nature, Tabula Raza
ii.Man is reasonable by nature
iii.Man has natural rights: Land, liberty, equality (somewhat ironic since
he was a slave owner)
iv. Gov’t is a “public servant” that protects these rights
i. influenced Jefferson, Paine, Voltaire
ii. Resulted in the American Revolution and the French
Revolution (1789).
These revolutions and the ideas behind them were thought of as…
“The Spirit of the Age”
•Examples of this in England:
•William Godwin, and his idea of Benevolent Anarchy, and the French
Revolution
• 1793: An inquiry concerning Political Justice, gov't is corrupting force
(dependence and ignorance, w), will be replaced by knowledge and
personal morality thanks to education of/and reason. communal living
based on public discussion, education, the end of private property, marriage,
law --all of which lead to mental enslavement.
--experience forms character
--we are all equal, with equal capacities for reason
--society over gov't
--social judgment over emotion (fire clause)-- (imagine being is
daughter)
•In the heyday of the rev., a beloved figure: by 1800, wrote: I have fallen (if
I have fallen) in one common grave with the cause and love of liberty; and
in this sense I have been more honoured and illustrated in my decline, than
ever I was in the highest tide of my success.
--influenced Coleridge, Wordsworth (though they turned their backs
on him in the post-revolution conservatism), Byron, and of course,
Shelley.
--Central to liberal (radical) social and artistic circles.
--Married Mary Wollstonecraft
--1794, Caleb Williams
•British Reactions to the French Revolution…
• Seemingly, the embodiment of Enlightenment thought and philosophy
•Starts as a pragmatic and rational revolution, informed by the main (and
liberal) philosophies of the time…
…was a cause for fear for Britain’s conservative ruling class (how would you react to the
toppling of a monarchy by a forming democracy if you were part of a monarchic gov’t
like in England?)
…was a cause for fear for Britain’s conservative ruling class (how would you react to the
toppling of a monarchy by a forming democracy if you were part of a monarchic gov’t
like in England?)
Edmund Burke, “Reflections on the Revolution in France” (pgs 152 – 158):
All circumstances taken together, the French Revolution is the most astonishing that
has hitherto happened in the world. Everything seems out of nature in this chaos of
levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes jumbled together with all sorts of follies. In
viewing this monstrous tragi-comic scene, the most opposite passions succeed, and
sometimes mix with each other in the mind; alternate contempt and indignation;
laughter and tears; scorn and horror. (152)
…Our [Britain’s] political system is placed in a just symmetry with the order of the
world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of
transitory parts; wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding
together the great, mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one
time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but, in a condition of unchangeable
constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation and
progression. (153)
[on Monarchy (156 -57)]
But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions, which made power gentle and
obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland
assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private
society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent
drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe
of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary
to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own
estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion.
On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a queen is but a woman; a woman is but
an animal, and an animal not of the highest order. All homage paid to the sex in general as
such, and without distinct views, is to be regarded as romance and folly. Regicide, and
parricide, and sacrilege, are but fictions of superstition, corrupting jurisprudence by
destroying its simplicity. The murder of a king, or a queen, or a bishop, or a father, are only
common homicide; and if the people are by any chance, or in any way, gainers by it, a sort of
homicide much the most pardonable, and into which we ought not to make too severe a
scrutiny.
On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and
muddy understandings, and which is as void of solid wisdom as it is destitute of all taste and
elegance, laws are to be supported only by their own terrors, and by the concern which each
individual may find in them from his own private speculations, or can spare to them from his
own private interests. In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see
nothing but the gallows. Nothing is left which engages the affections on the part of the
commonwealth.
•Political fallout of the Revolution in England
A)Burke and English Conservatism (reading)
 Burke & the "Body Politic" (pgs 152-158) ("monstrous" -- monstre) –
guillotine
i.Natural order of leadership/Social Position (inversion of social order)
1.English Pride & Propriety
ii. conflict of oppositions (horrible to Burke, central to Romanticism)
iii. Sold 30,000 in two years (Paine’s Rights of Man sold 200,000!!)
--English Conservatism
--fear of the public, repression of social rights (such as Habeus Corpus)
But Also, previous to this and as a reaction against this….
•Political fallout of the Revolution in England
A)Burke and English Conservatism (reading)
 Burke & the "Body Politic" (pgs 152-158) ("monstrous" -- monstre) –
guillotine
i.Natural order of leadership/Social Position (inversion of social order)
1.English Pride & Propriety
ii. conflict of oppositions (horrible to Burke, central to Romanticism)
iii. Sold 30,000 in two years (Paine’s Rights of Man sold 200,000!!)
--English Conservatism
--fear of the public, repression of social rights (such as Habeus Corpus)
B) But also, a reaffirmation of
Rationality and Liberal Humanism (at
least before the disillusionment from the
Horrors of the Revolution)
For Example….
Mary Wollstonecraft, “A Vindication of the Rights of Men” (pgs 160-161)
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together;
The birthright of man, to give you, Sir, a short definition of this disputed right, is such a degree of
liberty, civil and religious, as is compatible with the liberty of every other individual with whom he
is united in a social compact, and the continued existence of that compact.
Liberty, in this simple, unsophisticated sense, I acknowledge, is a fair idea that has never yet
received a form in the various governments that have been established on our beauteous globe; the
demon of property has ever been at hand to encroach on the sacred rights of men, and to fence
round with awful pomp laws that war with justice. But that it results from the eternal foundation of
right–from immutable truth–who will presume to deny, that pretends to rationality–if reason has led
them to build their morality and religion on an everlasting foundation–the attributes of God?
The civilization which has taken place in Europe has been very partial, and, like every custom
that an arbitrary point of honour has established, refines the manners at the expense of morals, by
making sentiments and opinions current in conversation that have no root in the heart, or weight in
the cooler resolves of the mind.–And what has stopped its progress?– hereditary property–
hereditary honours. The man has been changed into an artificial monster by the station in which he
was born, and the consequent homage that benumbed his faculties like the torpedo’s touch;–or a
being, with a capacity of reasoning, would not have failed to discover, as his faculties unfolded, that
true happiness arose from the friendship and intimacy which can only be enjoyed by equals; and
that charity is not a condescending distribution of alms, but an intercourse of good offices and
mutual benefits, founded on respect for justice and humanity.
And of Course….
Romanticism!
IN general – Effects of the Enlightenment:
—the enlightenment’s navigation of spirituality and science is seen as
an overthrow of spirituality for science. (codification vs. great chain of
being)
—systematic thinking vs. church and state repression
--promotes man’s need to think reflect upon one’s place in the natural
order
--a conflict between spirituality (emotion) and physicality (experience)
Results in a fascination with THE SUBLIME -- The Capturing of the
Invisible or Intangible in the Nature
Examples…
Romanticism and the Sublime
•What does science do with the uncodifiable?
•How does the “great categorization of things” account for
emotion and spirituality?
•These “Unknowables” are called “The Sublime,” which are the
uncapturable or uncodifiable aspects of nature
Definition
The sublime can be best distinguished in relationship to the beautiful. The beautiful is that in
nature which can be admired calmly and appreciated for its surface appearance (color, depth,
material, balance). The sublime is that in nature which is so much greater than man that its
attraction actually includes a certain degree of fear and trepidation on the part of the beholder,
although a fear not so immediate that it traumatizes. For Wordsworth, it is a terrible,
frightening, but nonetheless attractive, side to Nature's otherwise gentle and calming beauty.
Hugh Holman's A Handbook to Literature: Edmund Burke in 1756 wrote A Philosophical
Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful . Kant followed Burke's
line of thinking in his Critique of Judgment (1790), where he linked beauty with the finite and
the sublime with the infinite. Burke's doctrine of the sublime was powerfully influential on
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers. He believed that a painful idea creates a sublime
passion and thus concentrates the mind on that single facet of experience and produces a
momentary suspension of rational activity, uncertainty, and self-consciousness. If the pain
producing this effect is imaginary rather than real, a great aesthetic object is achieved. Thus,
great mountains, storms at sea, ruined abbeys, crumbling castles, and charnel houses are
appropriate subjects to produce the sublime.