Enlightenment
18th century intellectual movement
Dare to Know!
Emmanuel Kant
Beginnings of Enlightenment
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Scientific Revolution
Enlightenment
Isaac Newton
•experiment”
knowledge should be gained by “observation, analysis and
not through religious teaching
John Locke (1632-1674)
•scientific method study of society
Main Themes
of the Enlightenment
• rationalism
or
•The
cosmology
Age of Reason
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secularism
scientific method
utilitarianism - Jeremy Bentham
optimism and self-confidence
tolerance
freedom
John Locke
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An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
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tabula rasa
• all knowledge is sensory
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rejects original sin of man
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society should be based on secular laws
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mankind is capable of improving social conditions reform
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John Locke
Second Treatise of
Government 1690
inalienable rights: life, liberty
and property (excludes slaves
in America)
• social contract between ruler
and subjects
• proponent of educational
reform, freedom of press,
religious toleration and
separation of political powers
a “Republic of letters” was
• elites form. . .
formed
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an international
informal community of
philosophes
letters
unpublished
manuscripts
books
pamphlets
salon de Madame
Geoffrin
Four main philosophes
Montesquieu
Rousseau - the general
will
Voltaire
Diderot - encyclopedia
baron de Montesquieu
Persian Letters 1721
•satire on French society as
told by Persian travelers
•travelogue
•Pope a “magician”
•criticizes slavery - extension
of despotism
The Spirit of the Laws 1748
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favored =
•Britain’s parliament - an
“intermediary institution”
•separation of power
•checks and balances
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against =
•absolutism (despotic)
•republic (too chaotic)
Montesquieu
vs.
radical
?????
Voltaire
Francois-Marie Arouet 1694 - 1778
witty, sarcastic
writings banned in France
and Spain
imprisoned in the Bastille
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enlightened monarch
Voltaire
praises Britain
history determines politics of each state not one-size fits-all
approach
freedom of speech
strongest attack against the church
Philosophical Dictionary 1764
deist - supreme being
Candide 1759
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criticism of Enlightenment as
being too optimistic
last line “one must cultivate
one’s own garden”
Main message = progress is
inevitable without human action
Voltaire and religion
Deist
anti-clerical
Still, he sees benefits of having religion
Ecrasez l’infamel or
Crush the Infamous Thing
Quotes by Voltaire
If God did not exist, one would have had to invent
him.
I want my attorney, my tailor, my servants, even my
wife to believe in God, and I think that shall then be
robbed and cuckholded (cheated on) less often.
Everything I see scatters the seeds of a revolution
which will definitely come. . . Enlightenment has
gradually spread so widely that it will burst in full light
at the first right opportunity, and then there will be a
fine uproar. Lucky are the young, for they will see
great things.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712 1778
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switch from rationalism to
romanticism
Romanticism - idealizes
emotions, instincts and
spontaneity as being as
important as reason rationalism
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Rousseau Writings
Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences
1750
Discourse on the Origin of Inequality 1755
Emile 1762
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novel
secular education and childrearing
Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the
Author of nature, but everything degenerates in the
hands of man.
Main Writing of Rousseau
•the general will or will of the
majority =
direct democracy
•social contract
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Rousseau and women
domestic sphere v. public
sphere
leads to . . .
cult of domesticity among
middle class women
Victorian England 19th
century
Who said what?
I may not agree with what you say but I will die for
your right to say it.
Voltaire
Men are born free yet everywhere they are in chains.
Rousseau
The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so
dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a
citizen in a democracy”
Montesquieu
Diderot
To instruct a nation is to civilize it.
Mary Wollstonecraft
1792
ideas in her writing:
against Rousseau’s domestic
sphere
women’s right to education
1817
Diderot’s Encyclopedia
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28 volumes
60,000 articles
2,800 illustrations
20 years to put together
Cesare Beccaria
Beccaria’s ideas lead to Jeremy Bentham’s
Utilitarianism
Enlightenment and economic
theories
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physiocrats liberalizes the economy - end regulation
critical of mercantilism
Adam Smith - 1723 - 1790
•laissez-faire
•competition
•invisible hand theory
Enlightenment and Women
Madame Marie-Therese Geoffrin
Marquise de Pompadour
ran
the
Salons
Comments on women by:
Montesquieu
Diderot
Enlightenment and Slavery
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never directly addressed
Anti-slavery movement comes later
John Locke
Montesquieu
Break Time is almost here hang on!
Wake Up!!!!