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The Age of Enlightenment
The Enlightenment
Eighteenth-Century Elite
Culture
Popular Culture
During the eighteenth century, the great
scientific and philosophical innovations
of the previous century evolved into a naturalistic worldview divorced from
religion
Displacing the authority of religion with that of
reason, the new outlook offered an optimistic
future
Many important eighteenth-century intellectuals no longer
believed in Christianity and looked to reduced its
influence
No divine morality or afterlife
Cultural institutions and media gave an increased
forum
A new middle-class to consume books
The Enlightenment
Many believed that human behavior and institutions
could be studied rationally, like Newton’s universe
They called this the Enlightenment—pursuit of
reason, tolerance, and virtue (apart from religion)
Paris—the focal point
Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau
The Broadening Reverberations of Science
Rene Descartes and Isaac Newton cared little for
social institutions
Remained practicing Christians
Their legacy, however, led to the unfolding of Christianity in west
The Popularization of ScienceNon-scientists applied the
methodologies of Descartes, Newton, and Locke to other
realms of human thought
fusion of methodological doubt and naturalist
explanations—scientific and mathematical spirit
Writers translated the discoveries into amusing
reading
Voltaire, the most famous of
Enlightenment thinkers, wrote science through literature and
criticism
The Elements of the Philosophy of Newton—a
freeing of the mind from dogma and
religion
Popularizations of scientific
method stimulated public
interest in science,
mathematics, etc.
Mesmerism—healing magnetic
fields
Natural History
*natural history— the science of the earth’s
development—a combination of geology,
zoology, and botany
G. L. Buffon, keeper of the French Botanical
Gardens
Natural History of the Earth
An exploration of the development of
the earth—completely ignored
the religious tradition of Genesis
Beyond Christianity The erosion of biblical revelation as a source of
authority
The elimination of superstitious imagery that could make religion seem
ridiculous
The devil could be considered a category of
moral evil rather than horned creature
The deemphasizing of miracles and an emphasis on the
moral teachings of the Bible
This kind of thinking ultimately
diminished the authority of
religion
Toleration
French critic Pierre Bayle emphasized the idea of
toleration
Critical and Historical Dictionary (1697)—put the
claims of religion to the test
Christianity as myth and fairy tale resulting in
fanaticism and persecution
The Spanish Inquisition and Louis XIV became
examples of why religion is immoral
Complete toleration—the allowance of any
person or any creed or faith as long as they are
moral
Habsburg emperor Joseph II
Deism
Voltaire became the Enlightenment’s most vigorous anti-religious
polemicist and dedicated to the destruction of
Christianity
l’infame (the infamous thing)
“Every sensible man, every honorable man must hold [Christianity] in horror”
The Philosophical Dictionary (1764)
Published anonymously and burned by
Switzerland, France, and the Netherlands
Organized religion is not simply false but
pernicious and destructive leading to fanaticism and
persecution
Voltaire hoped that educated Europeans
would abandon Christianity in favor of
*deism
Morality without the threat of damnation
Private contemplation rather than public
worship
The Philosophies Science and secularism became the rallying points of
a group of French intellectuals known as the
*philosophes
They saw themselves as bring the Enlightenment to
the masses
Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson
Intellectual Freedom Exposing assumptions and institutions to reason,
experience, and utility
Reason vs. faith and religion
A return to the Greco-Roman rational
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776)
The Philosophies laid claim to Newton and Locke and used their
theories to expand their enlightenment
agenda
They placed human beings and human
reason (literally, much more than the
humanist) at the center of thought and reason
Persecution and Triumph
Religious traditionalist and the apparatus of
censorship threatened intellectual freedom
A few were forced into exile, jail, making public
confessions, and the burning of books
Pioneering in the Social Sciences
Voltaire and history
Social Science—a collection of disciplines to understand the past, not just “triumphal” political
history
Analyzed the past with questions of morality and
ethics
Political Liberty
The Spirit of the Laws (1748) by the French magistrate
Montesquieu
Comparative study of governments and societies
Introduced the perspective of relativism: climate,
religion, and commerce of various countries
Montesquieu argued that a government
needed checks on those who hold power
The various powers (executive, legislative,
Judicial) must be separated
Diderot and the Encyclopedia
The French philosphes collectively generated a
work enlightenment thought—the Encyclopedie
Denis Diderot, a popular publisher of novels,
plays, and mathematics, was the primary writer
Advocate of the “natural man”
Two of Diderot’s books were
condemned by the authorities as contrary to religion, the state,
and morals
The Encyclopedia
The ultimate purpose of the work was to “change
the general way of thinking”
Religion was treated with artful satire or relegated it to a philosophical or
historical principle
Science stood at the core
The Encyclopedia’s Impact “The vomit of hell”
Attorney general of France—”There is a
project formed, a society organized to
propagate materialism, to
destroy religion, to inspire a spirit of
independence, and to nourish the corruption of
morals”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau Obsessed with the issue of moral freedom,
Rousseau found society far more oppressive than most philosophes would
admit—and they were part of the problem
Idleness and the dissolution of morals
The basis of morality was conscience, not
reason
Rousseau’s Concept of Freedom
The Social Contract
Popularized after the French Revolution
He denied the almost universal idea that some
people are meant to govern and others to obey
Governments should follow the consensus as to
the best interests of all citizens