Fun With the Enlightenment
It is all around you, watching your every move
Basic Introduction
• Intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th Centuries
• Influential in Britain and continent• Affects art, philosophy, science, politics• Celebration of reason• Belief in progress
Just for fun
• Break up into three groups.• You will be assigned a scenario and a set of tasks.• Take fifteen minutes to work through the
scenario• Be prepared to present your scenario and
responses.• Just provide a basic response– not overly
detailed.
The Enlightenment and Art• Emulation admiration of
antiquity– values, aesthetics, philosophy, etc.
• Emerges from development of the formal study of archaeology
• Depiction of scenes/myths/stories from antiquity
The Death of Socrates, Jacques-Louis David (1787)Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Enlightenment and Art
Napoleon Crossing the Alps, Jacques-Louis David, 1801Musée national du château de Malmaison, Rueil-Malmaison, France
Monticello (1772), Charlottesville, VANational Park Service
The Enlightenment and Music• Baroque
– Emphasis upon technical complexity
– Importance of counterpoint
– Repetition, variation, ornamentation of a main theme
– Notion of cosmological importance of music
– Interweaving of lines together
J. S. Bach, Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, No. 16 in G MinorEarsense.org
Move to a new style– “classical” period
• Dropped counterpoint and ornamentation
• Galant style• Single melody with
accompaniment• Emphasis upon lean and
audible form to music• Music meant to be
enjoyed, stripped of mystery
Diagram of first movement of Mozart’s String Quartet No. 18 in G major, K 387, University of Florida
Enlightenment and Political Philosophy
• English--– Thomas Hobbes (human
nature)– John Locke (social
contract)• French– – Montesquieu (separation
of powers)– Rousseau (popular
sovereignty/ republicanism)
Rembrandt Peale, Thomas Jefferson (1805)New York Historical Society
Take a break and think a bit
• What would be the characteristics of an ideal absolute ruler?
• Get in your groups from before and come up with a list of five traits
Enlightened Despotism
• Philosopher kings• Suspicion of the masses
among many Enlightenment types, i.e. Voltaire
• Examples– Charles III of Spain– Frederick the Great of
PrussiaAnton Graff, Frederick the Great, c.a. 1780Schloβ Charlottenburg, Berlin
Enlightenment and Science
• René Descartes• Francis Bacon and
emergence of empiricism
• Isaac Newton and modern physics
• Emergence of learned societies/debating clubs/coffee houses
• MeritocracyGodfrey Kneller, Sir Isaac Newton, 1702National Portrait Gallery, London
Enlightenment and Religion
• Results in a questioning of received knowledge
• Weariness from wars of religion (Peace of Westphalia, 1648)
• Emergence of deism– “Natural religion”– Connection to antiquity
• Later: emergence of secularism
Largillière, Voltaire, 1725Palais de Versailles, France
Looking ahead• French Revolution
– Liberté, égalité, fraternité– Reign of Terror
• Nationalism– Connection-- UK– Citizenship-- France– Language, culture and
belonging– Germany, Italy• Romanticism
– Sturm and Drang– Beethoven– ColeridgeTop: Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People (1830)Bottom: Turner, The Fighting Téméraire (1829)
Counter-Enlightenment
• Reaction to the perceived excesses of the Enlightenment– Overemphasis upon reason– Counterrevolutionary
• Set of values at tension with those of the Enlightenment into 20th Century
Modern Critics
• Enlightenment science not disinterested but about making use of nature– exploitation
• Development of modern bureaucratic state at expense of individual hand-in-glove with rationalism
• Economic liberalism and its costs• Conquest and colonization– civilization v.
uncivilized• Failure of the promise of progress