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