Intellectual roots of change: experiential learning

1. Scientific method

2. global cultural contact and trade

3. traditions of belief and political power:

Individual Freedoms

Voltaire (pen name of François-Marie Arouet, 1694-1778)• Écrasez l’infame, “erase the infamy” • Against abuse of people by Church and

government• if can’t critique openly - satire

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)• argued for equality of all individuals,

regardless of class, before the law• The Social Contract (1762) • society is collectively the sovereign

The Collection of all knowledge:humanity vs. divinity

Denis Diderot (1713-67)• French philosopher and writer. • his major contribution was the Encyclopédie

“Portrait of Diderot” van Loo, 1767

• in 1750 announced - catalog of all human knowledge

• 1751 the first volume was published; final in 1772• the Ancien Régime suspicious; control of

knowledge is power• courts tried to control and destroy

know the world, change the world

Change and continuity• Nomenclature: know the terms

• aristocrats, or landed classes, or upper classesinherited land and titlesinherited rights and privilegesie legal and property rights, political rights, no

taxes

• bourgeoisie or middle classes urban, professional – not same as contemporary

NA

• Working classes and peasants these class divisions were famously described by

Marx in 19C; his analysis has had lasting impact, but flawed in significant ways

‘Une Soirée chez Madame Geoffrin’, 1812A.J. Lemonnier (first reading of Voltaire’s The Orphan from China)

Madame Geoffrin

The answer: no way

Louis XV (1710-74)‘the entire public order emanates from me… the rights and interests of the nation whom you dare to make a separate body from the monarch rest solely in my hands’.

But, that is not quite true…..

The estates general• one of a series of political bodies throughout France

• formal institutional vestige of reciprocal power-sharing between king and: first estate (clergy)

second estate (nobility)third estate (commoners)

• could act as a powerful ‘check’ on the king – and esp. his ability to raise the amount and type of taxes collected

• however, only the king could call this body….

Conclusion1. Know the world to change the world

• experience of society changing• theories or political change• experiential knowledge

2. Enlightenment for whom• not the ‘mean’ people• not women• Race and class

3. Application of ideas• change political order, law, remove power of

the church• or not