European Enlightenment

The "European Enlightenment" or the "Enlightenment"

Overview:

• 1680-1790
• an intellectual "Age of Reason"
• world view change from religious to secular
• marked by skepticism and inquiry
• pursuit of happiness: focus on the human condition
• diffusion of knowledge: books, pamphlets, publications, libraries, universities

Background and historical context & causes

• the Enlightenment arose during a time of tremendous change and uncertainty
  • religious wars
  • expanding world connections
  • economic growth and cycles
• it may be seen as a clash of the old and the new:
  • new science, new technologies, new religions, new forms of government
• it would be wrong to say, however, that the Enlightenment created the modern world
  • change is incremental
  • ideas evolve over time
  • people and institutions resist change
  • events shape that change

Commercial revolutions

• key backdrop is the growth of the private economy
  • Medieval Europe & manorial feudalism
    • church-owned or heritable, aristocratic landowners via royal grants or agreements
    • agricultural or extraction labor held by landowners & taxes based on land
    • small manufactures & skilled trade controlled by guilds
  • late middle-Ages Europe
    • growth in trade and movement towards taxation on trade
    • growth of towns and cities leads to commercial-based economies
  • private land or structure ownership increasingly from purchase or rent and not aristocratic prerogative

Protestant Reformation

• challenge to papal supremacy and a centralized Church
• religious wars lead to tremendous destruction and loss of life
• protestant nations (Netherlands, German states, England)

Age of Discovery

• European expeditions around Africa, across the Atlantic and ultimately across the Pacific
• = a challenge to Europe-centric view of the world, exposure to different geographies and peoples

Scientific Revolution

• = a challenge to traditional views and explanations for the world
• new views and comprehension of the physical world and its forces (physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, etc)
• scientific method as means of rational interpretation of the world

Technological advances

• transoceanic travel creates great diffusion of people, animals, plants, materials and ideas
• armament technologies increase lethality of war
• as it did with the protestant reformation, the printing press fueled the diffusion of ideas

Key dates of the Enlightenment

• 1648: end of the 30 Years War (religious dispute was a core cause of the war)
• 1680: publication of Isaac Newton's Principio Mathematica
• 1688: Glorious Revolution in England
• 1682: Haley's comet & Bayle's "Reflections on Comets"

Enlightenment definitions

• disenchantment of the world
  • from Max Weber
  • attacking superstition
• political reform
  • applying reason to public policy
  • infrastructure projects
  • penal & criminal law enforcement and reform
    • vagrants and beggars

Enlightenment core ideas

• truth can be found through investigation
• self-government
  • Glorious Revolution: William of Orange takes power
    • transfer of power based on the public good and not dynastic divine rule

Enlightenment projects

Diderot's "Encylopedie"

• a tremendous project to catalog human knowledge
• = an exercise in "freedom of thought"
• had 28 volumes, 71,818 articles and 3,129 illustrations
• started by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert
• goals:
  • Diderot wrote that the purpose of the project was ""to change the way people think"
  • to disseminate (spread) knowledge across economic classes
  • to give more common people access to practical knowledge, especially mechanics
• it was the first encyclopedia to have independent contributors
• some of the ideas presented in the encyclopedia were considered radical
  • the French government banned it in 1759
  • the work supported religious freedom
  • many entries challenged religious doctrine
    • under the idea that knowledge is provable, the work treated religion as also subject to proof
    • the work attacked mysticism and superstition

Taxonomy of human knowledge

Fig. 3: "Figurative system of human knowledge", the structure that the Encyclopédie organised knowledge into. It had three main branches: memory, reason, and imagination.

• Enlightenment's outlook was that all human knowledge and the world and universe around it can be understood rationally
  • therefore, such knowledge can be organized logical
• the Encyclopedia organized knowledge into three main categories:
  • memory (factual knowledge)
  • reason (logic, deduction)
  • imagination (arts, literature)

Enlightenment thinkers

=== alphabetical by last name=== === section title: first, last, alphabetical by last name

• dates
• famous for:
• background:
• core ideas:
• works:
• legacy:

Cesare Beccaria

• 1738-1794
• considered the "father of criminal justice" or law
• core ideas:
  • Italian thinker, concerned with prison reform
• works:
  • wrote On Crimes and Punishments
  • condemned torture and the death penalty

Pierre Bayle

• 1647-1706
• famous for:
  • important fore-runner (came before) to the Encyclopedists (see Diderot)
  • promoted religious toleration
• background:
  • born in France, his father was a Calvinist
  • he converted to Catholicism, then returned to Calvinism and fled to Geneva
    • in Geneva he met Renee Descartes
  • he then went to Netherlands and taught at university in
• core ideas:
  • a French protestant ("Huguenot"), Bayle fled persecution in France for the Netherlands
  • religious skepticism and toleration
• works:
  • Historical and Critical Dictionary, starting 1697
  • 1682 Reflections on Comets
    • Hailey's comet as natural phenomenon and not a mysterious event
    • challenged superstition
• legacy
  • he argued that the Bible promoted religious toleration
    • and that it did not justify use of force to coerce religious beliefs
    • 
      "One must transcribe almost the whole New Testament to collect all the Proofs it affords us of that Gentleness and Long-suffering, which constitute the distinguishing and essential Character of the Gospel." He did not regard toleration as a danger to the state; on the contrary:

      "If the Multiplicity of Religions prejudices the State, it proceeds from their not bearing with one another but on the contrary endeavouring each to crush and destroy the other by methods of Persecution. In a word, all the Mischief arises not from Toleration, but from the want of it."

      Bayle also rejected the use of coercion and violence in the universities,

      It will be an everlasting subject of wonder to persons who know what philosophy is, to find that Aristotle's authority had been so much respected in the schools for several ages, that when a disputant quoted a passage from that philosopher, he who maintained the thesis, durst not say "Transeat," but must either deny the passage, or explain it in his own way—just as we treat the Holy Scriptures in the divinity schools. The parliaments, which have proscribed all other philosophy but that of Aristotle, are more excusable than the doctors; for whether the members of the parliament were really persuaded that that philosophy was the best of any, or whether they were not, the public good might have induced them to prohibit the new opinions, for fear the academical divisions should spread their malignant influences on the tranquility of the state.

Denis Diderot

• 1713-1784

• core ideas
• author, editor of l'Encyclopedie
• self-exiled to Switzerland to carry on the project in secret
• Diderot was a follower of Voltaire and deisms (that God exists but not as a distinct entity)
  • he later adopted materialism and atheism
  • he believed that religious truths should be subject to the same standards of proof as any other knowledge
• he also wrote plays and was a prominent art critic
• overall, Diderot's thoughts are expressed in these questions, as proposed by one of his biographers, Andrew S. Curran:
  • Why be moral in a world without god?
  • How should we appreciate art?
  • What are we and where do we come from?
  • What are sex and love?
  • How can a philosopher intervene in political affairs?
• Diderot quotation:
  • "posterity is for the philosopher what the 'other world' is for the man of religion."

David Hume

• the problem of induction
  • how do you know that the sun will rise tomorrow?
  • Greek verwion of hte question >>> todo
• reason will always be the slave of passion
• in 2020 Hume cancelled by modern "cancel culture"
  • Hume wrote a racist tract, "comments on matters of race" that posited that blacks were inferior beings
  • in 2020, Edinburgh University removed his name from a building on campus

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

• 1729-1781
• German writer and critic
  • influenced German literature
  • promoted religious tolerance and freedom
• works:
  • Nathan the Wise, a play on religious tolerance

click EXPAND for details on Nathan the Wise and the "parable of the rings"

• • • a play about Nathan, a Jewish merchant who meets Saladin the Great, the Ottoman sultan and thus a core Islamic leader
    • Saladin asks Nathan which of the Abrahamic religions is the "true religion"
      • Abrahamic religions are Judaism, Christianity and Islam (in order of historical appearance)
    • Nathan avoids the question trap by answering with the "parable of the ring"
      • = a story about a magical ring that empowers the bearer God's approval ("pleasing to God")
        • i.e., the bearer's religion is the "true religion"
      • it is passed on by generation, until a father can't decide which of three sons to give it to
        • so he creates two exact copies and gives each son a ring
      • afterwards, the sons argue over who owns the actual ring
      • they take their dispute to a wise man who tells them
        • that perhaps all three rings are replicas, they cannot know
        • therefore, if each acts in such a way as God will be pleased, it would show that each ring has the magical power
        • i.e., God doesn't judge by one's religion but by one's actions

John Locke

Portrait of Locke by Godfrey Kneller in 1697

• 1632-1704
• key Enlightenment thinker
• known as "Father of liberalism"
• key ideas:
  • "natural law" and "natural rights"
    • that people are born with certain rights and that "natural" laws pre-exist governments (which creates "positive law")
  • the "social contract"
    • the government and the governed must have a "contract" that protects and defines the rights and responsibility of both
    • people have the natural right to protect their own "life, health, liberty, or possessions"
      • therefore, protecting those rights is a primary purpose of government (its contract)
  • "consent of the governed"
  • separation of powers
    • Locke envisioned separate executive, legislative and judicial branches
    • governments are legitimate only if they have the "consent" or permission from the "governed" (the people)
  • the "clean slate" or "tabula rosa"
    • that all humans are born equal and learn from their environment and experiences
    • he promoted proper education of children when young
      • otherwise, prejudices, fears, and superstitions will be "locked in" to their memories
  • separation of church and state
  • property
    • Locke argued that property is a natural right and is necessary for happiness
    • land ownership was traditionally seen as the property of the aristocracy
      • so Locke's views on property rights challenged centralized or aristocratic authority
  • supply and demand or "price theory"
    • Locke developed the economic / monetary theory of the relationship between supply and demand
• works:
  • "A Letter Concerning Toleration" 1689
  • "Two Treatises of Government" 1689-90
  • "Some Thoughts Concerning Education" 1693
  • "1695. The Reasonableness of Christianity, as Delivered in the Scriptures" 1695
• quotations:
  • "What worries you masters you."

Montesquieu

• 1689-1755
• full name Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
• French philosopher and political thinker
• known by Americans as the "champion of liberty"
  • the American Founders quoted Montesquieu in their writings more than any other source than the Bible
  • the American "Father of the Constitution, James Madison, developed his ideas of separation and balance of powers based on Montesquieu
• promoted the "separation of powers" in government
  • John Locke previously discussed this notion, but it was Montesquieu who most clearly articulated them
• promoted representation of the people in the French parliament (known as the "Third Estate")
• studied the past to determine the best forms of government
  • developed a theory of history as driven by conditions and not specific events (see quotation below)
• works:
  • The Spirit of the Laws 1748

click EXPAND to see excerpts from "The Spirit of the Laws" on separation of powers:

In every government there are three sorts of power: the legislative; the executive in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive in regard to matters that depend on the civil law.

By virtue of the first, the prince or magistrate enacts temporary or perpetual laws, and amends or abrogates those that have been already enacted. By the second, he makes peace or war, sends or receives embassies, establishes the public security, and provides against invasions. By the third, he punishes criminals, or determines the disputes that arise between individuals. The latter we shall call the judiciary power, and the other, simply, the executive power of the state.

— The Spirit of the Laws, Book XI[20][21]

When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.

Again, there is no liberty if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control; for the judge would be then the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with violence and oppression.

There would be an end of every thing, were the same man, or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise those three powers, that of enacting laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and of trying the causes of individuals.

— The Spirit of the Laws, Book XI

The executive power ought to be in the hands of a monarch, because this branch of government, having need of dispatch, is better administered by one than by many: on the other hand, whatever depends on the legislative power, is oftentimes better regulated by many than by a single person.
But if there were no monarch, and the executive power should be committed to a certain number of persons selected from the legislative body, there would be an end of liberty, since the two powers would be united; as the same persons would sometimes possess, and would be always able to possess, a share in both.

— The Spirit of the Laws, Book XI

• Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline, 1734

click EXPAND for Montesquieu's theory of history:

It is not chance that rules the world. Ask the Romans, who had a continuous sequence of successes when they were guided by a certain plan, and an uninterrupted sequence of reverses when they followed another. There are general causes, moral and physical, which act in every monarchy, elevating it, maintaining it, or hurling it to the ground. All accidents are controlled by these causes. And if the chance of one battle – that is, a particular cause – has brought a state to ruin, some general cause made it necessary for that state to perish from a single battle. In a word, the main trend draws with it all particular accidents

• quotations:
  • "To be truly great one has to stand with the people, not above them"

Isaac Newton

• Principio Mathematica
• launched idea of a divinely-ordered universe understandable by mathematics

Voltaire

• 1694-1778
• French philosopher and writer
• real name =
• "Voltaire" is 'nom de pleume" (pen name), derived from an anagram
• ideas:
  • freedom of speech
  • freedom of religion and freedom and toleration
  • separation of church and state
    • was very anti-clerical and anti-dogma (strict religious rules)
    • was a "deist" but not an atheist
  • disliked democracy
    • leads to mob rule
  • pluralism
    • Voltaire studied foreign religions and history and considered them on equal basis as with those of the West
    • he admired Confucius:

 Confucius has no interest in falsehood; he did not pretend to be prophet; he claimed no inspiration; he taught no new religion; he used no delusions; flattered not the emperor under whom he lived... 

• works:
  • Candide
  • satire on Enlightenment thought "best of all possible worlds"
• quotations:
  • "Common sense is not so common."

Legacy

• American Constitution