European Enlightenment

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1680-1790

  • intellectual "Age of Reason"
  • world view change from religious to secular
  • skepticism & religious skepticism
  • pursuit of happiness: focus on the human condition
  • diffusion of knowledge: books, pamphlets, publications, libraries, universities

key dates =[edit | edit source]

  • 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[edit | edit source]

  • 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[edit | edit source]

  • self-government
    • Glorious Revolution: William of Orange takes power
      • transfer of power based on the public good and not dynastic divine rule


Enlightenment projects[edit | edit source]

Diderot's Enccylopedie[edit | edit source]

Enlightenment thinkers[edit | edit source]

entry structure[edit | edit source]

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

  • core ideas
  • dates
  • works

Pierre Bayle[edit | edit source]

  • core ideas
    • religious skepticism and toleration
  • 1682 Reflections on Comets
    • Hailey's comet as natural phenomenon and not a mysterious event
    • challenged superstition
  • religious toleration


Cesare Beccaria[edit | edit source]

  • On Crimes and Punishments
    • condemned torture and the death penality

Diderot[edit | edit source]

  • author, editor of l'Encyclopedie
  • self-exiled to Switzerland to carry on the project in secret

Robert Hooke[edit | edit source]

David Hume[edit | edit source]

  • 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[edit | edit source]

  • core ideas
  • 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

Isaac Newton[edit | edit source]

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


Voltaire[edit | edit source]

  • Candide: satire on Englightenment thought "best of all possible worlds" << to do