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

Prussia

Anton 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

• Meritocracy Godfrey 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