The Enlightenment

❖18th century. ❖Age of optimism, belief in progress, new values of freedom, rights, and equality. ❖Humanity beginning to master the world. ❖Reason triumphs over the authority of tradition.

❖Hierarchical societies – monarchs. ❖Societies of old regime based on status and divided into three main groups known as orders, or estates.

Old Regime

1.Clergy – those who pray; 2.Nobility – those who fight; 3.Everyone else – those who toil.

Not connected with money – many members of third estate were richer than other two.

Old Regime

❖First two estates usually represented less than 5% of the population.

Old Regime

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❖Old regime also a society of privileges, enforceable at law. ❖Certain noblemen could wear a sword in public, have a coat of arms, and not have to remove their hat in the presence of the king.

Old Regime

❖Some regions were exempt from certain taxes or did not have to send men to do military service. ❖Nobility and Church had tax exemptions or reduced rates. ❖Church had special courts to try clergy for violations of law.

Old Regime

❖Top of hierarchy were absolute monarchs who ruled by divine right. ❖Most famous: Louis XIV (1643-1715) of France.

Old Regime

❖Leading intellectual figures of Enlightenment were French. ❖Referred to themselves as philosophes. ❖Liberal and curious about the world.

Knowledge and Progress

❖Hated evils of society and spoke out against intolerance. ❖Shared belief in progress of knowledge and making the world better for all.

Knowledge and Progress

❖Philosophes accepted scientific method as basis of new knowledge.❖Great faith in power of reason.❖Also tended to be skeptics, refusing to accept anything as true unless proof was verifiable.

Knowledge and Progress

❖Philosophes produced an Encyclopedia. ❖Believed knowledge was power. ❖Knowledge needed to undo evil, reform laws, educate, and promote new values.

Knowledge and Progress

❖Most famous philosophes was Francois Marie Arouet (1694-1778). ❖Pen name – Voltaire. ❖Took a critical and witty stance on wide variety of issues.

Knowledge and Progress

❖Major work, Philosophical Letters, resulted from years living in England. ❖Contrasted France with England – praised English liberty and attacked French absolutism.

Knowledge and Progress

❖Also challenged the Catholic Church in France. ❖Attacked political structure. ❖Voltaire admired thinkers like Bacon, Locke, and Newton.

Knowledge and Progress

❖Resented by French authorities, who burned Voltaire’s book. ❖Voltaire admired time of Louis XIV, Athenian Greece, Roman Empire, and Italian Renaissance.

Knowledge and Progress

❖Measure of greatness for Voltaire was culture. ❖In Candide (1759), Voltaire used philosophical tale to express doubts about all being for the best. ❖http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/voltaire-francois-

marie-arouet-known-1694-1778-writer

Knowledge and Progress

❖His main character, innocent youth, journeyed through the world, encountering ideas and experiences that ridiculed the philosophy of optimism. ❖Pangloss, Candide’s teacher, kept telling him in the face of misfortune and injustice that this is “the best of all possible worlds.”

Knowledge and Progress

❖Another character, Martin, a gloomy pessimist, believed that the devil is in control of the world. ❖It was Candide who chose neither optimism nor pessimism, but told his friends, “we must cultivate our garden.”

Knowledge and Progress

❖Voltaire’s attacks on existing institutions in France often centred on Catholic Church. ❖He viewed the institution as corrupt and intolerant. ❖Also anti-Semitic.

Knowledge and Progress

❖(1712 – 1778), more popular than Voltaire. ❖Wrote The Social Contract (1762): “Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

❖For Rousseau, civilization had its drawbacks.❖He ascribed evil in society to the institutions that it supported.❖Private property made us selfish and destroyed natural goodness.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

❖Did not mean an abandonment of civil society. ❖He redefined sovereignty by placing it in the hands of the people, who were the ultimate judges of public interest.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

❖Human beings need both liberty and society.❖They entered into a social contract among themselves whereby they gave up certain personal liberties in exchange for protection, but retained ultimate sovereignty.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

❖Rousseau focused on the nature of community.❖Believed individuals needed civil society; sociability was part of nature.❖Yet, he maintained that the community was more than the sum of the individuals and their wishes.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

❖Community had an identity and a will, what Rousseau referred to as the General Will.❖Not the will of the majority (could be evil); but will of community in its noblest sense.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

❖Egalitarian thinker.❖Attacked private property.❖Believed direct democracy in small polity or government.❖Introduced new element into Enlightenment thought – sentiments and feelings, rather than reason alone.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

❖Unhappy with philosophes and attacked artificiality of society. ❖Claimed that each child was a special person who had to be carefully nurtured.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

❖Children were innocent. ❖His pleas for a life of sentiment and passion became the basis of the Romantic Movement in the next generation. ❖https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqOaG24aPSc

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

❖Thinkers unconcerned with economic questions. ❖Those who attached Church and nobility proposed reforms that would allow greater freedom of economy.

Economy

❖A. R. J. Turgot invented slogan of economic liberalism: laissez-faire. ❖Most influential economic work of century was Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776).

Economy

❖Smith wished to encourage free trade and competition in order to create more wealth. ❖He believed that the economy should be self-regulating based on the law of supply and demand.

Economy

❖If individuals would pursue their own self-interest, wealth would be increased and the economy would work according to natural laws (put forth by Newton).

Economy

❖Division of labour would result in greater efficiency and free trade would force industries and states to operate only in areas where they could compete.

Economy

❖Imagined a free expanding economy working harmoniously if regulated by an “invisible hand.” ❖Criticisms?

Economy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAJDD1_Oexo&noredirect=1 ❖The Wealth of Nations became

standard modern economic theory.

❖The new industrial capitalism would cite this as its theoretical base.

Economy

❖Well-known Enlightenment thinkers were virtually all men.❖Women did have important role – organizers of the salon.❖Began as a way for small group of elite women to satisfy educational needs.

The Salon

❖Evolved into meetings of intellectuals guided by hostesses.❖Most famous was Marie-Therese Geoffrin (1699-1777).❖Ran two salons (Monday for artists, Wednesday for men of letters).

The Salon

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❖Participants were admitted based on their accomplishments, rather than social status. ❖Main activity of the salon was conversation.

The Salon

❖Hostess would direct conversation and keep male participants under control. ❖Women held this position as a result of Enlightenment beliefs about gender roles:

The Salon

❖Women and men are different in nature but complimentary, “feminine” sensibility balancing “masculine” reason. ❖1770s, salons began to decline.

The Salon

❖New institutions, such as Masonic lodges and clubs, came to displace salons.❖These institutions were more open, no letter of introduction necessary, and offered marginal role for women.

The Salon

❖Women in Enlightenment were affected by new ideas about nature, human nature, and society.❖Also put forth concepts of separate spheres for men and women based on “natural” differences between genders and women’s inferior intellectual qualities and superior sensibility.

The Salon

❖Desire among certain rulers to make governments more effective and strengthen their economies and make military more powerful.❖Method was to employ Enlightenment principles of reason and tolerance to challenge tradition and carry out reforms.

Enlightened Despotism

❖Believed they should foster prosperity and social progress. ❖Resulted in formal law codes in Austria and Prussia in the late 1700s.

Enlightened Despotism

❖Most important enlightened despots: Frederick II (the Great) of Prussia (1740-1786) ❖http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WMNkd6-CMY

Enlightened Despotism

❖Joseph II of Austria (1765 -1790) ❖http://www.biography.com/people/joseph-ii-9358214#awesm=~oHjMuN8w9eV

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Enlightened Despotism

❖Catherine II (the Great) of Russia (1762 -1796) ❖http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3Mo1qRk3e8&feature=related

Enlightened Despotism

❖Charles III of Spain (1759 -1788)

Enlightened Despotism

❖Jose I of Portugal (1750 -1777)

Enlightened Despotism