The Enlightenment 17001800

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The Enlightenment 1700-1800
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Immanuel Kant What is Enlightenment? (1784)

• Enlightenment is man's release from his
  self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's
  inability to make use of his understanding
  without direction from another. Self-incurred is
  this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of
  reason but in lack of resolution and courage to
  use it without direction from another. Sapere
  aude. Have courage to use your own reason!"- that
  is the motto of enlightenment.

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Origins of Enlightenment

• Renaissance/Reformation
• Individualism
• Scholarship
• Increased Literacy
• Scientific Revolution
• Newtonian physics/natural laws
• Empiricism/Scientific Method
• Age of Exploration
• Relative truth and morality

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Characteristics of the Enlightenment

• Rationalism/Reason
• Apply Scientific Method to study laws of human
  nature
• Progress
• Optimism
• Create better societies
• Freedom
• Of thought and expression
• From oppressors

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The Englightened Individual The Philosophe

• French publicists of new ideas
• Salons civilized social gatherings presided
  over by wealthy women
• Her circle met daily from five o'clock until nine
  in the evening. There we were sure to find choice
  men of all orders in the State, the Church, the
  Court .... Politics, religion, philosophy,
  anecdotes, news, nothing was excluded from the
  conversation News of all kinds was gathered
  there in its first freshness.
• On Julie de Lespinasse

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Pre-Enlightenment Philosophy in the Age of Reason

• 17th century Europe
• Science Philosophy

John Locke An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding (1690)
Thomas Hobbes Leviathan (1651)
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Philosophes Human Nature

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762)
• Voltaire, The Philosophical Dictionary (1764)

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The Great Debate

• Reason Logic

Tradition Superstition
vs

• Rationalism
• Empiricism
• Tolerance
• Skepticism

• Nostalgia
• Religion
• Irrationalism
• Emotionalism

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The Big Questions

• What is the nature of man?
• Is society governed by natural laws?
• What is the purpose of government?
• What is the best form of government?