The Early Modern Intellectual World

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The Early Modern Intellectual World

• Its effects on ideas of justice and human rights

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BIG QUESTION (based on the theme of the course)
How and why did Early Modern thinkersgive rise
to modern ideas of human rights and justice?
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Caution

• The big designation Scientific Revolution has
  been criticized by historians because it implies
  revolutionary change when, in fact, the changes
  were part of a slow process of change that had
  gone on for centuries. However, there is no
  doubt, for instance, that the idea of a
  heliocentric universe replacing that of a
  geocentric one had huge implications.

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Further Cautions

• Its important to realize, too, that
• The discoveries of people like Copernicus and
  Galileo were embedded in a society that was very
  busy killing people and engaging in religious
  wars
• The ideas of Descartes, Locke, and Hobbes were
  born in a society that hardly was egalitarian.
• This is intellectual history and it rides on a
  social and economic base.

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Justice?

• Where was justice before this time? Scriptures,
  afterlife (you get your just desserts in Heaven
  or Hell and you can pay penance in Purgatory),
  and there was law
• We have just seen a form of justice in the
  witchcraft trials and pardon tales. Copernicus,
  Galileo, and others did their work as the trials
  were going on

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Scientific Revolution(s)
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Scientific Revolution (an Iffy concept)

• One of its questions How can the world be known
  when the old system of knowing it collapses?
• The collapse
• Displaced the Earth as the center of the universe
• Shook faith in God
• Shook faith in human importance
• Led to notions of equality over hierarchy (will
  get to that)
• Changed ways of thinking but had debt to ancient
  and medieval thought even as it overturned it

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Scientific Revolution Debates among Historians

• Not one revolution but a series of revolutions
  paradigm shifts of the same pattern?
• Nature of universe (16th-17th c)
• Circulation of the blood (Harvey)
• Later revolutions in chemistry. biology, nuclear
  physics

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Other historians argue . . .

• It wasnt a scientific revolution because that
  wasnt the way the scientists themselves saw
  things
• They thought they were recovering ancient
  learning, not making something new
• They did not make distinctions among fields of
  study and often worked in more than one
• The revolutions were part of a continuum of
  thought.

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Predecessors to the Scientific Revolution (It was
part of a continuum)

• The Ancient Greeks
• Medieval Thinkers

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Ancient Greeks ideas of the universe

• believed in abstract perfection (the ideal
  circle, which never could exist in reality)
• believed earth was spherical proved by
  observation
• believed the moon, sun, and stars were celestial
  crystalline spheres purer and non-earthly while
  the Earth was material and so not pure, therefore
  inferior, but Earth was still the CENTER of the
  universe
• The earth didn't move

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Ptolemy (2nd c AD) his idea of the universe
His model of the universe is based on the ideas
of Greek astronomers. It is often called the
Aristotelian universe (after the Greek
philosopher Aristotle).The earth is in the
center, with the moon, sun, and planets in
circular orbits around it. The sun is in between
Venus and Mars. What does this say about the
position of human beings (earthlings) in the
universe?
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Ptolemys Epicycles
Why was retrograde motion a necessity in his
universe?
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Medieval Notions of Nature

• Everything composed of earth, air, fire, or
  water, each of which follows its ideal nature
• earth and water heavy moved down
• air and fire light moved up
• fifth element aether, more pure than the rest
  heavenly bodies ("up) composed of aether
• owed something to the ancient Greeks
• This fits with religion or religion fits with it?
  
• Disdain for the earthly and striving for the
  heavenly, which is the ideal and better and
  qualitatively different
• body and spirit two different things
• God is in the heavens, which are pure
• Christianity fitted well into the
  Aristotelian/Ptolemaic universe. Where else
  should humans, Gods creatures, live but in the
  center of the universe.
• Thomas Aquinas (13th century) thought that
• Reason and faith are not opposites but should
  work together
• Humans should investigate nature

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From Dante's The Divine Comedy (1265-1321)

• Aristotles ideas still held. The moon, sun, and
  planets were in the same positions. The planets
  were named after the ancient gods, though the
  names were Roman, not Greek.  
• Heaven (and God) were outside the fixed stars.
  Hell was inside of and below earth, with
  Purgatory above it.

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Painting of the Universe on the Third Day of
Creation by Hieronymus Bosch

• This is from his famous triptych, The Garden of
  Earthly Delights, c. 1500

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Scientists

• Note!
• The first men we think of as real scientists
  Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo lived in the 16th
  and early 17th century. They took the earth from
  the center of the universe and replaced it with
  the sun.
• This was the time of witchcraft trials.
• How can you explain that?

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Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543

• Argued that
• the sun was the center of the universe, not
  Earth
• the Earth moved
• space was big but a place of fixed stars
• Relied on sense perceptions What he saw was
  what you got
• Displaced Ptolemy's model, except he did not give
  up the idea that heavenly bodies moved in circles
  so some aspects of Ptolemy's model still applied

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Copernicus Universe The little circle in the
center (Sol) is the sun. Earth is the third
planet.
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Copernicus said

• "At rest in the middle of everything is the sun.
  For in this most beautiful temple, who would
  place this lamp in another or better position
  than that from which it can light up the whole
  thing at the same time? For, the sun is not
  inappropriately called by some people the lantern
  of the universe, its mind by others, and its
  ruler by still others. Hermes the Thrice
  Greatest labels it a visible god, and Sophocles'
  Electra, the all-seeing. Thus indeed, as though
  seated on a royal throne, the sun governs the
  family of planets revolving around it. Moreover,
  the earth is not deprived of the moon's
  attendance. On the contrary, as Aristotle says in
  a work on animals, the moon has the closest
  kinship with the earth. Meanwhile the earth has
  intercourse with the sun, and is impregnated for
  its yearly parturition. In this arrangement,
  therefore, we discover a marvelous symmetry of
  the universe, and an established harmonious
  linkage between the motion of the spheres and
  their size, such as can be found in no other
  way.

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Copernicus Universe
What could have been the cultural effect of his
displacing the earth from the center of the
universe?
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Giordano Bruno (1548-1600)

• He said the universe was infinite, a place with
  many worlds. If God is infinite, isnt the
  universe infinite?
• He rejected the geocentric (Earth-centered) idea
  as did Copernicus
• BUT he also went beyond the heliocentric
  (Sun-centered) model to him the universe had no
  center and everything in it moved. The stars were
  suns.
• He saw the heavenly bodies as concentric memory
  wheels. In observing them, the mind would see
  ideas in every-changing relationships, and this
  would lead to lost wisdom
• He was not an astronomer, in the strictest sense
  of the word, but a philosopher.

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Brunos universe
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• Church officials ordered Bruno to recant his
  ideas, "diverse horrid opinions" which they
  thought were heretical
• He wouldnt do it. So they tortured him. He still
  wouldnt recant
• On February 17th, 1600, he was burned at the
  stake

Giordano Bruno by Avicenna
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Johann Kepler (1571-1630)

• He discovered that planets move in elliptical
  orbits around sun
• So the universe wasnt perfect anymore

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Galileo (1564-1642

• Showed that the universe moved in non-ideal ways.
• Used the telescope for direct observation of the
  heavens sun spots, phases of Venus and got a
  better impression of what they were made of. It
  wasnt all that pure and ethereal.

Galileos all-too-solid moon.
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Galileos InquisitionHe abjured his heretical
ideas and wasnt killed but placed under house
arrest.
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Why was Galileo so controversial?

• Argued that "in discussions of physical problems
  we ought to begin not from the authority of
  scriptural passages, but from sense-experiences
  and necessary demonstrations for the holy Bible
  and the phenomena of nature proceed alike from
  the divine word . . .It is necessary for the
  Bible, in order to be accommodated to the
  understanding of every man, to speak of many
  things which appear to differ from the absolute
  truth so far as the bare meaning of the words is
  concerned. But Nature, on the other hand, is
  inexorable and immutable she never transgresses
  the laws imposed upon her, or cares a whit
  whether her abstruse reasons and methods of
  operation are understandable to men. Link to
  complete document, a letter to Queen Christina of
  Sweden, written in 1615 http//www.galilean-libra
  ry.org/christina.html
• Church position adherence to Aristotelian
  universe.
• Question Analogy today?

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Blaise Pascal

• Pascal, who was French, is difficult to slot into
  a disciplinary category he was a philosopher, a
  mathematician, and a physicist. Probability
  theory owes something to him as do the ideas of
  Rousseau (18th century) and the existentialists
  (20th century). He was a believer in God.
• Very famous is Pascals Wager Let us weigh the
  gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us
  consider the two possibilities. If you gain, you
  gain all if you lose, you lose nothing. Hesitate
  not, then, to wager that He is.Pensees (1670)

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A quotation from Pascal

• For, after all, what is man in nature? A
  nothing in comparison with the infinite, an
  absolute in comparison with nothing, a central
  point between nothing and all. Infinitely far
  from understanding these extremes, the end of
  things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden
  from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally
  incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he
  came, and the infinite in which he is engulfed.
  What else then will he perceive but some
  appearance of the middle of things, in an eternal
  despair of knowing either their principle or
  their purpose? All things emerge from nothing and
  are borne onwards to infinity. Who can follow
  this marvelous process? The Author of these
  wonders understands them. None but he can.

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Quotations from Pascal

• Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center
  is everywhere and the circumference
  nowhere.Pensées (1670)
• Through space the universe grasps me and swallows
  me up like a speck through thought I grasp it.
  Pensées (1670)
• What is man in nature? Nothing in relation to the
  infinite, all in relation to nothing, a mean
  between nothing and everything.Pensées (1670)
• I feel engulfed in the infinite immensity of
  spaces whereof I know nothing, and which know
  nothing of me, I am terrified The eternal silence
  of these infinite spaces alarms me. Pensées
  (1670)
• The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he
  does not know how to stay quietly in his
  room.Pensées (1670)
• There is almost nothing right or wrong which does
  not alter with a change in clime. A shift of
  three degrees of latitude is enough to overthrow
  jurisprudence. One's location on the meridin
  decides the truth, that or a change in
  territorial possession. Fundamental laws alter.
  What is right changes with the times. Strange
  justice that is bounded by a river or mountain!
  The truth on this side of the Pyrenees, error on
  the other.Pensées (1670)
• The more I see of men, the better I like my dog.
  H Eves Return to Mathematical Circles (Boston
  1988).

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In the New Thinking

• The Earth does not represent imperfection and sin
  any more
• The universe isnt perfect either. The other
  heavenly bodies are made of the same stuff as
  Earth
• The Earth is not the center of the universe

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• What might this have done to the Early Modern
  mindset?

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Didn't have much effect on the ordinary guy
(maybe) BUT

• Science gained importance in (elite) society.
• Science was supported by
• Monarchs
• Schools new ones
• Learned societies
• More men were attracted to science as a
  profession. This was partly the fault of the
  religious wars why go into theology?
• Scientists sought to segregate scientific
  knowledge (knowledge of nature) from religious
  knowledge
• Natural philosophy even got into the nature of
  God and how the world was created

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• Seventeenth century ideas about human nature and
  politics

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René Descartes (1596-1650)

• Catholic yet accepted Copernicus idas
• Made up philosophical system that was outside
  religion
• Discourse on Method revolved "to seek no other
  knowledge than that which I might find within
  myself, or perhaps in the great book of nature.
  He is the one who said, "I think, therefore I
  am."
• He wondered whether the world itself might be an
  illusion
• Cartesianism systematic doubting relies on
  individual reason
• implicitly egalitarian all men (and women)
  reasonable

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• 
  
  Illustration from Descartes
  Principia Philosophiae, 1677

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Thomas Hobbes (17th century)

• In Leviathan (1651), he said that humans are
  selfish "of the voluntary acts of every man,
  the object is some good to himself.
• He asked the question What would society be like
  in "state of nature" (no law, no state)? His
  answer life would be "solitary, poor, nasty,
  brutish and short, a "war of every man against
  every man"
• Still, he thought people were rational, capable
  of agreeing to give up their right to violence.
  
• So, according to him, the State (leviathan) is
  necessary. The power of the state comes from its
  citizens, but even so, the state should have
  absolute authority, in return for which it
  guarantees peace.
• According to Hobbes, justice is a social
  construction. Law is dependent on power and
  justice is what the law says it is.

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John Locke (1632-1704)

• Believed the individual should use reason to look
  for truth, should look for evidence, should not
  depend on authorities BUT also
• Thought institutions can have legitimate
  functions beneficial to the welfare of individual
  and society

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Lockes An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

• In the Essay, Locke
• Asks What can we know? What can we now?
• Presents his idea that a human being is born a
  blank slate (tabula rasa) and that therefore our
  ideas come from experience.

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Lockes Two Treatises of Government

• In the Treatises, Locke
• Speaks against the divine right of kings and the
  absolute monarch kings should rule with the
  consent of the community. If they do not, they
  can be removed.
• Discusses the idea of natural rights (rights that
  human beings have just because they are human
  beings e.g., the right not to be killed)
• Advocates transferring some rights to government
  and keeping others (social contract)
• Attacked censorship of print

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Differences Hobbes and Locke?

• Hobbes was pessimistic about human nature, Locke
  optimistic
• While both agreed the state exists by consent of
  governed (voluntarily giving up their rights),
  Hobbes believed in absolutism, Locke in the right
  of people to remove an absolute monarch
• We inherit more from Locke than Hobbes?

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Enlightenment(1690-1790)

• As you will see, the historical period we call
  the Enlightenment was not so much a new
  enlightenment springing from darkness as a part
  of an intellectual continuum. How were
  Enlightenment thinkers different from those who
  went before them?

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Preoccupations of Enlightenment

• Owed debt to and was intricately involved with
  Scientific Revolution
• Man using reason can figure out Nature's laws
• Man, using reason, can figure out laws of human
  behavior and society
• How?
• observation rather than analogy or received
  wisdom or principle
• experience more important than rational
  speculation
• particular over general

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Isaac Newton (d. 1727)

• His Discoveries
• Calculus
• Light
• Laws of motion (showed how planets moved)
• Until 20th century we lived in a Newtonian world
  in some ways we still do
• His ideas
• The universe is made of matter same as earth.
• The world and universe follow the same laws.
• Nature has order and meaning based on reason.
• Pope (the poet) re Newton "Nature and Nature's
  laws lay hid in night/God said, Let Newton be!
  and all was light"

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Enlightenment religion?

• Religious relativism no one religion is
  intrinsically better than another
• skeptics doubted rather than believed
• deists "natural religion"
• pantheists natural world god
• Reaction against superstition and clericalism
• Most intellectuals still believed in a supreme
  being, but not necessarily a Christian God

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What is a human being? Can we know the world and
change it?

• How can we change human society (and politics) to
  be more just?
• Humanity is progressing, humans are moving toward
  perfectability (hangover from the past?)
• BUT we are not the center of the universe

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The New Sciences of Man

• Turning the scientific method on human concerns
• Science of politics recalls Hobbes and Locke
• In nature, humans are free and equal
• Government should reflect natural law
• Reason throws doubt on everything divine right,
  for instance
• Reason says all people have reason, so therefore
  all people are equal
• Reason leads to a critique of authority
  question, decide for yourself based on what you
  see
• Progress possible because thought is not
  dependent on old sources (e.g. Bible)

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The Pursuit of Happiness

• Afterlife to here and now
• The material world is not BAD
• You can have both individual good and social good

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Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
(1689-1755)

• Said the forces that created different kinds of
  states and their laws (republican, monarchical,
  etc.) allowed changes due to human will
• human will should reject things like slavery and
  torture
• human will can create conditions of liberty
• separation of executive, legislative, judiciary
• He expressed here real hatred of despotism,
  clericalism and slavery

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

• "Man is born free and is everywhere in chains. .
  ." (Social Contract)
• Said people in society participate in making law,
  so obedience to that law is liberty, because it
  came from each person's will
• general will, "forced to be free"
• sovereignty of the people
• wanted moral reform, renewal of religion, manners

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Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet (1694-1778)

• Cultivated by Frederick the Great (Prussia),
  enlightened despot
• Influenced by Newton and Locke (man has no innate
  ideas, tabula rasa or blank slate)
• Fought superstition and cruelty
• Author of Candide
• characters represent something Pangloss
  represents philosophy
• Embodied Enlightenment values but shows end of
  facile optimism earlier

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Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794)

• wanted to reform the criminal justice system,
  working with a group called the academy of
  fists.
• knew philosophers like Hobbes and Montesquieu
• wrote On Crimes and Punishments (1764), a protest
  and argument against torture, the use of capital
  punishment, inconsistent sentencing, arbitrary
  judicial power, and more. This book was read by
  kings and philosophers.
• For an excerpt from his book, go to
  http//www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/18beccaria.html
  

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Enlightenment Kings

• Legitimacy of royal family, which came from the
  notion of divine right), but
• a new sense of public service according to
  rational principles
• Abandoning of religion and tradition as
  justification for their power
• State power still important
• Welfare of subject more important than it had
  been

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Enlightened despotism

• Frederick II of Prussia, Catherine II of Russia,
  Emperor Joseph II Ended some privilege e.g.
  power of guilds
• Codified laws of state
• Improved education
• Softened prison system
• Abolished or restricted use of torture in
  criminal cases
• End of arbitrary arrest and persecution of
  religious minorities
• Government exists by will of the people

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Question Again

• How and why did Early Modern thinkersgive rise
  to modern ideas of human rights and justice?