European Intellectual Revolutions

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European Intellectual Revolutions
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Changes in Europe 16th 17th centuries

• Protestant Reformation
• Lutheranism, Calvinism, Arminianism
• Wars of Religion
• Scientific Revolution
• Colonialism
• Industrial Revolution
• Ascendancy of Great Britain and France over Spain
  and Portugal

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The State

• Royal Absolutism
• Absolute power vested in a monarch
• Divinely approved form of government
• Jacques Bossuet and Thomas Hobbes
• Louis XIV of France (r. 1643-1715)
• Constitutionalism
• Limited power of the monarch
• Power vested in legislature
• England and the Glorious Revolution of 1688
• Bill of Rights (1689)

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Scientific Revolution and Philosophy

• Scientific Revolution
• Nicolaus Copernicus, 1543
• Galileo Galilei, 1632 (E pur si muove)
• Francis Bacon, 1620
• René Descartes, 1640s and Isaac Newton, 1687
• Philosophy
• John Locke

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The Copernican Revolution
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(No Transcript)
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John Locke (1632-1704)

• 1690 tabula rasa, Latin for blank slate.
• People are shaped by experiences and environment,
  not innate ideas.
• Implications for religion?
• Critical of absolutism.

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Lockes Works and Views

• Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
• Tabula rasa
• Two Treatises of Government (1689)
• Rulers are subject to the law
• Political contracts
• Letter Concerning Toleration (1689)
• Religious toleration
• Government and religion

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Age of Reason

• Tradition v. Reason
• Certain buzzwords associated with the period
  reason, rationalism, natural law, tolerance,
  progress.
• Enlightenment
• Religion
• Government
• Society
• Gender and race
• Political revolution

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The Enlightenment

• Intellectuals became known as philosophes, French
  word for philosopher.
• Not all philosophes were French, though movement
  did begin in Paris.
• Salons of Europe
• Ideas spread across Europe into New World
  colonies.
• Ideas not only discussed, but put into action.

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Gathering in a salon
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Voltaire (1694-1778)

• Came from bourgeois class of Paris.
• Studied law and wrote witty plays and novels.
• Deism
• Candide (1759)
• Criticism of traditional religion.
• Fanaticism (1742)
• Critique of Islam.

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Montesquieu (1689-1755)

• Part of French nobility
• The Spirit of the Laws (1748).
• Three types of government.
• Republic, Monarchy, and Despotism
• Constitutions
• Checks and balances
• Separation of powers

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Adam Smith (1723-1790)

• Scottish philosopher.
• Theories on economics.
• The Wealth of Nations (1776)
• Laissez-faire, economic liberty
• Functions of government education, protection
  (army), justice (police), public works.
• Four-stage theory
• Hunter and gather
• Pastoral shepherd
• Agricultural
• Commercial

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

• Discourse on the Origins of the Inequality of
  Mankind (1755)
• People adopted laws to protect private property.
• As a result, they had become enslaved to the
  government.
• The Social Contract (1762)
• General will
• More government

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Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

• A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792).
• Attacked Rousseau's Émile (1762)
• Womens education
• Attack on domesticity
• Female slaves and male tyrants
• Olympe de Gouges

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Justifications for Race Slavery

• Were Africans human?
• European map of Africa published in 1761
• David Hume, Scottish philosopher, Essay and
  Treatises (1768)
• Georg Hegel, German philosopher, Philosophy of
  History (1837)

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I am apt to suspect the negroes to be
naturally inferior to the white. There never was
a civilized nation of any other complexion than
white, nor even any individual eminent either in
action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures
amongst them, no arts, no sciences.
David Hume
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It is manifest that want of self-control
distinguishes the character of the Negroes. This
condition is capable of no development or
culture, and as we have seen them at this day,
such have they always been .
Georg Hegel
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Challenging Slavery

• Some critique from Enlightenment
• Montesquieu (1748) It is impossible for us to
  suppose these creatures to be men, because,
  allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow
  that we ourselves are not Christians.
• Olaudah Equiano
• Interesting Narrative (1789)
• David Walker

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Olaudah Equiano
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David Walker

• Born in Wilmington, N.C., in 1785.
• Free black, not a slave.
• Becomes a black rights activist and abolitionist.
• Published Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the
  World (1829)

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See your Declaration Americans! ! ! Do you
understand your own language? Hear your language,
proclaimed to the world, July 4th, 1776 We
hold these truths to be self evident -- that ALL
MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL! ! that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable rights
that among these are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness! ! Compare your own
language above, extracted from your Declaration
of Independence, with your cruelties and murders
inflicted by your cruel and unmerciful fathers
and yourselves on our fathers and on us -- men
who have never given your fathers or you the
least provocation! ! ! ! ! ! --David Walker,
Appeal, 1829