PHIL 2035: Introduction

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PHIL 2035 Introduction

• Why study the Enlightenment?

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The Enlightenment lives on today

• Autonomous and free use of ones own
  reasoncritical thinking,
• Valuable to question received authority
• religion,
• politics,
• science
• Toleration would make society more peaceful
  (Locke, Voltaire).
• Progress through reason and science
• Science rests on reliability of the evidence of
  the senses (Locke) and
• instruments of measurement
• Technological control of nature

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Enlightenments influence today

• On going debates
• Toleration/religious vs secular values
• Liberalism (personal freedoms)how much freedom?
• Who should rule? One, the few or many? Is
  democracy the best regime?
• Inequality how much is acceptable?
• Institutional framework
• scientific institutes
• centralized states (cameralism, public policy)
• technocratic expertise

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Icons of EnlightenmentThe Ship of Learning

• Frontispiece, Bacons Great Instauration (1620)
• Many shall pass to and fro, and knowledge shall
  be increased.
• Pillars of Hercules symbolize limits of learning
• Ship image refers to voyages of exploration,
  expansion of scientific knowledge and conquest.

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Icons of Enlightenment Philosophy Tears the
Veil from Truth
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Explanation of frontispiece

• Truth is wrapped in a veil, radiant with light
  that disperses the clouds
• Reason and Philosophy are to her right Reason
  lifts the veil, while Philosophy pulls it away
• Theology, on her knees, receives the light from
  Truth (this is a reversal of traditional
  Christian understandings)
• Other sciences are grouped below.

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When did the Enlightenment Start?

• Our thesis is that the Enlightenment
• started in the seventeenth century,
• But was a long process beginning with
• the revival of ancient learning in the
• Middle Ages and (12th-15th centuries)
• Renaissance (16th century)

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What preceded it ?

• High Middle Ages (ca. 1150-1300)
• Translation of ancient Greek texts from Arabic
• Medicine (Galen, Dioscorides)
• Physics (Aristotle)
• Logic (Aristotle) gt Medieval Scholastic
  philosophy
• Politics and ethics
• These texts were used to know the natural world
• No experimentation in the modern sense.
• Question why were the texts in Arabic?

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Role of ancient thought

• Renaissance revival of ancient thought
• was beneficial because it brought much lost
  knowledge to light
• However, ancient knowledge (2000 years old) was
  also a source of error
• People thought they needed only to read to
  become learned.And so they devoured
  indiscriminately everything that the ancients
  left (dAlembert, PD, 63).
• .

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The Attack on Scholasticism

• Bacon and Descartes rejected scholasticism
  because it did not have practical benefit!
• For example, medicine based on ancient authors
  useless in treating illness
• Bacon replaced it with a new operational natural
  philosophy
• the end we propose for our science is the
  discovery of practical arts, not arguments .
  They the scholastics conquer their adversary by
  disputation, we conquer nature by work (emph.
  added) (Great Instauration).

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The New Philosophy Focus on NatureHow to know
it and use it!

• Invent experiments
• Perform anatomic dissections, discover how human
  body works
• Create taxonomic systems to organize information
• Develop scientific institutions (e.g. academies)
• Take nature, not texts, as basis of truth
• Use the senses, examine the validity of their
  findings (Bacon, Descartes, Locke)

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Focus on SocietyHow to make it better?

• Is social, political and economic inequality
  justified or justifiable?
• Who should rule?
• A monarch by divine right,
• an elite or
• the whole people?
• Are people capable of ruling themselves?
• Should more than one religion be permitted in a
  society?
• How should Europeans treat people from other
  places?
• Is slavery (un)acceptable?