I. What is (the) Enlightenment?

A. Develops out of the ideas of the

Scientific Revolution
- an expansion of the worldliness and
secularism of the Renaissance
B. Immanuel Kant – “What is Enlightenment?”
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![Dare to
know!] "Have courage to use your own reason!"- that is the
motto of enlightenment.
II. Central Concepts of the
Enlightenment

A. The methods of natural science should be

used to understand all aspects of life -
through the use of REASON
B. Discover the natural laws of human
society as well as the natural world (“social
science”)
C. The idea of progress - The confidence in
human power, human reason to improve
society
II. Central concepts of the
Enlightenment [cont]

D. Rejection of superstition and tradition

E. Tolerance and equality

F. Deism - God does not intervene in the

world through miracles; he created the
world, and then removed himself from it
 What is “Enlightenment?”

Reason Traditions
& Logic and
Superstitions
rationalism  nostalgia for the
 empiricism past
 tolerance  organized religions
 skepticism  irrationalism
 Deism  emotionalism

Immanuel Kant –-- DARE TO KNOW!

Centers of the Enlightenment
III. The Philosophes
men of letters who wrote for public consumption,
using humor, wit, satire
A. Denis Diderot - The
Encyclopedia - a compilation
of all knowledge!
“[Our aim] is to collect all the knowledge scattered over the face of the earth,
… and to transmit this to those who will come after us.... It could only belong
to a philosophical age to attempt an encyclopedia; … All things must be
examined, debated, and investigated without exception and without regard for
anyone’s feelings…. We have for quite some time needed a reasoning age.”

“It is impious to want to impose laws upon man’s conscience;

this is a universal rule of conduct. People must be
enlightened and not constrained.”

“War is the fruit of man’s depravity; it is a convulsive and

violent sickness of the body politic … If reason governed
men and had the influence over the heads of nations that
it deserves, we would never see them inconsiderately
surrender themselves to the fury of war; they would not
show that ferocity that characterizes wild beasts.”
“No man has received from nature the right to command others....
The government, although hereditary in a family…, is not private
property, but public property that consequently can never be taken
from the people, to whom it belongs exclusively…. It is not the state
that belongs to the prince, it is the prince who belongs to the state.”

“It is of the greatest importance to conserve this practice [the

free press] in all states founded on liberty.”

“The buying of Negroes, to reduce them to slavery,

is one business that violates religion, morality,
natural laws, and all the rights of human nature.”
Shoes Button-making
Subscriptions to Diderot’s Encyclopedia
III. The Philosophes (cont)
B. Montesquieu - separation and
balance of powers; admired the British
model of government
III. The Philosophes (cont)
C. Voltaire
1. freedom of thought and
religion ~ toleration
2. ridiculed the clergy for
their bigotry,
intolerance, and
superstition
3. Admired Louis XIV and
Frederick the Great -
thought people unable
to govern themselves
 “I have never made but one
prayer to God, a very short one:
‘Oh Lord, make my enemies
ridiculous.’ And God granted
it.”
“Almost everything that goes beyond
the adoration of a Supreme Being
and submission of the heart to his God is a comedian playing
orders is superstition. One of the to an audience too afraid
most dangerous is to believe that to laugh.
certain ceremonies entail the
forgiveness of crimes. Do you believe It is dangerous to be
that God will forget a murder you right when the
have committed if you bathe in a government is wrong.
certain river, sacrifice a black
sheep…? … Do better miserable I may not agree with what
humans, have neither murders nor you have to say, but I will
sacrifices of black sheep.” defend to the death your
right to say it.
III. The Philosophes (cont)
D. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(later Enlightenment)
1. Society is artificial and
corrupt - state of nature is
better - education
2. Valued impulse and
emotion more than reason
3. Believed in contract
government and individual
freedom
4. “General Will” - republic as
ideal government
 Historians often refer to the
“Enlightenment project.” What
was the “project” of the
Enlightenment? What reforms
were the philosophes seeking?
What kind of society were they
trying to create?
IV. The “Republic of Letters”

A. URBAN –-- gathering of

elites in the cities (salons)

B. URBANE --– cosmopolitan, worldly

- music, art, literature, politics
- read newspapers & the latest
books
C. POLITENESS –-- proper behavior
- self-governed
 Reading During the Enlightenment

► Literacy:
- 80 % for men, 60 % women
► Books were expensive (one day’s wages)
► Many readers for each book
- novels, plays & other literature
- journals, memoirs, “private lives”
- philosophy, history, theology
- newspapers, political pamphlets
- often censored by governments
“Must Read” Books of the Time
A Parisian Salon
A Parisian Salon
 The Salonnieres

Madame Geoffrin Madame

(1699-1777) Mademoiselle Suzanne Necker
Julie de (1739-1794)
Lespinasse
(1732*-1776)
 Zoology & Biology

A dissection at the Royal Academy, London

Chemistry Labs & Botany Gardens
 Questions for Review
1. What types of literature were featured in the illegal book trade in France?
2. What were the important trends of Enlightenment thought?
3. What was the primary purpose of Fontenelle’s writings?
4. Why does the Enlightenment develop best in France?
5. What does Locke put forth in his Essay Concerning Human
Understanding?
6. What was the “reading revolution?”
7. What does Montesquieu argue in his Spirit of Laws?
8. What does D’Holbach present in System of Nature?
9. What was the fundamental goal of the Encyclopedia?
10. What was Rousseau’s “general will?”
11. Who wrote the Historical and Critical Dictionary?
12. Which social classes intermingled in Parisian Salons?
13. Who wrote Progress of the Human Mind? What was put forth in this
work?
14. What did Emmanuel Kant advocate?
15. Who was Mendelssohn and what did he argue?