Transcript The Age of Reason (Enlightenment) and Deism

The Age of Reason
(Enlightenment) and Deism
English 2
Loyola High School
Mr. Dan O’Connell
Cause and Effect
 Causes (What do we
know?)
 Effects (What will we
learn?)
Cause and Effect—America & Europe
 Causes
– Religious Fanaticism
– Witch trials
– Beginning of a
merchant class—aka
bourgeoisie
– Landed Aristocracy
– Monarchies
– Church & State united
– Church = Truth
 Effects
– Deism—”natural law”
– Rise of merchant
class—aka bourgeoisie
– Science/Logic/Reason
= Truth
– Rise of philosophers
– Revolution x 3
– The “perfect” society
– Separation of Church
& State
– Democracy
The Enlightenment
 Enlightened thinkers believed that human
reason could be used to combat ignorance,
superstition, and tyranny and to build a
better world.
 Principal targets: Religion and the
domination of society by hereditary
aristocracy. In other words, the church and
the state, who often worked hand-in-hand.
The Enlightenment—Early Forms
 Renaissance Humanists (14th & 15th cent.)
– Argued that proper worship of God involved admiration
of his creation, notably His crown of creations:
humanity.
– Celebrating humans worships God better than gloomy
priests who preached original sin and repentance
 Galileo Galilei (1632)
– Used logic and observation to argue that earth rotates
around sun
– The Church (possessor of Truth) forced him to recant,
objecting that Bible clearly stated that the sun moved
through the sky.
– Led to the advancement of science—Isaac Newton
The Enlightenment—Early Forms
 Michel de Montaigne (16th Century)
– Asked “What do I know?”
– We have no right to impose other dogmas which rest on
cultural habit rather than absolute Truth
– New World = new cultures
• Morals may be relative
– If we cannot be certain that our values are God-given,
then we have no right to impose them by force on
others
– Popes and kings had no right to enforce adherence to
particular religious or philosophical beliefs
– Doubt is essential to science—test, challenge, ask—to
get closer to truth. Authority is science’s enemy
The Enlightenment—17th Century
 Enlightenment philosophers combined logic and
reason
 Logic: formal logic is the process(es) by which an
argument can be determined as valid or not. An
argument is valid if the premises are all true, then
the conclusion must also be true.
– Example: All humans have heart. Tom is a human.
Therefore, Tom has a heart.
 Reason: Enlightenment thinkers stated that it
consisted of common sense, observation, and their
own unacknowledged prejudices in favor of
skepticism and freedom.
The Enlightenment—17th Century
 The 17th century scene: Dogma & Fanaticism
– Witch-hunts and wars of religion
– Protestants & Catholics denounced each other as
followers of Satan
– People imprisoned for attending wrong church
– All publications censored by church and state
– Slavery widely practiced, defended by religious leaders
– Despotism of monarchs=“divine right of kings”
– Any opposition was imprisoned or executed
 Reason and Logic had no room for these matters
The Enlightenment—17th Century
 Political & Economic Background
– Wealth from Asia & Americas catapulted a new
class of merchants into prominence, partially
displacing the aristocracy whose power had
been rooted in land ownership
– These bourgeoisie had there own ideas about
the world—main agents of change in the arts,
government, and the economy
– Naturally convinced that their earnings were
result of their individual merit and hard work
– Absolutist kings and dogmatic churches were
the biggest obstacle to change for the merchant
class
The Enlightenment
 Individualism, freedom, and change replaced
community, authority, and tradition as core values
 Religion survived, but was weakened
 Monarchies dwindled over the course of 100 years
beginning in mid-18th century
 Church insisted it was only source of truth
– Any reasonable person knew that most human beings
on earth were not and had never been Christians, yet
they built great & inspiring civilizations
 Most important, the middle classes—the
bourgeoisie—were painfully aware that they were
paying taxes to support a fabulously expensive
aristocracy that contributed nothing of value to
society.
Deism
 The word "Deism" is derived from the Latin word
for God: "Deus." Deism involves the belief in the
existence of God, on purely rational grounds,
without any reliance on revealed religion or
religious authority.
 Deists:
– Do not accept the belief of most religions that God
revealed himself to humanity through the writings of
the Bible, the Qur'an or other religious texts.
– Disagree with strong Atheists who assert that there is no
evidence of the existence of God.
Deism
 Deists regard their faith as a natural religion, as
contrasted with one that is revealed by a God or
which is artificially created by humans. They
reason that since everything that exists has had a
creator, then the universe itself must have been
created by God. Thomas Paine concluded a speech
shortly after the French Revolution with: "God is
the power of first cause, nature is the law, and
matter is the subject acted upon."
 Thomas Paine on Deism:
http://www.scaevola.com/deism/
Philosophers in Europe
 France
– Voltaire
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
 England
– John Locke—the social contract
– David Hume
Philosophers in America
 Thomas Jefferson
 Thomas Paine
 Benjamin Franklin
 Patrick Henry
 George Washington
Putting Theory into Practice:
The American Revolution
 “Great upheavals in history occur when
circumstances are ripe.”
 French & Indian War (1754-1763)
 Stamp Act of 1765
– Needed to raise revenues in colonies to pay war debt
– Taxed 54 ordinary items
– Colonial reaction was bitter, Stamp Act repealed
 Townshend Acts of 1767
– Taxed paper, paint, glass, lead, and tea
– Colonists organized boycott; British dissolved the
Massachusetts legislature and sent troops to Boston
 Boston Massacre (1770)—5 dead
Putting Theory into Practice:
The American Revolution
 Tea Act of 1773
– Led to Boston Tea Party
 Coercive or Intolerable Acts of 1774
– Shut down port of Boston
– Forbade meetings
– British troops could be housed in colonists’ homes
– No British officials could be tried in colonies
– Annulled charter of colonies, put British Governor in
charge of all
 First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia
 “The Shot Heard Round the World”
– Lexington & Concord
Sources
 http://www.religioustolerance.org/deism.htm
 http://www.scaevola.com/deism/
 http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/hum_303/enlig
htenment.html
 Ellis, Linda., et al. Prentice Hall Literature,
Timeless Voices, Timeless Themes: The American
Experience. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 2000.