Transcript The Enlightenment 1700-1800

The Enlightenment
1700-1800
Immanuel Kant
What is Enlightenment? (1784)
Enlightenment is man's release from his selfincurred 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. Have courage to
use your own reason!"- that is the motto of
enlightenment.
Origins of Enlightenment

Renaissance/Reformation
– Individualism
– Scholarship
– Increased Literacy
 Scientific Revolution
– Newtonian physics/natural
laws
– Empiricism/Scientific Method
 Age of Exploration
– Relative truth and morality
Characteristics of the Enlightenment

Rationalism/Reason
– Apply Scientific Method
to study laws of human
nature

Progress
– “Optimism”
– Create better societies

Freedom
– Of thought and expression
– From oppressors
The Englightened Individual:
The Philosophe
French “publicists” of new ideas
Salons – civilized social gatherings
presided over by wealthy women
Her circle met daily from five o'clock until
nine in the evening. There we were sure to
find choice men of all orders in the State,
the Church, the Court [....] Politics,
religion, philosophy, anecdotes, news,
nothing was excluded from the
conversation […]News of all kinds was
gathered there in its first freshness.
On Julie de Lespinasse
Pre-Enlightenment Philosophy in
the Age of Reason
 17th
century Europe
 Science + Philosophy
Thomas Hobbes
Leviathan (1651)
John Locke
An Essay Concerning
Human Understanding
(1690)
Philosophes & Human Nature
 Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
The Social Contract
(1762)
 Voltaire, The Philosophical Dictionary (1764)
The Great Debate
Reason & Logic
 Rationalism
 Empiricism
 Tolerance
 Skepticism
vs
Tradition &
Superstition




Nostalgia
Religion
Irrationalism
Emotionalism
The Big Questions

What is the nature of man?
 Is society governed by
natural laws?
 What is the purpose of
government?
 What is the best form of
government?