Enlightenment Challenges Society
Religion
Church = Freedom Limiting Institution Most philosophes anticlerical (against influence of a hierarchical, institutional Church organization) Not necessarily against the general concept of religion Natural Religion Ex: Deism Revealed Religion Ex: Christianity Empiricism (logic and observation) Teaching (divine revelation) Man is ignorant Man is fallen Needs enlightenment Needs redemption Reason Faith Evidence Authority (Bible and/or Church)
Isms Deism Deism is example of natural religion Followers: Voltaire, Hume, Diderot, Founding Fathers like Thomas Jefferson Deists believe in a distant, non-interventionist God; God existed just not way Christians believe Other Isms Skepticism: nothing can be fully known, doubt everything Atheism: belief in no God Diderot on Skepticism: All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone s feelings.
Religious Toleration Rational analysis of religious practices led to demand for religious toleration By 1800, most governments in western and central Europe extended toleration to Christian minorities and in some states civil equality to Jews
Race
Race Argument: Natural sciences, literature, and popular culture increasingly exposed Europeans to peoples outside Europe In line with scientific categorization of plants and animals (taxonomies), Europeans began to classify humans into hierarchical ordered races (biological, physical distinct groups of humans) New categorization because before people grouped according to national, political, or cultural affiliations Popularized by Enlightenment thinkers like Kant, On the Different Races of Man (1775) Counter Argument: Racism did not go unchallenged Ex: Diderot s Supplement to Bougainville s Voyage criticize European racism via dialogue between Tahitian villagers and Europeans Olaudah Equiano publish memoir testifying to horrors of slavery making an economic argument against it
Women
Women and the Enlightenment Woman s question : debate about the nature and value of women Argument: women deserve equal rights 1. 2. Mary Wollstonecraft: Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), women would be better daughters/sisters/wives/mothers if they had rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience to men and society Marquis de Condorcet: attributed women's limitations not to their sex but to their inferior education and circumstances Counter Argument: nah (continued exclusion of women from political life) Rousseau Emile (1762): natural biological differences between men and women that made women mothers rather than intellectuals
Literature
Literacy 80% of men; 60% of women Books were expensive Many readers for each book (20 : 1) Genres: novels, plays, journals, memoirs, philosophy, history, theology. newspapers, political pamphlets
Voltaire (1694-1778) French Enlightened thinker Influenced by John Locke, Shakespeare, and Isaac Newton What he knew about science taught to him by girlfriend, Emilie du Chatelet who was a fellow French philosophe Spent a lot of time in England so became great admirer of English constitutionalism Deist who was proponent religious tolerance Candide was set during 16th French wars of religion; hero was Henry IV Heavily criticized absolutism of Louis XIV and XV
Epitome of Enlightenment Voltaire s Candide (Optimism) 1759
Reason Both Rousseau and Kant question exclusive reliance on reason and emphasized role of emotions in moral improvement of self and society
Rousseau Important Works: A Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, Emile (gender), The Social Contract (politics) Question: Does progress in the arts and sciences correspond with progress in morality? Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains. As civilizations progress, they move away from morality. Science and art raised artificial barriers between people and their natural state. Therefore, the revival of science and the arts corrupts social morals, not improves them Virtue exists in the state of nature but lost in society Concept of the noble savage The Social Contract: Liberty could be achieved only by subjecting one s individual interests to the general will Did this by entering into a social contract not with their rulers, but with each other
Kant Transcendentalism Some things are known by methods other than empirically, belief in a non-rational way to understand things that transcended sensory experience. Ex: faith, pre-existence, life after death Thoughts on Enlightenment In 1784, Kant posed the philosophical question, Are we now living in an enlightened age? He then answered his own question by saying no but we live in an age of enlightenment. Diderot reflects Kant s idea: We will speak against senseless laws until they are reformed; and, while we wait, we will abide by them.
Art Baroque Rococo Romanticism
Baroque and Rococo 18th century art and literature increasingly reflected the outlook and values of commercial and bourgeois society Bad because increasingly non religious subjects (secular) Boujee because growing consumerism (fashion, gold everything, self portraits, non essential objects) by upper class called bourgeois
Baroque 1. Catholic Church: Started during the Catholic Reformation as a means of answering the iconoclasm of the Protestants.
2. Absolute rulers: by 18th century had evolved into a tool of absolute rulers Charles I of England Flemish artist Van Dyck was court painter to King Charles I Philip IV of Spain Velazquez court painter of King Philip Louis XIV of France Hyacinthe Rigaud Charles I at the Hunt Las Meninas
3. Dutch: alternate use of art to glorify middle class, everyday life rather than the Church or the monarch Rembrandt Greatest European painter of 17th century. Famous for his self portraits of which he painted almost 100 at different stages of his life Vermeer Scenes of everyday life Girl with the Pearl Earring The Milkmaid
Rococo Start in Paris under Louis XV (1723-74) By 1760, considered outdated in France but still the style until 1800 in Central Europe and Eastern Europe Themes Playfulness of the Nobility - attempted to celebrate the fun of aristocracy and show aristocrats at play or in times of leisure Beauty - demonstrate beauty of women Mythology - like the Renaissance, Rococo artists used mythological images Light and Airy - pastel colors, softer than Baroque
Rococo Architecture Maria Theresa s Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna Frederick the Great s Sans Souci Palace at Potsdam
French Rococo Fragonard was a popular court painter of portraits and landscapes The Swing
English Rococo Sir Joshua Reynolds who created over 2,000 historical paintings and portraits. In 1768, he became first president of the Royal Academy