Europe in the Age of Reason - Bloomsburg University of ...facstaff.bloomu.edu/lstallba/_documents/126_AgeOfReason.pdfEurope in the Age of Reason ? ... and control of religious practice

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Europe in the Age of Reason ?

L. M. Stallbaumer-Beishline

©2016

Dangerous or Abuse of History ‐‐

Why?

Here are a few of the many concepts that have made the West and that constitute its core meaning: • The principle of human dignity: that all human beings are equal in worth (if not in talents, beauty, or size), that they possess rights which cannot be taken away, and that to the greatest possible degree they are free. • The ideal of justice: that no person should be unfairly privileged above another. • The value of democracy: that the power to shape the future of a community belongs to its people as a whole and not to arbitrarily selected leaders. • The method of rationalism, which assumes that all phenomena (even those pertaining to God, essence, or spirit) may be subject to the critical scrutiny of the human mind.• The inclination to progress, to work toward goals to be achieved in the future.• The habit of self-examination, which encourages human beings to examine themselves seriously and often to test whether they have fulfilled their promise and their responsibilities.

Margaret King, Western Civilization: A Social and Cultural History (2003)

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context

Why periodize?

• To identify a significant development

• To impose order on the chaos

• Suggests a sharp break

• Risks marginalizing other topics or promoting a “white-washed” image of history

1524

Age of Religious WarsFought over the impact of the Protestant and Catholic Reformation, religious rivalries between rulers, and control of religious practice

1648Age of AbsolutismMany European monarchs claim divine right theory and refuse or resist having their powers restricted by constitutions and parliaments

Scientific Revolution Intellectual movement; natural world should be understood through scientific methods of research, not scholasticism

Eras/Periods

1543

c.1700

1680s

1789

EnlightenmentIntellectual movement advancing/exploring new theories about liberty, reason, learning, politics, etc.; natural laws explain human relations as much as nature; goal to improve humanity and promote the use of reason

Age of Reason

Protestant Reformation

1517

1534 Catholic Reformation

1600s

1700s

Agricultural Revolution

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Agricultural & Industrial Revolution

Enlightenment

c. 1680s-1789

Scientific Revolution

1540s-1700

1600s-1700s 19th C (1800s)

Age of Religious Wars

• German Peasants’ War (1524-1525)• Battle of Kappel in Switzerland (1531)• The Schmalkaldic War (1546-1547)• Eighty Years War (Low Countries, 1568-1648)• The French Wars (and Civil Wars) of Religion (1562-1598)• Thirty Years War (1618-1648)• Wars of the Three Kingdoms (England, Scotland, Ireland,1639-1651)

Witchcraft & Superstition

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Alchemy

Scientific Revolution

Paradigm Shift

Scholasticism

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Francis Bacon, 1561-1626

The Refutation of Philosophies (1608)

New System of Logic (1620)

“What justification can there be for this self-imposed servitude [that] … you are content to repeat Aristotle after two thousand [years]?... Be not forever the property of one man.”

Astronomy & The Scientific Revolution

Geocentric

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Nicholas Copernicus,1473-1543

On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres (1543)

In his dedication to Pope Paul III:“I can readily imagine, Holy Father, that as soon as some people hear that in this volume, which I have written about the revolutions of the spheres of the universe, I ascribe certain motions to the terrestrial globe, they will shout that I must be immediately repudiated together with this belief. … I am aware that a philosopher’s ideas are not subject to the judgement of ordinary persons, because it his endeavor to seek the truth in all things, to the extent permitted to human reason by God. Yet I hold that completely erroneous views should be shunned.”

Heliocentric View

Galileo Galilei1564-1642

Public letter to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, his benefactor:

“Some years ago, as Your Serene Highness well knows, I discovered in the heavens many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things, as well as some consequences which followed from them in contradiction to the physical notions commonly held among academic philosophers, stirred up against me no small number of professors-as if I had placed these things in the sky with my own hands in order to upset nature and overturn the sciences. They seemed to forget that the increase of known truths stimulates the investigation, establishment, and growth of the arts; not their diminution or destruction.”

“. . . [His critics] go about invoking the Bible, which they would have minister to their deceitful purposes. Contrary to the sense of the Bible and the intention of the holy Fathers, if I am not mistaken, they would extend such authorities until even in purely physical matters - where faith is not involved - they would have us altogether abandon reason and the evidence of our senses in favor of some biblical passage, though under the surface meaning of its words this passage may

t i diff t “

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Conflict with Catholic Church

MedicineFour Humors (blood, yellow bile, black bile, phlegm)

Andreas Vesailius, 1514-1564

On the Fabric of the Human Body (1543)

Human anatomy; dissection

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William Harvey, 1578-1657On the Motion of the Heart and Blood (1628)Dissection and vivisection

“Neither do [philosophers” swear such fealty to their mistress Antiquity, that they openly, and in sight of all, deny and desert their friend Truth. But even as they see that the credulous and vain are disposed at the first blush to accept and believe everything that is proposed to them, so do they observe that the dull and unintellectual are indisposed to see what lies before their eyes, and even deny the light of the noonday sun. They teach us in our course of philosophy to sedulously avoid the fables of the poets and the fancies of the vulgar, as the false conclusions of the sceptics.” “These views as usual, pleased some more, others less; some chide and calumniated me, and laid it to me as a crime that I had dared to depart from the precepts and opinions of all anatomists; others desired further explanations of the novelties, which they said were both worthy of consideration, and might perchance be found of signal use.”

Isaac Newton, 1642-1727

Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687)

Scientific Revolution

Social Order

Man & Society

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What are the defining characteristics of the

Enlightenment?

• Approachable writing style

• Not building a consensus

Natural Laws

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Free, critical reason

Mankind and society

Social justiceCesare Beccaria (1738-1794)On Crime and Punishment

Having rejected torture as a means of extracting confessions, he writes, “It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them. This is the fundamental principle of good legislation, which is the art of conducting men to the maximum of happiness, and to the minimum of misery, if we may apply this mathematical expression to the good and evil of life....”

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)A Vindication of the Rights of Women

Having acknowledged that men have greater physical strength, she argues that women can contribute as physicians, politicians, etc and appeals to reason, “Would men but generously snap our chains, and be content with rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience, they would find us more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, more reasonable mothers – in a word, better citizens. We should then love them with true affection, because we should learn to respect ourselves; …”

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Mark 7:21 "For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, …”

Psalms 51:5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me.”

Natural depravity

Reject supernatural revelation or power

Perfectibility of man and inevitable progress

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Perfectibility of

, uneducated,

un-propertied, women, or

people of color

man

State and individual

What was the larger political and

cultural context of the Enlightenment?

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European‐wide English• Francis Bacon (1562‐1626)• Thomas Hobbes (1588‐1679)• Isaac Newton (1642‐1727)• John Locke (1632‐1704)• Mary Wollstonecraft (1759‐

1797)Dutch• Rene Descartes (1596‐1650)• Baruch Spnioza (1632‐1677)Italian‐speaking • Giambattista Vico (1668‐1744)• Cesare Beccaria (1738‐1794)German‐speaking• Immanuel Kant (1724‐1804)• Johann Gottfried von Herder 

(1744‐1803)• Gottfried Leibniz (1646‐1716)• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

(1749‐1632)• Moses Mendelssohn (1729‐

1786)Swiss• Jean‐Jacques Rousseau (1712‐

1778)

Scientific Revolution?

American Colonies• Thomas Jefferson (1743‐1826)• James Madison (1751‐1836)• Benjamin Franklin (1706‐1790)• George Mason (1725‐1792)• Thomas Paine (1737‐1809)

Scottish• Dugald Stewart (1753‐1828)• David Hume (1711‐1776)• Adam Smith (1723‐1790)Irish• Edmund Burke (1729‐1797)• George Berkeley (1685‐

1753)Austrian • Joseph Haydn (1732‐1809)• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 

(1756‐1791)

French origins?

Denis Diderot (1713‐1784)Jean Le Rond d’Alembert (1717‐1783)Voltaire (1694‐1778)Baron de Montesquieu (1689‐1755)Jean Jacques RousseauPierre Bayle (1647‐1706)Marquis de Condorcet (1743‐1794)Olympe de Gouges (1748‐1793)Baron d’Holbach (1723‐1789)Antoine Lavoisier (1743‐1794)

Encyclopedie

Urban culture

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Salons and coffee houses

Academies

“Enlightened Absolutism”Constitutional Absolutist/authoritarian

Monarchy

Frederick II, r. 1740-1786 (Prussian)

Catherine II, r. 1762-1796 (Russian)

Maria Theresa (r. 1740-1780) (Holy Roman Empire til 1765 and Habsburg dominions til 1780)

Joseph II, r. 1765-1790 (Holy Roman Empire)

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Nobility or Aristocracy?

Clergy?

Emerging middle class or “bourgeoisie”

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Emerging working class

Why 1789? French

Revolution

Industrialization a.k.a. Industrial Revolution

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Agricultural & Industrial Revolution

Enlightenment

c. 1680s-1789

Scientific Revolution

1540s-1700

1600s-1700s 19th C (1800s)

Preview of Next WeekTues, 2 Feb Discussion:

1. What questions do you have about the readings? Where did you struggle? What are the essential facts and context that you need to know to interpret the documents?

2. Why did the Lisbon earthquake present such an intellectual crisis for eighteenth-century thinkers?

3. How did theologians explain the disaster within the framework of their beliefs? How did Enlightenment thinkers explain it?

4. In what direction was their thought on the physical word and its relationship to divine forces leading them?

Between classes do the following

Review The Mind of an Age: Science and Religion Confront Eighteenth-Century Natural Disasters (chapter 4) in Discovering the Western Past

Submit WTL #2 in hard copy and upload to BOLT by the beginning of class, Thursday, 4 February

Thurs, 4 Feb Discussion continued….

Preview of next week

Reading Preview

Text?

Context?

Subtext?

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CalendarWTL

Exercise

Chapter 4: The Mind of an Age: Science and Religion Confront Eighteenth-Century Natural

Disaster in Discovering the Western Past

1. Read “The Problem”, pp. 76-77

2. List the names of people, events, eras that you should become familiar with or need to know; start looking them up to help you understand context, subtext.

3. Know the questions driving the reading (p. 78)

4. Read Sources and Methods and make note of essential details that might provide insight on the document (pp. 78-82)

5. Read the documents (pp. 83-101) once through just to increase familiarity, define strange words

6. Reread to determine text, context, subtext of each document

7. By Tuesday respond tentatively to WTL questions

8. Bring questions about the readings to class on Tuesday … learning begins with questions.