Chapter Study Outline

  1. Introduction
    1. The Calas Case and Voltaire (1762)
      1. Intolerance and ignorance
      2. Fanaticism and infamy
    2. Enlightenment concerns
      1. The danger of unchecked and arbitrary authority
      2. The value of religious toleration
      3. The importance of law, reason, and human dignity
  2. The Foundations of the Enlightenment
    1. An eighteenth-century phenomenon
    2. Basic characteristics
      1. The power of human reason
      2. Self-confidence
      3. Newtonian methods had wide application
      4. "Dare to know!" (Kant)
      5. Reason needed autonomy and freedom
      6. The "Holy Trinity": Bacon, Newton, and Locke
        1. Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
          1. Education and environment
          2. Sense perception and the tabula rasa
          3. The goodness and perfectibility of humanity
          4. Moral improvement and social progress
      7. The organization of knowledge
        1. The scientific method
        2. Collected evidence on the rise and fall of nations
        3. Compared government constitutions
      8. The "cultural project" of the Enlightenment
        1. Practical, applied knowledge
        2. Spreading knowledge and free public discussion
        3. "To change the common way of thinking" (Diderot)
        4. Writing for a larger audience
        5. Academies sponsored essay contests
        6. The expansion of literacy
        7. The first "public sphere"
  3. The World of the Philosophes
    1. The philosophe
      1. A free thinker unhampered by the constraints of religion or dogma in any form
      2. Voltaire (born François Marie Arouet, 1694-1778)
        1. The personification of the Enlightenment
        2. Life
          1. Educated by Jesuits
          2. Spent time in the Bastille for libel
          3. Temporary exile in England
          4. Great admirer and popularizer of all things English (especially Newton and Locke)
        3. Philosophical Letters (1734)
          1. Religious and political liberties of the British
          2. British open-mindedness and empiricism
          3. Admiration for English culture and politics and respect for scientists
          4. Religious toleration
          5. Observations on England as criticisms of France
        4. écrasez l'infâme—"crush infamy" (all forms of repression, fanaticism, and bigotry)
          1. Loathed religious bigotry
          2. Did not oppose religion— sought to rescue morality from narrow dogma
          3. Common sense and simplicity
          4. Contacts with Frederick of Prussia and Catherine the Great
    2. Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755)
      1. Life
        1. Born of a noble family, inherited an estate
        2. Served as magistrate in the parlement of Bordeaux
        3. A cautious jurist
        4. The Persian Letters (1721)
          1. Series of letters between two Persian visitors to France
          2. Likened French absolutism to Persian despotism
          3. Thinly-veiled criticism of France
      2. The Spirit of the Laws (1748)
        1. A work in comparative historical sociology
        2. Newtonian in its empirical approach
        3. How do structures and institutions shape laws?
        4. Different forms of government— what spirit characterized them?
          1. Republic—virtue
          2. Monarchy—honor
          3. Despotism—fear
        5. Spelled out the dangerous drift toward despotism in France
        6. Admired the British system of separate and balanced powers
        7. Checks and balances
    3. Diderot and the Encyclopedia
      1. A vast compendium of human knowledge
      2. Grandest statement of the philosophes' goals
      3. Scientific analysis applied to human reason—happiness and progress
      4. Guided by Denis Diderot (1713-1784) and Jean d'Alembert (1717-1783)
      5. Seventeen large volumes of text, eleven volumes of illustrations (1751-1772)
        1. Purpose was to change the general way of thinking
        2. Demonstrated how the application of science could promote progress
        3. Heavy circulation despite the high price
        4. Government revoked permission to publish for trying to "propagate materialism" (1759)
  4. Internationalization of Enlightenment Themes
    1. The "party of humanity"
      1. French books widely distributed and read
      2. Cosmopolitan movement of ideas
    2. Enlightenment themes: humanitarianism and tolerance
      1. Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794)
        1. On Crimes and Punishments (1764)
          1. General themes: arbitrary power, reason, and human dignity
          2. Attacked the view that punishment represented society's vengeance on the criminal
          3. Legitimate rationale for punishment was to maintain social order, prevent other crimes
          4. Opposed torture and the death penalty
      2. Religious toleration
        1. End religious warfare and the persecution of heretics and religious minorities
        2. Few philosophes were atheists (materialists)
        3. Most were deists—God as "divine clockmaker"
        4. Most philosophes viewed Judaism and Islam as backward
        5. Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781)
          1. Treated Jews sympathetically
          2. Nathan the Wise (1779)
          3. Three great monotheistic religions are three versions of the same truth
        6. Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786)
          1. Took up the question of Jewish identity
          2. On the Religious Authority of Judaism (1783)
          3. Defended Jewish communities against anti-Semitic policies
    3. Economics, government, and administration
      1. Rising states and empires made economic issues important
      2. The French physiocrats
        1. Mercantilist policies were misguided
        2. Real wealth came from land and agricultural production; advocated a simplified tax system
        3. Laissez-faire—wealth and goods to circulate without government interference
      3. Adam Smith (1723-1790)
        1. Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776)
          1. Disagreed with the centrality of agriculture
          2. Central issue was the productivity of human labor
          3. Mercantile restrictions did not create real economic health
          4. The "invisible hand" of the marketplace
          5. Rational individuals should pursue their interests rationally
          6. The stages of economic growth
          7. Following the "obvious and simple system of natural liberty"
  5. Empire and Enlightenment
    1. The economics of empire and the profitability of colonies
      1. New world of natural humanity and simplicity
      2. The slave trade and humanitarianism, individual rights, and natural law
    2. Abbé Guillaume Thomas Francois Raynal
      1. Philosophical History . . . of Europeans in the Two Indies (1770)
        1. A total history of colonization, natural history, exploration, and commerce
        2. Industry and trade brought improvement and progress
        3. Condemned the Spanish in Mexico and Peru, the Portuguese in Brazil, the English in North America
        4. A good government required checks and balances
        5. The problem? Europeans in the New World had unlimited power
    3. Slavery and the Atlantic world
      1. Atlantic slave trade hit its peak in the eighteenth century
      2. For Raynal and Diderot, slavery defied natural law and natural freedom
      3. A condemnation of slavery in a metaphorical sense
      4. Slavery as a violation of self-government
      5. Few philosophes advocated the total abolition of slavery
    4. Exploration and the Pacific world
      1. Mapping the Pacific and scientific missions
      2. Louis-Anne de Bougainville (1729-1811)
        1. Sent by the French government to the South Pacific in 1767
        2. Looked for a new route to China and new spices
        3. Described Tahiti
      3. Captain James Cook (1728-1779)
        1. Two trips to the South Pacific
        2. Charted coasts of New Zealand, New Holland, New Hebrides, and Hawaii
        3. Explored the Antarctic continent, the Bering Sea, and the Arctic Ocean
      4. Travel accounts of these voyages read by a large audience eager for such information
    5. The impact of the scientific missions
      1. The eighteenth century fascinated by stories of new cultures
      2. Diderot, Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville (1772)
        1. Tahitians as original human beings
        2. Humanity in its natural state
        3. Uninhibited sexuality and freedom from religious dogma
        4. Simplicity versus overcivilized Europeans
      3. Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859)
        1. Spent five years in Spanish America
        2. Personal Narratives of Travels (1814-1819)
        3. Toward Darwin and evolutionary change
  6. The Radical Enlightenment Rousseau and Wollstonecraft
    1. How revolutionary was the Enlightenment?
    2. The world of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
      1. General observations
      2. Quarreled with and contradicted other philosophes
      3. Attacked privilege and believed in the goodness of humanity
      4. Introduced the notion of "sensibility" (the cult of feeling)
      5. The first to speak of popular sovereignty and democracy
      6. The most utopian of the philosophes
    3. The Social Contract (1762)
      1. "Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains"
      2. The origins of government
      3. The legitimacy of government
      4. Social inequality and private property
      5. Legitimate authority arises from the people alone
        1. Sovereignty should not be divided among different branches of the government
        2. Exercising sovereignty transformed the nation
        3. The national community would be united by the "general will"
          1. Citizens bound by mutual obligation rather than coercive laws
          2. Citizens' common interests represented in the whole
    4. Emile (1762)
      1. Story of a boy educated in the "school of nature"
      2. Children should not be forced to reason early in life
      3. The aim was moral autonomy and good citizenship
      4. Women useful as mothers and wives only
      5. "Natural" is better, simpler, uncorrupted
    5. Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse (1761)
      1. Seventy editions in thirty years
      2. Domestic and maternal virtues
      3. Humans ruled by their hearts as much as their heads
      4. Middle-class and aristocratic sensibility: spontaneous feelings
      5. The Enlightenment and gender
        1. Education as key to social progress—education for all?
        2. Were men and women different?
        3. Were gender differences natural, or socially created?
    6. The world of Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)
      1. Rousseau's sharpest critic
      2. A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)
        1. Republican ideas
        2. Spoke against inequality and artificial distinctions of rank, birth, or wealth
        3. Society ought to seek "the perfection of our nature and capability of happiness"
        4. Women had the same innate capacity for reason and self-government as men
        5. Virtue the same thing for men and women
        6. Relations between the sexes ought to be based on equality
      3. The family
        1. The legal inequalities of marriage law
        2. Women taught to be dependent and seductive in order to win husbands
        3. Education has to promote liberty and self-reliance
        4. The common humanity of men and women
        5. The natural division of labor between men and women
        6. Hinted that women might have political rights
  7. The Enlightenment and Eighteenth-Century Culture
    1. The book trade
      1. The expansion of printing and print culture
      2. An international and clandestine book trade
      3. Growth of daily newspapers
      4. British press was relatively free of restrictions
      5. Censorship only made books more expensive
      6. "Philosophical books"—subversive literature of all kinds
      7. The eighteenth-century literary underground
    2. High culture, new elites, and the "public sphere"
      1. Networks of readers and new forms of sociability and discussion
      2. Elite or high culture was small but cosmopolitan
      3. Joined together members of the nobility and wealthy members of the middle classes
      4. "Learned societies"
        1. American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia)
        2. Select Society of Edinburgh
        3. Organized intellectual life outside universities
        4. Provided libraries, meeting places for discussion, published journals
      5. Elites also met in academies
        1. Royal Society of London
        2. French Academy of Literature
        3. Berlin Royal Academy
        4. Fostered a sense of common purpose and seriousness
    3. Salons
      1. Organized by well-connected and learned aristocratic women
      2. Brought together men and women of letters with members of the aristocracy
      3. Located in all major cities
      4. Other societies
        1. Masonic Lodges
        2. Secret societies with elaborate rituals
        3. Egalitarian
        4. Pledged themselves to rational thought in all human affairs
        5. Coffeehouses—aided the circulation of new ideas
    4. The public sphere and public opinion
      1. The ability to think and criticize freely
      2. Effect on politics—moving politics beyond the court
    5. Middle-class culture and reading
      1. Shopkeepers, small merchants, lawyers, and professionals—a different reading public
      2. Bought and borrowed books
      3. Targeted middle-class women
      4. Popularized Enlightenment treatises on education and the mind
      5. Popularity of the novel
        1. Samuel Richardson (1689-1761)— Pamela and Clarissa
        2. Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)—Moll Flanders and Robinson Crusoe
        3. Henry Fielding (1707-1754)— Tom Jones
        4. Fanny Burney (1752-1840)— Evelina
        5. Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823)—The Romance of the Forest
        6. Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849)— Castle Rackrent
        7. Jane Austen (1775-1817)—Pride and Prejudice and Emma
    6. Popular culture: urban and rural
      1. Literacy
        1. Varied by gender, class, and location
        2. Greater literacy in northern Europe
        3. Ran high in towns and cities
      2. Broadsides, woodcuts, prints, drawings, cartoons
      3. The availability of new reading material
      4. The blue books—inexpensive, small paperbacks
        1. Traditional popular literature
        2. Short catechisms
        3. Tales of miracles
        4. The lives of saints
      5. Networks of sociability
        1. Guild organizations offered discussion and companionship
        2. Street theater and singers
        3. Market days and village festivals
        4. Oral and literate cultures overlapped
      6. The philosophes and popular culture
        1. The Enlightenment was an urban phenomenon
        2. Looked at popular culture with distrust and ignorance
    7. Eighteenth-century music
      1. The last phase of the Baroque
      2. Bach and Handel
        1. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
          1. Remained a German provincial his entire life
          2. A church musician at Leipzig
          3. Supplied music for Sunday and holiday services
          4. An ardent Protestant, unaffected by the secularism of the Enlightenment
        2. George Frederick Handel (1685-1759)
          1. Public-pleasing cosmopolitan
          2. Established himself in London
          3. The oratorio—musical drama to be performed in concert
          4. The Messiah
      3. Hayden and Mozart
        1. The classical style
        2. Imitating classical principles of order, clarity, and symmetry
        3. The string quartet and the symphony
        4. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
          1. Began composing at age four, a keyboard virtuoso at six
          2. Wrote his first symphony at age nine
          3. Attracted attention across Europe
          4. Freemasonry
          5. Died relatively poor
          6. The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and The Magic Flute
        5. Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
          1. Spent his life with a wealthy Austro-Hungarian family
          2. Moved to London— commercial market for culture
          3. The father of the symphony
      4. Opera
        1. A seventeenth-century creation
          1. Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)
          2. Combined music with theater
        2. Christoph Willibald von Gluck (1714-1787)
          1. Came to Paris from Austria
          2. The musical tutor of Marie Antoinette
          3. Simplified arias, emphasized dramatic action
          4. High entertainment for the French court
      5. Aristocratic and court patronage
      6. Pierre Augustin de Beaumarchais (1732-1799)
        1. Author of The Marriage of Figaro
        2. Satirized the French nobility
  8. Conclusion
    1. Science as a form of knowledge
    2. Raising problems to public awareness
    3. The language of the Enlightenment