The Enlightenment in Europe

and the Americas (Volume D)

Background
classical ideals versus progress and
modernity
faith and imagination versus reason
I as individual versus society
God as a watchmaker, Deism
reason: the power by which man deduces
one proposition from another, or proceeds
from premises to consequences (Dr.
Johnson, Dictionary, 92).

Background (continued)

human reason
freedom
free market
Kant, controlled
politics
problems with racism
and slavery
progress

Reason
Belief that reason could lead people to
eternal truths
And that reason provided a means of
discovering fresh solutions to scientific,
philosophical and political questions

Reason and Reality

Rene Descartes- I think, therefore I am.
The mind as the source.
David Hume- individual identity if a fiction
constructed in our minds to make
discontinuous experiences and memories
seem continuous and whole.

Newton- believed that the complexity of the

universe testified of a divine plan.

Religion
Deism
scientific study as a
divine or spiritual
study
individual and the
universe
Great Chain of Being

God as a watchmaker
Central to the deists
The idea that the Divine Planner did not
supervise daily operations
Instead, the Watchmaker set the watch in
motion and left it running
Encouraged a separation of ethics and
religion

Implications
Separation of ethics and religion
Ethics seen as a matter of reason
Mankinds struggle between rationality and
emotion
Belief that man could become more
enlightened (faith in mankinds potential)
Kings and Queens seen as mortals

Society

social instability
decorum, civility
social hierarchy
gender roles
absence of children

Decorum
suitable subjects
proper language and style
purpose of writing: to delight and to
instruct
artifice or reality? (convention)
arts purpose to conform to convention

Alexander Pope
But ALL subsists by
elemental strife; And
Passions are the
elements of Life. The
general ORDER,
since the whole
began, Is kept in
Nature, and is kept in
Man (An Essay on
Man, lines 16971).

Enlightenment Thinkers
Travel/Exploration
View of other cultures?
Imperialism?

Test Your Knowledge

The Enlightenment was a time of great
tension between the ideals of __________
.
a. tradition and progress
b. philosophy and literature
c. poetry and drama
d. religion and Deism

Test Your Knowledge

Enlightenment philosophers and writers,
regardless of their belief in tradition or
progress, tended to value which of the
following?
a. imagination
b. natural philosophy
c. reason
d. realism

Test Your Knowledge

The topic of children is largely absent from
Enlightenment writing because __________.
a. infant mortality was so high
b. children were not understood to possess
reason
c. children were not taught to read until
adulthood
d. the topic of children was considered
indecorous

Test Your Knowledge

What was the Great Chain of Being as
Enlightenment thinkers understood it?
a. a guide to proper behavior and decorum
b. the historical royal lineage
c. part of God as a watchmaker
d. a hierarchy that put everything in its
place

Test Your Knowledge

The Enlightenment ideal of decorum
suggested that ____________.
a. all subjects were fit for literature
b. all literary genres were equally important
c. literary subjects must be fitted to their
appropriate genre
d. genre was always more important than
subject

This concludes the Lecture

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