Stephanie Leung Per 1 AP Euro Chapter 17 outline The Age of Enlightenment FORMATIVE INFLUENCES ON THE ENLIGHTENMENT - the political

stability and commercial prosperity of Great Britain after 1688, the need for administrative and economic reform in France after the wars of Louis XIV and the consolidation of what is known as a print culture were the chief factors that fostered the ideas of the Enlightenment and the call for reform throughout Europe. Ideas of Newton and Locke - Issac Newton and John Locke were the major intellectual forerunners of the Enlightenment. - In An Essay concerning Human Understanding, Locke argued that all humans enter the world a tabula rasa, or blank page, and personality is the product of the sensations that impinge on an individual from the external world throughout his or her life; shapes character, a reformer s psychology that suggested the possibility of improving the human condition The Example of British Toleration and Political Stability - The domestic stability of Great Britain after the Revolution of 1688 furnished a living example of a society which enlightened reforms appeared to benefit everyone; religious toleration to all except Unitarians and Roman Catholics. - The authority of the monarchy was limited and the political sovereignty resided in the Parliament. - these liberal policies had produced neither disorder nor instability, but rather economic prosperity, political stability and a loyal citizenry. -Many writers of the continental Enlightenment contrasted what they regarded as the wise, progressive features of English life with the absence of religious toleration, the extensive literacy censorship, the possibility of arbitrary arrest, the overregulation of the economy and the influence of aristocratic military values in their own nations and most particularly in France. The Emergence of a Print Culture - print culture a culture in which books, journals, newspapers, and pamphlets had achieved a status of their own. -during the eighteenth century, the volume of printed material books, journals, magazines, and daily newspapers increased sharply throughout Europe, and Prose came to be valued as highly as poetry and the novel emerged as a distinct literary genre. - driving forces behind this expansion of printed materials was the increase in literacy that occurred across Europe. Especially in the urban centers of Western and central Europe could read, as a result, printed word became the chief vehicle for communicating information and ideas that would remain so until electronic revolution of our own day. -Books were not inexpensive in the 18th century but they and the ideas they conveyed circulated in a variety of ways to reach a broad public, libraries grew in numbers. - Within both aristocratic and middle-class society, people were increasingly expectedto be familiar

with books and secular ideas, publications such as the specatator begun in 1711 by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele fostered the value of polite conversation and the reading of books, coffeehouses became centers for discussing writing and ideas. -successful authors of the Enlightenment addressed themselves to monarchs, nobles, the upper middle classes, and professional groups, and they were read and accepted in these upper levels of society, other aspiring authors found social and economic disappointment, they lived marginally, writing professionally for whatever newspaper or journal that would pay for their work, many writers grew resentful, blaming a corrupt society for their lack of success, from their anger, they often espoused radical ideas or took moderate Enlightenment ideas to radical extremes, transmitting them in this embittered form to their often lower-class audience. - literate public and the growing influence of secular printed materials created a new and increasingly influential social force called public opinion the collective effect on political and social life of views circulated in print and discussed in the home, the workplace and centers of leisure. - governments could no longer operate wholly in secret or with disregard to the larger public sph454, had to explain and discuss their views and policies openly; Continental European governments sensed the political power of the new print culture, regulated the book trade, censored books and newspapers, confiscated offending titles, and imprisoned offending authors. THE PHILOSOPHES - philosophes writers and critics who flourished in the expanding print culture and who took the lead in forging the new attitudes favorable to change, championed reform and advocated toleration. - these figures sought rather to apply the rules of reason, criticism and common sense to nearly all the major institutions, economic practices, and exclusivist religious policies of the day ; most famous of their number: Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot, D Alembert, Rousseau, Hume, Gibbon, Smith Lessing, and Kant. -few were university professors, most were free agents who might be found in London coffeehouses, Edinburgh drinking spots, salons of fashionable Parisian ladies, the country houses of reform-minded nobles or the courts of the most powerful monarchs on the continent; in Eastern Europe, often royal bureaucrats. - the philosophes drew the bulk of their readership from the prosperous commercial and professional urban classes, discussed the reformers writings and ideas in local philosophical societies, Freemason lodges and clubs with forward-looking aristocrats. - Although the writers of the Enlightenment did not consciously champion the goals or causes of the middle class, they did not provide an intellectual ferment and a major source of ideas that could be used to undermine existing social practices and political structures based on aristocratic privilege. - The chief bond among the philosophes was their common desire to reform religion, political thought, society, government and the economy for the sake of human liberty; goal was for freedom from arbitrary power, freedom of speech, freedom of trade, freedom to realize one s talents, freedom of aesthetic response, freedom in a word of moral man to make his way in the world, no other single set of ideas has done so much to shape and define the modern Western world. Voltaire First Among the Philosophes - most influential of the philosophes : Francois-Marie Arouet

- had offended first the French monarch and then certain nobles by his politically and socially irreverent poetry and plays. - as he went into exile in England, he visited its best literacy circles, observed its tolerant intellectual and religious climate, relished the freedom he felt in its moderate political atmosphere, and admired its science and economic prosperity, wrote a book (letters on the English) which praised the virtues of the English, especially their religious liberty, and implicitly criticized the abuses of French Society. - with the help of Countess Emilie de Chatelet, he published Elements of the Philosophy of Newton, which popularized the thought of Issac Newton across the continent. -he believed that human society could and should be improved but he was never certain that reform. THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND RELIGION - many philosophes of the eighteenth century, ecclesiastical institutions, especially in their frequently privileged position as official parts of the state, were the chief impediment to human improvement and happiness. - complained that both established and non-established Christian churches hindered the pursuit of a rational life and the scientific study of humanity and nature, as both Roman Catholic and Protestant clergy taught that humans were basically depraved, becoming worthy only through divine grace. - Church owned large amounts of land and collected tithes from peasants, most clergy were legally exempt from taxes and made only annual voluntary grants to the government, upper clergy were mostly relatives or clients of aristocrats, and high clerics were actively involved in politics, clergy frequently provided intellectual justification for the social and political status quo and they were active agents of religious and literacy censorship. Deism - William Rovertson was a philosphe and he was the head of the Scottish Prebysterian Kirk. - philisophes sought religion without fanaticism and intolerance, a religious life that would largely substitute human reason for the authority of churches. - most believed that the life of religion and of reason could be combined, giving rise to a set of ideas known as deism. - John Toland s Christianity not Mysterious indicates the general tenor of deism, promoted religion as a natural and rational, rather than a supernatural and mystical phenomenon, differed from Locke and Newton, both of whom regarded themselves as Christians, and that god could interfere with natural order, whereas deists regarded God as a kind of divine watchmaker who had created the mechanism of nature, set it in motion and then departed. -deism was empirical, tolerant, reasonable, and capable of virtuous living, hoped that the wide acceptance of their faith would end ribvalry among the various Christian sects and with it religious fanaticism, conflict and persecution. Toleration - philosophes presented religious toleration as a primary social condition for the virtuous life. - The city of Toulouse ordered the execution of a Huguenot named Jean Calas, who had been accused of murdering his son to prevent him from converting hto Roman Catholicism, viciously tortured and

publicly strangled without ever confessing his guilt, this case illustrated the fruits of religious fanaticism, and the need for rational reform of judicial processes. -in 1779, German playwright and critic Gotthold Lessing wrote Nathan the Wise, a plea for toleration not only of different Christian sects, but also of religious faiths other than Christianity, premise behind all of these calls for toleration, was that life on earth and human relationships should not be subordinated to religious zeal that permitted one group of people to persecute, harm or repress other groups. Radical Enlightenment Criticism of Christianity - Some philosophes went beyond the formulation of a rational religious alternative to Christianity and the advocacy of toleration to attack the churches and the clergy with vehemence - David hume argued that no empirical evidence supported the belief in divine miracles central to much of Christianity (Inquiry into Human Nature ; of Miracles) - gibbon explained the rise of Christianity in terms of natural causes rather than the influence of miracles and piety ( The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) - Baron D Holbach and Julien Offray de La Mettrie embraced positions close to atheism and materialism, thought it was a distinctly minority position, as most philosophes sought not the abolition of religion but its transformation into a humane force that would encourage virtuous living. Jewish Thinkers in the Age of Enlightenment - despite their emphasis on toleration, the philosophes criticisms of traditional religion often reflected an implicit contempt not only for Christianity but also, sometimes more vehemently for Judaism and Islam as well. -aimed their satirical barbs at personalities from the Hebrew scriptures, some philosophes characterized Judaism as a more primitive faith than Christianity and one from which philosophical rationalism provided a path of escape. -Baruch Spinoza who lived in Netherlands, and Moses Mendelssohn, who lived in Germany, Spinoza set the example for a secularized version of Judaism, and Mendelssohn established the main outlines of an assimilationists position. - many though Spinoza drew God and nature too intimately into a single divine substance. - he symbolized Jews who, through the use of their critical reason separated themselves from traditional Judaism and attempted to enter mainstream society to pursue a secular existence with little or no regard for their original faith. -Moses Mendelssohn, the leading Jewish philosopher of the 18th century (Jewish Socrates) Most influential work : Jerusalem or On Ecclesiastical Power and Judaism - urged that religious diversity within a nation did not harm loyalty to the government, wished to advocate religious toleration while genuinely sustaining the traditional religious practices and faith of Judaism. Islam In Enlightenment Thought -rival to Christianity, portrayed Islam as a false religion and Muhammad as an impostor. -some philosophes criticized Islam on cultural and political grounds.

- some well-informed works based on knowledge of Arabic and Islamic sources, such as Barthelemy d Herbelot s Bibliotheque orientale, a reference book published in 1697, Simon Ockley s History of the Saracens and George Sale s introduction to the first full English translation of the Qur an were largely hostile to their subject. - for Volatire, Muhammed and Islam in general represented simply one more example of the religious fanaticism he had so often criticized among Christians. - The deist, John Toland, who opposed prejudice against both Jews and Muslims, contended that Islam derived from early Christian writings and was thus a form of Christianity. - Montesquieu believed the excessive influence of Islamic religious leaders prevented the Ottoman Empire from adapting itself to new advances in technology. - Lady Mary Wortley Montagu praised much about Ottoman society and urged the English to copy the Turkish practice of vaccination against smallpox, thought upperclass Turkish women were remarkably free and well treated by their husbands though having to wear clothing that completely covered them in public. THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND SOCIETY The Encyclopedia: Freedom and Economic Improvement - The mid-century witnessed the publication of the Encyclopedia, one of the greatest monuments of the Enlightenment and its most monumental undertaking in the realm of print culture. - The encyclopedia was in part a collective plea for freedom of expression, reached fruition only after many attempts to censor it and halt its publication. - Encyclopedia also included numerous important articles and illustrations manufacturing, canal building, ship construction, and improved agriculture, making it an important source of knowledge about 18th century social and economic life, and articles on politics, ethics and society ignored divine law and concentrated on humanity and its immediate well-being. Beccaria and Reform of Criminal Law - The idea of social science originated with the Enlightenment, philosphes hoped to end human cruelty by discovering social laws and making people aware of them. - Marquis Cesare Beccaria (Italian aristocrat and philosophe) published On Crimes and Punishment, in which he applied critical analysis to the problem of making punishments both effective and just - thought the criminal justice system should ensure a speedy trial and the intent of the punishment should be to deter further crime. The Physiocrats and Economic Freedom - Economic policy was another area in which the philosophes saw existing legislation and administration preventing the operation of natural social laws, believed mercantilist legislation & the regulation of labor by governments & guilds actually hampered the expansion of trade, manufacture and agriculture. - physiocrats economic reformers - primary role of government was to protect property and to permit its owners to use it freely.

Adam Smith on Economic Growth and Social Progress - The most important economic work of the Enlightenment was Adam Smith s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealthy of Nations. - Adam Smith (professor at Glasgow University) believed economic liberty was the foundation of a natural economic system, urged that the mercantile system of England to be abolished. - founder of laissez-faire economic thought and policy, which favors a limited role for the government in economic life. - embraced an important theory of human social & economic development, four-stage theory- human societies can be classified as hunting and gathering, pastoral or herding, agricultural, or commercial. - Smith s outlook helped justify their economic and imperial domination of the world during the following century. POLITICAL THOUGHT OF THE PHILOSOPHES - most philosophes were discontented with certain political features of their countries, but French philosphes were especially discontented, the most important political thought of the Enlightenment occurred in France. Montesquieu and Spirit of the Laws - Charles Louis de Secondat, baron de Mntesquieu was a lawyer, a noble of the robe, and a member of a pronvincial parlement, also belonged to the Bordeaux Academy of Science, wrote The Persian Letters. - he had visited England and deeply admired English institutions, in the Spirit of the Laws, held up the example of the British constitution as the wisest model for regulating the power of government, his book was perhaps the single most influential book of the century, exhibits the internal tensions of the Enlightenment. - one of Montesquieu s most influential ideas was that of the division of power in government. - although he set out to defend the political privileges of the French aristocracy, Montesquieu s ideas have had a profound effect on the constitutional form of liberal democracies for more than 2 centuries. Rousseau: a Radical Critique of Modern Society - Jean-Jacques Rousseau held a different view of the exercise and reform of political power from Montesquieu s, he transcended the political thought and values of his own time. - in his Discourse on the Moral effects of the Arts and Sciences, he contended that the process of civilization and the Enlightenment had corrupted human natures, and in his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Rousseau blamed much of the evil in the world on the uneven distribution of property. - He questioned the concepts of material and intellectual progress and the morality of a society in which commerce and industry were regarded as the most important human activities - Rousseau suggested that the society is more important than its individual members, envisioned a society in which each person could maintain personal freedom while behaving as a loyal member of the community, and drawing on the traditions of Plato and Calvin, he defined freedom as obedience to law, believed the general will, and that to obey the general will is to be free. - Rousseau had attacked the 18th century cult of the individual and the fruits of selfspirit. - Leading figures in the French Revolution were familiar with his writing, and he influenced writers in

the 19th & 20th century who were critical of the general tenor and direction of Western culture, Rousseau hated much about the emerging modern society in Europe, but he contributed much to modernity by exemplifying for later generations the critic who dared to question the very foundations of social thought and action. Enlightened Critics of European Empires - Most European thinkers associated with the Enlightenment favored the extension of European empires across the world, believed that the extension of the political structures and economics of the northwestern Europe amounted to the spread of progress and civilization. - a few Enlightenment voices did criticize the European empires on moral grounds, especially the European conquest of the Americas, the treatment of Native Americans, and the enslavement of Africans on the two American continents, critics Denis Diderot, and 2 German philosophers Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottlieb Herder - ideas that allowed these figures from the Enlightenment to criticize their empires : 1. the Enlightenment critics of their empires argued for a form of shared humanity that the 16th century European conquerors and their successors in the Americas and in other areas of imperial conquest had ignored; 2. The conviction that the people whom Europeans had encountered in the Americas had possessed cultures that should have been respected and understood rather than destroyed; 3. Human beings may develop distinct cultures possessing intrinsic values that cannot be compared, one to the detriment of another because each culture possesses deep inner social and linguistic complexities that make any simpler comparison impossible. WOMEN IN THE THOUGHT AND PRACTICE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT - women helped significantly to promote the careers of the philosphes, salons of women gave the philosophes access to useful social and political contacts and a receptive environment in which to circulate to ideas, and also increased social status and added luster and respectability to their ideas as the women who organized the salons were well connected to political figures who could help protect the philosphes and secure royal pensions for them. - philosophes were not strong feminists, Montesquieu maintained that the status of women in a society was the result of climate, the political regime, culture and women s physiology, held a traditional view of male domination in marriage and family, and upheld the ideal of female chasity. - Rosseau portrayed the domestic life and the role of wife and mother as a noble and fulfilling covation, giving middle-and upper-class women a sense that their daily occupations had a purpose. - Mary Wollstonecraft brought Rousseau before the judgement of the rational Enlightenment ideal of progressive knowledge in a vindication of the Rights of Woman, her opposition to certain policies of the French Revolution, unfavorable to women that Rousseau had inspired. - argued that to confine women to the separate domestic sphere because of supposed limitations of their physiology was to make them sensual slaves of men, victims of male tyranny, obedience was blind, and they could never achieve their own moral or intellectual identity. ROCOCO AND NEOCLASSICAL STYLES IN 18th CENTURY ART - 2 contrasting styles Rococo: embraced lavish, often lighthearted decoration with an emphasis on

pastel colors and the play of light; Neoclassicism embodied a return to figurative and architectural models drawn from the Renaissance and the ancient world. Rococo- aristocrats of the old regime ; neoclassicism recalled ancient republican values that implicitly criticized the Old Regime. - Style of Louis XV, Rococo style spread across Europe and was adapted to many public buildings and churches, Rococo art portrayed the aristocracy, and particularly the French aristocracy, at play. - prominent artists : Jean-Antoine Watteau, Boucher and Jean-Honore Fragonard; produced works filled with female nudes and with men and women in sexually suggestive poses. - In 1755, Johann Joachim Wincklemann, a German archaeologist, published Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture, followed in 1764 by The History of Ancient Art, he directly or indirectly contrasted the superficiality of the Rococo with the seriousness of ancient art and architecture. - European aristocrats who came to Italy admired both the ancient and Renaissance art that was on view there and the neoclassical woks that contemporary artists were producing there, also commissioned architects to rebuild their own houses & public buildings in Neoclassical style. - These paintings were didactic rather than emotional or playful, many Neoclassical painters used scenes of heroism & self-sacrifice from ancient history to draw contemporary moral and political lessons. -Neoclassical artists intended their paintings to be a form of direct political criticism, Jacques-Louis David, the foremost French Neoclassical painter, used ancient republican themes in the 178-s to emphasize the corruption of French monarchical government, later became an artistic champion of the French Revolution and Napoleon. - The philosophes themselves became the subjects of Neoclassical artists. ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM - Most of the philosophes favored neither Montesquieu s reformed and revived aristocracy nor Rousseau s democracy as a solution to contemporary political problems. - Historians use the term enlightened absolutism for this form of monarchical government in which the central absolutist administration was strengthened and rationalized at the cost of other, lesser centers of political power, such as the aristocracy, the church & the parliaments or diets that had survived from the Middle ages. Associated with it: Frederick II of Prussia, Joseph II of Austria, Catherine II of Russia. - Frederick II gave Voltaire and other philosphes places at his court, Catherine II sought to create the image of being an enlightened ruler, Joseph II imposed a series of religious, legal and social reforms that contemporaries believed he had derived from philosophes suggestions. Frederick The Great of Prussia -embodied enlightened absolutism; forged a state that commanded the loyalty of the military, the junker nobility, the Lutheran clergy, a growing bureaucracy recruited from an educated middle class, and university professors, had the confidence to permit a more open discussion of Enlightenment ideas. - his policy of ennobling only for merit and Frederick s protecting the nobility s local social interest and leadership of the army meant that Prussia did not experience the conflicts between the aristocracy and the monarchy that troubled other 18th century European states. - allower Catholics and Jews to settle in Lutheran country - rationalize the existing legal system and make it more efficient, eliminating regional peculiarities reducing aristocratic influence, abolishing torture, and limiting the number of capital crimes.

- Prussians did not prosper under Frederick s reign, and the burden of taxation fell disproportionately on peasants and townspeople. Joseph II of Austria - embodied rational, impersonal force as did the emperor Joseph II of Austria, less of a political opportunist and cynic than either Frederick the Great or Catherine the Great, thought the result of his well-intentioned efforts was a series of aristocratic and peasant rebellions extending from Hungary to the Austrian Netherlands. - sought to reduce Hungarian autonomy - favored a policy of toleration, extended freedom of worship to Lutherans, Calvinists, and the Greekl Orthodox, granted the right of private worship, and relaxed the financial and social burdens imposed on them but did not give them full equality. - abolished many internal tariffs, encouraged road building and improved river transport, inspected farms and manufacturing districts, reconstructed the judicial system to make laws more uniform and rational and to lessen the influence of local landlords. - granted peasants a wide array of personal freedoms, including the right to marry, to engage in skilled work, and to have their children learn a skill without having to secure the landlord s permission. - commuted robot into a monetary tax, only part of which was to go to the landlord, the rest reverting to the state. Catherine the Great of Russia - understood that the fragility of the Romanov dynasty s base of power - Catherine s familiarity with the Enlightenment and the general culture of Western Europe convinced her Russia was backward and that it needed major reforms to remain a great power, and she understood that she must have a wide base of political and social support. - reorganized local government to solve problems the legislative commission had brought to light - wisely made a virtue of necessity, strengthened the stability of her crown by making convenient friends with her nobles. - suppress internal barriers to trade, favored the expansion of the small Russian urban middle class that was so vital to trade. - Catherine s limited administrative reforms and her policy of economic growth had a counterpart in the diplomatic sphere, drive for warm-water ports continued, which required warfare with the Turks. - Treaty of KuchukKainardji gave Russia a direct outlet of the Black Sea, Catherine, as empress of Russia, was made the protector of the Orthodox Christians living in the Ottoman Empire The Partition of Poland - The Russian military successes increased Catherine s domestic political support, but they made the other states of eastern Europe uneasy, these anxieties were overcome by an extraordinary division of Polish territory known as the First Partition of Poland. - Austria also harbored ambitions of territorial expansion - the helpless Polish aristocracy, paying the price for maintaining internal liberties at the expense of developing a strong central government, ratified this seizure of nearly one third of Polish territory.

- The partition of Poland clearly demonstrated that any nation without a strong monarchy, bureaucracy and army could no longer compete within the European state system, major powers in eastern Europe were prepared to settle their own rivalries at the expensense of such a weak state. The End of the 18th Century in Central and Eastern Europe - 3 regimes based on enlightened absolutism became more conservative and politically repressive - Russia faced a peasant uprising, Pugachev Rebellion, Catherine the Great never fully recovered from the fears of social and political upheaval that it raised. - fear of, and hostility to, change permeated the ruling classes of central and eastern Europe.