Enlightenment
man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity
Immaturity
The inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another
The motto of enlightenment
Sapere Aude! (Dare to know)
Descartes “Meditations”
“[I] had to raze everything to the grounds and start again from the original foundations [if I wanted to] establish anything firm and lasting in the sciences.”
Descartes vision of the natural world
“comprised of inert, extended particles moving in accordance with mechanical laws”
Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia
“if mind and body are two separate substances, defined in position to one another, how do they interact? How can the immaterial soul move the body”
Artists of the Classical Baroque period
Gianlorenzo Berlini, Artemisia Gentileschi, Velasquez, Peter Pauls Rubens
Artists of the Restrained Baroque period
Rembrant van Ricin, Jan Vermeer, Anthony van Dyck, Christopher Wren
Hobbes’ theory of Incorporeal substance
“The origin of all ideas is the senses and memory and imagination are nothing but decaying sense” thus it is nonessential.
Hobbes’ Leviathan theme
Developed a Politics of the state that is based on the theory of human nature: move away from state of nature to enter civil society
Hobbes’ political contract
“political state comes into existence through a social contract whereby individuals agree to authorize a sovereign power to govern over them”
Mathematical principles of natural philosophy (1687)
mathematical model explaining heavenly and earthly motion In a single physical system based on universal gravitation written my Isaac Newton
Émilie du Châtelet
Argued that the debate between Cartesians and Newtonians was involved in nationalism. Also wrote Foundations of Physics which synthesized the two approaches with a metaphysical foundation for Newtonian Physics
Gottfried Whilhelm Leibniz
supported Jesuit mission in china but saw it as the basis for cross-cultural exchange in which China would teach Europe as much as Europe would teach China
John Locke’s The Second Treatise of Civil Government
justifies slavery (under certain conditions) and the dispossession of indigenous peoples in British North America.
Rousseau’s theory of the transition between the state of nature to civil society
a series of states leading to being ruled by a monarchy
Voltaire’s Candide
philosophical story targeting theologians, aristocracy, Leibniz’s optimism, and his complex relationship with enlightenment
Romanticism
artistic and cultural mouvement which rejected Enlightenment rationalism in favour of imagination, subjectivity, and intuition.
Sturm and Drang
German literary movement known as storm and stress
Quobna Ottobah Cugoano
1st writer of African descent to present his own abolitionist narrative - Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery
Immanuel Kant
“An action is only moral if and only if I can will that my maxim should become a universal law.”¸
Symbol in the Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Reason ad enlightenment became the instruments for deeper and more powerful forms of domination and control
1641
Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy published in Latin
1642
The English Civil War begins
Cardinal Richelieu, Prime Minister of France dies and is succeeded by Cardinal Mazarin
1643
Louis XIII of France dies: The regency of Louis XVI begins
1644
Bernini sculpts “The Vision of St. Theresa” in Rome
1648
Peace at Westphalia ends the 30 yrs war
1649
England forms a commonwealth under Cromwell
Charles I of England is beheaded
1651
Thomas Hobbes publishes Leviathan
1656
Bernini creates the Pizza of St. Peter’s in Rome
1660
The restoration in England
Charles II returns
1661
Louis XVI begins personal rule in France following the death of Cardinal Mazarin
1664
Molière publishes Tartuffe
1665
Rembrandt paints “The Jewish Bride”
Molière writes Don Juan
1666
Publication of Margaret Cavendish’s The Bling World
1677
1st performance of Racine’s Phaedra
1678
Anonymous publication of the Princesse de Clèves
1687
Newton publishes Principia Mathematica
1688
The “Glorious Revolution” in England
1689
The Bill of Rights and Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas
Locke publishes Two Treatise on Government
1690
Publication of Second Treatise of Civil Government by John Locke
1694
Sir Christopher Wren undertakes the building of the Greenwich Hospital
1703
Peter the Great lays the foundation of St. Petersburg
1705
1st publication of Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees
1709
The “Tatler,” London newspaper is issued
1710
English South Sea Company founded
1714
Leibniz’s Monadology published
1715
Death of Louis XIV of France
Regency of Louis XV begins
1723
Louis XV attains his majority
1724
J.S. Bach writes the “St. John Passion”
1738
John Wesley has his evangelical conversion
1739
David Hume publishes Treaties of Human Nature
1741
Handel writes “Messiah”
1743
von Balthasar Neuman begins pilgrimage church of Vierzehneiligan
1746
Zimmerman begins pilgrimage church “Die Wies”
1748
Baron de Montesquieu publishes The Spirit of the Laws
1751
The Encyclopédie begins to be published
1752
Tiepolo paints frescoes of the Resident in Wuzburg
1755
Rousseau publishes Discourse on Inequality; the Lisbon earthquake
1756
the 7 yrs war begins
1758
Voltaire publishes Candide
Vettel publishes Law of Nations
1760
Sterne begins to publish Tristram Shandy
1763
Denis Diderot composes Rameau’s Nephew
Rousseau publishes the Social Contract
Mozart (aged 6) begins concert tour of Europe
1763
Peace at Paris ends the 7 yrs war
Canada begins as a British colony
1763
Promulgation of the Royal Proclamation by King George III
1770
Goethe begins work on Faust (the second part published after his death in 1832)
1772
Reign of the Kangxi Emperor ends
1774
Louis XVI succeeds Louis XV as King of France
Goethe publishes The Sorrows of Young Werther
1776
The American War of independence
Adam Smith publishes AnEssay into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
1779
Lessing, Nathan the Wise is published
1781
The American “Declaration of Independence”
Publication of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
1785
A steam engine is installed in a cotton spinning factory
David paints the “Oath of the Horatii”
Kant publishes Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals
1786
Mozart writes The Marriage of Figaro
1787
Religious toleration is granted in France
The Constitution of the United States is signed
1789
The French Revolution begins
1823
John Marshall decision for the Johnson v. M’Intosh
1724 - 1804
Immanuel Kant
1729-1797
Edmund Burke
1757-1827
William Blake
1758-1794
Maximilian “the Incorruptible” Robespierre
1759-1797
Mary Wollstonecraft
1769-1821
Napoleon Bonaparte
1770-1831
George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
1776
The American war of independence / revolution begins
`1788
United Staes of America constitution ratified
1789
The French Revolution
1790
Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France
Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Man
1792
Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
1793
Robespierre guillotined
1797-1851
Mary Shelley
1799-1815
Under Napoleon Bonapart, France at war with everyone
1805-1859
Alexis de Tocqueville
1806-1873
John Stewart Mill
1807
G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit
1809-1882
Charles Darwin
1813-1883
Richard Wagner
1815
Napoleon abdicates
1818-1883
Karl Marxs
1818
Shelley’s Frankenstein
1819-1891
Herman Melville