Timeline:

1630: Governor Winthrop delivers “A Model of Christian Charity” while aboard the Arbella

1650: Age of Reason

1692-3: Salem Witch Trials

1700-1800: Enlightenment Era

1730-1770: Great Awakening

1820ish-1880ish: Romanticism

Pre-Enlightenment

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679):

-Leviathan (1651)

-right to rule given to the king by the people

-good vs evil:

-good is what I want

-evil is what I don’t want

-subjective judgement, no universal judgement

- ”at war, all against all”

-everyone must agree to give up a portion of their liberty to an external force (absolute monarch)

-top-down rule

Isaac Newton (1642-1727):

-driving the age of reason

-Principia Mathematica (1687)

-important because Newton makes claims about natural laws/the universe

-says that we didn’t need a deity, preacher, or king to translate for us, humans can

learn on their own through observation

-discovered universal laws which open a new way of thinking

-pulling away from the idea that god does everything, says humans get their own ideas of the universe

-sets up ideas for the Enlightenment

-more scientific

Enlightenment

- coined by Immanuel Kant

-Enlightenment in direct response to people like the Puritans (saying god does

everything), instead claiming that humans do things

-also known as the New Age of Reason

Immanuel Kant:

-lived towards the end of the period, “Enlightenment is the awakening of our self-incurred

Immaturity”

-everyone sees things differently depending on our perspectives

- ”phenomenon” everyone sees a different version of everything, but only the object has the real object within it: “Das ding an sich” the thing in itself

John Locke (1632-1704):

- ”Essay Concerning Human Understanding” (1690)

-explores a variety of ideas, including a response to Hobbes’ idea of absolute monarchy

-natural rights: life, liberty, property

-absolute monarchs don’t work because they take away the natural right of liberty

-tabula rasa (blank slate): our personalities are affected by nothing but our experiences, due to being born with a blank slate of a mind

-Empiricism: a school of thought (area of philosophy) that states that our knowledge comes from experiences

-two-way contract: a promise to commit to certain things agreed on by both sides

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778):

-heavily influenced by Locke’s ideas, did not like Hobbes

- ”Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains”

-believed people are born into freedom, then society places “unnatural” restrictions on people

-natural restrictions: biological state (short, tall)

-unnatural restrictions: societal rules and conditions (racism, poverty, homophobia, transphobia)

-believed people were naturally good

-the only way to be free in a government is through direct/pure democracy

-everyone gets absolutely equal vote

-Discourse on Inequality (1754)

-Social Contract

James Madison:

-argued for representative democracy

-votes are not counted equally

-worried direct democracy would put too much power in groups & urban areas

-Federalist No. 10

Deism:

-a religion of science, that requires a belief in a deity or god-entity

-“If p, then q” p=there is a creation, q=there is a creator: if creation, then creator

-doesn’t see deity in daily life -> belief that deity created the world then left the world to us to take care of it -> we are able to take care of it through reasoning and observation

Beliefs:

-there is a god

-creation is the religious text (the bible is to christianity as the world is to deism)

-our duty is to care for the earth and everything on it (enlightenment idea of progress/improvement)

-god gave us reason and we must use it to improve the world

Thomas Paine:

-summarizes the views of deism in Of the Religion of Deism Compared with the Christian Religion (1791) also personally biased against Christianity

-rationalism: all knowledge comes from reasoning

-wrote: Common Sense; The American Crisis; The Age of Reason

The Great Awakening

-a come back to religion through emotional teaching

-also known as the New Age of Faith

-traveling pastors, tent revivals

-first American movement

Johnathan Edwards:

“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”

-if you adopt enlightenment principles, you’re going to hell

-focuses on imagery that will scare people back into Christianity

-wrathful god

William Tennent & family

-Pennsylvania, Presbyterian Church

-People are deeply concerned about the turn away from religion

-Create a “log college” (Princeton) to educate their ministers

-beginning of Great Awakening, first tent revivals

Enlightenment vs Great Awakening chart