The Enlightenment (Unit 5, 5.1)

  • Provided the ideological framework for all the revolutions during this period

  • Definition: An intellectual movement that applied new way of understanding, such as rationalism, and empiricist approaches to both the natural world and human relationships

    • Rationalism

      • Argued that reason, rather than emotion or any external authority, is the most reliable source of true knowledge

    • Empiricism

      • Idea that true knowledge is gained through the senses, mainly through rigorous experimentation

    • Empirical and rationalist ways of thinking were developed earlier during the Scientific Revolution in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries

  • Scientific Revolution

    • Scientists tossed biblical and religious authority out of the window and used the rigorous process of reason to discover how the world really worked

    • Experienced scientific breakthroughs in understanding the complexities of:

      • Cosmos

      • Internal working of the human body

    • The Enlightenment is just just an extension of that same kind of scientific and rationalistic thinking, 

      • But Enlightenment philosophers applied these methods to the study of human society

  • One of the crucial components of the Enlightenment was the questioning and re-examination of the role of religion in public life

  • Enlightenment began in Europe where most people were Christians and where the Church had been an instrument of state power for a long time

  • According to Enlightenment thinkers, Christianity is a revealed religion

    • The words of the Bible along with all its commands was revealed by god and therefore could not be questioned

  • Enlightenment represented a significant shift of authority, carried over from the Scientific Revolution, from outside a person to inside a person

  • New ways of relating to the divine were developed

    • Deism

      • Exceedingly popular among Enlightenment thinkers

      • Believed that there was a God that created all things then no longer intervened in the created order

    • Atheism

      • Complete rejection of religious belief and any notion of divine beings

New Enlightenment Ideas
  • Political Ideas

    • Individualism

      • Most basic element of society was the individual human and not the collective groups

      • Progress and expansion of the individual > progress and expansion of the society

    • Natural Rights

      • Individual humans are born with certain rights that cannot be infringed upon by government or any other entity

      • John Locke - argued all humans were born with the natural rights of life, liberty, and property

    • Social Contract

      • Human societies, endowed with natural rights, must construct a government of their own will to protect their natural rights

      • If that government becomes a tyrannical turd, then those people have the right to overthrow that government and establish a new one

Effects of Enlightenment Ideas
  • Major Revolutions

    • Enlightenment ideas created the ideological context for these revolutions that occurred in this period, including the American, French, Haitian, and Latin American revolutions

    • The Enlightenment's emphasis on the rejection of established traditions and new ideas about how political power ought to work played a significant role in each of these great upheavals

    • Those revolutions in turn created the conditions for the intensification of nationalism

      • Nationalism: A sense of commonality among a people based on shared language, religion, social customs, and often linked with a desire for territory

  • Expansion of Suffrage

    • Suffrage: Right to Vote

    • After the American Revolution, laws were passed only white males with land could vote

      • But in the first half of the nineteenth century, laws were passed that recognized the right of all white males to vote

      • In the second half of the nineteenth century, black males had gained the right to vote

      • One significant reason was the Enlightenment ideas like liberty and equality were revered in America as part of the cultural heritage beginning with the Declaration of Independence

  • Abolition of Slavery

    • Enlightenment thinkers criticize slavery on account of its complete for people’s natural rights, most notably liberty

    • In response to a powerful abolitionist movement, Great Britain abolished slavery in 1807

      • Britain was also the wealthiest nation in the world and they gained much of that wealth during the Industrial Revolution by means of paid labor

      • Abolition was a natural move, but it also made economic sense at the time

    • Enslaved people themselves also contributed to the abolition of slavery

      • Great Jamaica Revolt

        • Massive slave rebellion in British Jamaica

        • Scale and casualties of that rebellion played a significant role in Britain’s decision to abolish slavery throughout their empire

  • End of Serfdom

    • In the midst of the transition from agricultural to industrial economies during the Industrial Revolution, serfs, which were peasants bound in coerced labor, became more and more unnecessary to economic flourishing 

    • Peasant Revolts

      • Induced state leaders in England, France and Russia to abolish serfdom

  • Calls for Womens’ Suffrage

    • Feminist Movement

      • Women began to advocate for rights in all areas of life, not least voting

    • Olympe de Gouges

      • Her work, The Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Female Citizen, harshly criticized the French Constitution for sidelining women in the birth of post-revolutionary France

    • Seneca Falls Convention in 1848

      • Women organized themselves in a gathering to call for a constitutional amendment that recognized women's right to vote

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