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