A. Enlightenment Assumptions

• Humans are naturally good → natural reason exists in all of us

  • If humans can live in a nice environment, a utopia is theoretically possible

• Progress is inevitable

  • Go from uncontrolled beasts to enlightened reason

  • Education, need for teacher to have lightbulbs to go off

  • Most enlightened people are historians – Plato, Socrates

• Human nature is uniform (predictable)

  • Newtonian, mathematical

B. Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651)

• Anti-enlightened assumptions

• English Civil War displayed chaos, disorder, and danger

  • Beheading of a king

  • People massacring each other

  • Hobbes lived through this, impacted his views

  • Lenses are different; varying views

• Humans: dominated by passion, appetites, and physical needs (mechanistic)

• Satisfy needs at expense of other men (selfish/individualistic)

• State of nature = constant warfare

  • Selfish needs drive war

• Solution: social contract giving up power to an absolute ruler

  • Giving democracy to people when people are selfish?

• Absolute ruler wants power and wealth

  • Needs to be careful, be good to the people to continue his rule

  • Interests of the ruler aligns with the people to prevent overthrow

• State of nature is worse than tyranny

C. Locke’s Tabula rasa (1690)

• Tabula rasa – blank slate

  • Humans are born neither good nor bad

• Environment shapes character

• Humans = naturally rational, reason leads to moral character

  • Moral character → more moral characters → utopia

• Social contract to form civil society AND form a government

  • Give up some freedoms for protection, live in harmony

  • Violate social contract → punishment

  • Government protects your unalienable rights – life, liberty, property

• Failed government → rescinding contract; civil society keeps out chaos

  • Vote out government – elections

D. Skepticism

• “What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step toward truth.” – Denis Diderot

• 17th century scientists believed their work proved God (e.g. Newton)

  • Not all skeptics are atheists!

• Skeptics emerged questioning absolute truths and organized religion

• Themes: rational, progressive science over reactionary priests

  • Creates social turmoil

• Bayle: open-minded tolerance; nothing can be known beyond doubt (moderate)

  • Skepticism happening in France "underground”

  • No “freedom of speech” for now…

• d’Holbach: humans were machines determined by outside forces (inflexible atheist)

  • No free choice; nature makes the choices for you

  • Outside forces: agriculture, weather, plague

• Hume: ideas reflect our sense experiences

  • Reasons tells nothing

  • Go with “gut feelings” and intuition, don’t try to reason them

• Undermined Enlightenment’s power of reason

  • Anti-reason philosophers exist in the Age of Reason

  • Hume and d’Holbach contributed to this

E. Early Philosophes

• John Toland (1696): Deist, nature proves God’s existence, validity in religion

  • Religion enforces reason – perfection in nature, must be planned by God

  • Deist – God is all-powerful in the creation of people, but people have free will

    • God will never intervene in daily life

    • aka “watchmaker” or “toy soldier”

• George Berkeley (1710): matter does not exist except as we perceive it (subjective idealism)

  • What matter is to us is how we perceive it.

    • Candle = heat = light = religious stuff

  • God controls mind

• Immanuel Kant: agreed with Hume’s limitations of reason, but sought absolutes (God)

  • Plays more closely to the church

  • Be careful trying to reason with God

• Voltaire: attacked irrationality, intolerance, and superstition

  • “Crush the damn thing!”

  • Advocated for tolerance, rationality, and reason

• Diderot (DID-er-o) viewed science as a way to achieve Voltaire’s goals (Encycloedie)

  • Compiled encyclopedia as a means to becoming tolerant and rational

  • Hated the Catholic church

• Montesquieu: Spirit of Laws balanced monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy

  • Three branches of government with checks and balances

• Philosophes generally did not associate with each other, but they read and were influenced by each others’ works.

F. Rousseau’s Regression

• Reason is good, but heart is a better guide to conduct

• Man happiest in primitive state of nature (rejected Hobbes/Locke)

  • State of nature = caveman looking for people – communal, basic

  • As we progress, happiness goes down – anxiety, inequality, hierarchical, artificial laws, private property

• Civilization corrupted man – progress can be regress

  • Driven by collecting private property

  • Hates slavery

  • Anarchist, early communism

• Emile (1762): educational system should emphasize expression and self-discovery

• Social Contract: big states corrupt; small states → natural state of man (more trust in gov’t)

  • Government should follow the will of the people

  • In a smaller state, you have more say in the government

• Confessions: emotional and moral ambiguity of adult life; influences Romanticism

• Pre-Rousseau philosophies

  • Monarchies said they should adopt Enlightenment ideas to better the people

  • Monarchs end nobility privilege, give freedom (Enlightened Despots)

    • Despots = king/queens

  • Goes about it top-down,

• Rousseau: Monarchy is rotten, abolish it, people have power given by Social Contract

  • American/French revolutionary ideas