The Age of Reason Do Now: 02.02.01 Review your notes from

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The Age of Reason

• Do Now 02.02.01 Review your notes from
  Yesterday. Summarize and bullet point in your 1/3
  section.
• Quiz Monday Be able to Explain the
  accomplishments, or basic philosophies of
• Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Rousseau, Hobbes,
  Locke, Montesquieu,
• You should also be able to identify a specific
  work the Philosophers were responsible for.

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The Age of Reason

• Big Picture
• Both the Scientific Revolution and the
  Enlightenment reflect the importance of the use
  of Reason as a means of determining mankinds
  place in the Universe.
• Specifically, we are speaking of man in
  relationship to his God, and to His Political and
  Social Structure.

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The Age of Reason

• The Enlightenment was an outgrowth of the
  Scientific Revolution.
• Hence, we have the Philosophers taking a page
  from the laboratory, and man great experiment,
  Society, will be changed utterly.
• Lets backtrack a moment

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The Age of Reason

• Remember
• The Renaissance and Humanism? We know this was
  significant because Man began to focus on their
  lives, and their abilities, as opposed to
  subjugating themselves to the Church and waiting
  for the Afterlife.

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The Age of Reason

• Remember the Protestant Reformation?
• People like Martin Luther and John Calvin
  questioned the status quo, and change raged
  throughout Europe?
• Remember the Age of Exploration? Where man
  sailed over seas an began to set up new empires
  and tame the savages that lived in the wild?
• What was mans place in the social structure?
• Was mankind inherently good or evil?

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The Age of Reason

• All of these contribute to a climate of change,
  of Revolution, of the possibilities of the Human
  Spirit.
• But, we cant forget that for every step take in
  the English Revolution, of the English Bill of
  Rights and the Power of Parliament, there were
  still very oppressive monarchs, absolute
  monarchs, that clung to the beliefs of Divine
  Right and total subjugation of the People.(Louis
  XIV)

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The Age of Reason

• Sowe are talking about change. Revolution.
• Lets look back at the Scientific Revolution
• How can the ideas of Men Like Copernicus and
  Galileo affect the way that Political
  Philosophers think???

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The Age of Reason

• First of all, lets talk about the differences
  between the idea of faith vs. the idea of Reason.
• We can see the Middle Ages as an Age of Faith.
  You did not question your existence, nor the role
  of the church.
• It was an accepted/expected reality that you
  would live and die, and go to heaven or hell.
• Everything in between was in the hands of God,
  and that was that.

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The Age of Reason

• We know that the Renaissance began to change
  mankind's view of himself and his place, and the
  Protestant Reformation made clear steps in this
  direction as well.
• Remember to that as the thinkers of the
  renaissance looked back to Greece and Rome, we
  began to focus on the abilities of the individual
  as opposed to the Power of Pure faith.

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The Age of Reason

• Technology can change society as well. The
  telescope will enable individuals to examine the
  heavens (think of that word!) and make bold
  statement about the universe from a non religious
  standpoint.
• Changes in methods of learning, (an outgrowth of
  Humanism) math specifically, will also change
  theories about how the heavens move, and hence
  our place (earth) in the universe.

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The Age of Reason

• Movers and shakers
• Nicholas Copernicus. KeyHe uses new
  mathematical formulas and challenges an age old
  theory, and that is that the Earth (geocentric),
  is the center of the Universe.
• He purports that the Sun, (heliocentric) is the
  center of the Universe.
• By doing so the Catholic Church is threatened,
  because God created earth, and hence it must be
  the center of everything.

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The Age of Reason

• Galileo Galilei Italian astronomer who used the
  relatively new technology of the telescope to
  further support the controversial findings of
  Copernicus.
• You should also know that Galileo was brought to
  trial and condemned by the Inquisition (The
  Catholic Churches assault on non believers) for
  his findings.

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The Age of Reason

• Isaac Newton The Big Daddy of the Scientific
  Revolution.
• Newtons Principia Mathematica focused on his
  groundbreaking findings in reference to the
  existence of Gravity (what cause things to
  fall?), and his laws of motion.
• Essentially, this means that there is a force or
  forces at work, generally referred to as Nature
  that affect our lives separately from Gods
  interventionThat is big stuff

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The Age of Reason

• The Scientific Method. Focuses on reason and
  mans intellectual ability to problem solve, and
  does not simply have us throw up our hands and
  apply it all to the power of God
• The scientific method is used every time you
  enter a lab as FDA.
• You problem solve by

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The Age of Reason

• State Problem
• Collect Information
• Form a hypothesis (possible solution)
• Experiment
• Record Data
• State a conclusion
• Repeat steps as necessary

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The Age of Reason

• Rene Descartes and the use of Reason.
• Simply put Descartes felt, it was mans ability
  to reason to think that defined his very
  existence.
• His Discourse on method stated that cogito ergo
  sum meaning I think therefore I am.
• Essentially, it is our intellectual abilities
  that defines our existence
• Lets make the transition to the Enlightenment
  and review what we have learned

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The Age of Reason

• Reason, a faith in the ability of man not just
  in the power of a god will lead us to a group of
  thinkers who examine the role of mankind in
  society, and the role of government in
  relationship to its citizenry.
• Are their Natural laws, separate from the laws of
  God, that can dictate the place of man in
  society.
• Andwhat is the role of government in
  relationship the enforcement or support of these
  laws???

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The Age of Reason

• Big Time Thinkers in the Enlightenment
• Locke
• Hobbes
• Montesquieu
• Rousseau
• Voltaire
• Each will view man, and his role in society
  somewhat differently

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The Age of Reason

• Thomas Hobbes Wrote the Leviathan.
• His basic philosophy was that people were cruel,
  greedy,brutish and that is was societies job to
  civilize them.
• Man in his state of nature would only look out
  for his own interestshence society was not
  possible
• A powerful government was needed for a control
  mechanism.

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The Age of Reason

• John Locke Most famous work was the Second
  Treatise on government.
• Basic idea was that we had natural rights and
  that man was essentially good, but corrupted by
  society.
• Governments should be formed to protect mans
  rights, rather than rights being given to the
  citizen by government.
• The Radical ideas that was Lockes was that
  government had an obligation to the people, and
  the people had a right to overthrow government if
  they felt it was necessary

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The Age of Reason

• If we put Hobbes and Locke in the context of the
  English Civil War
• Hobbes would side with the Monarchy.
• Locke would side with the Parliament and
  Cromwell.

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The Age of Reason

• Baron de Montesquieu The next step in the
  governmental process, which is the separation of
  Powers.
• Essentially, this means that to protect against
  tyranny and anarchy (the extremes of power in
  either case) power needed to be separatedin this
  way no one branch of the government would hold
  too much influence over the other.

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The Age of Reason

• Montesquieu proposed a three part governmental
  system of the
• Legislative Look Familiar?
• Executive
• Judicial

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The Age of Reason

• Essentially, this is the formation of the checks
  and balances system that was the foundation of
  our governmental system.
• Lets look at another interpretation of the
  concept of the contract between the government
  and its populace.
• Jean Jacques Rousseau and the Social Contract

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The Age of Reason

• Rousseau saw man quite differently from someone
  like Hobbes. Rousseau felt that man was born
  good, and that he was corrupted by society.
• He stated that man is born free, And everywhere
  he is in chains.
• Hence, the relationship between government and
  the people is a complex one.

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The Age of Reason

• Rousseau believed that the chains that bound men
  are the were the controls of government.
• However, man must also consent to give up pure
  self-interest in order to participate in a freely
  formed government.
• Hence, it is a sort of contract between the
  government and the governed.

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The Age of Reason

• Lets review briefly.
• Hobbes - Man is a brute. Government must
  control them.
• Locke - Man is born good. Their Natural Rights
  must be protected by govt.
• Montesquieu Government must be balanced.
  Separation of Powers
• Rousseau There must be a social contract,and man
  must give up some rights as part of a community.

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The Age of Reason

• Voltaire (real name was Francois Marie Arouet de
  Voltaire)
• Social Satire. a means where an author
  criticizes society through fiction.
• Candide a satire of 18th Century Society.
• He was imprisoned twice for his writing, and
  after his second sentence he was exiled to
  England, where he was influenced by great
  thinkers like Locke and Newton.

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The Age of Reason

• Voltaire was a life long critic of the Church and
  the monarchy.
• He will also center his novel on a criticism of
  the Philosophy of Optimism, founded by the German
  Philosopher Leibnitz.
• Here is a summary of Optimism.

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The Age of Reason

• Voltaire shared with Leibnitz the belief in the
  existence of a Supreme Being, who was the creator
  of the Universe, Heaven and Earth included.
• Voltaire could not accept the idea that
  everything could be explained by the belief in
  Providence-that every thing happens for the best.
  
• Although Voltaire was a believer in God, he saw
  him as a more absentee god and he explained him
  in the following manner

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The Age of Reason

• Voltaire believed that God was, in his
  relationship to man, like a ships captain is to
  mice that are scurrying in the hold of the ship.
  He is aware, but totally indifferent to their
  existence and their well being.
• Two primary tenants of Leibnitz's Philosophy
  that Voltaire argued vehemently against are these

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The Age of Reason

• Leibnitz saw God as beneficent, and that he, in
  creating the world, created the "best possible
  one".
• However, Leibnitz was not stating that the world
  was perfect and devoid of evil.
• What he meant was that God's goodness and concern
  for his creation assures us that what is moral
  and right will finally emerge. (We have to wait
  for it, and be patient!)
• What man must do is to see the Divine plan in
  it's entirety, not simply an examination of
  specific events. We must see the forest, not the
  trees

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The Age of Reason

• Secondarily, Leibnitz saw Nature as orderly. It
  laws were immutable. Any deviation from this plan
  upsets the "Great Chain of Being".
• There is strict order, and that is that.
• Voltaire attacked this philosophy on two fronts

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The Age of Reason

• The idea that all is well, that this is the "best
  of all possible worlds" becomes the running joke
  of the novel.
•  Secondly, the idea that the Great Chain of Being
  to be strictly adhered to is nonsense.
• Lets look at Candide briefly.

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The Age of Reason

• The main characters are Candide, and naïve young
  man, and Pangloss, the philosopher teacher who
  will assure Candide that whatever happens, this
  is indeed the best of all possible worlds.
• The Satire of the novel will center around the
  many trials and hardships that Candide will
  endure, and how long he can hang on to the notion
  that everything is for the best.