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The Enlightenment

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Title: The Enlightenment


1
The Enlightenment
  • An age of Reason

2
Historical Steps Toward Enlightenment
  • Dark Ages a period of history dominated by
    tradition, irrationality, superstition, and
    tyranny
  • Revolution of physics systematic thinking could
    apply to all forms of human activity, including
    thinking

3
European Enlightenment thinkers
  • called themselves Enlightenment thinkers,
    believing that they were breaking from the past
    of darkness, obscurity, and ignorance of European
    thought with the light of truth

4
Enlightenment thinkers
  • advocated Reason as a method by which one could
    establish an authoritative system of
  • Aesthetics (emotional value)
  • Ethics (behavioral code)
  • Government (ruled by the people)
  • Logic (thought and reason)

5
Enlightenment belief
  • Enlightenment thinkers believed that through the
    big four (aesthetics, ethics, govt., logic),
    human beings could discover objective truth about
    the universe.

6
Specifics of Enlightenment belief (slide 1)
  • The universe is fundamentally rational and can be
    understood by reason aloneimplications
  • Truth can come through empirical (observable)
    observations, the use of reason, and systematic
    doubtimplications
  • Human experience is the foundation of human
    understanding of truth authority is not to be
    preferred over experienceimplications

7
Specifics of Enlightenment belief (slide 2)
  • All human life, both social and individual, can
    be understood in the same way the natural world
    can be understood once understood, human life,
    both social and individual, can be manipulated or
    engineered in the same way the natural world can
    be manipulated or engineeredimplications
  • Human history is largely a history of progress

8
Specifics of Enlightenment belief (slide 3)
  • Human beings can improve through education and
    the development of their rational facilities
    (logic)implications
  • Religious doctrines have no place in the
    understanding of the physical and human
    worldsimplications
  • Although God created the universe, he has no
    place in running itimplications

9
Rene Descartes
  • The Big Man of the Enlightenment
  • Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am)
  • Subjective truth holds a higher place than
    objective truth
  • What is truth and how do we know?
  • Radically changed how people look at truth,
    knowledge, and the question of existence

10
Whats the big deal?
  • Objective truth
  • Commonly shared truth
  • Grounded in belief that higher being develops
    truth
  • Subjective truth
  • Individuals perception of truth
  • Individual experience is the foundation of truth

11
Big Men of the Enlightenment
  • Thomas Hobbes (The Leviathan)
  • Human law derives from natural law
  • Monarchs rule by the consent of the people
  • John Locke
  • tabula rasa
  • The only knowledge is empirical (that which can
    be observed)

12
Enlightenment thought comes to the New World
  • America was forged in a revolution and built
    almost entirely upon Enlightenment ideas.
  • The final legacy of the Enlightenment in the
    eighteenth century would be the establishment of
    a fully functioning Enlightenment government
    based, theoretically at least, on secular values
    and the notions of right and equality.

13
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  • Rousseau concerned himself mostly with the idea
    of liberty (civilization has robbed us of our
    natural freedoms)
  • The govt and the people are in a social
    contract
  • The governed agree to be ruled
  • The govt will protect their rights, property,
    happiness
  • The Social Contract "Man is born free but
    everywhere is in chains."

14
A broken social contract
  • The govt and her people are in a social contract
  • When the govt breaks the social contract
    (doesnt protect the people), the people are
    entitled to new rulers
  • It would not be an exaggeration to say that
    Rousseaus concept of the social contract sparked
    the American Revolution

15
Rousseau on Education
  • Emile
  • Emile outlines the best way to educate people
  • Rousseau wanted an education that maximized the
    human potential

16
Enlightenment Thinkers in America
  • Thomas Paine (Common Sense)
  • "These are the times that try men's souls."
  • Paine communicated the idea that the colonists
    needed a revolution to break from England
  • Benjamin Franklin
  • Thomas Jefferson (Declaration of Independence)

17
The Declaration of Independence
  • The DoI outlines the social contract the govt
    has with the citizens of the United States
  • The DoI is largely based on Rousseaus theory of
    the social contract

18
Sources
  • http//www.wsu.edu/dee/ENLIGHT/ENLIGHT.HTM
  • http//www.ushistory.org/paine/
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