Humanism Lecture Three

Humanism – Lecture Three 4/11/05



The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment is the culmination of the Renaissance.

The thinkers of the Enlightenment are called philosophes ­– wanted to cread a society that was more rational and humane.

They adopted Descartes doubt – and doubted inherited opinions and tradition.

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“We think that the greatest service to be done to me is to teach them to use their reason, only to hold to truth what they have verified and proved” – Denis Diderot (1713-1784)

verify – make sure that something is true or accurate

Denis Diderot – - chief editor of the Encyclopedia - progress of civilization measure of man’s goodness – morality – like Rousseau thought that education should promote curiosity rather than claims to truth.

The Enlightenment grew out of the Scientific Revolution.

The philosophes wanted to apply the scientific method to the human world and fix it.

Issac Newton discovered the laws for physical world – couldn’t there be same kind of laws to be discovered for human society – such as government, law, ethics, economics.

Christianity and the Search for Natural Religion

The philosophes criticized Christianity for its unreason and superstition.

Relying on the kind of scientific method that Bacon suggest – they rejected the idea of miracles, angels, devils as mere imagination.

Relying on the deductive methods of Descartes – they examined the Bible and found many contradictions and extreme claims – using scientific method challenged Christianity’s claim on the Truth.

They also attacked Christianity for seeing humans as evil and helpless without God’s help. To establish an enlightened society the power of the church had to be broken.

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Francois Marie Arouet (1694-1778), known to the world as ‘Voltaire’

Voltaire

the recognized leader of the French Enlightenment – lived in England in 1720s – admired English freedom, commerce, science – argued strongly against Christianity – which he thought caused many of the problems in French society – he thought that Christianity would be destroyed by the “weapons of reasons’ – many ideas of Christianity make no sense to reason at all yet people have killed and slaughted each other over those ideas.

Natural Religion

Many of the philosophes were atheists, but most were deists (believers in God) – including Voltaire. The deists tried to change Christianity with science and reason – natural religion – thus they denied that the Bible came from God – they rejected mysteries, prophecies, and miracles, and the virgin birth, Jesus walking on water, the Resurrection – as going against reason – they thought that God created the world – but once created let it run on its on.

For these deists the essence of religion was morality – not rituals or church authority.

Political Thought

Apart from Christianity being bad – the philosophes thought that despotism was another evil confronting humans.

despot/despotism – a ruler with unlimited powers – usually a cruel use of those powers.

So – two main ideas of the Enlightenment – destroy the power of the Church – make religion reasonable – and lessen the power of their rulers.

The philosophes thought that political solutions could be found for the problems that beset society.

Hobbes and Locke

Two very important political philosophers of the Enlightenment were:

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Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

John Locke (1632-1704)

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

Hobbes

believed that only absolute rule by a King – could hold peoples passions in check – this is what he wrote in his most famous book – Leviathan (1651) – tried to make a political philosophy based on scientific method – thus rejected the idea that the King’s authority comes from God – thought that people were selfish and grasping – withough a strong state people would be out of control.

Locke

thought that people were essentially good - in his book Two Treaties of Government (1690) – said that people were born with rights to life, freedom, and property – and it was the state’s obligation to protect those rights – therefore, no government, King, or ruler has the right to take those rights away – if the government fails to protect natural rights then the people must have a way of getting rid of that government.

Locke’s philosophy inspired the American and French revolutions – and he idea that the people have the right to oppose and get rid of a government that doesn’t protect or takes away their natural rights – was the justification the American colonies used to pull away from England.

Rousseau

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“Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains” – Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762)

Rousseau saw the state as corrupt – only used to help the rich and powerful – the state robed people of their natural freedom and took away their feeling for others and the common good – wanted a real democracy – admired the Greeks – direct democracy

The Enlightenment and the Modern Age

The Enlightenment holds key ideas of today world.

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Key Ideas of the Enlightenment:

autonomous reason – capable of thinking independent of authority

rational and secular interpretation of nature and society

value of science and technology as a way to make a better future

free people from intolerance, cruelty, and oppression

separation of church and state

These ideas of the Enlightenment spread from Europe to the US and helped from the Declaration of Independence – which put into words many of John Locke’s ideas.

the government gets its authority from the people who it governs
that human beings are born with natural rights
the government has a responsibility to protect those rights
the people have a right to resist a government which threatens those rights

Another important thing – was that Enlightenment philosophers broke with Christian ideas of human nature and the purpose of life.

For the Christian: men and women were born in sin, suffering and misery were there because that was God’s plan, relief could only come from God, social inequality was part of God’s plan also.

For the Enlightenment philosopher: injustice and suffering were man-made problems which could be solved through reason, had confidence in peoples’ ability to gain happiness by improving their earthly conditions, and express a theory of human progress that did not need God.

The Enlightenment philosopher believed in the power of reason and rationality in three main ways:

(quote 5a)

1. Human beings are free to the extent that their actions are carried out for a reason. Actions prompted by traditional authority, whether religious or political, are therefore not free; liberation requires weakening if not overthrowing this authority.

2. Human rationality (reason) is universal, requiring only education for its development. Because they are rational beings, all human beings have certain rights, among them the right to choose and create their own lives.

3. The true form of all things (the laws by which things operated) could be discovered, whether of the universe, of the mind, of good government, of a happy life.


However, today many people are not convinced of the Enlightenment’s notion of progressively better future through science – especially because of events in the 20th century such as WWI and WWII.

In his book, The Enlightenment, the contemporary writer, Peter Gay says this:

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“The world has not turned out the way the philosophes wished and half expected that it would. Old fanaticisms have been more intractable, irrational forces more inventive than the philosophes were ready to conjecture in their darkest moments. Problems of race, of class, of nationalism, of boredom and despair in the midst of plenty have emerged almost in defiance of the philosophes philosophy. We have known horrors, and may know horrors, that the man of the Enlightenment did not see in their nightmares.” – Peter Gay, The Enlightenment.