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The Age of Enlightenment. The Triumph of Reason. The Age of Reason. Two major themes in the Western Experience are defined by intellectual and religious life The Scientific Revolution and the Age of Reason that it brought caused a sharp break in both themes
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The Age of Enlightenment The Triumph of Reason
The Age of Reason • Two major themes in the Western Experience are defined by intellectual and religious life • The Scientific Revolution and the Age of Reason that it brought caused a sharp break in both themes • Not since pagan times had religion been so directly challenged • Philosohes became the spokesmen of the educated elite in 18th century society
The Enlightenment • 17th century science, religious skepticism, and appreciation of classical culture led to 18th century intellectuals with a new spirit • They popularized science by applying the scientific method to other disciplines • Natural History became popular • Combo of geology, zoology, botany • G.L. Buffon- Natural History of the Earth • Ignored Creationism but his theories were at odds with it
Moving Past Christianity • Biblical Authority was shot • Liberal theologians tried to remove superstition from religion • Devil became moral evil instead of a red guy with horns and a pitchfork • This helped some intellectuals maintain their faith but for the most part it weakened the authority of the church • Christian ethics called into question • Could people of other faiths live moral lives?
Deism • Voltaire- religion’s worst enemy • “Every sensible man, every honorable man must hold [Christianity] in horror” • He hoped that educated men would abandon Christianity for Deism • God was like a clockmaker • Man lives on its own in a divinely ordered world • Some philosophes went beyond deism into philosophical atheism
The Philosophes • French thinkers that ralied around science and secularism • Shared a critical spirit where all assumptions must stand the tests of reason, experience, and utility • Invoked the spirit of classical paganism • Referrred to the middle ages as “the dark ages” • Edward Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire declared that the church had stopped the Roman world from achieving a life of reason instead of myth • Philosophes, like the humanists before them, put man at the center of their thought
Some Thinkers to Think About • Montesquieu- expanded Cartesian thought to natural law and claimed that like the physical, political phenomena were also subject to natural law • Marquis de Condorcet- universally valid truths in ethics, economics, and government like science and math • Adam Smith- The Wealth of Nations- sought natural law as the universally binding force behind political affairs and promoted capitalism • David Hume- expanded Locke’s theories and his main concern was causality. If A always follows B can we conclude that B causes A? NO • Immanuel Kant- proposed a complete philosophical approach- we can have reliable knowledge but true knowledge cannot transcend experience • Categorical imperative: “act only according to the maxim which you at the time will to be a universal law.” • Denis Diderot- wrote a 35 volume encyclopedia which was the largest compendium of contemporary social, philosophic, artistic, scientific and technological knowledge ever produced in the west
The end of “baroqueness” • Rococo- tail end of the baroque period which found pleasure in a refined, elegant style • “From the ponderous baroque to the delicate and playful rococo” • The movement was based on leisure with a feeling of classicism • The birth of the orchestra
Rococo Painting- Watteau’s Departure from the Island of Cythera- The pursuit of pleasure
Rococo Architecture-Fischer’s Benedictine Abbey at Ottobeuren, Bavaria- walls disappear behind “frosting”
Rococo Music- a challenge to Bach and Handel- dropped the dense textures for light graceful melodies in short distinct phrases • Compare • Handel’s Messiah • Bach’s Art of the Fugue • Haydn’s Surprise
