Chapter 24The Promise of

Reason

Overview

The Enlightenment

• From 1687 (Newton’s Principia) to 1789 (the beginning of the French Revolution)

Influence of the Scientific Revolution

• To apply the scientific method → experience + intellect

→ social reforms

• To discover natural laws

→ Independent of clerical authority

→ autonomy of reason

Emphasis on Reason• The concept of natural law

• Development of the social sciences– Political theories of Hobbes and Locke

• Influence of Locke on Montesquieu and Jefferson

– Economic theories of Adam Smith

Thomas Hobbes• "… that during the time men live

without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man".

Thomas Hobbes

• -absolute monarchy based on egalitarian principles

• -the commonwealth as a body; the King as its head

John Locke• “Men being . . . by nature all free,

equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent.”

John Locke• “The only way whereby any one

divests himself of his natural liberty and puts on the bonds of civil society is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceful living one amongst another.”

• Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government ….” (“The Declaration of Independence”, 1776)

http://www.ntpu.edu.tw/pa/teacher/gossens/2003HobbesLocke.pdf

Adam Smith• 1723-1790

• Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776)

– Laissez-faire

– Opposed to mercantilism

– The “invisible hand” of the marketplace

– Rational individual would pursue their interest rationally

Philosophes• Nature of the salon

• The deist view of God

• Diderot and the Encyclopédie

• Notion of social progress—Condorcet and Wollstonecraft

• New forms of prose: the novel; journalistic essay

Encyclopédie

• Diderot

• 35 volumes

• 1751-1772

• Louis XV banned it twice

Encyclopédie• A collection of “all the knowledge” on earth• Voltaire, “Let the facts prevail”• Purpose: to “change the general way of

thinking”• To demonstrate how the everyday

applications of science could promote progress and alleviate all forms of human misery.

Progress• Condorcet (1743-1794)• “The real advantages that should result f

rom this progress, of which we can entertain a hope that is almost a certainty, can have no other term than that of the absolute perfection of the human race . . . .”

(Fiero 611)

Progress• Pope (1688-1744)

• “WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT”

(Fiero 614)

Progress• Result: a “cult of utility”

–Advances in science and technology–Social reforms

• Tyranny and injustice challenged (Fiero 619)

Woman• Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

• A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

• The argument: men consider females “rather as women than human creatures.” Women receive “a false system of education” that teaches them to sacrifice strength and usefulness to beauty so that they could please men.

•The End