The Enlightenment

1660-1770

A Handbook to Literature•Defines the Enlightenment as “a philosophical movement of the eighteenth century, particularly in France but effectively over much of Europe and America.”

•The Enlightenment celebrated reason, the scientific method, and human beings’ ability to perfect themselves and their society.

The Enlightenment was a European phenomenon that spread to America.

People were dissatisfied with life as they found it. They believed that

they could improve it.

The fundamental notion was that human nature is fundamentally good.

Institutions have corrupted it.

Of Class Systems

Structured on the basis of a rigid class system, thetraditional social order began to face changes in theeighteenth century as new commerce generated newwealth, whose possessors felt entitled to claim theirown share of social power.

Capitalism was an important aspect of theEnlightenment.

Of Kings

In Leviathan (1651), Thomas Hobbes argued thatkings rule not by divine ordinance but out of humanneed; they exist to prevent what would other wise bea war of all on all.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, both the Englishand French executed their rulers.

Fundamental Problem

How to eliminate abuses and maintain social order and stability.

The French Revolution (1789) scared both the English and Americans who felt that the French way was too dangerous.

philosophes• A group of thinkers who made a critical examination of

previously accepted institutions and beliefs from the viewpoint of reason and with confident faith in natural laws and universal order.

• They agreed on faith in human rationality and the existence of discoverable and universally valid principles governing human beings, nature, and society.

• They opposed intolerance, restraint, spiritual authority, and revealed religion.

Religion• Men and women no longer automatically assumed God’s

benign supervision of human affairs or the primacy of their own Christian obligations.

• Deists believed that the fullness and complexity of the physical world testified to the sublime rationality of a divine plan.

• However, The Planner did not necessarily supervise the day-to-day operations of His arrangements.

The Watchmaker GodA popular analogy suggested that God resembles a watchmaker who

winds the watch and leaves it running.

Society

• One of the insistent themes of the literature of the period is the discrepancy between well-defined codes of behavior and the actual behavior that those codes helped to disguise.

Political Influence• In America, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and

Thomas Jefferson were profoundly influenced by the principles of The Enlightenment.

• The Enlightenment was the intellectual ferment out of which the French Revolution came.

• The Enlightenment gave philosophical shape to the American Revolution and the two basic documents of the United States: The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution.