Week 6: Enlightenment

Textbook reading: Birn, Chapters 6 & 8. This week we raise another phenomenon that will haunt us for the remainder of the term: the Enlightenment, both as an intellectual and cultural movement and as a force for change in society and politics. First we examine the cultural climate in which the Enlightenment emerged; next we'll track its development through the middle of the eighteenth century, when the movement first came under attack from within. Read and prepare for discussion in class: Voltaire, On Toleration (1763) [Excerpts].

Religion and Authority

I. Discussion: Voltaire, On Toleration (1763)
Image: The Execution of Jean Calas (1762)

II. Authority in the Church
A. Transformations in Religion and Society
B. The Ascendance of Secular Power
C. Reassertions of Orthodoxy
1. The Huguenot Diaspora (1685)
2. The Expulsion of the Salzburg Protestants (1731)

Map: Religion in the Holy Roman Empire (1618)
Map: “Simultaneous”churches in the Empire (1525-1800)
Chart: A “Simultaneous” Church (Bautzen)

Map: Religious Divisions in the Netherlands (1849)
Image: “Peace Admonishes the Churches to Amicability” (1600-1620?)
Image: Onze lieve heer op zolder, Amsterdam (exterior)
Image: Onze lieve heer op zolder, Amsterdam (interior)

Image: Johann Philipp von Schönborn, Archbishop of Mainz (1647-1673)
Image: Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne (1727-1794), Archbishop of Toulouse (1762-1788) and Sens (1788-1792)

Image: Louis XIV as victor over heresy (after 1685)
Image: The "Dragon-Missionaire" (after 1685)
Map: Religious Exiles in Europe (1531-1732)
Image: The Salzburg Emigrants, 1731

III. New Challenges: The Religions of the Heart
A. The Pietist Challenge to Lutheran Orthodoxy in Germany
B. The Jansenist Challenge to French Catholicism
C. Methodist Revivalism in Anglican Britain

Image above: John Wesley (1703-1791) by William Hamilton, National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG 317. Image source: Wikipedia Commons

Image: August Hermann Francke (1663-1727)
Image: Cornelius Otto Jansen, Bishop of Ypres (1538-1638)
Image: The Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques (1728-1730)
Image: Le Chretien desabusé sur le sujet de la Grace (Paris, 1701)
Image: The Oxford Methodists (London, 1732)

IV. Popular Religiosity in the Century of Enlightenment

Image: The March of the Salzburg Protestants (1732)
Image: The Benedictine Monastery at Melk (1661)

Image top right: Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659-1743), Jacques-Bénigne de Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Image source: Wikipedia Commons. Image above: Protestant exiles from the Bishopric of Salzburg. The text in the central legend box reads: “The New Testament drives us into exile. Even when we leave our homeland, we know that we are in the Lord´s hands”. Image source: pfaenders.com.

What Was Enlightenment?

I. Introduction: The Encyclopédie, Machine de Guerre of Enlightenment

Écrasez l’infâme! Crush the infamous thing!

Image right: the frontispiece from volume 1 of the Encyclopédie, published in 1751. The original image on which the frontispiece was created by Charles-Nicolas Cochin (1715-1790) and presented at the Salon of 1765 by Diderot himself. The engraver was Bonaventure-Louis Prévost (1747-1804?), an illustrator for the Encyclopédie and a friend of Cochin's. The work is laden with symbolism: The figure in the center represents truth—surrounded by bright light (the central symbol of the enlightenment). Two other figures on the right, reason and philosophy, are tearing the veil from truth. Image source: Bibliotheque Nationale de France.

Image: Titlepage of the Encyclopédie, volume 1 (1751)
Excursus: The Encyclopédie
Image: Jean-le-Rond d'Alembert (1717-1783)

Basic Assumptions of the Enlightenment:
1) Human beings are not innately depraved or sinful
2) Human beings are essentially similar
3) The benefits of reason are universal
4) The goal of life is life itself
5) The first condition of the good life is freedom of the mind

II. Big Thinkers, Major Phases

A. The Early Enlightenment: The Science of Humanity (ca. 1700-1745)
1. Popularizing Newton, Locke, and Sensationalism
2. A Case in Point: Charles de Montesquieu
3. The God of the Philosophers: Deism

Image: John Locke (1632-1704)
Image: Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
Image: François-Marie Arouet, a.k.a. “Voltaire” (1694-1778)
Image: Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755)
Image: De l'Esprit des Lois (1748)

B. The High Enlightenment: Challenge from Within the Movement (ca. 1745-1770) 1. La Mettrie and the Mechanical Man 2. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762) Image: Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751) Image: L'homme machine (1748) Image: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) Image: Du contract social (1762) C. The Synthesis of Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant's definition of Enlightenment: “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from self-imposed immaturity [or: tutelage] for which he himself is responsible. Immaturity and dependence are the inability to use one’s own intellect without the direction of another. One is responsible for this immaturity and dependence, if its cause is not a lack of intelligence or education, but a lack of determination and courage to think without the direction of another. Sapere aude! Dare to know! is therefore the slogan of the Enlightenment.” Image left: Louis Michel van Loo, Portrait of Denis Diderot (1767). Oil on canvas, 81 x 65 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris: Web Gallery of Art. III. Living the Enlightenment

Image: Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
Image: "What is Enlightenment?"
Image: An eigtheenth-century masonic initiation (ca. 1800)
Map: Masonic lodges in France, 1789

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Image above: Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825), The Oath of the Horatii (1784). Oil on canvas, 330 x 425 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.

This painting depicts the story of the Horatii family, who according to legend had been chosen for a ritual duel against three members of the Curiatii family, in order to settle a dispute between the cities of Rome and Alba Longa. David shows the three Horatii brothers swearing an oath to return from the battle either victorious or dead. Their mother and sister despair, not least because the sister is married to one of the Curiatii. Because of its austerity and depiction of dutiful patriotism, The Oath of the Horatii is often considered to be the clearest expression of Neoclassicism in painting. The painting's uncompromising directness, economy and tension made it instantly memorable and full of visual impact. Each of the three elements of the picture - the sons, the father and the women - is framed by a section of a Doric arcade, and the figures are located in a narrow stage-like space. David split the picture between the masculine resolve of the father and brothers and the slumped resignation of the women.. The focal point of the work is occupied by the swords that old Horatius is about to distribute to his sons. Image source: Web Gallery of Art.