The Enlightenment in Western Europe (1600-1789)

I. Names: Enlightenment, Age of Reason, Neoclassic Period Ethos. "The distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs of a person, group, or institution." Weltanschauung. "A comprehensive conception or image of civilization and of the universe and of man's relation to it." II. Two Emotional Attitudes at the beginning of the period.

A. Pessimism: Confronted with the disparity between man's seeming greatness and his actual littleness.

1. Loss of authority
2. Desire for a solid basis for truth
B. Optimism: Reason, Common Sense, Natural Law
III. Political Background

A. Rise of Nationalism: Wars

1. Battle of Lepanto (1571)
2. Thirty Years War (1618-1648)
3. French Revolution (1789)
B. Famous people

1. England: Oliver Cromwell (1653-58); John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722)
2. Russia: Peter the Great (1672-1725);
Catherine the Great (1762-1796)
3. Prussia: Frederick II, the Great (1740-1786)
4. Austria: Maria Teresa (1740-1780)
5. Sweden: Gustavous Adolphous (1611-1632)
6. Louis XIV (1638-1715); Minority (1643-61); Reign (1661-1715); The Sun King;
"L'etat, cest Mois!"
IV. Religious Background
A. Religious Wars
B. Deism: A belief in God based on the scientific and philosophic themes of
Natural Law. The Deists believed in an abstract deity who had created the
universe(likened to a giant watch) and then receded from it, leaving it to operate by
divine Natural Law. They did not believe He was imminent in nature, nor did they
believe in Divine Revelation (the Bible), only in Natural Revelation.Called
Freethinkers.
V. Scientific Background
A. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) Novum Organum (1620) Experimental Philosophy--Induction
B. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687)
C. L'Encyclopedie (1751-1776) Diderot, Voltaire, Rousseau, Buffon
VI. Philosophy
A. Rene Descartes (1596-1650): Deduction; Dualism; Innate Ideas
B. John Locke (1632-1704): Empiricism; Tabula Rasa
C. George Berkeley (1685-1753): Idealism; Monism
D. David Hume (1711-1776): Skepticism
E. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716): Optimism

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