The Promise of Enlightenment

1. The Promise of Enlightenment Chapter 18

2. Catherine the Great “It is a way of immortalizing oneself to be the advocate of humanity, the defender of oppressed innocence…You have entered into combat against the enemies of mankind: superstition, fanaticism, ignorance, quibbling, evil judges, and the powers that rest in their hands. Great virtues and qualities are needed to surmount those obstacles. You have shown that you have them: you have triumphed.” -Catherine the Great to Voltaire

3. Catherine the Enlightened • Begins a regular correspondence with Voltaire • Progress for Humanity could only be achieved by rooting out the wrongs left by: • Superstition • Religious fanaticism • Ignorance • Outmoded forms of justice • Everything had to be examined in the cold light of reason. • Attacked the legal use of torture • Supported religious toleration • Education • Criticized censorship by state and Church.

4. The Enlightenment at Its Height Philosophes differ from Philosophers • Philosophes of the Enlightenment were dedicated to solving real word problems. • Structures of government (Wilhelm von Humboldt – Limits of State Action) • Systematic application of reason could do what religious belief could not – improve the human condition by pointing to needed reforms. • Makers of the Encyclopedia • Denis Diderot: “Everything must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.”

5. The Enlightenment at Its Height Few Enlightenment writers held university positions. • Ideas developed through printed books and pamphlets, hand written letters, through informal readings of manuscripts. • Salons: differing from the 17th cent counterparts, 18th cent Parisian salons teemed with ideas philosophes might not want put into writing – testing public opinion, etc… • Madame Marie Therese Geoffrin: best known Parisian salon that brought together a who’s-who of Enlightenment thinkers.

6. Criticisms of the Church were difficult because of the power it held in society • Influential people thought religion was a essential foundation of good society and gov’t. • David Hume: belief in God rested on fear rather than on reason. He was surprised "to see the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and to observe the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is brought about, we shall find, that as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. 'Tis therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular." Conflicts with the Church and State

7. After Newton, people could conceive of the universe as an eternally existing, self-perpetuating machine. • God, then, becomes unnecessary • Atheists • Deists: believe in God, but give him no active role in human affairs. Isaac Newton and His Effect on Religion

8. Deist • Philosophical Dictionary: attacked most of the claims of Christianity (Catholic and Protestant). • These, he said, had been the primary source of fanaticism and brutality among humans. • Launched a campaign to extend civil rights to French Protestants and fought for the abolition of torture. Voltaire

9. Critics also assailed Church and State support for European colonization and slavery. • Raynal(1713-1796): detailed the destruction of native populations by Europeans and denounced the slave trade • Views were mixed on New World natives and Africans. • Hume: “There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion that white.” Abbe Raynal

10. Separation of Powers: gov’t ought to be divided up into separate branches. • Checks and Balances • Writes the Spirits of the Laws: warns against the dangers of despotism, opposed the divine right of kings, favored constitutional gov’t. Montesquieu

11. The Limits of State Action: argues the state “tends to make man an instrument to serve its own arbitrary ends, overlooking his individual purposes.” • Develops the foundations of classical liberalism, evolving into libertarian socialism or classical anarchism. • Major idea of classical liberalism is an opposition to all but the most restrictive and minimal forms of state intervention in personal or social life. • Influenced John Stuart Mill Wilhelm von Humboldt

12. The Individual and Society • The Enlightenment interest in secular society produced two major results. • It advanced the secularization of European political life that had begun after the Wars of Religion in the 16th and 17th cent. • Laid the foundations for the social sciences of the modern era. • Adam Smith: modern discipline of economics • Rousseau: emphasized the needs of the community over the needs of the individual.

13. Writes The Wealth of Nations • The notion of the “invisible hand” • Misrepresentation of Smith’s views as “becoming synchronized with those of the whole society” • “Home Bias” espoused by Riccardo and Smith that countries would "prefer the support of domestic to that of foreign industry” “as if led by an invisible hand.” • Denounced the “the vile maxim of the masters of mankind….all for ourselves and nothing for other people” espoused by the “merchants and manufactures who have been by far the principle architects” of policy, “whose interests have been so carefully attended to.” • Views on the division of labor as compared to the early Marx. Adam Smith

14. “Radical” Views of Labor Adam Smith Karl Marx When a person is converted into a tool of production he: “has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention [and] he naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become…. His mind falling into that drowsy stupidity which, in a civilized society, seems to benumb the understanding of almost all the inferior ranks of people.” Smith, Wealth of Nations, p. 782 Warned that the: “alienation of labor [occurs] when work is external to the worker, …not part of his nature… [so that] he does not fulfill himself in his work, but denies himself…[and is] physically exhausted and mentally debased, this alienated labor that casts some of the workers into a barbarous kind of work, and turns others into machines, thus depriving man of his species character, of free conscious activity and productive life.” Marx, quoted in Chomsky, On Democracy and Education, p. 128

15. More “Radical” Views of Labor • “To inquire and create, these are the centers around which all human pursuits more or less directly revolve.” • Therefore, “whatever does not spring from a man’s free choice but is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very being but remains alien to his true nature: he does not perform it with true human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness.” • And if man acts in a mechanical way, reacting to external demands or instruction rather than in ways determined by his own interests and energies and powers, we may admire what he does, but we despise what he is. Because he is a machine. Von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action (written in 1792, published in 1851). Wilhelm von Humboldt

16. Says society itself threatened natural rights or freedoms “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” • Writes Emile (1762) • Commentaries on education • The Social Contract (1762) • On political theory • Argued in an 1749 essay that science and the arts had corrupted social morals, not improved them. Jean-Jacques Rousseau

17. Spreading the Enlightenment French Enlightenment German Enlightenment • Most daring critiques of Church and State • Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau all faced persecution. • Caught between two eras • The want to appear modern and accepting, but had fewer constitutional guarantees like GB. • By 1760s gov’t largely ignored works previously thought to be subversive or offensive. • Tended to avoid political confrontations with authorities. • Focused more on social relationships between Christians and Jews • Moses Mendelssohn • Focused more on reason • Immanuel Kant: set the foundations for modern philosophy in Critique of Pure Reason (influences American transcendentalism). • Idealism: understanding can only come from examining the ways in which ideas are formed in the mind. • Does God exist? Do humans have free will? Is personal immortality possible?

18. Society and Culture in an Age of Enlightenment The Nobility React to the Enlightenment France • Landlords simply raised taxes or created new ones • Peasants had to pay taxes to use the landlords facilitates to grind grain, bake bread, and press grapes for wine, even had to pay a tax to pass on land as inheritance. • Public service without pay (building roads, etc…) • Duties on salt and goods sold at market. Paid 1/10 of grain crop to church (tithe) England • Game laws • Kept the poor from eating meat and maintained the social status of the rich. • Landed gentry hired gamekeepers to stop peasants from hunting. If caught it carried the death penalty. • After 1760 arrests shot up dramatically. • In most places hunting was a special right of the nobility.

19. Society and Culture in an Age of Enlightenment Prussia • Frederick II (Frederick the Great) • ensured that nobles dominated both the army officer corps and the civil bureaucracy. Russia • Catherine II • granted nobility vast tracts of land, the right to own serfs, and exemption from personal taxes and corporal punishment • Charter of the Nobility of 1785 codified these privileges in exchange for subservience to the state. Even with all this nobility in France, Great Britain, and western Germany were the most open to new ideas. • Rousseau: It was “manifestly contrary to the law of nature…that a handful of people should gorge themselves with superfluities while the hungry multitude goes in want of necessities.”

20. The Middle Class and the Making of a New Elite • The Enlightenment offered middle-class an intellectual and cultural route to social improvement. • No titles like those above them but didn’t work with their hands like peasants below them. • Doctors, lawyers, lower-level officials • Bourgeoisie: “city dweller” • As a result of the consumer and agricultural revolutions the population of the middle class nearly tripled in size in the 1700s. • Salons and Masonic Lodges • Began as social clubs for learned members of society • Freemasons: Members of Masonic lodges, where nobles and middle-class professionals shared interest in the Enlightenment

21. Cathedral of Vilnius, Lithuania New Cultural Styles Shared tastes in travel, architecture, the arts, and reading b/t middle class and nobles strengthened ties between the two. “Grand Tours” of Europe: backpacking across Europe. New discoveries of Greek and Roman ruins at Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Paestum resulted in Neoclassical style.

22. Pulteney Bridge, England

23. The White Hall of Gatchina Palace, Russia

24. Prado Museum, Spain

25. Neoclassic Style • Begins to push aside the baroque and rococo styles. • Josiah Wedgwood: created connected the middle class to the wealthy with designs for crockery • Tea sets for Catherine the Great of Russia • British royalty • “QueenswarePotery” • Rise of “classical” music • String instruments in orchestras • Composers create works that are repeated

26. Austrian composer, predecessor to Ludwig van Beethoven • Wrote more than 100 symphonies. • One of the last composers before the shift towards the “classical” style that we understand today. • Wrote no string quartets, when asked why he replied: • “Because no one has ordered any” The Classical Composers Franz Joseph Haydn

27. Writes only 9 symphonies • 5 concertos for piano • 32 piano sonatas • And 16 string quartets • Studies under Haydn • Begins to go deaf later in life but still continues to compose, conduct, and perform The Classical Composers Ludwig van Beethoven

28. In connection with Haydn, combines lightness, clarity, and profound emotion into his works. • Like Haydn, he wrote for noble families but by 1800s his works were incorporated into concerts throughout Europe. The Classical Composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

29. Life on the Margins, 1700s • Although international trade boomed, the results didn’t exactly trickledown • Population grew by almost 30% • England, Ireland, Prussia, and Hungary • Food shortages occurred periodically • Prices went up • Day laborers and peasants with small holdings suffered • 200,000 French workers left annually to find seasonal jobs elsewhere • 10% of Europe’s population depended on charity • Workhouses begin to crop up, mid 1600s • Places where local gov’t put the poor • By 1740 most German towns had them: part workshop, hospital, and prison

30. Life on the Margins, 1700s France • To supplement charity gov’t created depots de medicite: beggar houses. • Poor sent to work in manufacturing jobs • Most were too weak or sick to work, 20% died within a few months of incarceration. • Officials seem overwhelmed by the rise in poor • Crimes against poverty increase. Setting the stage for the French Revolution?

31. Persistence of Popular Culture • As the ideals of the Enlightenment spread, literacy increased throughout Europe. • Allowed the continued participation of the lower classes in new tastes and ideas. • France: 50% of men & 27% of women could read by 1780s, twice as much from a century earlier • Lower classes overwhelmingly read religious books • Higher in England and Dutch Republic • Much lower in Eastern Europe • Forms of Entertainment • Elite: Salon, concerts, art exhibitions. • Peasants: Fairs and festivals • Lower classes: cabarets and taverns • Britain: bullbaiting, bearbaiting, dogfighting, cockfighting • Cricket hooligans: matches would sometimes result in brawls between fans.

32. Changes in Sexual Behavior The Move to Cities • Rates of births out of wedlock increased • From 5% to 20% by the end of the 18th cent. • Modern sexual revolution? • Beginnings of women’s liberation movement? • Result of break down of traditional (family and community) pressure to force a man to marry a woman pregnant with his child. • Increase in abandoned babies  cities began to est. foundling hospitals  50% higher IMR as opposed to being raised at home. • Servants would often lose their job if the employer discovered they had borne a child. • Male homosexuals (“sodomites”) were brutally persecuted in some places  imprisoned or executed.

33. State Power in an Era of Reform Enlightened Despots • Rulers who used Enlightenment inspired reforms to improve life for their subjects  when it suited their goals, and to gain commercial or military advantage over rivals • Catherine the Great of Russia • Frederick the Great of Prussia • Joseph II of Austria • Wars now fought for overseas empires and dominance of the European continent. • Professional armies and navies, not such a high (domestic) civilian toll.

34. Required long lines about three men deep  two loading one firing. • 1740-1775: Two major wars in Europe. • War of Austrian Succession • Seven Years’ War State Power in an Era of Reform Flintlock Musket

35. 1740: Holy Roman Emperor, Charles VI dies w/o male heir. • Most recognize his heiress, his daughter, Maria Theresa • Pragmatic Sanction of 1713: allows a woman to inherit Habsburg lands. • Frederick II (Prussia) sees opportunity for new territory and invades Silesia (Austria). • France joins Prussia because they’re fighting Austria • Great Britain joins Austria to keep France from expanding into Netherlands War of Austrian Succession

36. PRUSSIA AUSTRIA France Spain Bavaria Saxony (1741-1742) Sweden Some Italian states Great Britain Hanover Dutch Rep Saxony (1743-1745) Russia

37. War of Austrian Succession

38. War of Austrian Succession North American Theatre • King George’s War (GB vs. FR) • Wabanaki Confederacy with France • Iroquois Confederacy with Great Britain • War of Jenkins's Ear (GB vs. SP) • Spanish captain boarded a British ship whom he accused of smuggling. • Cut off the British captain’s ear, says “Go and tell your king that I will do the same, if he dares to do the same.”

39. War of Austrian Succession Outcomes Maria Theresa (Austria) conceded Silesia to Prussia in order split the Prussians off From France. The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle of 1748 saw Maria as the heiress to the Austrian lands  her husband, Francis I, becomes Holy Roman Emperor The treaty failed to resolve the colonial conflicts b/t France and Britain and fighting continued “unofficially.”

40. Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) The Diplomatic Revolution • Prussia and Great Britain agree to defensive alliance • Austria allies with France • Russia and Sweden join as well • Frederick II (Prussia) invades Saxony (allied with Austria) • We now have Britain vs. France yet again…

41. Seven Years’ War - Prussia v Austria II/Great Britain v France XVIII?? PRUSSIA AUSTRIA Great Britain Hanover Iroquois Confederacy Portugal France Russia Spanish Empire Saxony Sweden

42. Seven Years’ War

43. Seven Years’ War A Fluke of History • Over time Russian and Austrian armies encircle Frederick II (Prussia)  he despairs that “all is lost. I will not survive the ruin of my country.” • Elizabeth of Russia dies and leaves the throne to the mentally unstable Peter III • Fanatical admirer of Frederick and all things Prussian. • He withdraws Russia from the war. • He was murdered shortly after, most likely at the request of his wife, Catherine the Great.

44. Seven Years’ War Outcomes • British naval power routes France in overseas conflicts. • France cedes Canada to Britain and agrees to remove its armies from India via Treaty of Paris (1763) • France, in exchange, get West Indian islands (Haiti) • French eagerness to avenge this defeat helps motivate France to aid North American colonists in their revolution against Great Britain.

45. Prussia’s Rise and First Partition of Poland • Prussia’s losses during the Seven Years’ War • 160,000 from action or disease • This was augmented by Frederick William I: • Canton System: enrolled peasant youths from each “canton” into the army • Reservists, and remained so as long as they were able-bodied. • Military expenditures rise under Frederick II • Almost every nobleman served • Retirement = return to the estates and coordination of the canton system • Military permeated every facet of life.

46. Prussia’s Rise and First Partition of Poland • Frederick II (Prussia) is now able to propose the Partition of Poland in 1772 between Prussia, Austria, and Russia. • Poland-Lithuania • Commonwealth: strict checks on monarchical power • Checks enacted by a legislature and controlled by the nobility • What does this sound like? • Precursor to modern concepts of democracy, constitutional monarchy, and federation. • Great diversity and relative religious tolerance: Warsaw Confederation Act 1573