Topic 13- Enlightenment

• Enlightenment: c. 1630 - 1800

  • Intellectual movement
  • Emphasis on power of reason to increase knowledge and improve the human condition
  • Often hostile to tradition
  • Often hostile to Christian faith
• Enlightenment - Factors in its rise

  • Religious conflict
  • Thirty Years' Year (1618-1648)
  • Religious toleration
  • Intellectual Successes
• Catholic Enlightened: Descartes

  Background

  • 1596 - 1650
  • French
  • Devout Catholic
  • Humanist education - rejected for experience and introspection
  • Scientist, mathematician, philosopher
• Catholic Enlightened: Descartes

  Key Themes

  • Method of doubt
  • Cogito, ergo sum - "I think, therefore I am" ( I know that I exist and can think )
  • Existence of God (Idea implies the reality)
  • Mind-Body dualism: the mind and body are one
  • Rationalism
• Descartes: First and Second Meditations

  First:

  Everything that he accepted as true is from his senses. Things like 2 + 2 = 4 and the shape of a square. But things that are based on composite things like medicine or physics can be doubted. By being doubtful of everything, he can at least protect himself from evil.

  Second:

  He goes back to contemplating whether his senses are real or not. From the wax, he knows that he sees the wax, but he cannot imagine the countless possibilities of the shapes wax can form into. All things perceived from his senses to his mind are clear perceptions.
• Pascal - Background

  • 1623 - 1662
  • French
  • Mathematician, physicist, philosopher, theologian
  • Devout Catholic
• Pascal's Wager

  • Reason Inconclusive
  • Finite loss, Infinite Possible gain
  • Go with God
  • Actual outcome: Certainty ( Wagner excerpt, number 233)
• Enlightened Religion: Jefferson's Deism

  • God who creates, rewards, punishes ( incl. in afterlife )
  • Jefferson's "Bible" - no miracles
  • Against "priestcraft"
  • For "natural religion" ( obligation to worship God )
  • For religious freedom
• Enlightened Law: Beccaria (1738 - 1794)

  Background

  • Native of Milan
  • Writes on Crimes and Punishments (1764) and at age 25
  • Against severity of criminal punishment
• Beccaria: Punishment

  What punishment punishes

  • Harm to the people
  • NOT sin or wrong intention

  Why?

  1. Prevent offender from committing additional harm
  2. Deter others
• Traditional Criminal Punishment

  • Disproportionate (severe)
  • Irrational, unpredictable
  • Based on ill-defined "wrongness" of act
  • Ineffective as deterrent

  Punishment Reformed

  • Proportionate
  • Certain, prompt
  • Based on offences clear harm to society
  • Effective as deterrent
• Beccaria: The Death Penalty

  His Case against the Death Penalty

  1. Government not empowered to kill
  2. "Extent" not "intensity" of punishment deters
  3. Imprisonment better deterrent ( long punishment, lose companionship, freedom )
• Impact

  • Legal change - religious freedom, criminal reform, democracy
  • Intellectual change - separation from authority, the past
  • Religious change - deism, doubt