Enlightenment Flashcards
0
Q
Francis Bacon
A
- was English
- was a politician and writer
- countered Aristotle, arguing that new knowledge had to be discovered through empirical, experimental research (empiricism)
- argued that greater knowledge of the universe would improve daily life
1
Q
Aristotle
A
- was Greek
- influenced beliefs about how the universe worked for two thousand years
- believed the earth was the motionless center of the universe, surrounded by transparent spheres
- challenged by Nicholas Copernicus
2
Q
Tycho Brahe
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- was Dutch
- established himself as Europe’s leading astronomer with his detailed observations of a new star
- built the most sophisticated observatory of his day
- contributed a lifetime’s worth of data, but could not make much sense of it due to limited understandings of mathematics
3
Q
Madame du Chatelet
A
- was French
- was an intellectually gifted woman from high aristocracy with a passion for science
- housed Voltaire in her country home
- depended on private tutors
- focused on spreading the ideas of others
- strongly supported women’s education
4
Q
Catherine the Great
A
- was a German princess, married to the Russian emperor Peter III
- was intelligent and attractive
- began a relationship with a high-ranking soldier and used his millitary power to overthrow her husband
- imported Western artists and intellectuals
- wrote letters extensively, especially to Voltaire
- began on legal and educational reforms
- after a revolt, gave complete control of serfs to nobles and increased the power of the nobility
- hoped (successfully) to expand Russia’s territory
5
Q
Nicolas Copernicus
A
- was Polish
- studied church law and astronomy
- was uninterested in astrology
- theorized that everything revolved around the sun, recieving much criticism from religious leaders, especially Protestants
6
Q
René Descartes
A
- was French
- served in the Thirty Years War
- realized geometry and algebra had perfect correspondence (analytic geometry)
- believed it was necessary to doubt everything
- split all things into mind and matter (Cartesian dualism)
7
Q
Denis Diderot
A
• was a French “philosophe”
• began his career as a hack writer with a skeptical religious pamphlet
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8
Q
David Hume
A
- was Scottish
- carefully argued skepticism
- attended D’Holbach’s dinner parties
9
Q
Bernard de Fontelle
A
- was a French philosophe
- was a versatile letter-writer
- sought to make science witty and entertaining for a broad nonscientific audience, a goal which he amazingly achieved
- wrote /Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds/
10
Q
Fredrick II “The Great”
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- ruled Prussia
- made a deal with Catherine the Great in order to maintain a balance of power in Eastern Europe
- was involved in the Partitions of Poland
11
Q
Galileo Galilei
A
- was Italian
- marked for a religious career
- became fascinated with mathematics, of which he became a professor at the age of 25
- elaborated and consolidated and experimental method
- worked with motion and discovered the law of inertia
- discovered the first four moons of Jupiter
- believed the moon was not a perfect sphere, but as full as bumps and things as earth
- was tried for heresy after he disproved the views of Aristotle and Ptolemy
12
Q
Madame Geoffrin
A
- orphaned and married at 15
- against her husband’s will, started a biweekly salon that counted Montesquieu and Fontelle as regular guests
- with her inheritance from his death, gave generously to the encyclopedists
- corresponded with Catherine the the Great and the king of Sweden
- was a practicing Christian and would not tolerate attacks on the Church in her house
- mentored Julie de Lespinasse
13
Q
Joseph II
A
- ruled Austria
- originally painted as a tragic hero whose lofty reforms were undone by the landowning nobility
- now seen as largely continuing the state-building techniques of his mother, Marie Theresa
- maintained close control of the Catholic church
- allowed religious toleration for Jews and Protestants
- abolished serfdom
- decreed all peasant labor obligations be converted into cash payments, which was met with strong resistance
14
Q
Immanuel Kant
A
- was the greatest German philosipher of the age
- worked as a professor in East Prussia
- argued that if serious thinkers were able to print their ideas, enlightenment would follow
- suggested Prussia’s Frederick the Great was an enlightened monarch because he permitted freedom of the press
15
Q
Johannes Kepler
A
- came from a German noble family
- trained for Lutheran ministry
- long believed the universe waa built on mystical mathematic relationships
- demonstrated that planets have elliptical orbits
- showed planets do not move in a uniform speed through their orbits
- showed that the time it takes for an orbit to be completed is related to the planet’s distance from the sun
16
Q
John Locke
A
- published /Essay Concerning Human Understanding/ and /Second Treatise of Civil Government/
- theorized that the mind is like a blank tablet at birth, written on by its surroundings as a person grows (tabula rasa)
17
Q
Louis XV
A
- inherited the French throne when he was five
- was great-grandson to Louis XIV
- appointed a finance minister whi decreed a 5 percent income tax on everyone, which resulted in vigorous protests from people in all social standings, causing the tax to be dropped
- tried to maintain emergency taxes after the expensive Seven Years War, and the people once again thwarted this
- described as indolent and sensual, more interested in his mistresses than the country
- appointed René de Maupeou as chancellor, who abolished the remaining parlements and exiled vociferous members to the provinces, created a new group of royal officials, and taxed the privileged much more
18
Q
Maria Theresa
A
- inherited all the Hapsburg territories at a young age after Charles VI’s death
- described as charismatic
- ethnically diverse army fell at the hands of Frederick II’s precise Prussian one, and she was forced to cede almost all of Silesia to him
- was determined to regain Silesia, and attempted this with France’s help in the Seven Years’ War, but failed
19
Q
Baron de Montequieu
A
- was a French phiosophe
- wrote /The Persian Letters/, a clever social satire wherein two foreign travellers criticized the practices and beliefs of Europeans through their outside eyes
- studied history and politics at his family estate
- set out to apply the critical method to the problem of government in /The Spirit of Laws/
- strongly supported separation of powers
- argued for a strong, independent upper class to maintain balance
- had great influence on the US and French constitutions
20
Q
separation of powers
A
- was first used in England
- was praised by many philosophes, argued for especially by Montesquieu, who viewed it as the best preventative of despotism
- was where political power was divided and shared by a variety of classes and legal estates holding unequal rights and privileges
21
Q
Isaac Newton
A
- born into lower English gentry
- attended Cambridge
- was fascinated by alchemy, and was intensely religious
- idealized by later generations as the perfect rationalist
- deeply devoted to discovering the laws of the universe
- came up with the law of universal gravitation
22
Q
Jean Jacques Rousseau
A
- was a philosophe
- attacked the Enlightenment’s faith in reason, progress, and moderation
- described as brilliant and difficult, appealing and neurotic
- came to believe all of his salon friends were plotting against him
- believed in warm, spontaneous emotion as the purest form of intellectual freedom
- wrote /The Social Contract/, which argued that general will (though not necessarily majority rules) is sacred and absolute
- was unnoticed before the French Revolution, but later appealed greatly to democrats and nationalists
23
Q
Voltaire
A
- was a philosophe
- was part of a comfortable, middle-class family
- wrote more than seventy witty volumes
- after being arrested for being rude to a noble, he spent his life fighting against injustice and inequality
- met Madame du Châtlet, and took refuge in her country house
- praised England and popularized the scientific method
- called Newton “history’s greatest man”
- thought monarchy was best because people suck
- believed in a clockmaker God
- despised the Church but praised religion in general
- supported “simple piety and human kindness”
