Enlightenment

Question 1

What was the enlightenment and when is it associated with?

Answer 1

An intellectual movement associated with the 18th century

Question 2

What did the enlightenment grow from?

Answer 2

Grew from the Scientific Revolution of the 17thC and associated with the rise of Capitalism and Imperial Expansion

Question 3

Who were the continental thinkers?

Answer 3

The ‘philosophes’ - the American and Scottish thinkers

Question 4

In what ways can it be seen as an English enlightenment?

Answer 4

The contribution of Newton and Locke and the example of the Revolution Settlement in 1688-9

Question 5

What are the main ideas put forward by the enlightenment that link with modernity? (4)

Answer 5

1. Its the foundation of ‘modern ideas’
2. Rational thought and empirical experiment are the ways to discover truth
3. Starting to question orthodoxy like religion
4. Championed natural sciences

Question 6

What was nature and natural law?

Answer 6

The idea that the world had a natural order, a dynamic order, and that humans have the capability to understand and manipulate these concepts of nature

Question 7

What was rationalism?

Answer 7

The ability for us to reason and understand things, allowing us to understand how the natural world works meaning we can control it

Question 8

Who was Descartes? What is he most famous for?

Answer 8

The Father of European philosophy.

“I think therefore I am” - the idea that by questioning things it shows you’re alive

Question 9

What is empiricism?

Answer 9

The opposite of rationalism - knowledge based off experience, for something to be true it has to be verifiable - in science, its based off evidence, we have hypotheses and investigations through empirical methods`

Question 10

What did materialism extend?

Answer 10

The views of natural law - the function of the human body, society etc

Question 11

What was atomism?

Answer 11

The idea that the ‘atom’ was the basic unit of everything. It was applied to society to suggest that we are the atoms that make up society

Question 12

What did the belief in progress mean?

Answer 12

That we are perfectable, and that if we understand how everything works then we can become better people

Question 13

What did this line the enlightened way of thinking encourage?

Answer 13

Scepticism - starting to question things they had once taken for granted like religion, the divine right of monarchs etc

Question 14

What can be argued are the 3 main origins of the enlightenment?

Answer 14

1. The Scientific Revolution c1500-1700
2. Capitalism from the 1500s onwards
3. Exploration by West of rest of world in the 1400s - exposed Britain and Europe to foreign ideas and beliefs

Question 15

What was the pre-enlightened world view?

Answer 15

Most people didn’t have access to education and instead had scripture. Where priests would tell you what knowledge was needed.
A geocentric model of the universe - the Great Chain of Being. Where everything has its place, everything is in order and everything is subordinate to something else

Question 16

What are the 3 main scientific advances and who made them?

Answer 16

1. Copernicus (1473-1543) - Heliocentrism
2. Galileo (1564-1642) - the telescope altered our understanding of the universe, could understand using mathematics
3. Harvey (1578-1657) - empirical study of the body - experiment and observation

Question 17

Who are often labelled the ‘Godfathers of the Enlightenment’?

Answer 17

Isaac Newton (1642-1727) - scientific method and the laws of the universe, mechanistic understanding of politics, economy

John Locke (1652-1704) - was also an empiricist - the self: tabula rasa (blank slate) - the brain was born being able to understand and observe information, the Social Contract - we enter bodies of government in order to obtain our social freedom. An individualist - people should be free to pursue their dreams as long as it doesn’t interfere with others’

Question 18

What are some of the enlightenment figures of the c18?

Answer 18

The French philosophes include: Voltaire (1694-1778), Montesquieu (1714-1755), etc
Scotland: David Hume, Adam Smith
America: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson
Later enlightenment figures: Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, Tom Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft

Question 19

What political impacts did the Enlightenment have?

Answer 19

Notions of individual rights (not necessarily new ideas)
Locke’s ideas of Contractual Government – American and French Revolutions
The British Example, 1688 - replacing one King with another - destroys this idea of divine right, contractual monarchy?
Secure individual rights

Question 20

What impacts did the Enlightenment have on Religion?

Answer 20

1. Challenge to the authority and irrationality of religion
2. Separation of Church and State
3. Atheism - isn’t widely supported by English philosophes - as they just disagreed with religious trappings
4. Religious toleration
5. Reason and Science and Christianity - the British Example?

Question 21

What impact did the Enlightenment have on Science and Technology?

Answer 21

Diderot and D’Alembert - The Encyclopedia c1761 - providing as much info as possible, to be passed down through generations - everyone should be educated
The Lunar Society - interested in the practical application of new scientific thought – Josiah Wedgewood, James Watt and Matthew Boulton, Erasmus Darwin

Question 22

What effect did the Enlightenment have on the Economy?

Answer 22

The creation of wealth and codification of capitalism
Laissez-faire or free-market economy
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776)

Question 23

What effect was had on society?

Answer 23

1. Human improvement - a happier society?
2. Tolerance
3. Reform - people were perfectible, you could turn a criminal into a positive member of society
4. Sociability and Manners: demonstrate the ability to reason, through self control, politeness and manners

Question 24

To what extent did people become enlightened?

Answer 24

The intelligencia, the middling sort. Some argue that most were illiterate and intolerant, adhered to more traditional ideas of society and the cosmos. Couldn’t afford to engage with fashionable society.

Question 25

What evidence is there to suggest the English Enlightenment has been overlooked by historians?

Answer 25

Ernst Cassirer’s influential The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (1951) - didn’t even mention Bolingbroke and Bentham, Priestley, Price and Paine or Godwin and Wollstonecraft
Leonard Marsak’s anthology The Enlightenment presented no readings at all from English writers while Lester Crocker’s equivalent barely did better, with a token four out of fifty

Question 26

What evidence is their to suggest that Britain played a significant role in the Enlightenment?

Answer 26

The philosophes (Voltaire etc) looked to England as the birthplace of the modern - European nations celebrated Britain’s constitutional monarchy and freedom under the law, its open society, its prosperity and religious toleration
Called England a ‘nation of philosophers’ and the cradle of liberty, tolerance and sense
France ‘owes to England the great revolution which has taken place…”
Various ‘Anglophiles’ adopted English ideas and celebrated them
Diderot - “without the English, reason and philosophy would still be in the most despicable infancy in France”
British fiction became fashionable - Robinson Crusoe (1726) took Germany by storm, as did the verse of Ossian (the ‘Scottish Homer”)

Question 27

Why would the British contribution to the Enlightenment have been overlooked?

Answer 27

So commonly ignored because the Englightenment has always been seen as a French Phenomenon, or at least French centred
The fact that there was not a revolution akin to that of France and America at that time- shows that there could not have been an English Enlightenment ‘worthy of the name’
Men in England at the time didn’t call themselves ‘enlighteners’ and the phrase ‘the Enlightenment’ enter English usage until mid-Victorian era

Question 28

What arguments are there for the lack of British contribution?

Answer 28

Britain made the Enlightenment more basic so it would appeal to the masses - while the Enlightenment as we know it was done by the middle and upper classes
Depends how you define the enlightenment - if you base it solely on philosophical developments, the English contribution doesn’t necessarily fit in