HIS109Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 30: Christian Humanism, Montesquieu, Scientific Method
Document Summary
Progress: is happening, is inevitable, new, in terms of human civilization. Attempt to recover the lost: primitive rebellions, change as evil, wrong; not part of the human condition. Renaissance held with these ideas: not a golden age in the future, however in the past, classical studies. Christian humanism: attempt to get back to the purity of the early church. Enlightenment: changed traditions of western thought, motivated by scientific discoveries, forces of nature were comprehensible. Immeasurable forces: god, devil, there were no such thing as incomprehensible forces, the world itself is something you can control and understand. Reason and human agency: great spark of progress. New problems, new difficulties: belief that the challenges could be addressed the same way as the past, progress was manifestly possible, redirecting the progress. Karl marx: progress, believed he uncovered the laws of history, the forces that made progress happen. Darwin: species change, species improve, meeting the challenges of their environment.
