HIST1083 Lecture Notes - Lecture 22: Habeas Corpus, Age Of Enlightenment, A Generation
Lecture 11.10.16 The Enlightenment
Next Thursday Module 6 Quiz and Discussion
• The Enlightenment
o Starts to define the early modern from the modern period
o Rights to vote, habeus corpus, freedom of speech, etc. were developed
o Whatever was oppressed in absolutism was brought to life in the Enlightenment
• Cat Massacre
o Daily life of apprentices was bad, paid little, worked all the time, insulted, beaten, given
animal food to eat
o Cats treated better than tem
o Rounded up all the cats and killed them
o Apprentices came from hierarchy→bottom of the ladder→reflective of the time of strict
hierarchy
▪ Natural human reaction is to rebel
▪ If you attack your master, you will be fried, arrested, could be killed
▪ Cats offer patht hat allow the apprentices to hurt the master
indirectly→without incriminating yourself
▪ Shows that they have power over their master
• Get a buzz form the power
▪ Enlightenment i full of dramatic changes, offers optimism to these lower class
people
o Taste of power
o A generation later, France explodes in revolution→world is turned upside down
• The Enlightenment extrapolates the Scientific Revolution to life in general
• Background
o Ideas of the Enlightenment (equality, rights, knowledge, etc.) was a response to
absolutism
o a leaig his self-aused iaturit
o Age of discovery
▪ When you discover new worlds, it tests who you are, what you represent, and
your character
o Scientific Revolution
▪ Logic
▪ Challenging established social political norms becomes more prevalent as the
Enlightenment goes on
▪ Pushing absolutism and the scientific revolution together creates tension and
this friction creates a spark
• Core Principles
o Reason
▪ Absolutism and order were against it
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o Tolerance
▪ As opposed to oppression→equality, entitled tor espect as a fellow citizen
istead of soeoes suject
o Natural Law
▪ Idea that we all have inherent rightd and values as people
▪ Absolutism ridiculed
o Progress
▪ For all society
▪ Science helps here
o Enlgihtenment movement encouraged change and progress as a good thing for all
o Those in power were against it (the nobility and the Church)→constant clash between ld
order and rising new order
• Roots in France
o Expansion of education
▪ Need people to go to school, great for the king but in the long term undermines
absolutsi because education promotes different ways of thinking
o Critique of King and Church
▪ The first and second estates living a comfortable life while the third estate (95%)
is paig taes ad liig i poert ist oka
o Critique of Superstition
▪ Flies in the face of superstition
o Critique of censorship laws
▪ Louis XIV brings in a censor so that the state can read everything before the
state puts it out to the public
o All this momentum is building against absolutism
• Building on Existing Knowledge
o Geoncentrism from Greek learning
o Heliocentrism of Copernicus, Kepler
o Order of planets, Galileo
▪ Challenging the old order
▪ Didt just drea it up, osered it ith a telesope he uilt
o Planetary gravity, Newton
• Intellectual Roots
o Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
▪ I thik therefore I aCogita, ergo su →the very understanding that you
exist means that you exist as a person
▪ Skepticism is key, learning method over content→ask questions
▪ Individual perception trumps traditional ideas
• Reformation idea from Luther, if you can read and understand the ideas
then that well-informed person should be more trustworthy than
traditional ideas that have been passed down without question
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find more resources at oneclass.com
