History 105, lecture 3: The European Enlightenment September 9, 2002
During the 18th century, many intellectuals began to question some of the basic ways of thinking that had characterized European culture in earlier centuries. We call this new way of looking at the world the Enlightenment, because proponents of the Enlightenment spoke of themselves as bringing new light to a world that had been shrouded in darkness. Enlightenment thinkers argued that humankind had been held back by superstition and ignorance, but that the intelligent use of human reason could overcome these obstacles and open the way to progress. In the eyes of these thinkers, existing religious, social, and political institutions lacked rational foundations, and people should not be afraid to change them. Enlightenment thinkers also believed that individuals were capable of thinking for themselves, and that they should not restricted in the use of their freedom. The Enlightenment was an international movement, involving intellectuals from all over Europe. Among the major thinkers of the European Enlightenment were Spinoza, (the Netherlands), John Locke, (England), Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, (all from France), Benjamin Franklin (North America) and Kant (Germany).
I. Basic ideas of the Enlightenment
A. rejection of tradition
B. faith in human reason
C. belief in progress
II. The Enlightenment reform program
A. critique of revealed religion
B. opposition to tradition
C. criticism of social hierarchy
D. for and against absolute monarchy
III. Slavery: An Enlightenment Debate
A. The growth of the European colonial world and the slave trade
B. Slavery and the values of the Enlightenment
C. Enlightened defenses of slavery
Immanuel Kant (1784), “What is Enlightenment?” “Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s intelligence without the guidance of another…. Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own intelligence! Is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment.”
Voltaire (1766), in favor of religious tolerance: “What a dreadful passion is that pride, which would force men to think like ourselves! But is it not the summit of folly to think of bringing them to our dogmas, through making them continually revolt by the most atrocious calumnies, by persecutions, dragging them to the galleys, to the gibbet, to the wheel, and to the flaming pile?”
Adam Smith (1776), on individualism: “Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not tht of his society, which he has in view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather most necessarily leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society.”
Beaumarchais (1784), on the privileges of the nobility, from his play “The Marriage of Figaro”: “How came you to be the rich and mighty Count Almaviva? Why truly, you gave yourself the trouble to be born!”
A French Observer’s Description of West African Peoples (1789)
“If religion did not teach us beyond any doubt that we are all descendants of a single man, one would certainly believe that, just as he did with dogs and parrots, God created several species of men at the same time.”
An Enlightenment Condemnation of the Slave Trade (1789)
“By what right do we permit ourselves to take men like ourselves away from their homeland? To cause massacres and continual wars there? To separate mothers from their children, husbands from their wives? To cause those who are too old to be sold to be massacred… in front of their children, because of our lust to buy these unfortunates?”
(Both citations from Pruneau de Pommegorge, Description de la Nigrité (1789), 59, 215.