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5HUM0271 Politics and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Britain

5HUM0271 Politics and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Lecture 9: The Enlightenment. What do historians mean by ‘ The Enlightenment ’ ?. Old view: rationality rather than superstition or revelation A world view validated by science rather than religion or tradition

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5HUM0271 Politics and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Britain

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  1. 5HUM0271 Politics and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Britain Lecture 9: The Enlightenment

  2. What do historians mean by ‘The Enlightenment’? Old view: • rationality rather than superstition or revelation • A world view validated by science rather than religion or tradition • a belief in the power of human reason to change society and liberate the individual from the restraints of custom or arbitrary authority

  3. European philosophers L to R: • Montesquieu (1689-1755) • Voltaire (1694-1778) • Kant (1724-1804) • Diderot (1713-1784)

  4. What do historians mean by ‘the Enlightenment’? Newer interpretations: • no longer an autonomous intellectual movement • not confined to western Europe • no single chronology or extent of spread or influence • Interest in how society disseminated, used and responded to ideas

  5. Key theme • ‘It is more helpful to think of Enlightenment as a series of problems and debates, of ‘flash-points’, characteristic of the eighteenth century, or of ‘pockets’ where projects of intellectual expansion impacted upon and changed the nature of developments in society and government on a world-wide basis.’ Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment (1995), p. 3.

  6. problems and debates 1. Religion: • Ranges from violent hostility to religion to a promotion of ‘rational Dissent’ • Debate on toleration = the connection between religion and the state 2. Science: • Defining boundaries from experimental philosophy • Nature – from part of a ‘Great Chain of Being’ to discrete classification groups

  7. Joseph Wright of Derby, ‘A Philosopher giving that Lecture on the Orrery,’ 1766

  8. Scottish philosophers L to R: • David Hume (1711-1776) • Adam Ferguson (1723-1816) • Adam Smith (1723-1790)

  9. The Spectator (1711-14)editors Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

  10. The Lunar Society of Birmingham

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