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Enlightenment A Brief History With Documents
The A Brief History With Documents by Margaret C. Jacob. Bedford/St. Martins,2000
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First published October 4, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 16, 2023
The Enlightenment was an 18th century intellectual and cultural movement in Western Europe that was critical “about once unquestioned truths” and developed new ideas about religion, epistemology, morality, and the best form of society, which expanded “the mental universe of the literate (1).”
The Enlightenment’s political origins were in the French King Louis XIV revocation of the edict of Nantes and expulsion of Protestant Huguenots and the ascension of the Catholic King James II to the English throne. Huguenot refugees “began an unprecedented propaganda battle against French absolutism (4).” Meanwhile English Protestants allied with other Protestants to oppose King James II, leading to the Glorious Revolution in which a Dutch army removed the Catholic King and replaced him with William and Mary in 1689, ending the threat of absolutism, ensuring habeas corpus, and toleration for all Trinitarian Protestants. The earliest period of the Enlightenment is best described “as an international Protestant movement against religious persecution (72).” These Protestants viewed themselves as a struggling against absolutism, tyranny, and arbitrary authority.
“The international group of Protestant journalists, theorists, scientists, liberal clerics, publishers, and booksellers created the context wherein the new, enlightened ideas flourished: representative government, the need to abolish the privileges of the clergy, and a more accepting approach to human nature, virtue and vice, sexuality and gender (15).”
Literature became international and was often published anonymously and was often published by counterfeit publishers like Pierre Marteau, which allowed writers to be more provocative and critical in their subject matter, while evading the censors. A wide-variety of new philosophers appeared in this period who offered “a cacophony of new opinions about human nature, the universe, and religion.” The most important early Enlightenment thinkers were Descartes, Francis Bacon, John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Spinoza.
John Locke was the liberal theorist of the early Enlightenment and liberal Whig party who developed new ideas about the proper methods of educating children, argued against the divine rights of kings, and advocated social contracts as legitimizing representative government and strong legislators that represent interests of propertied classes. Likewise, Newton established new methods to determine truth based in experimentation, laws of nature governing the universe, and mathematics. Many thinkers influenced by Newton extended these ideas not only to the study of nature, but believed it could be applied to politics and ethics by using reason to determine the laws governing society.
“Science allowed alternatives to be imagined in everything from politics to religion. Lawlike behavior in the heavens suggested that human inventions such as governments also could run by laws and procedures (16).”
Women’s education became an important part of the Enlightenment agenda for many thinkers of the time.
“The necessity for the female education appeared in almost every tract written to advance women’s status, from what the Newtonian Madame du Châtelet said in France at mid-century to what the radical English Republican Mary Wollstonecraft argued at its end. The challenge to absolute monarchy as a theory of government also affected masculine notions of authority. By late in the century, fathers were being sentimentalized as teachers and protectors, no longer simply as masters (25).”
There was many changes in religion as well during this period. Physico-theology believed the study of nature could help explain God’s Providence, deism appeared that reduced religion to a mere belief in one God without acceptance of the Bible, miracles, or revelation, while John Toland coined the term pantheism to describe the belief that God and nature are the same. Alongside intense skepticism of religious matters,
Anti-clericalism, and outright sacrilegious tracts such as Treatise of the Three Imposters, new forms of liberal Protestantism arose like Unitarianism, alongside liberal and conservative divides within many established forms of Protestantism, while the Church of England witnessed ideological splits between the liberal Low Church and conservative High Church. Many Orthodox Churches downplayed ideas like mortal sin, purgatory, hell, angels, original sins, and predestination. Religion shifted to become more private, individualistic, and focused on a believers’ thoughts rather than public, communal, and ritualistic.
A mid-century crisis broke out when France invaded the Low Countries in 1746 pulling countries like Britain, Austria, and Prussia into the fighting as well. This shifted the focus of the Enlightenment from England and the Low countries to France, bringing with it a stronger radicalism and emphasis on materialism. Eventually by 1789 the theorizing and philosophizing of Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau transformed into more concrete revolutions, especially the French Revolution, whose excesses in the form of the reign of terror serve a rallying cry for its critics to delegitimize many Enlightenment ideas.
“After 1800, every opponent of the French Revolution and its democratic implications blamed the Enlightenment for the modern egalitarian disease. Nineteenth-Century conservatives vastly exaggerated both the power and the democratic impulses of the philosophes and the pundits. Yet the Enlightenment’s opponents had been right about the overall tendency of its reformers and radicals: They started by criticizing the abuses of theocratic clergy and absolutist kings, and then they did not know where to stop (69).”
The second half of the book consists of a selection of primary sources such as Some Thoughts Concerning Education by John Locke on which Locke suggests the main goal of education for children should be inculcating virtue through gentle guidance and modeling rather than harsh punishment and arbitrary authority; the irreligious Treatise of the Three Imposters; Letters concerning the English Nation by Voltaire; a small selection of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Letters, a portion of Denis Diderots’ Encyclopedia, etc.
The Enlightenment’s political origins were in the French King Louis XIV revocation of the edict of Nantes and expulsion of Protestant Huguenots and the ascension of the Catholic King James II to the English throne. Huguenot refugees “began an unprecedented propaganda battle against French absolutism (4).” Meanwhile English Protestants allied with other Protestants to oppose King James II, leading to the Glorious Revolution in which a Dutch army removed the Catholic King and replaced him with William and Mary in 1689, ending the threat of absolutism, ensuring habeas corpus, and toleration for all Trinitarian Protestants. The earliest period of the Enlightenment is best described “as an international Protestant movement against religious persecution (72).” These Protestants viewed themselves as a struggling against absolutism, tyranny, and arbitrary authority.
“The international group of Protestant journalists, theorists, scientists, liberal clerics, publishers, and booksellers created the context wherein the new, enlightened ideas flourished: representative government, the need to abolish the privileges of the clergy, and a more accepting approach to human nature, virtue and vice, sexuality and gender (15).”
Literature became international and was often published anonymously and was often published by counterfeit publishers like Pierre Marteau, which allowed writers to be more provocative and critical in their subject matter, while evading the censors. A wide-variety of new philosophers appeared in this period who offered “a cacophony of new opinions about human nature, the universe, and religion.” The most important early Enlightenment thinkers were Descartes, Francis Bacon, John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Spinoza.
John Locke was the liberal theorist of the early Enlightenment and liberal Whig party who developed new ideas about the proper methods of educating children, argued against the divine rights of kings, and advocated social contracts as legitimizing representative government and strong legislators that represent interests of propertied classes. Likewise, Newton established new methods to determine truth based in experimentation, laws of nature governing the universe, and mathematics. Many thinkers influenced by Newton extended these ideas not only to the study of nature, but believed it could be applied to politics and ethics by using reason to determine the laws governing society.
“Science allowed alternatives to be imagined in everything from politics to religion. Lawlike behavior in the heavens suggested that human inventions such as governments also could run by laws and procedures (16).”
Women’s education became an important part of the Enlightenment agenda for many thinkers of the time.
“The necessity for the female education appeared in almost every tract written to advance women’s status, from what the Newtonian Madame du Châtelet said in France at mid-century to what the radical English Republican Mary Wollstonecraft argued at its end. The challenge to absolute monarchy as a theory of government also affected masculine notions of authority. By late in the century, fathers were being sentimentalized as teachers and protectors, no longer simply as masters (25).”
There was many changes in religion as well during this period. Physico-theology believed the study of nature could help explain God’s Providence, deism appeared that reduced religion to a mere belief in one God without acceptance of the Bible, miracles, or revelation, while John Toland coined the term pantheism to describe the belief that God and nature are the same. Alongside intense skepticism of religious matters,
Anti-clericalism, and outright sacrilegious tracts such as Treatise of the Three Imposters, new forms of liberal Protestantism arose like Unitarianism, alongside liberal and conservative divides within many established forms of Protestantism, while the Church of England witnessed ideological splits between the liberal Low Church and conservative High Church. Many Orthodox Churches downplayed ideas like mortal sin, purgatory, hell, angels, original sins, and predestination. Religion shifted to become more private, individualistic, and focused on a believers’ thoughts rather than public, communal, and ritualistic.
A mid-century crisis broke out when France invaded the Low Countries in 1746 pulling countries like Britain, Austria, and Prussia into the fighting as well. This shifted the focus of the Enlightenment from England and the Low countries to France, bringing with it a stronger radicalism and emphasis on materialism. Eventually by 1789 the theorizing and philosophizing of Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau transformed into more concrete revolutions, especially the French Revolution, whose excesses in the form of the reign of terror serve a rallying cry for its critics to delegitimize many Enlightenment ideas.
“After 1800, every opponent of the French Revolution and its democratic implications blamed the Enlightenment for the modern egalitarian disease. Nineteenth-Century conservatives vastly exaggerated both the power and the democratic impulses of the philosophes and the pundits. Yet the Enlightenment’s opponents had been right about the overall tendency of its reformers and radicals: They started by criticizing the abuses of theocratic clergy and absolutist kings, and then they did not know where to stop (69).”
The second half of the book consists of a selection of primary sources such as Some Thoughts Concerning Education by John Locke on which Locke suggests the main goal of education for children should be inculcating virtue through gentle guidance and modeling rather than harsh punishment and arbitrary authority; the irreligious Treatise of the Three Imposters; Letters concerning the English Nation by Voltaire; a small selection of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Letters, a portion of Denis Diderots’ Encyclopedia, etc.
April 16, 2021
This is a great little book on the Enlightenment!
The "brief history" is less than 100 pages. The remainder of the book is a collection of excerpts from original documents of Enlightenment authors. Despite the book's compact size, I found it gave me some valuable insights into the period and a new perspective on a variety of historical events. Highly recommended.
The "brief history" is less than 100 pages. The remainder of the book is a collection of excerpts from original documents of Enlightenment authors. Despite the book's compact size, I found it gave me some valuable insights into the period and a new perspective on a variety of historical events. Highly recommended.
January 19, 2018
I had to read this for my HST 400 class. It's really informative it's just I don't really enjoy reading the work of philosophes. Although I did enjoy Diderot and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. I can't stand Locke or Voltaire.
October 9, 2020
Jacob does a pretty good job explaining the Enlightenment. Voltaire always cracks me up with his witticisms, but for the most part I don't find the other philosophers as engaging (maybe part of this also has to do with that I was forced to read this).
March 12, 2017
This was a required book for my CH 202 class.
December 27, 2012
I read this for my Western Perspective II class. I honestly loved it! The beginning is an introduction by the author and part two of the book is a collaboration of first-sources. I liked it so much instead of selling it I re-gifted it to a good friend of mine I new would enjoy it.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews