Enlightenment (Part I)

in this lecture we're looking at the enlightenment in the context of the 17th century and if there's any subject that is hotly contested in terms of the interpretation of this day and age it is the origins and the impact of the Enlightenment anyone standing in the modern world of course knows about something called the Enlightenment or the age of reason we live in a world where often the Scientific Revolution or the Enlightenment itself is pitted against claims of faith claims of theology or these kinds of things often from the modern Vantage it seems like this seamless shift from the rise of the Enlightenment until its flowering and eventually its culmination in the modern world and needless to say the Enlightenment had a dramatic impact on everything from culture the politics to the church and eventually to technology the issue though here is always one of interpretation depending on which historian or which historical group you happen to read you're going to hear different origin stories as to who brought about the Enlightenment some see at beginning as early as 1650 which is the century that we're in right now during these next several lectures others see it as arising in the 1700s or the next century still others though a minority report on the subject see it as a process that goes back to the greco-roman period that laid dormant during the age of the Middle Ages and of course during the Reformation but which here in the early modern period begins to rise again to the ascendancy the problem is only compounded though when you start to look around for what is the central you might say philosophical or intellectual commitment of anyone in the Enlightenment some see it as mere doubt maybe a commitment to not merely taking questions on the authority of the Bible or of the church others see it as part and parcel to the Scientific Revolution advances in technology and these kinds of things that appear to wipe away the sense of mystery and awe and of miracles or maybe depending on again the interpretation the enlightenment itself is the erosion of confidence in the Christian faith itself then what's left is something that is altogether rational well there's a word often used by historians that we want to avoid here and the word is Whiggish the Whiggish perspective on history is a common claim that's often used by historians whenever we have a sort of manifest destiny always marching towards progress view of history the Whiggish perspective on any number of different things is often the claim that those who are the victors eventually rewrite the history to look like their predecessors were always there for the beginning and the whigs of course are a political movement within the English context who are in favor of liberal thought rationalism democracy and these kinds of things and as often the case that whenever someone with a Whiggish bent began to write the history of either England or some other thing it always seemed like the great March throughout history down until their own day when everything was now hunky-dory what we want to avoid this because what it tends to do when you are a Whig whenever you have a Whiggish understanding of history is you always read things as clear-cut distinctions Fastbreaks and any evidence to the contrary always gets explained away instead what we want to talk about here in this first lecture on the Enlightenment it's just how it got going what were its impulses what did those in the 17th century who were part of this movement of what would eventually become known as the Enlightenment what did they think they were doing and what were their instincts and the definition of the Enlightenment we're going to go with here is that the Enlightenment in the context of the 17th century is a revolution it's a revolution of ideas and practices related to all types of levels of society politics culture the arts philosophy theology but and this is the important thing these early days of the Enlightenment were neither self-consciously a break with the past and more importantly they always tend to vary across time and space you have folks who are essentially Christian and overtly Protestant who get wrapped up in what would become known as the Enlightenment but who themselves were not really on board with what will become the Enlightenment project of the separation of faith and reason you also have folks who are more radical or less radical during these decades of the 17th century the key though is that as there is a revolution as there is a renewed vigor of certain questions and the questioning of certain key assumptions at times the revolution is only understood piecemeal those who are part of the early scientific revolution for example men like Francis Bacon who were going to look at here in a minute was really the furthest thing from what the Enlightenment would eventually become he is very much a theologian who is concerned about science or a Christian man who was attempting to apply his Christian principles to the study of the natural world he is hardly an atheist who eventually through the process of science or doubt or criticism eventually leaves the faith in other words some are embracing a revolution or a renewed interest in ideas or science or doubt even but they're doing so they think from the context of their faith and they themselves don't embrace the revolution as it would come to be known later so therefore the implications of what they're doing are either things that they are unaware of or in some cases later implications during the Enlightenment are things that these early Enlightenment thinkers might not have gone along with the goal of anyone during this revolution again of the Enlightenment during the early days would of course not have seen themselves principally as starting a new movement many of them saw themselves as reformers going back to the old way of doing things but they do introduce new categories and new discussions as we'll see that do have a collateral impact as the deck ADEs and eventually as the centuries wear on the key issue for a lot of folks during this day and age is the grounding of the Christian faith and of philosophy other things towards a commitment of progress and tolerance now this will eventually lead to a quest for freedom in particular the revolutionary freedom ideas that we see in the next century during the Revolutionary era with the French Revolution and the American Revolution and so on in this day and age though again coming out of the Wars of Religion coming out of the real deep hostility between Protestants and Catholics you see the Intelligencia as we call them the leading intellectual leaders of Europe beginning in part to have to reckon with the fact that the claims to total truth to being the one Church overall flies in the face of the fact that their neighbors are now let's say Protestant now we want to make too much of this I find it actually quite striking how people describe the religious tussling back and forth from the 17th century in the context of the modern world too often for example we were talking about the Puritans or about the pilgrims coming to the new world it's often described as being their desire to quote practice their own religion in their own way well the difference between Protestantism and Catholicism while certainly great on a number of key areas hardly constitutes the practicing of a different religion entirely these are not ethnically cleansed oppressed people leaving a world where their faith itself is being destroyed rather it's the practice of their we might say denominational distinction that is causing them to want to leave well again repeatedly in these early days of the Enlightenment those who are part of the intelligentsia throughout Europe are trying to find ways to engage in the intellectual world and in the theological world or the philosophical world in a way that would ground or reground the commitments of the Europeans to the truth but in a way that would allow them to make room let's say so that there does not need to continue on so much war and bloodshed for the sake of faith the key issue here though is that those living in the 17th century in particular in the mid 60 hundreds or not themselves part of what we would later call the radical enlightenment here's the thing these folks living in the 17th century are not going to be all that radical when we look back on it from where the Enlightenment will eventually go however when we get into the next century into the 18th century those who are more radically opposed to the things of faith entirely in and of themselves or even those who might be considered East or atheist during the 18th century will look back on the 17th century and claim some of these figures as their forefathers in particular we'll see the person of Voltaire Voltaire loves to look back into rewrite some of the history and claim certain people as part of his more robust you might say cynical anti religious way of approaching the intellectual life Voltaire was great at mockery and he was also great at revisionist history it's Voltaire for example who looks back on the humanists of the Catholic world coming from the Middle Ages into the Reformation and he claims that he is a humanist that humanism really means what he is all about never mind that the early humanists were all devout Catholic and with only a few exceptions were all frankly Orthodox Catholic yet Voltaire rewrites the humanist story as being part of his heritage therefore the early humanists were all men like him well it does the same thing here in the 17th century when he's looking back at men like Francis Bacon and others and he claims them as part of his own perspective well for the sake of historical record we do need to point out that this is again a revisionist reading of these things so what we want to do here is be careful in the 17th century there are those who are certainly part of the Enlightenment and they are certainly changing some of the categories however it's the following century the 18th century that sparks what we call the radical enlightenment and they therefore retell some of this story as being a bit different than what actually occurred in the context of history last little bit of housecleaning here we need to dispel really three myths these the three myths that are related to the early enlightenment in particular that we need to make sure we understand in distance just a bit from the Enlightenment as it will come to be known first myth not everything in the Enlightenment is about freedom again looking in the modern world back we tend to say while the Enlightenment comes along and they preach freedom freedom of thought first and then eventually freedom in the political arena and the brotherhood of men and the equality of all people well that kind of flies in the face that so many oppressive things were going on during this day that were not only blessed by religious claims but even within the context of the Enlightenment things like slavery the African slave trade in particular hierarchical distinctions between the peasant folks or the lay folks and those who were of the elite status of Europeans were not destroyed at all in fact in many cases they were not even attacked and this is particularly the case when you look at the slave trade so many of these so-called Enlightenment freedom fighters are really fighting for freedom for themselves in other words the Enlightenment is a time of freedom relatively speaking from the Middle Ages but this is still an age where it's freedom for some and not for everybody secondly the Enlightenment is not the first generation to exclusively discuss the issue of faith and reason the Enlightenment should not be seen as merely the question of unaided or superior reason rising up to challenge the questions of faith that is certainly part of the Enlightenment but when you actually take a wider look at history the entirety of the Middle Ages by and large when you look at the subject of scholasticism churned back and forth on the question of the limits of reason and the expression of faith there are figures in the Middle Ages who come almost entirely to the same conclusions though with different applications sure about the role of Reason in the context of the intellectual life Abelard for example though he is challenged on a number of different fronts was a man who believed that reason and faith were virtually synonymous so that if something was not proven by reason well so much the worse for that idea in some ways Abelard looks very much like an Enlightenment man and he's not the only one similarly there are those within these early decades of the Enlightenment like Descartes who we'll look at here in a second who actually looks back to this same medieval period as the wellspring of at least the concepts that he is discussing the court for example points explicitly to an Psalms ontological argument for God as part of the foundation for his own thinking about reason and about doubt so you cannot say that every age every century before the Enlightenment was simply blind faith superstitious nonsense in and of itself the European world and its heritage from the greco-roman world men in particular from Aristotle had always wrestled with the question of where does our Reason begin or end and where does something like faith take over so the Enlightenment is not simply rationalism replacing superstition rather it's a reapplication of some of these older debates and certainly it is a different departure as we'll see but the Enlightenment is not merely rationalism over against faith rather it's an application of it thirdly the Age of Enlightenment is not synonymous with the scientific method too many textbooks frankly both from the high school days and even from college tend to allege that it's the scientific method that gives rise to the Enlightenment there's a couple of issues here first and foremost the Enlightenment is not simply a movement within the sciences we're going to look at one of the men who actually in some ways is the founder of the scientific method Francis Bacon but there are other movements that we equate with the Enlightenment that do not have much to do with the study of the natural world in other words the Enlightenment is bigger than simply the Scientific Revolution though it certainly is an umbrella over which the scientific development of the European world gets going the other thing is there is no simple single definition of the scientific method this idea that one idea one method of doubt creeps in and suddenly they apply this to the natural world and eventually they say alright let's get rid of all this faith stuff is too simplistic an answer in fact ironically the man who in some ways invents the scientific method was himself a devout Protestant really more than pure and stripe than anything else again he thinks he is applying good Christian methods and principles to the idea of discovering and studying the natural world and so he comes up with something that is like a scientific method but there is no single descending from the sky scientific method there had always been discussion of the appropriate measure of Reason experiment observation and out from the greco-roman period that was there in the Middle Ages though it was somewhat attenuated and eventually it does get reintroduced here in the Enlightenment but it's not as if one thing one idea or one method changed all of Europe again that's too simplistic so to conclude from all this again ground clearing that we've had to do to get rid of some of our maybe pre conditioned responses to what the Enlightenment is the Enlightenment is a revolution it's not some everyday workman like change to the intellectual world these are big changes however those who are at the initial stages as the Enlightenment is dawning on Europe or unaware of either what they're changing as it will change down the corridors of time in later centuries or they themselves don't have the same conclusions that others will reach based on these same principles the change is wider than merely one of science or of the shift away from the church in one direction rather it's cultural political philosophical etc it goes all throughout every level of society in Europe by the time it's done so what we have here we're going to say just with some round numbers is you have from 1650 to roughly 1725 what I will call the early enlightenment this is the time where it is still relatively combined the worlds of faith and theology and dogmatix and the area of science and doubt and philosophy these worlds have not split fully at this point after that though from 1725 roughly to about 1850 and of course it carries on a bit after you have what I will call the radical enlightenment and by radical here I mean simply radical conclusions more radical commitment to some of these earlier enlightenment principles not pairing and partnering with faith or the Christian worldview but rather distancing itself and at times becoming a bit hostile to the things of faith so this is still one continuum this is still the Enlightenment overall but what changes is the tone of it and the radical stance of some of those who come in the later days of the Enlightenment it's in those later days for example where you do begin to see some of the tussling back and forth between the claims of science versus the claims of faith in the early days you really don't have much of this you have some of it to be sure but it's not nearly as pronounced or as serious as it will become so to finish up this lecture we're going to take two examples from the seventeenth century one from the realm of the sciences and one from the realm of philosophy and we're going to demonstrate just briefly a bit from the story and a bit from their intellectual writings what it is that they thought they were doing and how despite the fact that both of these men believe that they are devout Christians are beginning to introduce some changes to the way that we think and do our philosophy or our study of the natural world the two were to look at our Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes first of all Francis Bacon Bacon's dates actually coincide with the Reformation itself 1561 to 1626 he is right there in the thick of it with Elizabeth in England all the way down to the dawning of the Stuart age with a coming of James the first and in the last year of his life the rise of Charles the first Francis was an intellectual and a political leader on a number of different levels in fact William Cecil who we've seen Dean Lord burly the right-hand man under Elizabeth who himself was a committed Protestant you might say Puritan on some level though of course he resisted and rejected the Puritans of his own day and their conclusions on things like the vestments but William Cecil was Francis Bacon's uncle and actually to that end Francis actually sees himself to the day that he dies as a committed Protestant there in Elizabethan and Stuart England he was for a time the Attorney General and then eventually he was Lord Chancellor of England he eventually has a political disgrace it is found out that he is corrupt and has accepted monies for the sake of his actions and so therefore he is removed from office and disgraced for a period but he had been a Cambridge man he had gone to the University there where he actually was a personal disciple of the man Whitgift who would eventually become Archbishop of Canterbury and one of the leading Protestant theologians there in Elizabethan England now Bacon's intellectual influence on the Enlightenment again is in the realm of the natural sciences or the study of the natural world Voltaire actually says that Francis Bacon that he has quote the father of science and this is due in large part of the fact the bacon actually comes up with the closest thing that we have to a scientific method . now again the scientific method is not a method in and of itself it's rather a collection of methods in all different varieties that have a root core of things like observation doubt hypothesis etc well the method that bacon lays out is one of these types of approaches to the sciences as often in fact sometimes called the bacon Ian or the bacon method meant in it he lays out all kinds of ways that we are supposed to doubt our senses doubt our preconceived convictions that we're supposed to observe things and bring nothing to the table you might say and then working off of intuition come up with hypotheses and then try to measure them etc and it's for this reason that you can see why bacon is well often consider to be one of the more important figures in the development of the history of science as well as in the Enlightenment you could see why Voltaire would look back to him as the father of modern science here's the thing though again just to kind of shade this just a bit what's striking about this is the fact that bacon to the day that he died Saul himself really more as a theologian of the natural world than as a scientist leaving the things of faith behind so for example in his book the great instauration the book that actually gives us the new method of doing scientific or natural study of the world it's in this book in the great instauration that the bacon IAM thesis or the bacon e'en method is spelt out step by step here's the funny thing though the book itself was actually based on the Bible at least bacon things that it does so for example there are six major subjects or chapters in the book bacon actually says that his preface that he has six because as he is a student of the natural world as he is a student of creation he felt that it would be appropriate to base his book on the six literal days of creation as he sought so there are 6 days in 6 chapters when all the seventh day he says he rests so in the context very much of the book that gives us allegedly the scientific method or at least part of the scientific method as it would come to be known the book itself is more of a theological textbook and it's not just that he arranged the book according to the six days of creation bacon actually spends time in the book coming up with what he believes is a Christian biblical account for how we can even study the natural order you see for bacon as a Protestant he realizes that the world is tainted with sin that we are sinful people that there is a corruption to the created order well that would seem at least to those who are committed to the studying of the natural world as if it's somehow calls in a jeopardy either the goodness of creation therefore the reason for even studying it in the first place or more importantly our ability to grasp nature and to study it with any degree of conviction make it actually lays out an argument where he says that because of salvation because of the work of Christ on the cross we can now do science what he means by this is the work of grace in the context of salvation restores to us and restores to creation their integrity not fully yet of course he believes that there has to be a final restoration with the coming of Christ but he actually bases the very ability to do science on the fact that Christ has died on the cross He is risen again and therefore he is lord over the cosmos for him that's why we studied the natural world because it is redeemed notice again the blending of scientific Enlightenment principles with theological and Christian biblical principles now is this a good argument maybe that's not the point the point is is that for bacon he sees himself as dovetailed or maybe even you might say as not having left the Reformation Protestant world still though bacon does signal some changes in the way that he attempts to ground the process of doubt and experiment in the context of the world of his day bake it actually does introduce things into a scientific method that had not really been thought of before things like rigorous doubt not simply taking answers at face value not simply for example accepting claims about the natural world based off of things that appear to come from maybe the medieval world or something like this so in other words even in the context of his attempt to be a good Protestant bacon is in some ways grounding his perspective in his method on this idea that not everything is to be trusted now he is not an atheist and he's not cracking that door in fact bacon in one of his essays actually writes a treatise against atheism very famous quote of his he says quote a little philosophy inclines to atheism but depth and philosophy brings minds to religion now right there again he's saying only those who dabble in philosophy which in his case means everything from the sciences to theology to whatever he says those who dabble in it inclined towards atheism that's frankly pretty telling he's saying that there are folks who seem to be injecting too much doubt because they get a little bit of this idea of doubt and then therefore they just run with it but he's saying on the other side of that doubt on the other side of that temptation the siren call for atheism you eventually get to a commitment that religion is the only way the other thing though with bacon is is pretty scathing against those who are superstitious those who are kind of mine addled faith committed folks who simply won't measure or experiment things now that will become a hallmark of the more radical Enlightenment's attack on either the church or on certain people of faith so again with bacon he's part of this enlightenment he is making some leaps and jumps in you might say new directions but here he is in the context of the early 17th century believing that he is being really not much more than a philosopher theologian of the Christian and Protestant world so there are changes afoot but they're not fully realized here the person of Francis Bacon what about Rene Descartes Descartes is another one of these folks you know anyone who's taking the philosophy 101 course during their undergraduate days or who has taken just a basic overview of Western philosophy they always stub their toe on Descartes in the philosophy realm Descartes is considered to be really the breaking point from whatever has gone before to whatever comes after it's often in fact called the Cartesian Revolution meaning the Descartes Cartesian Revolution that after Descartes you have this ultimate commitment to the question of assurance or true knowledge not simply knowledge based on faith Descartes states of course are 1596 and he dies very helpfully for those trying to remember the dates in the year 1650 he was actually born to a Roman Catholic family in an area that was controlled by the Hyuga knows most of his life in the context of his upbringing in fact drove into him in brain within him a real concern with the fact that the Catholic Protestant claims to absolute truth needed to find a grounding that was somewhat more sure than simply appealing to their own personal convictions or their own personal confessions the deal with Descartes though is to the day that he died he believed he was a devout Roman Catholic and some ways here though beyond Francis Bacon Descartes is attempting he things to live within the confines of his Catholic faith but he goes so much further than his confines that eventually just a generation after his death his books are eventually banned by the Catholic Church but it's important to note that Descartes himself was not an atheist what Descartes is looking for again is a more sure foundation for building up truth claims than what had gone previously before he thinks he is reground Catholic faith on a better footing than simply shouting louder than the Protestants or imposing upon them politically their faith the Cartesian Revolution you might say is this in the Middle Ages as we've said there were people who discuss the limits of faith and reason the question though in those days was often more what can I know can I know the Trinity in any deep way Abbe Lord or Aquinas might ask how can my words have meaning if God is incomprehensible how can my faith or my reason connect with who God is again that's a faith and reason question it's in the philosophy realm it's not in the sciences but you can't fault them for not being scientists in the philosophy realm they are asking pretty profound questions in fact Aquinas and Abelard and all these folks deal with the subject of the slipperiness of language and its inability in some cases to actually signify what you mean that at times feels very much 20th century and all the debates we've had over the meaning of words and language during our own time but the question the Middle Ages was more what can I know where Descartes changes it again the Cartesian Revolution is he makes the question not what can I know but how can I be certain you see in the Middle Ages the question of what can I know did not rest on the claim that one can be entirely ironclad certain based on the merits of my own rational synthesis you might say that the medievals when they were discussing faith and reason we're like men swimming in the ocean asking how can I grasp even some language to describe what I'm seeing I'm seeing it I'm observing it I'm not blind but I can't comprehend fully everything Descartes is more the man that's building a house and he's asking a question if I can't have a rock-solid base to build anything upon if I can't be absolutely certain of something then I will not even begin to attempt building a house of what I think or believe that is very subtle to be sure but that is the Cartesian Revolution you might say we mentioned in a previous lecture that Descartes asked the question how do I know anything for sure and he comes down somewhat anachronistically given the slogan of it with the phrase I think therefore I am what does he mean by this well again he comes to this conclusion almost like a geometric proof of course you'll remember in geometry that a geometric proof is it given it's something that is the foundational principle that you then apply to a problem to figure something out it'll have to prove the proof itself it itself is a given that's what actually Descartes is really looking for in the philosophical intellectual world and he lands on this claim that I think therefore I am as his conclusion I can doubt everything I can doubt that faith is a figment of my imagination I can doubt that the pastor or the priest standing in front of me is lying to me I can doubt that the Bible was made up by a bunch of devils and gremlins trying to convince me to believe false things notice by the way the radical pairing away of confidence in some of the things that for centuries people had assumed were things you can trust Descartes is saying I can't based on reason alone trust those things because there's always some sliver of doubt that can cause me to doubt them in the end though he comes down hard with this claim I think therefore I am which is another way of saying just the fact that I am doubting that I exist itself means that I have to exist to be doubting the fact that I exist he's kind of painted himself back into this corner and he realizes that he says from a again geometric proof sense of the argument if I'm the one doubting then I have to exist to be doing the doubting it can't be that I doubt and don't exist at the same time therefore he says I'm thinking I have thoughts as a person I must therefore assume that I couldn't be not thinking and yet thinking at the same time therefore the conclusion I think or maybe a better translation is the fact that I'm thinking means that I exist now again des cartes purpose here is not to get rid of Christian dogma rather he believes what he's doing is grounding Christian dogma in particular Catholic faith off of this new principle he believes that because we build up the question of I know I exist therefore from that principle I can build up a case to defend everything that I believe and if you actually read des cartes philosophical works he does spend a majority of his time after he has come up with his claim that he thinks therefore he is trying to buttress all of his other conclusions based off of that foundation in other words he's not saying all I care about is that I exist forget everything else rather he thinks he's found the foundation stone upon which he can build his house for his theology and for his Christian philosophy now it's telling Descartes again says that his you might say great forerunner in this type of debate is Anselm and some had made something of an analogous argument about the existence of God and Descartes here thinks he's doing something that is relatively in keeping with the Christian faith he like bacon also goes on to radically critique atheism as being bad philosophy and impossible still though when you look at the teachings of Descartes this radical spin from again to use that analogy people in a notion trying to describe the great mystery of the complexity that's all around them versus this as we call it Cartesian revolution to base everything on me as the thinking rational person is a shift it is a radical shift and this is why we call it the Cartesian revolution he's made me made us and our rationalism the foundation upon which we built certainty upon everything else well it's really a Descartes also a bacon but in particular in Descartes let's you see again the implications of those in these early days of the Enlightenment who are introducing new revolutionary ideas to Europe who themselves don't follow their own implications yet who in the course of a future century and as the years were on we can see in hindsight we're introducing things that eventually will lead to a more radical enlightenment perspective you

Channel: Ryan Reeves

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Keywords: Age Of Enlightenment (Literature Subject), Philosophy (Field Of Study), René Descartes (Academic), Francis Bacon (Author), Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (College/University), Ryan M. Reeves, Theology (Field Of Study), Christianity (Religion), Religion (TV Genre), Scientific Revolution (Event)

Id: DdB4DzKTyb0

Length: 37min 27sec (2247 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 16 2015