The Enlightenment Jigsaw Reading - Student B
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The Enlightenment Jigsaw Reading - Student B
- 1. Criticisms of Religious Authority • Criticisms often motivated by typical Enlightenment belief in reason and social justice Thomas Paine, 1737-1809
- 2. Criticisms of Religious Authority • Criticisms often motivated by typical Enlightenment belief in reason and social justice • Tom Paine on the Bible: “a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalise mankind.”
- 3. Criticisms of Religious Authority • Criticisms often motivated by typical Enlightenment belief in reason and social justice • Tom Paine: “a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalise mankind.” • Voltaire’s Treatise on Tolerance (1763) “we ought to look upon all men as our brothers” Voltaire, 1694 - 1778
- 4. Movements for Social Reform • 1764: Cessare Beccaria argues for the humane treatment of criminals
- 5. Movements for Social Reform • 1764: Cessare Beccaria argues for the humane treatment of criminals • “Every punishment that does not arise from absolute necessity is tyrannical”
- 6. Movements for Social Reform • 1764: Cessare Beccaria argues for the humane treatment of criminals • “Every punishment that does not arise from absolute necessity is tyrannical” • Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Right of Women (1792)
- 7. Movements for Social Reform • 1764: Cessare Beccaria argues for the humane treatment of criminals • “Every punishment that does not arise from absolute necessity is tyrannical” • Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Right of Women (1792) • “I do not wish women to have power over men but over themselves”
- 8. Movements for Social Reform • 1764: Cessare Beccaria argues for the humane treatment of criminals • “Every punishment that does not arise from absolute necessity is tyrannical” • Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Right of Women (1792) • “I do not wish women to have power over men but over themselves” • Anti-slavery movement initially slow to develop. England only abolishes slavery in 1833
Editor's Notes
- Criticisms of Religious Authority Many Enlightenment thinkers vigorously and repeatedly attacked Christian beliefs and institutions, challenging the Church in ways that might have led them to be burnt at the stake in other eras. However it is important to realise that these attacks were motivated by typical Enlightenment concerns with reason and social justice. As such, the greatest Enlightenment critics of Christianity tended to direct their attacks at the perceived superstition and cruelty which they felt characterised the historical development of the religion. A key text from this period in the English-speaking world is Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason (1794-1807). Paine was born in the county of Norfolk, England but emigrated to the British American colonies in 1774, arriving just in time to participate in the American Revolution. As a populist and radical writer, Paine’s main contribution was to repeat arguments against religion which had long circulated among the educated elite but which were relatively unknown among the common reader. For example, Paine highlights what he sees as the corruption of the Christian Church and criticizes its efforts to acquire political power. He also applies reason to religion, leading him to reject miracles and to view the Bible as an ordinary piece of literature rather than as a divinely inspired text. To reach as wide an audience, Paine published his arguments in pamphlet form, a cheap disposable format with which he could reach as wide an audience as possible. He also wrote in a deliberately emotive and provocative style to increase the impact of his ideas. For example, writing of the Bible, Paine characteristically asserts: “when we consider the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.” The most famous critic of Christianity during the Enlightenment was the French writer François-Marie Arouet, better known by his pen name “Voltaire”. Voltaire’s principal criticism of Christianity was the intolerance that he found among Christians. He was not the first writer to adopt this theme, but Voltaire returned to the theme so often that he made tolerance one of the highest principles of the Enlightenment. In a Treatise on Tolerance (1763), Voltaire demanded that Christians learn complete tolerance: “It does not require any great art of studied elocution to prove that Christians ought to tolerate one another. I will go even further and say that we ought to look upon all men as our brothers. What! call a Turk, a Jew, a Siamese, my brother? Yes, of course; for are we not all children of the same father, and the creatures of the same God?”
- Movements for Social Reform Prison Reform Another leader of the Enlightenment in Italy, Cesare Beccaria, applied the scientific standards of careful observation and reasoning to another human activity, the punishment of crimes. Beccaria, a wealthy Milanese noble, studied prison conditions in Milan, and he was horrified by the conditions he discovered: Criminal charges were brought in secret, the accused had few opportunities to offer a defence and produce evidence, trials by jury was rare, torture was used both to determine guilt and to punish it, and people were routinely executed for minor crimes. Beccaria’s Treatise on Crimes and Punishment (1764) marked the beginning of modern criminology, and it led to more humane standards in European civilisation. His argument was simple, and began with the statement of principle that “every punishment that does not arise from absolute necessity is tyrannical”, Breccaria argued. Building on this basis, Beccaria only accepted what he called ‘preventive punishments’—to stop a criminal from committing the same act again or to inhibit someone else from committing that crime—and he argued forcefully against any form of torture. Gender equality One of the most far-reaching Enlightenment movements for social reform focused on the inequality of women. A few prominent male thinkers championed the equality of women, but most did not. Instead, a few educated women, despite lacking the advantages of their famous colleagues, began to publish their own reasoned arguments about the condition of the sexes. The most influential advocate of the equality of the sexes, and one of the most important founders of feminist thought, was another Englishwoman—Mary Wollstonecraft. The daughter of an alcoholic and abusive father, Wollstonecraft learned to support herself despite having only a limited education. She and her sister directed a school near London, and this led Wollstonecraft to begin writing texts and tracts on education. Success introduced her to literary circles in London, where she met radical writers who encouraged her to continue her writing. She practiced some of her radical ideas in her own life, living with a man and having a child outside marriage. Wollstonecraft found only limited happiness, however, and once attempted to drown herself in the River Thames. From these poignant experiences, Mary Wollstonecraft found the materials for her masterwork, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). She, too, constructed her argument for women in the language of the Enlightenment. “In what,” she asked, does human “pre-eminence over the brute creation consist? The answer is clear... in Reason.” Because women possess reason as well as men, they were equally preeminent and should be treated that way: “[I]f they be really capable of acting like rational creatures, let them not be treated like slaves”. For Wollstonecraft as with many Enlightenment thinkers, the capacity for rational thought which all human beings possessed brought with it the obligation to treat all individuals equally. As she noted in one of her most famous lines: “I do not wish women to have power over men but over themselves”. The anti-slavery movement Although they typically championed equality and criticised oppressive authority in many aspects of the civilised life, Enlightenment thinkers were strangely ambivalent about what was arguably the most evil inequality of their time: slavery. Some saw it as a necessary evil. “The human race,” Voltaire wrote in his Philosophical Dictionary (1764), “constituted as it is, cannot subsist unless there be an infinite number of useful individuals possessed of no property at all.” It must also be remembered that political thinkers of the Enlightenment, and Locke in particular, often argued for the rights of middle-class property holders in a society where land had always been owned by the upper-classes and passed down through family lines. In addition, many of these same middle-classes had risen to positions of wealth and power on the back of the slave trade, particularly those connected with Atlantic trade in cotton, sugar and tobacco: all cash crops cultivated by slaves in the Americas. The rising middle-classes were therefore understandably reluctant to do away with an institution to which they owed all their world wealth and social status. By the second half of the century, however, the tide began to turn decisively against the slave trade as a new generation of writers launched bitter attacks on slavery. In a publication of 1755, the French thinker Denis Diderot condemned slavery focussing on the suffering it caused and the rights of those it oppressed: “There is not a single one of these hapless souls... who does not have the right to be declared free... since neither his ruler nor his father nor anyone else had the right to dispose of his freedom.” That statement appeared in thousands of copies and various editions of an encyclopaedia that was probably the most influential publication resulting from the French Enlightenment. Following the French Revolution, the new Republic of France voted to abolish slavery in all French colonies. The abolition decree stated that: "the Convention declares the slavery of the Blacks abolished in all the colonies; consequently, all men, irrespective of colour, living in the colonies are French citizens and will enjoy all the rights provided by the Constitution." However, it would take until 1833 until the British legislated to abolish slavery throughout their empire.