The Age of Reason1687 - 1789

• The Enlightenment• The Neoclassic Age

The Age of Reason1687 - 1789

• FORERUNNERS– Galileo– Bacon– Descartes– Hobbes

• The Age of Reason is dated from 1687, when Issac Newton published his work on gravity, Principia Mathematica

The Age of Reason -- The Enlightenment1687 - 1789

Immanuel Kant: “Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one’s intelligence without being guided by another. Sapere Aude! [Dare to know!] Have the courage to use your own intelligence! is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.”

The Age of Reason -- The Enlightenment1687 - 1789

“Through laziness and cowardice a large part of mankind, even after nature has freed them from alien guidance, gladly remain immature. . . . It is so comfortable to be a minor! If I have a book which provides meaning for me, a pastor who has conscience for me, a doctor who will judge my diet for me and so on, then I do not need to exert myself. . . .Therefore there are only a few who have pursued a firm path and have succeeded in escaping from immaturity by their own cultivation of the mind.” (Immanuel Kant)

The Age of Reason1687 - 1789

Ancient Influences: Neoplatonism, mathematics, and numbers

Order, harmony

The Age of ReasonIdentifying Characteristics

• Art -- Order and Harmony• Education -- Progress• Religion -- Deism• Humankind -- The rejection of the doctrine of

original sin.• Political theory -- governments derive from

people in a social contract

Baroque -- Rubens

Self Portrait

Baroque -- Rembrandt

Night-watch

Baroque -- Vermeer

Milkmaid

Baroque--Bernini

Gianlorenzo Bernini

The Ecstacy of St. Theresa

Theatricality of Baroque

Baroque--CaravaggioCaravaggio

The Sacrifice of Issac

ActionExtreme ChiaroscuroTenebrism (“Dark Manner”

The Age of Reason: Order and Harmony

David’s Oath of the Horatii

The Age of Reason Order and Harmony

The Heroic Couplet

“Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,As to be hated, needs but to be seen;Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”

Alexander Pope

The Age of Reason: PROGRESS

For the first time, we see an optimistic view that humans can use reason to create a new and better world than had existed before. In the field of science in particular, there was a clear break from the past traditions and a belief that the best was yet to come, that scientific progress was possible.

Diderot’s Encyclopedie (28 volumes)

More ideas andinformation from secular sources

The Age of Reason--Deism

“I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy. . . . I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Chuch, by the Roman Church, . . .by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. . . .Thomas [one of Jesus’ disciples] did not believe the resurrection, and as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I, and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas.” (Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, 1794-5)

Deism -- Thomas Jefferson• “The day will come when the mystical

generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”

• “I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies”

Jefferson, the “Infidel”During Jefferson’s campaign for the presidency, the Gazette of the United States, published the following: “. . . the only question to be asked by every American, laying his hand on his heart, is ‘shall I continue in allegiance to GOD-AND A RELIGIOUS PRESIDENT; or impiously declare for JEFFERSON--AND NO GOD!!!’”

DEISM -- JOHN ADAMS

• “The doctrine of the divinity of Jesus is made a cover for absurdity.”

• “The Government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian religion.”

DEISM--Benjamin Franklin

“I was scarce fifteen, when, . . . I began to doubt of Revelation itself. Some books against Deism fell into my hand; . . . They wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist.” (Franklin, Autobiography, 65)

Deism --- Voltaire“Is Jesus the Word? If He be the Word, did He emanate from God, is He co-eternal and consubstantial with Him, or is He of a similar substance. . . .Is the Holy Ghost made? or begotten? or produced?. . .Assuredly, I understand nothing of this; no one has ever understood any of it, and that is why we have slaughtered one another. The Christians tricked, caviled, hated, and excommunicated one another, for some of these dogmas inaccessible to human intellect. . . .The most detestable example of fanaticism is that exhibited on the night of St. Bartholomew[1572], when the people of Paris rushed from house to house to stab, slaughter, throw out of the window and tear in pieces their fellow citizens who did not go to mass[Protestants]. (Voltaire, Treatise on Tolerance, 1763)

Human Worth: The Rejection of the Doctrine of Original Sin

• Christianity had long held that from Adam, humans had inherited a fallen state of corruptibility and an inclination to do evil. Catholicism and early Reformers both held this doctrine.

• During the Age of Reason, this doctrine was challenged and rejected by many. The view of human possibility became more optimistic.

Rejection of the Divine Right of Kings[Old view] “Because there are none on earth, after God, greater than sovereign princes, whom God establishes as His lieutenants to command the rest of mankind, . . . we [must] respect and revere their majesty in all due obedience, speak and think of them with all due honour. He who contemns his sovereign prince, contemns God whose image he is. . . . If the prince can only make law with the consent . . . of an inferior, whether it be a council of magnates or the people, it is not he who is sovereign” (Bodin, 1576)

Social Contract Theory(New ideas) “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the Governed.” (Decl. of Ind., 1776)