1. The Scientific Revolution
1.1. Kepler
1.1.1. German mathematician Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) published his New Astronomy, which set forth the laws of planetary motion and substantiated the heliocentric theory. Kepler indicated that the planets moved not in circles but in elliptical paths.
1.2. Galileo
1.2.1. Galileo perfected a telescope that literally revealed new worlds.
1.3. Galileo’s inquiries into motion and gravity resulted in his formula- tion of the law of falling bodies, which proclaims that the earth’s gravity attracts all objects—regardless of shape, size, or density—at the same rate of acceleration.
1.4. Bacon and the Empirical Method
1.4.1. Empirical method: a process of inquiry that depends on direct observation of nature and experimen- tation. The leading advocate of this approach to nature was the English scientist Francis Bacon (1561–1626). Bacon promoted a system of experi- mentation, tabulation, and record-keeping.
1.5. Descartes and the Birth of Modern Philosophy
1.5.1. René Descartes (1596–1650) favored abstract reasoning and mathematical proof. He thus advocated deductive reasoning as the best procedure for scientific investigation. The reverse of the inductive method, the deductive process begins with clearly established general premises and moves toward the establishment of particular truths.
1.6. Newton’s Synthesis
1.7. Newton’s monumental treatise Principia Mathematica linked terrestrial and celestial physics under a single set of laws: the laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation (by which every particle of matter attracts every other particle of matter).
1.8. Descartes’ dualistic model, the human body operates much like a computer, with the immaterial mind (the soft- ware) “informing” the physical components of the body (the hardware).
2. THE ENLIGHTENMENT
2.1. Locke: Enlightenment Herald
2.1.1. According to Locke, the human mind at birth is a tabula rasa (“blank slate”) upon which experience—consisting of sensation, followed by reflection—writes the script.
2.1.2. Locke’s importance as a philosopher was second only to his influence as a political theorist. Sixteenth-century thinkers had advanced the idea of a social contract—an agreement made between citizens in the formation of the state. In Of Civil Government (1690), the second of his two political treatises, he expounded the idea that government must rest upon the consent of the governed.
2.2. Montesquieu and Jefferson
2.2.1. . In his elegantly written thousand-page treatise The Spirit of the Laws (1748), Montesquieu defended liberty as the free exercise of the will and condemned slavery as fundamentally “unnatural and evil.” Montesquieu advanced the idea of a separation of powers among the executive, legislative, and judicial agencies of government.
2.2.2. Jefferson justified the establishment of a social contract between ruler and ruled as the principal means of fulfilling natural law—the “unalienable right” to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Although both Locke and Jefferson acknowledged that women held the same natural rights as men, they did not consider women—or slaves, or children, for that matter—capable of exercising such rights.
2.3. The Philosophes
2.3.1. The philosophes dominated the progress of the Enlightenment; these thinkers and writers met to exchange views on morality, politics, science, and religion and to voice opinions on everything. The philosophes applied scientific models and the empirical method to all aspects of human life.
2.3.2. Deists believed God had cre- ated the world but took no part in its functioning.
2.4. The Crusade for Progress
2.4.1. The German mathematician and philos- opher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) systematically defended the view that human beings live in perfect harmony with God and nature.
2.4.2. The most passionate warrior in the Enlightenment crusade for progress was the French aristocrat Antoine Nicolas de Condorcet. Condorcet believed that human nature could be perfected by the exercise of reason. All errors in politics and morals, he argued, were based in philosophic and scientific errors.
2.5. Revolutions of the Late 18th Century
2.5.1. In 1776, North America’s thirteen colonies rebelled against the British government. The British political theorist Thomas Paine (1737–1809) observed that the Revolution had done more to enlighten the world and diffuse a spirit of freedom among humankind than any previous event.
2.5.2. Between 1791 and 1793, divisions among the revolutionaries themselves led to a more radical phase of the Revolution, called the Reign of Terror. This phase saw the failure of the existing government and sent Louis XVI and his queen to the guillotine.
2.5.3. The French Revolution was, in the main, the product of two major problems: class inequality and a serious financial crisis
2.6. Enlightenment and the Rights of Women
2.6.1. Wollstonecraft’s Vindication enjoyed sustained and significant influence; it remains a landmark at the threshold of the modern movement for female equality.
2.7. Kant and Enlightenment Ethics
2.7.1. Kant proposed an ethical system that transcended individual circumstances. In the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), he proposed a general moral law called the “categorical imperative”. Kant defines “enlightenment” as the ability to use one’s rational powers without guidance from others.
2.8. Rousseau: Enlightenment Rebel
2.8.1. Human beings may be good by nature, argued Rousseau, but, ultimately, they are corrupted by society and its institutions. Rousseau defined the state as nothing more than “the general will” of its citizens. Rousseau’s views on female education were less liberal, as he held that a woman’s place was in the home.
2.9. Adam Smith: Economic Theory
2.9.1. Adam Smith (1723–1790) applied the idea of natural law to the domains of human labor, productivity, and the exchange of goods and services. Smith held that labor was basic to prosperity.
3. Literature and the Enlightenment
3.1. Pope: Poet of the Age of Reason
3.2. Pope was a British Neoclassicist who defended the value of education in Greek and Latin. Pope’s Essay on Man (1732–1744) is a philosophical poem that explains nothing less than humankind’s place in the universal scheme.
3.3. Newspapers and Novels
3.3.1. Designed to address the middle-class reading public, prose essays and editorials were the stuff of magazines and daily newspapers. Journalistic essays brought “philosophy out of the closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee houses,” explained Joseph Addison. Tatler and the Spectator, which featured penetrating commentaries on current events and social behavior.
3.3.2. The most important new form of eighteenth-century literary entertainment, however, was the novel. A landmark in this genre is the popular adventure novel Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe (1660–1731). Defoe’s narrative, based on actual experiences.
3.4. Slave `Narratives
3.4.1. A unique literary genre made its appearance in the eighteenth century: Slave narratives constitute a body of prose literature written by Africans who suffered the cruelty of the transatlantic slave trade. Some nine to twelve million slaves were transported to work on sugar plantations in the West Indies and elsewhere in the Americas.
3.5. Satire: Swift and Voltaire
3.5.1. The eighteenth century was history’s greatest age of satire. The favorite weapon of many Enlightenment intellectuals, satire fused wit and irony to underscore human folly and error—and, more specifically, to draw attention to the vast contradictions between Enlightenment ideals and contemporary realities.
3.6. Swift
3.6.1. The premier British satirist of the eighteenth cen- tury was Jonathan Swift (1667–1745). This Dublin-born Anglican priest took a pessimistic view of human nature. An immediate popular sensation, Gulliver’s Travels has become a landmark in fantasy literature and social satire.
3.7. Voltaire
3.7.1. Voltaire rose to fame as a novelist, historian, poet, playwright, and social critic. In thousands of pamphlets and letters, Voltaire attacked bigotry as a manmade evil and injustice as institutional evil.
3.7.2. Nowhere are Voltaire’s incisive wit and wisdom more famously wed than in the satirical tale Candide (1759; mockingly subtitled Optimism). Candide is Voltaire’s answer to blind optimism and the foolish hope that human reason can combat evil.
3.8. Hogarth’s visual Satires
3.8.1. Hogarth produced a telling visual record of the ills of eighteenth- century British society. He illustrated books by Defoe and Swift, among others, and he made engraved versions of his paintings, selling the prints by subscription.
4. The Visual Arts and the Enlightenment
4.1. The Rococo Style
4.1.1. The Rococo style flourished in the royal courts and churches of eighteenth-century Europe. But it found its ideal home in the elegant urban townhouses of Paris, where the wealthy gathered to enjoy the pleasures of dancing, dining, and socializing. In Austria and the German states, it became the favorite style for the ornamentation of rural pilgrimage churches.
4.2. Rococo Painting
4.2.1. The painting depicts the popular eighteenth-century fête galante, a festive diversion enjoyed in an outdoor setting.
4.2.2. Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806), Boucher’s most talented pupil, was the undisputed master of translating the art of seduction into paint. Working shortly before the French Revolution, he captured the pleasures of a waning aristocracy.
4.3. Rococo Sculpture
4.3.1. Rococo sculpture usually depicted elegant dancers, wooing couples, or other lighthearted subjects. One of the most popular French Rococo sculptors, Claude Michel, known as Clodion (1738–1814), worked almost exclusively for private patrons. His Intoxication of Wine revives a Clas- sical theme—the ritual celebration honoring Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and fertility.
4.4. Genre Painting
4.4.1. Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805) responded with humble representations that replaced the indulgent sensuality of the Rococo with realistic scenes of everyday life. Greuze’s paintings exalt the simple virtues of the middle and lower classes.
4.5. Neoclassicism
4.5.1. Neoclassicism—the revival of Greco-Roman culture—belonged to a tradition that stretched from the Renaissance through the age of Louis XIV.
4.5.2. The German scholar Johann Joachim Winck- elmann (1717–1768) was active in publicizing the newly excavated Classical treasures.
4.6. Neoclassical Architecture
4.6.1. Neoclassical buildings made use of simple geometric masses, free of frivolous ornamentation. Neoclassical interiors consisted of clean, wall planes. Perhaps the most memorable landmark of French Neo- classicism is the Arch of Triumph
4.6.2. Jefferson depended on Classical and Renaissance models for the design of the Virginia State Capitol, for the Rotunda of the University of Virginia. He realized that harmoniously designed buildings could not only create a national image; they could also influence social conduct and human aspiration.
4.7. Neoclassical Sculpture
4.7.1. Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741–1828), the leading portrait sculptor of Europe. His talent for capturing an individual’s characteristic expression gave his portraits an authentic presence.
4.7.2. Realistic Roman portraiture was not the only source of inspiration for eighteenth-century sculptors. The idealized nude sculptures of Hellenic Greece were rivaled by the works of the internationally renowned Italian-born Antonio Canova.
4.8. Neoclassical Painting
4.8.1. The pioneer of the new Classicism was the French artist Jacques- Louis David (1748–1825). If David’s subject matter was revolutionary, so was his style: geometric shapes, hard-edged contours, and somber colors replaced the sensuous curves, delicate figures, and pastel tones of the Rococo.
4.8.2. David’s most talented pupil was Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.
5. Music and the Enlightenment
5.1. The music of that era shares the essential features of Neoclassical art: symmetry, balance, and formal restraint. Classical music developed its own unique model for clarity of form and purity of design. The lib- eration of melody from Baroque polyphony was anticipated by the light and graceful melodies of French Rococo music, which, like Rococo art, was delicate in sound, thin in texture, and natural in feeling.
5.2. 18th- Century Classical Music
5.2.1. Classical composers wrote music for a variety of instrumental groupings. The largest of these was the instrumental form known as the symphony: an independent composition for full orchestra. the string quartet, a piece for two violins, viola, and cello; and the sonata, a composition for an unaccompanied keyboard instrument or for another instrument with keyboard accompaniment. The first movement was played allegro or in fast tempo; the second andante or largo, that is, in moderate or slow tempo; the third (usually omitted in concertos) in dance tempo (usually in three-four time); and the fourth was again allegro.
5.2.2. Also popular among classical composers was the form known as theme and variations, which might appear as an independent piece or as a musical idea within a symphony, string quartet, or sonata.
5.3. The Birth of the Symphony Orchestra
5.3.1. The strings, made up of violins, violas, cellos, and double basses, formed the nucleus of the orchestra. The woodwinds, consisting of flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, specialized in mellow harmony. The brass section, made up of trumpets and French horns, added volume and resonance. Lastly, the percussion section, using kettledrums (otherwise known as timpani), functioned as rhythm markers.
5.4. Haydn
5.4.1. Haydn took charge of all aspects of musical entertainment: He composed music, trained choristers, oversaw the repair of instruments. At the princely court, Haydn wrote operas, oratorios, and liturgical music. But his most original works were those whose forms he himself helped to develop: the classical symphony and the string quartet.
5.5. Mozart
5.5.1. Mozart produced a total of some 650 works, includ- ing 41 symphonies, 60 sonatas, 23 piano concertos, 23 string quartets, and 20 operas.
5.5.2. Mozart’s vocal music is never sentimental; it retains the precision and clarity of the classical style and invests it with unparalleled melodic grace.