OCC CIV NOTES 11/30

EXAM is Dec. 15 (friday) 2PM in lecture room
final paper due next friday to TAs in lecture
rough drafts due to TAs by monday the 4th

final- 2 questions from lecture AFTER midterm
2 questions from texts from WHOLE YEAR

Enlightenment-
-contemporary writers even called it the 'enlightenment'
mendelson defines enlightenment as a process
kant defines it as a release from man's own immaturity, undisturbed by prejudice and free of all others
KANT
-huge proponent of autonomy, self-reliance
-REASON is the source of moral obligation

enlightened criticism- critique of religious intolerance
-montesquieu and rosseau are the two more important writers against religious intolerance
-many rulers of nation-states became ardent supporters of toleration
-many thinkers of the period gave power of religion to the sovereign in order to take it away from the priests
-many enlightenment theorists argue for DEISM
-voltaire argues that 'natural' religion is better than any sort of revealed religion
-HUME argues that even natural religion was simply inspired by fear, and so was no more or less valid than revealed religion
-many books argued for 'reasonable versions of christianity'
-thomas jefferson was possibly the most famous unitarian in the new world (proponent of a 'reasonable christianity' without the trinity)
-god was then explained by reason, bound by it
-miracles did not seem reasonable
-the separate spiritual soul did not seem reasonable
-in scotland, hume questions miracles and their evidence
-basically, many of these thinkers were simply atheists in disguise
-some even less in disguise:
-many applied reason to christianity, and found that christianity itself was not reasonable
-reason enters the scientific realm
-fontenelle's work that we read helped popularize science
-isaac newton's principia mathematica was perhaps the most important book at the time
-newton laid the foundation essentially for newtonian physics
-newton himself argued that his mathematics could not answer any first-order questions (why are we here?, where does energy come from?)
-contemporary thought heavily mechanizes humanity, nature, everything was just cogs in a machine
-newton's better accepted in england than in france (not surprisingly)
-gravity, for example, operated at a distance, seen as occult in francce
-this may have been because of nationalism (french were huge supporters of cartesian explanations)
-anything even slightly non-mechanical (i.e. newtonian physics-at-a-distance) was labeled as occult
-finally, due to the microscope and scientific method, the idea of females as 'imperfect males' was thrown away
-women are finally seen as physiologically different from men, rather than just shitty m en
-people begin to examine fossils and volcanoes, realize that the biblical view of earth as only a few thousand years old was completely wrong
-science gets huge following
-lectures are done with elaborate experiments in public places and facilities, and would draw huge crowds
-finally, a massive encyclopedia was published, coauthored by huge numbers of people
-there was huge growth in the economies of western europe, this and other features led to a huge feeling of progress of humanity
-they see that now they're not embroiled in bitter wars of religion any more... yay!
-the vast majority of people before the enlightenment thought of the world as a zero-sum game, and so could not imagine progress
-then the enlightenment rolls around, people finally believe in progress

in england
-legally, women became property of men after marriage
-men would actually stand in court for their wives, cause women were nothing
-women couldn't vote, etc
-women should be meek, yielding, complacent, and tender, etc
-many cited fontenelle in saying that women could think and learn, but only in certain subjects
-for rousseau, men and women were fundamentally different
-a state of dependence was natural to women, so obedience is natural
-women exist for men's pleasure alone
-said men would often be vicious, so women should learn early to submit totally without complaint
-for wollstonecraft, women and men were equal
-women could do anything that men could do, entirely
-anything else was simply an expression of the tyranny of men
-the slavery of women degraded both slave and master
-reason applies to the whole species, not only men
-the end of education was the unfolding of the abilities of all humans
-women were created to be the FRIENDS of men, not their TOYS
-women should participate in vote, and be enlightened citizens
-she really wanted women to hold office as well
-she was called 'a hyena in petticoats'