Key Themes

Renaissance

(1450 – 1600)

Enlightenment

(1600 - 1798)

Romantic

(1798-1832)

 Key Intellectual Themes

“Rebirth” of Humanism and Neo-Paganism: love of man, man’s potential

Rationality, Reason, Sense

Sensibility*: Sensitivity, susceptibility to feelings, emotionalism

 Aesthetics: Artistic Form

Artistic Form (aesthetics): Papal Court, decorum,
Humanism

Neo-Classicism

Artistic Form: Order and Control (thru reason)

Satire: Dependent on Reason

Neo-Classicism

Artistic Form: “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”

Neo-Classicism

 The Humanist Tradition

Humanism: Classical Greek/Roman

Humanism: the mind, intellect, wit

Humanism: instinct, imagination

 Power and Privilege

Court

Society

The Individual

 Struggle Toward Justice and Religious Toleration

Civil Wars, Religious Wars, Reformation

Locke and Toleration

Toleration and Justice

 Theology

Nature as God, as defined by Bible and Aristotle; understanding thru Authority/Scholasticism (See treatment of Galileo etc)

Skepticism/radical doubt and method

Nature as machine, understanding thru empiricism and math (science)

Nature as God, understanding thru The Sublime (thru emotion, nature, unreason)

 Religion

Holy Roman Empire (HRE) vs. Emerging Reformation, Lengthy Religious Wars

Deism: Anti Organized Religion

Science to unfold God’s, rational, ordered “celestial clockwork”

Deism

Also, deification/worship of nature

 Seat of Political Power

Papal Power; Aristocracy

Rise of merchant, middle class.

Revolution against centralized authority

Rise of merchant, middle class.

Revolution against centralized authority

Pre-"Civilized" Man's Natural Condition

Natural Law

Hobbes: "the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Rousseau: "noble savage"

Central Cultural Values

Cultivated Beauty for Courtly Class

Experience (wisdom)

Innocence: Innate goodness

 Social Order

Decline of HRE, emerging nation-states, English civil wars, but Aristocracy remains strong

Natural Law

Locke, Voltaire: social order thru reason, progress

Natural Law grasped thru Science

Rousseau: social order thru man’s original goodness

Natural Innocence grasped thru emotion

 Science

Seeds of Scientific Breakthrough: Copernicus, Bacon, Keppler

Scientific and Philosophical Revolution: Application of Reason/logic to all questions (natural, economic, ethical etc.)

Newton, Descartes

Reaction Against Industrial Revolution

Political Struggle for Self Determination and Independence

Reformation, Spread of Protestantism, English Civil Wars

Natural Law

American Revolution (1776) and emerging republic

Jefferson, Franklin. Declaration of Independence

French Revolution (1789) Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen

Reaction to “The Reign of Terror” and Napoleonic Empire (1804-1814)

Revolution tempered with love and emotion.

1750: Rural, Agricultural Economies

Urban Industrial Economies

Example Material Means of Production

Wool: Pastoral Farmers and

Cottage Industries

Industrial Revolution: Technology: Application of Empiricism/Method and Natural Laws to Materials

Cotton (cotton gin 1793): Colonialism, Slavery, and Industrial Sweatshops