Age of Enlightenment
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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| The French ''[[Encyclopédie]]'' was a quintessential summary of thought and belief of the Enlightenment. It tried to destroy superstitions and provide access to human knowledge. In ancien régime France it caused a storm of controversy, however. This was mostly due to its religious tolerance (though this should not be exaggerated; the article on "Atheism" defended the state's right to persecute and to execute atheists). The encyclopedia praised Protestant thinkers and challenged Catholic dogma. The entire work was banned; but because it had many highly placed supporters, work continued and each volume was delivered clandestinely to subscribers. | The French ''[[Encyclopédie]]'' was a quintessential summary of thought and belief of the Enlightenment. It tried to destroy superstitions and provide access to human knowledge. In ancien régime France it caused a storm of controversy, however. This was mostly due to its religious tolerance (though this should not be exaggerated; the article on "Atheism" defended the state's right to persecute and to execute atheists). The encyclopedia praised Protestant thinkers and challenged Catholic dogma. The entire work was banned; but because it had many highly placed supporters, work continued and each volume was delivered clandestinely to subscribers. | ||
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The Enlightenment was an 18th century counterculture which opposed religious superstition and advocated rational thinking. It culminated in the American and French revolutions, as well as the Industrial Revolution.
The motto of enlightenment was expressed by Immanuel Kant in "Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own intelligence!". While seventeenth century philosophy saw the detachment of philosophy from theology, although it still offered arguments for the existence of – a deity, 18th-century philosophy was to go still further, leaving theology and religion behind altogether.)
- "Media, as we know it, first emerged at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Papers, journals, broadsheets, all became widely available in the new created public space of the coffeehouse. [...] The popular market for art and literature liberated writers and artists from the need for court patronage. No longer having to please their sponsors, they could experiment, and speak out as brashly as they wished." --Ken Goffman via Counterculture Through the Ages, p. 162
The Enlightenment was followed by Romanticism, which was a reaction against the rationalization of nature by the Enlightenment.
Contents |
Contemporary art movements
Key people
Denis Diderot - Immanuel Kant - Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Marquis de Sade - Spinoza - Voltaire
Related:
anti-clericalism - capitalism (rise of) - clandestine and anonymous publishing - libertine - materialism - radical politics - reason (main trope) - French Revolution - Industrial Revolution (rise of) - print culture (result of)
Compare
Historians and texts
- Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944) - Horkheimer and Adorno -
- Robert Darnton
- John Mullan
- Peter Gay
Encyclopédie
The French Encyclopédie was a quintessential summary of thought and belief of the Enlightenment. It tried to destroy superstitions and provide access to human knowledge. In ancien régime France it caused a storm of controversy, however. This was mostly due to its religious tolerance (though this should not be exaggerated; the article on "Atheism" defended the state's right to persecute and to execute atheists). The encyclopedia praised Protestant thinkers and challenged Catholic dogma. The entire work was banned; but because it had many highly placed supporters, work continued and each volume was delivered clandestinely to subscribers.
