Reading Notes W2: Society, Part A

The Enlightenment in Europe and the Americas (91-101)

Society (93-97)

  • Enlightenment begin in the late 17th century
  • "Modernity- upheld the importance of individual autonomy, broad education for women, and intellectual and geographical exploration" (92)
Dr. Johnson
  • He defined reason as "the power by which man deduces one proposition from another, or proceeds from premises to consequences" (92)
- meaning illumination occurs not by king orders but by the ordinary human mind
  • Others argued reasoning means solutions to scientific, philosophical, and political questions (92)
David Hume
  • He believes, "the idea of individual identity is a fiction constructed by our minds to make discontinuous and whole" (92)
  • Pointed out the uncertainty of reality in the external world
  • We only know that we exist
  • Thinkers insisted on the existence beyond ourselves
Alexander Pope's Essay on Man
  • "On life's vat ocean diversely we sail, / Reason the card, but Passion is the gale" (93)
  • Life could be understood as a struggle between rationality and emotion
Aphra Behn's Oroonoko
  • The story of an African prince tricked into slavery
  • By 18th century, abolitionist movement began to question slavery - is it ethical?
  • In the Americas, white's insisted their own privilege over other races (95)
Among privileged classes, men too had many opportunities
- education
-service in government or diplomacy
-exercise of political AND economic power

Women in upper class still had few opportunities for education and work beyond house chores

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz
  • Mexican nun who had a passion for thought and reading
  • Became an advocate of the right of women to education
  • It started to become common for women to fight reason
  • "If God had given all human beings reason, then women were just as entitled to develop and exercise their minds as their male counterparts" (95)
  • Late 17th century, France as in England, women began writing novels
Society and the well-defined codes of behavior (95)
- discrepancies between social appearance and the truth of human nature
- Moliere's Tartuffe provides this example by the expose of religious sham
- Jonathan Swift lashes at hypocrisy
- The world would be better (Voltaire and Johnson suggest), "if people examined not only their standards of behavior but also their tendency to hide behind them" (96)

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