all right, welcome everyone like we were talking about last class. we are now shifting a little bit into a conversation and discussion about some of these i would say these essential themes of 18th century america. we've spent the last what couple months talking about, you know these regions, you know, and how the colonies developed how those colonies became integrated into the mercantile empire right if the british empire the cultural empire today, we want to start with our first major theme and that is we want to talk about a little bit about intellectual history today and this movement in 18th century america, really it begins in late 17th century america, but this movement known as the enlightenment. now when you think about the enlightenment? what kind of things come to mind? yeah, lexus benjamin franklin. okay that why benjamin franklin? he kind of like to freedom livery like when we talk about like liberalism. okay sense and john locke as well with like the freedoms that come. all right, so certainly and we'll talk about this actually in the next couple of class periods. right? certainly. the enlightenment is about politics in some ways right natural rights, right and we'll get back to this good what else comes to mind the enlightenment. this is by the way, isn't this isn't this the class when you were in high school taking history, you know, like, oh we're doing the enlightenment today. i find you know this when you you're kind of eyes glaze over and you know, there's nothing exciting here. yeah caleb reason. okay. good reason how many of you have heard of the enlightenment used as or described the age of reason? right. we'll come back to reason again anyone else. what figures do you think about when you think about the enlightenment in the 18th century? we heard about franklin we heard about locke. any other names hit you next hmm jefferson. okay. good thomas jefferson in america often known as a man of the enlightenment. resilience voltaire good so we have these frenchmen right rousseau voltaire. there was this guy diderot who who wrote the encyclopedia good anyone else? those are the big ones. all of those names we could add, you know david hume to the list, you know a bunch of others we could add if we wanted to make a long list of the most important figures of the enlightenment. most of those figures that we learned about in school when we learned about the enlightenment are part of what historians call the high and lightenment. and what i mean by the high enlightenment is that these are kind of intellectuals that usually surround themselves with around power their paint. they have patronage their patrons are the kings and the queens the monarchs they tend to live a very different lives from normal people they are intellectuals. they are thinkers and that's what they do. that is they're calling that is their vocation right to write to think and so with their hands aren't dirty right in other words, right? these are the great kind of thinkers of the age so to speak right the high enlightenment, right? and usually it's associated with france. the philosoph says they're called the philosophy in france. there's an english enlightenment scottish enlightenment, right, but it's it's largely understood in its european context. what i want to suggest today and over the course of the next two classes. is that the enlightenment in america? in the american colonies in the 18th century. looks very different. from the high enlightenment of the 18th century in europe where you just have a bunch of people sitting around in coffee shops talking about ideas and sort of reading the loads. you read the latest piece by vote rousseau today. why? yes, you know pass me the decaf right very different. in america, so let's think about the enlightenment in america this way and some of you've had me for the us survey class have been there when i've done this but not everybody has had me for that class. raise your hand how many of you want to make a better life for yourself how many of you want to improve your life? yeah, i mean every hand in the room goes up, right you're all the reason you're in college. you know, you're that's why you're sitting here, right? i'm guessing most of you want to get a college degree because you want to prove your life. you want self-improvement. you want to better your life. you may even want to you know, some of you who if you're a first generation college student. you know, you may want to sort of pursue a life that your parents or your grandparents didn't have right college degree kind of thing. in some ways that if you raised your hand and all of you did i would i would suggest that you then have been more influenced by. the fundamental ideas of the american enlightenment then you realize. now usually when i bring this up to students, they will say or maybe some of you are assuming who has you know? everyone wants to improve themselves, right? you know, i mean from the beginning of time right? i mean if you're a human being you want to improve your life you want to strive you want to make something you want to rise? right you want to be ambitious and become something get it, you know good job or make more money that you're than your parents did or something like that, right? but what if i were to suggest to you that? the idea of wanting to improve yourself is actually a relatively new thing. in human history right and this idea of wanting to improve your life or improve society? suggests that number one it's possible. in other words think about new england puritans for a minute. you are not so stained and depraved from your sin nature. that you can't rise above it. and make something of yourself. you are not stuck in some type of a conservative caste system in which your bloodline determines whether or not you will be successful or not. if you reject that idea. you have drunk deeply. from the well, if you will of the enlightenment, so imagine, you know, imagine like a medieval peasant. okay, a medieval peasant pretty how does a medieval peasant just take a guess. how does a medieval peasant spend his or her day? so if you've studied medieval history, jack fields working in the field, right dylan you what dad to that. i was gonna say the same thing quietly. he's usually on a plow right or behind a horse. right plowing sowing reaping agricultural stuff, right? no medieval peasant say 18 to 22 year old medieval peasant is out there in the field saying. i may be on the field now, right but one day my kids they're going to go to college, you know, they're gonna become something. they're not even thinking that they're probably thinking i got to get the field done and if they're thinking thinking about anything other than their work, they're probably thinking like where am i going go when i die. right. how do i how do i get right with god? it's a completely different world view, but the idea that now improvement is possible. that one can actually change the world and this gets to your point caleb about x or exercising reason. is a new thing. it's not something that has been a defining marker of human history for tens of thousands and thousands of years. it emerges right in this moment. and again, it's a transatlantic idea. so it merges in you know, the high enlightenment in france and england and so forth but in the colonies this idea of improved this idea of the enlightenment is always connected with this notion of improvement. i want to talk about that here in a second. so so what i want to do today is i want to introduce some of the central tenets of the enlightenment in america and then over the course of the next couple days. we'll we'll dig even deeper into that. so today i want to really wrestle with this kind of more a 30,000 foot level, right? is the enlightenment? and how does the enlightenment what does the enlightenment look like in america in the colonies the british american colonies? okay, everyone clear where we're headed today. so i want to leave you with four essential. ideas today about the enlightenment in the first one. we've kind of already covered, but i want to i want to riff on it a little bit more. first the enlightenment is about self-improvement. progress if you believe in progress if you believe that you individually can improve yourself or that society can progress? you're in the enlightenment camp. now again, think about this in the context of the 18th century the idea that you can overcome the limits. of the world what are some limits that are placed on people's lives in the 18th century? or even in the 17th century. what limits people? well okay, does wealth limit you? i would think well food would be something that would allow you to do all kinds of things. most people can't do when you look lack of lack. okay, good lack of wealth, right? so so poverty or or not having money right could be a limit placed on you and certainly there were many in what we call in colonial america the lower sort, right who were limited by lack of money and lack of opportunity as a result of not having money good. what else? what are the limits are placed on your life jackson you're the religion that you practice. how does religion serve as a limit? if you're living say in puritan new england and you are say a catholic. you have no chance to do anything. good luck. yeah. or you know, i mean you know messiah university is a christian university many of you. if not, all of you are christians right does your does your christian faith place any limits on your life? i mean if you're going to say i'm a christian, is that going to place any kind of limits on you? of course, it will. right now you might want to go like commit adultery. right, and you can do it you're free to do it, but hopefully as a christian you might say i don't think that's a good idea because the scripture church tradition or whatever says that that's wrong. what do you mean? what do you mean? i can't commit adult you. i'm free. right. yeah, you technically aren't going to go to jail for. but christianity has placed a limit on you if you're serious about your faith. so religion becomes a kind of limit right the whole very notion of the puritan idea of total depravity. the calvinist idea is a limit because it suggests you are so depraved. that you can't rise above that the only what for calvinists what's the only way you can improve your life? and rise above the limits. well yes, but while you're living you're right. nicky dying. is that yeah, but while you're living. go ahead andrew like if god rescues you from yeah yourself. yeah, if you're safe if you're if you're if you're christian god can lift you above the sin, but only god could do that. you don't have to human potential to do that in puritan calvinism. right because your will is so broken and sinful that there's nothing you can do apart from god helping you. that's what the puritans believe the enlightenment will challenge that notion and say that your sinful nature has not broken you to such an extent that you can't rise above it through exercise of reason through hard work through individual effort, right? this is a new thing. in the history of the world that we haven't seen before progress. so enlightenment must always be understood when we talk about it in terms of self-improvement must always be understood. in the context of what it is challenging and it's challenging in older christian protestant and catholic. worldview of what is possible for human beings? now, let me illustrate this one more way. in a christian worldview say the middle ages. right or the puritans where is history moving? where's history ultimately going to end? with direction is it going? where's the ultimate sort of you know we use this word tea loss, right? what is the end of history in a christian worldview asa? all right, the rapture, let's be that's specific. let's be more general. what is it? what is it? jesus coming back. yeah the return of jesus right or the return of god will come and will will end it all. right that's kind of the christian what we call teleology. that's where history's moving. that's what christians of all the eastern orthodox catholic protestant, right? they all believe that history is ultimately moving towards god wrapping it up. we call this theological. theologically we call it eschatology, right the the end times when god will bring an end to his creation, right? the enlightenment has a completely different understanding of human history. and the way history is moving right because if progress is the ultimate goal of human history? histories ultimately moving towards the overcoming. of all limits right if we just apply reason. if we just apply our minds. educate ourselves learn new things knowledge gain new knowledge right in enlightenment knowledge is not fixed. you see what i mean by thick knowledge if you live in the middle ages, where do you find knowledge? the bible or the church, right? so there's only a certain amount of knowledge as it's contained in a book or an official church teachings, but the enlightenment suggests that knowledge is progressive you can you can always apply reason and come up with new knowledge. through experimentation through more thinking. right. so ultimately history in an enlightenment perspective is moving towards the overcoming of all limits through the application of reason. this is what we mean by improvement. like if you apply yourself and apply your education your rational ability you can rise above whatever weakness you have because you're poor or because you were born a certain way or so forth. right so in the enlightenment idea history is just you know, there is kind of no end ultimately, you know in its purest form. i should say. we're going to reach some kind of utopia where all limits will be overcome all disease. all you know unethical things. hey, we will even cheat death. right as long as we apply reason we'll figure out some way to cheat death. that is the teleology of the enlightenment. that is the way history is moving. so when you hear people say you're on the right or the wrong side of history, usually what they're saying is if you don't believe in progress you're on the wrong side of history. right and we had the you know, we can get into that today, but but i don't want to i don't want delft i we could get into that another time. i don't want to delve into that. so the enlightenment is about self-improvement one more point. i want to make about this before i go to the next slide. the enlightenment is often described as a very individualistic effort. if you apply reason you will improve right you will if you get educated. right if you get a degree or study something for a particular time, you will improve your life. you'll gain knowledge and so forth and that's true. but one of the things that's really interesting about the enlightenment. we see some of this in europe too, but in america is the enlightenment america is often. cultivated in communities so you have later on we'll talk about next class. we'll talk about benjamin franklin's gentel. remember i mentioned that some of you are at my convocation address that i gave months ago. i talked about the gentle right this this group of ordinary tradesmen. what was ben franklin's trade? he was a printer right? i mean you think of ben franklin is sitting in continental, you know, the continental congress, but when ben franklin came home from work every day, he had ink all over his hands. he had to clean up. here's what he was a tradesman. he was a worker he would gather with a bunch of other artisans like blacksmiths and carpenters and so forth. they met once a week in this club called the genteau and they described the club as a club for mutual improvement. there's no better enlightenment definition in that right a club for mutual improvement that get together. they read a text together and talk about it. someone would like present a paper that they wrote and they would debate it and so forth, but you see this over and over again that the enlightenment is both an individual effort, but the enlightenment improvement self-improvement always comes within some kind of community as well. so there's my first premise of the enlightenment the enlightenment is about self-improvement. second this one's a little more complex. and lightened people people who are enlightened were able to apply employ reason a necessary check. to the individual passions when you think about check what do you think about that? we're check. like to check them down. yeah good checks and balances, right? why do you need checks and balances? because if one if one branch of governments, they're passions run wild they need to be controlled and checked by another branch of government. right so here we're suggesting that reason needs to be checked a reason needs to check the passions. now if you were in college in the 18th century. if you were a student at one of the 18th century colleges and there weren't many we're you know, yale or harvard yale king's college. which later becomes columbia the college of philadelphia, which later becomes university of pennsylvania william and mary was around then i'm probably missing probably missing one or two here. i can't remember. in your senior year you would take a class with the college president. right, and that usually a minister and the class would be titled moral philosophy. which essentially would be ethics? right moral philosophy and there'd be a unit in that class on the discipline of faculty psychology. faculty psychology and basically in that unit you would study. the human faculties now one of the things you would learn in that class if you were taking it. your senior at a college you're getting educated, right which would be in a very small minority of the population right is you would learn that there are two dominant passion two dominant faculties. anyone know what they are? take a guess from looking at the screen. what are the two dominant faculties that all humans possess according to this 18th century faculty psychology dealing? and passion reason and passion i you are born with of these faculties. and you have to cultivate the other one. which one are you born with? passion, right, you know think about a baby. you know a baby doesn't like, you know, if the baby has to go to the bathroom and needs its diaper change or needs food, right? the baby is not making a kind of rational choice like oh mom's busy now. i'll come back to her later. you know or something like there's no reason involved right the baby starts to cry because it's rational faculty has not been cultivated yet. right so what you would learn in this class, is that the point of being an educated person? is to make sure that you train your rational faculty. so that it's strong enough. to put down usually they're described as the unruly passions. so in some ways the rat your reason your rational faculty is like a muscle think about lifting weights, right? you want to build that muscle and make it stronger and stronger. so when passions arise? that are going to get you into trouble. unruly passions you can rationally think this through and temper them control them. right you ever like i often use this illustration you ever ever talk to someone who's like they're dating someone or something that they know. it's just a bad relationship, you know, and then but i love them. you know, i'm in love, you know, what do you mean? well, this is just a terrible relationship for you if you were thinking clearly right you would know. this is a bad abuse of whatever relationship but but we're so, you know, oh, but we've been together so long one is the passions right? your friend is exercising reason and he's you to exercise reason right that this is bad. if you're an educated person, you're always your reason your reason your rational capacity. your rational faculty is going to be strong enough to suppress those urges. that's why we need educated people the founding fathers and the 18th century colonial enlightenment people that that's why they believed we need educated people. we need somebody to tell the people who are storming the capital on january 6th that that's a bad idea control your passions if they were here today. that's what they would say, right. control yourself so the whole idea was you want to be an enlightened person? and thus you have to educate yourself. to do that you have to train that muscle. there's always this war going on in the human psyche. the enlightenment teachers would say this this professor would say to you in the 18th century. and one and remember these are all religious colleges too at this point at least so the passions where they going to lead you. religiously if you're christian say we're the passions going to take you. if they get to out of control port sin, right, so there's even something christian about training irrational faculty because you can realize like this is not a good idea what i'm doing right now. but of course if you you know if you never were educated if you don't if you're rational faculty is not built up. the 18th century enlightenment thinkers would say this professor would say in your class. you're just going to do stupid things. you're going to go off and and you know be followed by your passions and they're going to lead you into bad places. so there's a kind of moral component to this. that's why you're studying this by the way in moral philosophy. in an ethics class if you're living in the 18th century and you're part of one of these colleges. right questions on that everybody clear on the second point so self-improvement and they're all they will build off each other right self-improvement also has everything to do with reason educating oneself controlling the passions because that's what true improvement is. third like they're getting even more more wordy now. to be enlightened one needs to direct their passions, right? we've defined what those are. away from parochial concerns and toward a universal love of the human race. what do we mean by what do i mean when i say parochial concerns here? what do you think about when you think about parochial concerns? what is where parochial mean? test your kind of sat vocabulary knowledge. yeah asa kind of like more individualized like your individual like things that pertain deal. okay. yeah. so parochial people who are parochial tend to be, you know, naturally kind of selfish or narcissistic, right? this is my world and i don't want to see anything beyond it right parochial good anyone else want to take a stab at that parochial? narrow in their understanding. yeah kind of narrow like limited, you know, you're not seeing the bigger picture. you're just kind of focused on your own kind of kind of identity or your own issues right? you don't see yourself as part of something bigger than yourself. right is the idea so when we think about you know, one of the things i failed to say earlier, we think about the enlightenment. we're really thinking about the philosophy of mud of modern life. right modernity as we often describe it right modern life. and it's this idea that you always enlightenment people always appeal when they're making an appeal whether it be a political appeal or religious appeal, whatever it might be cultural something cultural. they're always appealing. to universal principles that all human being share this gets to your point earlier alexis about about locke and rights, right? a person if a person is consistent and you know, we haven't even touched the idea about how consistent people are about these enlightenment ideas, right because they're really consistent. we might you know, we might have a very different world in the 18th century particularly when it comes to things like slavery and and injustice and you know so forth. so they took the we're talking in we're talking up here, right? we're we're gonna next couple classes. we're gonna break this down to see how this actually looks on the ground. right if their consent if these enlightenment thinkers are consistent if modern the modern is consistent, but locke said right we are all endowed with natural rights now by a creator with natural as jefferson right with natural rights, so we all have them. by the virtue of the fact that we're human beings. we all have rights. so when you make it appeal you appeal to things that everybody holds in common? not the things that make people different. right, so, you know someone who is embracing a kind of enlightenment brand of politics say today would appeal not to a particular identity group right particular racial group or particular, you know religious group or you know something else particular class right? they would appeal to say we need to come together as a human race. and thus we're going to have differences. but we need to build a society around what makes us the same. right so that's what i mean by we need to move away. the enlightenment says right. we need to move away from these parochial local concerns. sometimes they're described as local attachments. right the things that make us unique from other people, they're fine. but in order to advance society and improve society, we all have to come on board with the things that make us the same so these are universal appeals to rights. right would be an enlightenment approach, right? we all have rights and to the degree that you're not respecting. everybody's rights in your society. that is a degree to which you're enlightenment principles are failing. like if you believe in the enlightenment, but you don't give rights to a certain group of people in your society. don't talk to me about the enlightenment because you're not consistently applying it. is what the 18th century thinkers would say. right, so so i think the enlightenment would reject again. we're not here to judge it or we're just trying to understand it, right the enlightenment would reject kind of a kind of identity kind of politics right or an ident way, you know in which people understand themselves based on a particular race or gender or class or religion and they would want to think about everything that everybody has in common. universal love of the human race right not universal love of one particular part of the human race, but you know, this is why this is why tom payne in the american revolution if you remember reading common sense in another class, right? this is why he talks about himself as a citizen of the world. i'm not a citizen of a nation a town a community some local parochial place. i'm a citizen of the world. right because i align myself with the with the human cause now again, next couple days. we'll we'll we'll think about some of the critic critiques of this it will think about the way in which 18th century people may be disagreed with the enlightenment and so forth. but this is this is the idea. questions on that so again by this point, we've got one more to go here a couple more to go one more i think but but at this point, you know, we're starting to see the enlightenment. hopefully is a little more relevant to your life. it gives you something to think about a little bit more than just. you know. bunch of kind of elite white guy sitting around in a coffee shop in paris. he who are who are being controlled by, you know being funded by the king. right. it doesn't seem as distant because all of these are issues reason over passion self-improvement whether or not our identity should be rooted in a particular parochial kind of understanding of who we are some kind of universal industry. these are all these are all ideas that modern life in modern life where debating today. right. these are the this is this is the you know, suddenly enlightenment the modernity becomes much more relevant to us. let's say you have to agree or disagree with it. but realize how much these ideas have perhaps influenced. influenced you and how these ideas again are relatively new. last point i want to talk about here and that is the enlightenment in america always existed in conversation and in compromise with the deeply held christian faith of the american people. now we've talked about three different colonial societies so far. british colonial regions, right was probably you know, it's probably not the best exercise to do but it might be helpful right now. try to rank them in terms of you know, the role that religion played in the development of these societies. what would be the least religious of the three colonial societies? we've looked at so far jackson, virginia, virginia what i make an argument jackson, i mean they were anglican. yeah, there wasn't really any established like churches. nobody really practiced the fate. okay. that's somewhat stereotypical, but i see where you're going right? i mean there wasn't established church the anglican church people did go they practice. so whatever you're defining practice at the same time. no, you're right. right, the the you want add to that no. they're more focused on commerce and making money for yeah, the larger ethos you jackson. i think you're exactly right is not religion. so your answer is is correct, right? i think that virginia the chesapeake is one of the kind of you know religion is there but it's not, you know, absolutely kind of essential to the kind of ethos and the culture of the colony good. what would you say is second? asa my neck, okay, why make a case? i think like they're the fact that there's more religious freedom made it so that like religion was less like a universally shared part of everyone's culture. it was more like your own religion was more of like an individual thing rather than like a shared cultural experience that everyone had and also i think there was similarly to virginia bigger focused on commerce and trade yeah, i think i think you know this gets to the motivations for why william penn founded it, right? there's this economic kind of motivation right this kind of economic liberal motivation to make money and as well as to you know celebrate religion, but in all diversity, right not one dominant kind of church good and then that leaves us with what new england in which you have a state church which are puritanism, right? you know it is a it is a deeply deeply calvinist religious society. but i think in all three regions. i think we find. you know deeply embedded in the mindset of the settlers is some kind of religious sensibility. right even in virginia. you have people going to church right? the anglican church is important to them, right they give their money to the anglican church, right? because it's a state church, you know in the mid-atlantic, you know religion becomes important because of the way it's it can be freely practiced, right? and of course new england where it's sort of saturates the the landscape the point is there is naturally going to be in in kind of the way. we think about the enlightenment in the high enlightenment, right? there's naturally going to be attention between religion and and the enlightenment and these reason right, so if you were to take the enlightenment to its logical conclusion. in terms of religious belief right forget about just forget about the colonies for a second. but if you were to take the enlightenment to its logical conclusion. where would you be religiously? dylan or you probably be landing on that people can like improve himself and be like morally good without. christ, okay. so where would you end up like how would i categorize that kind of religion? so dylan said if you didn't hear him, he said he said you could you could improve your life without any kind of christian faith, right or christ or god or right? so if you took that idea to its logical conclusion, where would you end up? yes humanism or what? atheism, right if everything's reason. and everything can only explain be explained by reason. you know, i guess you could try to apply reason to kind of prove the existence of god, but ultimately christianity in all religions do have a certain dimension of faith to them right believe right, which is tends to be a very irrational idea. right. i mean miracles miracles are an irrational idea you realize that. like the idea that a supernatural being can come into your life come into your town or whatever and and do something that violates the laws of reason in science. that's irrational. that's not an enlightenment thing, right? but i'm guessing you know, there are not guessing there are millions and millions of people all around the world, especially in the united states today. but also there were thousands intensive thousands of people in colonial america who believed who believed they could improve themselves. they wanted to get educated. they want to control their passions. they wanted to be citizens of the world. and i believed in miracles. right and they believe god answered prayer. and they believe god interjected they believed in god period right so one of the things that i want to do next classes, i want to break this down even further. i want to sort of think about the wet the let you know the degrees to which these religious sensibilities either accept or reject, you know, the the idea of the enlightenment. so let's take an example here. let's just say you're living in massachusetts and in the 18th century, there's an earthquake. right and if you were living in a pre-enlightenment world, we've talked about this i think at some point this semester if you were living in a pre-enlightenment world. how would you interpret that earthquake? what would be your response? guys like this pleased with you or your society, okay? god has done something here. that's to punish us. god is displeased. we're not fulfilling the covenant. we're not sustaining the city on a hill people aren't becoming visible saints, right? god is punishing us by making the ground quake. right and destroying buildings is that a very enlightenment way of understanding? an earthquake no now after the enlightenment how much you understand that earthquake say in let's say the earthquake happens in like 1700 and 1750 when the enlightenment has had more profound effect on new england culture how much you understand the earthquake? or how might an enlightenment thinker scientists understand the earthquake, what would they need to do to make sense of why this earthquake happened? i mean, none of you are geologists. that's why you're being so quiet. but let's take a stab at it. like what would you have to figure out dylan? you're the scene afterwards and try to examine the ground they i don't know if they had i any idea of like seismic activity at that point. but yeah you i don't put whatever the 18th century equivalent of the richter scale was right you pull that out. you know you you measure the ground you do scientific experiments and you say, you know, you'd say well this earthquake happened because of these geological reasons right very enlightenment rational way of thinking about an earthquake now. does that mean that the earthquake didn't happen because god. again, we're thinking as an 18th century puritan here. right? does that mean the earthquake didn't happen because god is is punishing us. could be both. right in other words you have this idea that still god brings natural disasters to punish us. and you're going to try to understand the earthquake in terms of science. this is what i mean when i say. you can't pull the enlightenment. this is what it's life is like on the ground. you can't pull the enlightenment. you pull science historically. now you could do it right but in the 18th century people did not they did not pull the enlightenment out of their religious world views. now the enlightenment could criticize those religious worldviews. but ultimately most people access the enlightenment alongside of their religious worldviews so i'm guessing back to let's bring this to 21st century. i'm guessing all of your christians. right or some of you i'm not going to tell you to raise your hand, right? but if you're christians, right and you probably are because you came to messiah. you know, you probably believe that god answers your prayers or god is present or god is providential or some you know, you believe somehow god is active in the world. right but when i asked you if you want to improve yourself you all raced your hand. right. it means like you believe you have the ability. to improve yourself now some of you might say, well the only reason i do is because god helps me. right, but the very fact that you want to study something suggests that and you want to make something of yourself suggests that you believe you can do it. and maybe you can even do it. maybe you separate that part of your life from even, you know christianity or christianity right you get educated and you're christian on sundays or whatever. this is what i mean when i talk about the way in which the enlightenment in the 18th century is always working alongside of the worldview. it doesn't destroy the christian worldview of the people. it doesn't undermine it. but it works alongside of it now again, you might say like you know, you could critique that you could say well this is not you know rational like how could you believe that? how could you believe in science and believe in god right? that's not our goal here. our goal is try to understand the 18th century world question. did you say that this is kind of like the beginnings of like the foundation for the idea of separation of church and state because like these are two important aspects of life and they can coexist but they shouldn't necessarily intermingle. yeah, that's a great question. so is this the beginning of the separation of church and state? i mean, you know, you don't normally think about it that way but i think if you're a person of the enlightenment you believe that the state is ultimately a secular. a secular entity right because the state government is built not upon. the divine right of kings right in other words, you know got government is built on god. right. it's not built on like, you know, god created america as a christian nation or something like that. right government is based on what alexis what did you say at the beginning of class? what is government based on like freedom like your own individual rights liberism natural rights? right if you read the declaration of independence, there's nothing in the declaration of independence or the constitution about you know, your your god, maybe your rights come from god, but ultimately you build your society not upon theology. or the teachings of the church. you don't have a state church right? you have a society built on enlightenment principles. john locke's natural rights again now again, the founders believe that those rights came from god but you built your society on these universal back to the universalism right these universal principles while religion. then is a kind of ear in some ways an irrational category not completely but some ways an irrational category that the two shouldn't mix. right or that the enlightenment and all its power of natural rights government. i should not limit the right of people to worship and get in their face and tell them how they should conduct their spiritual lives. so so the separation of church and state is in many ways. is a kind of enlightenment idea? because the united states is one of the first nations that has anything like that the colonies even you know, the colonies are not separation of churches. they have state churches, right? yeah. other questions yeah, no the idea of deism very popular during the 18th century. yeah, so the question is wasn't dism popular and that's what i want to start class on. we're wrapping up here, but that's what i want to start class on on monday. right. i want to think about what are then all the options one could have when you integrate the enlighten this fourth point right when you integrate the enlightenment and religion. right. what are those options look like? well, if you're a ds, then you believe that god doesn't god created but doesn't allow any kind of supernatural activity after that. that's pretty heavy leaning towards which side enlightenment or yeah, the enlightenment right? if you are one of these people who say like yeah, like i believe we need to check the richter scale on that earthquake, but it's really god, you know, yeah, i understand scientifically why the earthquake happened but it really happened because god's punishing us you might be on the other side of that enlightenment religion nexus, right if you want to call it that but nevertheless you're still the enlightenment is still happening in conversation with spiritual religious things there's not much religion left with deism, right? there's still a lot of religion left with the with the earthquake example so again the goal here today is to get us started. we're going to spend two more class periods on the enlightenment and we're gonna really dig in now what this looks looks like on the ground. right, but these are the big principles that we're going to be operating on at operating with as we start to think about the enlightenment and as a develops in america and what that what that eventually looks like. okay. good. see you friday. i'm sorry monday. good job guys.g/history. i want to thank you all for coming to the hermitage this evening and want to welcome you i'm howard cattell and i have the privilege of being the president and ceo of the andrew jackson foundation. and we're so happy to have you here tonight for our third history and quirked series our third of our series tonight. let me put it that way. better look at my notes. these informal events these informal events are intended to offer you glimpses of united states history. as it relates to andrew jackson's america.

Related Keywords

Virginia , United States , Paris , France General , France , United Kingdom , Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , Frenchmen , America , American , British , David Hume , John Locke , Tom Payne , Asa Christian , Benjamin Franklin , Ben Franklin , Thomas Jefferson ,