History of Ideas

Prof. Bruce Harvey

DATES: FROM LOCKE & ENLIGHTENMENT TO ROMANTICISM (AND ON THROUGH MARX)

1687 Newton's Principia Mathematica. Newton's theories of matter & motion seem to explain the workings of the universe--an optimistic sense of being able to control nature ensues. God no longer perceived as routinely intervening in nature; instead, the Deity has created a perfectly rational, harmonious cosmos (like a super-complex watch), and he is best known by understanding his creation, the natural world.

1690 John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding published. Main theory is that, although we have the capacity to reason, our minds are basically "blank slates" when we are born. There are no inborn ideas (traditional Christian notion of innate depravity, the inheritance of Adam and Eve's sin, loses validity for many intellectuals of the period). We gain knowledge only through experience and our environment. Consequently, education becomes very important--humankind and society can perhaps be perfected over time. Combined with Newtonian optimism, the "Age of Enlightenment" begins.

1690 Two Treatises on Civil Government published.

1692 Puritan Witchcraft trials in Salem, Mass. (rationality eventually wins out over mass hysteria; U.S. becomes more and more secular).

1717 Daniel Defoe publishes Robinson Crusoe (essentially, a story of Lockean man cultivating property).

1721 J.S. Bach completes the Brandenburg Concertos.

1735 Swedish naturalist Linnaeus publishes The System of Nature--descriptive system designed to classify all the plants on the earth, known and unknown, according to the characteristics of their reproductive parts.

1762 J.J. Rousseau publishes Emile, in which he sketches a method of education that would preserve the natural goodness of children by allowing relatively free expression of their inclinations. Rousseau's ideas support later "Romantic Rebellion".

1764 Mozart (aged eight) writes his first symphony.

1769 Watt patents the steam-engine.

1773 Captain Cook ("discoverer" of Hawaii) brings Omai, a native of the Polynesian island of Huahine, back to England, where he is entertained by the aristocracy and causes a sensation. Signals fascination with "noble savage"--a main theme of "Romanticism." By the end of the 18th-century, a very complicated and competitive international network of commerce and colonialism has emerged.

1776 Adam Smith publishes The Wealth of Nations: establishes "laissez faire" principle: capitalism is like a self-regulating clock, so no need to regulate working conditions.

1787 U.S. Constitution signed.

1789 Parisians storm the Bastille: English government clamps down on dissent. Fear of "mob rule" makes it difficult for workers to articulate grievances. Wordsworth, Blake, and other Romantic poets greatly enthusiastic about the democratical energy unleashed by the revolution.

1790 Edmund Burke publishes conservative-reactionary Reflections on the Revolution in France.

1793 Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette of France executed.

1794 Thomas Paine publishes scandalous Age of Reason (debunks Old Testament as superstitious myth).

1798 William Wordsworth composes "Tintern Abbey".

1804 Immanuel Kant, German "Idealist" philosopher, dies. Basic philosophical premise is that we cannot absolutely know "reality" because it is always shaped, a priori, by the mind's faculties. Will influence Romantic celebration of the shaping power of imagination.

1804 Beethoven composes his Third Symphony, "Eroica".

1807 Robert Fulton's steamboat.

1821 Napoleon (defeated in 1815) dies: the British Romantic Period more or less ends. "Captains of Industry" become the heroes of the Victorian Age.

1826 James F. Cooper publishes Last of the Mohicans.

1828 Andrew Jackson becomes U.S. President. "Orphan, frontiersman, horseracing man, Indian fighter, war hero, and land speculator, Andrew Jackson embodied the new American spirit and became the idol of the ambitious, jingoistic younger men who now called themselves Democrats. At its best, Jacksonian democracy meant an opening of the political process to more people (although blacks, women, and Indians still remained political nonentities). The flip side was that it represented a new level of militant, land-frenzied, slavery-condoning, Indian-killing greed" (qtd. from Kenneth Davis).

1830 Opening of Liverpool-Manchester railroad: allows for rapid transport of coal, etc. between industrial areas of England.

1832 First Reform Bill in England: extends vote to middle-class owners of property (but working classes must wait until 1867, when the Second Reform Bill passes).

1833 All slaves emancipated in the British Empire.

1837 Queen Victoria begins reign.

1838 First transatlantic steamship crossing.

1839 Opium War begins (ends 1842): England forces free trade upon China.

1843 Karl Marx meets Engels; during the 1840's widespread unemployment, depression, and famine leads to rioting throughout Europe; massive immigration from Ireland to U.S.

1844 Frederick Douglass publishes Narrative of the Life of FD.

1848 Marx and Engels publish The Communist Manifesto.

1851 The Great Exhibition in London--a celebration of the wonders of technological progress (world perceived--by the middle-class, that is--as dynamically changing, for the better).

1852 Otis invents the first elevator with a safety break (you'll see "Otis" on the Anderson Hall elevator control panels).

1853 Charles Dickens publishes Hard Times, a novel about exploited English factory workers.

1856 Bessemer announces new process for making high-quality, low-cost steel. When combined with the Otis elevator, this makes possible the modern skyscraper.

1859 Darwin publishes Origin of Species.

1861 U.S. Civil War begins.

1865 Lister introduces antiseptic practices in hospitals.

1876 Bell patents the telephone.

1879 Edison invents the incandescent bulb.

1880's Britain and European nations colonize Africa.

1901 Queen Victoria dies.

1917 Lenin leads the Bolshevik Revolution.

ROMANTIC versus ENLIGHTENMENT or CLASSICAL

Emotional/ Reasonable and Practical

Individualistic/ Public Responsibility

Revolutionary/ Conservative

Loves Solitude & Nature/ Loves Public, Urban Life

Fantasy/Introspection/ External Reality

The Particular/ The Universal

Subjective Perception/ Objective Science

Right Brain/ Left Brain

Satisfaction of Desire/ Desire Repressed

Organic/ Mechanical

Creative Energy-Power/ Form

Exotic/ Mundane

"Noble Savage"-Outcasts/ Bourgeois Family

Idealist Philosophy/ Materialist-Empirical Philosophy

ENLIGHTENMENT OR AGE OF REASON (1689-1780): ITS VALUES AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS

1) TRIUMPH OF RATIONALITY AND SCIENTIFIC ATTITUDE TOWARD NATURE

--1687: Newton's Principia Mathematica explains laws of physics. Nature can be understood rationally and controlled.

--Leads to Deism: philosophy that sees nature as vast mechanism (world like super-complex watch). Design in nature means there is a creator. Understand God by looking at marvelously ordered cosmos--all is interconnected.

--Also leads to use value of nature being emphasized (remember Locke's "rationally and industriously").

--1717 Robinson Crusoe: Lockian man, ingeniously transforms island. Does not see island life as picturesque.

--Drive to understand nature as system: thus knowledge accumulated and organized:

--Linnaeus in System of Nature (1735) catalogues plants: emphasis on order/classification

--scholars in France/ Encyclopediasts 1751-1766

--Encyclopedia Britannica first published in 1771

--Historical overall consequence: Science pragmatically applied = technological development = industrial revolution.

2) RATIONAL FREE-THINKING/SPECULATION ABOUT IMPROVING SOCIAL MECHANISM

--Laws of government, like Newtonian laws of nature, can be understood and rationally implemented. American Constitution adopted after rational discussion/public debate (Federalist/Anti-Federalist Papers).

--Human nature can be perfected if we are in right social environment.

--Locke's 1690 Essay Concerning Human Understanding: tabula rasa. Knowledge gained through sensory imput=hence environment/education important.

--Proto-anthropology via "discoveries" (Cook in Polynesian islands, etc.) emphasizes "progress" of societies from "savage" to "barbarian" to "civilized".

--Eventually, leads to French Revolution/ envisioning utopias = Marx (part of Enlightenment tradition)

3) RISE OF MIDDLE-CLASS AND COMMERCIAL/MIDDLE-CLASS VALUES

--Locke emphasizes the centrality of property (and powers that secure property).

--Individual increasingly known in economic terms than spiritual terms

--Franklin: "a penny saved is a penny earned"ÄÄgood ole Protestant work ethic

--Adam Smith The Wealth of Nations (1776) calls England an "island of shop-keepers"

ROMANTIC REBELLION (1780-1830, with Queen Victorian becoming queen in 1837, ushering in the Victorian era). The trajectory of Enlightenment continues into our era: only poets and writers and artists really rebelling against some of the negative consequences of Englightenment. Romantics tend to be anti-establishment.

1) DETACHED RATIONALITY/SCIENTIFIC ATTITUDE SEPARATES US FROM NATURE (AND MAY LEAD TO DANGEROUS ASSUMPTION OF PROGRESSÄÄSCIENCE CANNOT FIX EVERYTHING)

--Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), German "Idealist" philosopher: Basic philosophical premise is that we cannot absolutely know external "reality" because it is always shaped, a priori, by the mind's faculties.

--nature not just an extrinsic mechanism to be rationally understood/manipulated:

--nature evokes emotion/ our emotion may shape landscape

--landscape valued over land per se

--what is beauty? does it exist in subject or object--reality is in fusion not in inside/outside, or subject/object dichtomy

--natural/organic process valued over the technology or mechanical artifice

--Mary Shelly's Frankenstein (1818) demonstrates failure of mechanical to imitate nature

--John Keats: "poetry should come as naturally as leaves to a tree"

2) INDIVIDUAL (ENERGY/PERCEPTION/FREEDOM) MORE IMPORTANT THAN SOCIAL SELF OR SOCIAL STABILITY

--subjective, unique experience celebrated over public or objective values.

--"noble savage"/ rural or "primitive" cultures valued for simplicity and naturalness

--urban life deadens perception: walk in a field, not in a street (hang out by a pond like Thoreau)

--society corrupts: children and childlike innocence celebrated

--Jean-Jacques Rousseau: "We are born free, but everywhere are in chains"

3) ROMANTIC ARTIST TYPICALLY ALIENATED FROM MIDDLE-CLASS AND MIDDLE-CLASS VALUES

--Romantic artist alienated because poetry doesn't sell very well (no longer a patronage system: Locke had a patron)

--Romantic artist tends to be fascinated by

--his/her own psyche

--the exotic (the Orient, altered states of consciousness) or forbidden

--the heroic (Napoleon)

--with visionary thinking/ with subconscious processes/dream PAINTING

--Romantic artist celebrates spontaneity over convention, the routine

--Romantic artist likely to value spiritual intuitions over dogmas of established religion

--Romantic artist likely to be radically egalitarian

--keep in mind that all of society is not engaged in what could be called the “Romantic Rebellion”. It is mostly an aesthetic/philosophical counter-culture, with much variation in whether the writers/artists were accepted/appreciated in their own age or not.

Wordsworth, from "The Tables Turned" (1798) Blake, "And Did Those Feet" (ca. 1804-10)

One impulse from a vernal wood And did those feet in ancient time1

May teach you more of man, Walk upon England's mountains green?

Of moral evil and of good, And was the holy Lamb of God

Than all the sages can. On England's pleasant pastures seen?

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; And did the Countenance Divine

Our meddling intellect Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

Misshapes the beauteous forms of thingsÄÄ And was Jerusalem builded here,

We murder to dissect. Among these dark Satanic Mills?2

Enough of Science and Art; Bring me my Bow of burning gold:

Close up those barren leaves; Bring me my Arrows of desire:

Come forth, and bring with you a heart Bring me Spear: O clouds unfold!

That watches and receives Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,

Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand,

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England's green & pleasant Land.

1 Refers to ancient belief that Jesus came to England with Joseph of Arimathea. Blake adapts the legend to his own conception of a spiritual Israel, in which the significance of Biblical events are as relevant to England as to Palestine.

2 Either an allusion to industrial England or to a mechanistic, utilitarian world-view.