The Enlightenment and Enlightened Despotism

This is Unit Six of Western Civilization Two, part two of two: six procedures on the Enlightenment, one of them the exam's sample question on Wollstonecraft, and the chain that runs from Newton to seventeen eighty-nine. Part one ended with the disruption that came despite the philosophes' intentions. This part pays off the unit's governing idea, a reform that dissolved its own ground, by drilling the way the exam tests it: six philosophes by the question each answered, the century's books in order, Kant read as a habit of mind compatible with obedience, Wollstonecraft read for the position the exam expects, the despots' reforms sorted by what each changed, and Poland's partitions read as a map. Then the chain. By the end you will be able to classify a philosophe and sequence the century. To read Kant and Wollstonecraft. To classify a reform and read the map. And to state how reason undermined what it did not attack.

Two procedures: six philosophes sorted by one question each, and the books and reforms placed between the Principia and the Revolution.

Six thinkers, six questions.

WC2 0528 Classifying a Philosophe by Position: Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hume, Smith

Six philosophes, six questions: where authority comes from, how power is arranged, what should be mocked, what governs behavior, how wealth grows, and what sovereignty is. Government by consent, revocable when it breaks the law: authority, Locke. Legislative, executive and judicial held apart: arrangement, Montesquieu. Superstition and the Inquisition ridiculed while the masses keep their God: mockery with limits, Voltaire. Passion rules, miracles are impossible, and commoners are not to be trusted with politics: behavior, Hume. A free market guided by an invisible hand: wealth, Smith. The general will, to which citizens devote themselves: sovereignty, Rousseau. Two traps: Locke and Rousseau both use the contract, but Locke's people lend power and Rousseau's people are the power; and Montesquieu is the witness's, so the separation of powers has no anchor locus.

Sixteen eighty-seven, seventeen fifty-one, seventeen eighty-nine.

WC2 0529 Sequencing the Enlightenment, 1687 to 1789

Two fixed points, the Principia of sixteen eighty-seven and the Revolution of seventeen eighty-nine, with the Encyclopédie's first volume in fifty-one as the midpoint. Then place: The Spirit of the Laws, forty-eight, three years before the Encyclopédie; Beccaria, sixty-four, before the Encyclopédie finished in seventy-two; the first partition of Poland, seventy-two, its last year; The Wealth of Nations, seventy-six; Joseph's serf decree, eighty-one; Kant's essay, eighty-four; Wollstonecraft, ninety-two, after the endpoint. Newton, Montesquieu, the Encyclopédie, Beccaria, the partition, Smith, Joseph, Kant, the Revolution, Wollstonecraft. Three dates rest on the witness where the anchor is silent or wrong, Montesquieu, Joseph's decree, and Wollstonecraft's ninety-two; the order holds.

Two readings: Kant's essay in three moves, and Wollstonecraft's Vindication for the position the exam expects.

Definition, diagnosis, limit.

WC2 0530 Reading Kant's "What Is Enlightenment?"

Kant's essay of seventeen eighty-four, read at Fordham, makes three moves. The definition: enlightenment is release from self-incurred tutelage, the inability to use one's understanding without direction from another, and the motto is Sapere aude, have courage to use your own reason. The diagnosis: laziness and cowardice keep most of mankind under guardians, because it is so easy not to be of age when a book understands for you, a pastor has a conscience for you, and a physician decides your diet. The limit, which the anchor stresses: the public use of reason must always be free, the private use in an office obeys, and Kant praises a king whose motto is argue as much as you like, but obey. The trap is to read Kant as a revolutionary; the essay is the Enlightenment's self-portrait, bold in thought and muted in politics. Courage to use one's reason is Kant; the general will is Rousseau.

The Revolution's promise, extended.

WC2 0531 Reading Wollstonecraft: The Position the Exam Expects

The exam asks which statement best represents Wollstonecraft's position, and the answer is that the liberating promise of the Revolution must be extended to women. Ask what she claims, what she blames, and what she demands, from Fordham's edition of the Vindication of seventeen ninety-two, paraphrased. She wishes to persuade women to acquire strength of mind and body and calls the soft phrases of sentiment and delicacy synonyms for weakness: the claim is that women are rational creatures kept in perpetual childhood. She says ingenious arguments excuse the tyranny of man by holding that the sexes should aim at different characters, and denies women any deficiency of mind: the blame falls on education and custom, not nature. She writes that the sacred rights of humanity are violated by insisting on blind obedience: the demand is that the rights of man be the rights of humanity. The distractors describe other people: fear of revolutionary chaos and defense of inherited privilege are Burke; women confined to education or to husband and children is the position she attacks.

Two procedures: five kinds of reform sorted by the question each answers, and the map of Poland read by side, order and remainder.

Who works, who is tried, who worships, who serves, who is taught.

WC2 0532 Classifying an Enlightened Reform: Serfdom, Torture, Toleration, Exams, Schools

Five kinds, one question each: who works the land, how the accused are treated, who may worship, who holds office, and who is taught. Serfs on royal lands freed while noble lands stand: serfdom, partial, Frederick. Full legal freedom extended to serfs and then undone by landlords: serfdom, complete and reversed, Joseph, on the witness. Torture banned and rich and poor under one law: the accused, Beccaria's program adopted by several monarchs. The Church made a tool of the state and toleration extended: worship, Joseph again. A bureaucracy entered by examination: office, Frederick. Russia's first girls' school: teaching, Catherine's Smolny. Every case shares a limit: none touched the monarch's power, and only Joseph touched serfdom on noble land, which is why his reforms did not last. What the despots did not do is surrender authority.

Which side, which order, what was left.

WC2 0533 Reading a Map of the Partitions of Poland

Three questions read the map: which power took which side, in which order the slices fell, and what was left. The sides: Prussia the west and north, linking Brandenburg to East Prussia across the gap unit three's map showed; Austria the south, Galicia; Russia the east, the largest share every time. The order: seventy-two, a slice from each edge; ninety-three, Prussia and Russia only, after Poland's reform constitution of ninety-one alarmed them; ninety-five, everything remaining, Warsaw to Prussia. What was left: nothing, a state partitioned out of existence in the witness's words, until unit fourteen's map restores it in nineteen eighteen. The anchor names only the first and last partitions, so the middle color is the witness's; and Poland's partitions are not the Holy Roman Empire's dissolution, which comes under Napoleon.

One capstone entry: the chain from Newton to seventeen eighty-nine, and how reason removed the reasons for a society it never attacked.

They removed the reasons for it.

WC2 0534 Reason Against the Society of Orders: How the Enlightenment Undermined What It Did Not Attack

The exam's fourth band asks what Enlightenment thought was, what enlightened despotism did, and how Poland was partitioned, and the anchor's answer joins them: a movement that meant to reform monarchy strengthened some monarchs and dissolved the ground under all of them. The thought came from Newton: if nature ran on rational laws, so must human nature, and the philosophes looked for the laws of learning, government and wealth. Locke found consent and the blank slate; Montesquieu, on the witness, the separation of powers; Voltaire wit against superstition; Hume passion and no miracles; Smith the invisible hand; Rousseau the general will. A reading public, salons run by women, the Encyclopédie and a smugglers' underground carried it to a glassworker. Their politics stayed muted: censorship, distrust of commoners, and an ideal of an enlightened king under reasonable laws. The despots obliged on their own terms. Frederick hosted Voltaire, freed serfs on royal lands and staffed his bureaucracy by examination; Catherine corresponded and schooled girls at Smolny; Joseph, on the witness, freed the serfs and saw the landlords undo it; Beccaria's program ended torture. None surrendered power, and the same three despots carved up Poland in seventy-two, ninety-three and ninety-five, because an elective monarchy with a paralyzed diet could not defend itself against neighbors who had read the same books. The disruption came anyway. Once a king's legitimacy rested on fair laws, his subjects could judge him; once privilege had to be deserved, nobles had to justify it; once revealed religion was dismissed, the First Estate lost its ground. Rights of man became abolitionism, and Wollstonecraft in ninety-two demanded them for women. The philosophes did not attack the society of orders. They removed the reasons for it, and in seventeen eighty-nine France found there were none left.

Look at what you can now do. You can classify six philosophes by the question each answered, and place the century's books between the Principia and the Revolution. You can read Kant's three moves and say why he is not a revolutionary, and read Wollstonecraft for the answer the exam expects: the Revolution's promise extended to women. You can sort five reforms and name the one thing no despot surrendered, and read Poland's map by side, order and remainder. And you can state the paradox, reason against a society it did not attack, which is this unit's one idea. Unit seven opens on the bankruptcy that turned ideas into events.