Enlightenment Roots - Introduction

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Disputatio
Disputatio. Central to scholasticism was the disputatio, a method of assessing knowledge and resolving contradictions. Typically, a master would choose the Bible or some other ancient text which would serve as the starting point for a subject of investigation. Contradictions within or between texts would be used to generate two opposing arguments. The aim was to reconcile these arguments using deductive reasoning and show how, in fact, the texts were in agreement.
Hierarchy of Heaven
"There is an essential hierarchy of ‘souls’ ... God is incorporeal and pure actuality. Angels are incorporeal and pure intellect...but imperfect. Man has a reasoning soul and a corporeal body: he is endowed with free will ... Animals have an animal soul and physical senses (but) neither reason nor free will. Plants have a vegetative soul ... They have no reproduction, no learning and no choice. Stones are wholly body and lack soul..." (Alan Kors ‘The Birth of the Modern Mind’)
Ferdinand Bol Moses Descends From Mount Siniai with The Ten Commandments painting - Moses Descends From Mount Siniai with The Ten Commandments print for sale
Moses Descends and the Ten Commandments (Ferdinand Bol). Codes of morality came to be seen in terms that were relative and grounded in human psychology not as absolutes that were divinely ordained. Intellectual scepticism treated with suspicion any truth claims not grounded in empirical evidence. Moreover, as the authority of government could no longer be so easily underwritten by divine prescription so questions revolving around the consent of the governed acquired greater potency.
Casanova’s Life and Times
'Wheel of Fortune' by Kev Butters, artist of 'Casanova in Paris: The Shadows of the King' - an online graphic novel created by Kev Butters and Dave Thompson.
Enlightenment Roots - Introduction
The Enlightenment was an intellectual and cultural movement that played a central role in the creation of a mental outlook commonly described as Western. The intellectual underpinnings of pre-Enlightenment Europe were challenged by thinkers in the late-sixteenth century and the seventeenth century who paved the way for the wider ranging assaults of the philosophes of the eighteenth-century. The end the Enlightenment is generally taken to be 1789, the start of the French Revolution.
Abraham - Wikipedia
Sacrifice of Isaac (by Caravaggio). Surrendering earthly happiness and well-being in the expectation of attaining paradise in the afterlife, was a commonplace for members of the Abrahamic traditions (Jews, Christians and Muslims) and rooted in their most fundamental conceptions of reality, as for millions it still is.
Church and state in medieval Europe - Wikipedia
For many generations societies were structured around strict hierarchies of commoners, priests and aristocrats in thrall to a supernatural cosmos that supervised and judged each moment of their lives.
Changeling - Wikipedia
Contrast that pre-Enlightenment European mind with the landscape of the European mind of today: an understanding that reality is grounded in what is material, observable and measurable as opposed to what can be deduced from authority, custom and tradition.
Scholasticism - Wikipedia
From the 14th century to the end of the 17th century the system of thought that dominated European schools and universities was known as ‘Aristotelian scholasticism’, or just ‘scholasticism’. In the 13th century, St Thomas Aquinas (1225 to 1274) demonstrated that it was possible to combine Christian theology and Greek philosophy, primarily Aristotelian, to create a coherent intellectual framework with which to make sense of the universe, including the mysteries and truths of Christianity.
Aristotle - Wikipedia
Aristotle. One of the key features of scholasticism was the Aristotelian system of causality, an essential tool in the investigation of the nature of the world. Aristotle was one of a number of thinkers to tackle the issue of causes with their ultimate aim being to understand why things came to be. This system was also known as the doctrine of the four causes: the material cause; the formal cause; the efficient cause; the final cause.
Great chain of being - Wikipedia
Christian theologians demarcated different existences and forms and thereby produced a scale of perfections otherwise known as a Great Chain of Being. At the top, in the heavens, is God, who is perfect, along with all other unchangeable beings. Below is the Earth and that which is changeable. The more qualities any substance possesses that are also possessed by God, such as love, spirit, wisdom or immutability, the higher up it will be on the Great Chain of Being.
Galileo Galilei - Wikipedia
Galileo Galilei (by Sustermans). At the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th we see the emergence of scholars such as Bacon, Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus and Descartes, whose ideas begin to undermine the old conception of reality. In the two centuries that followed humanity began to replace God at the centre of human concerns. The material world gained pre-eminence over the immaterial. Nature was seen to obey mechanical laws not the will of God, casting doubt on free will.
David Hume - Wikipedia
Painting of David Hume. Writers would resort to subterfuges to try and protect themselves. They would use pseudonyms, often in the name of a real person but who was now dead. Some, such as Hume, would have friends publish their works posthumously. Others would spread false information about the authorship of a text. To avoid the attentions of the censor, copies of texts would be hand-written rather than printed. Texts would also be printed abroad and smuggled back into France.