greetings this is dr mark rashaan and today we're looking at the enlightenment take a look at our questions and we'll get started this is going to be a lengthy lecture in part because i think that this is one of the most important subjects if not the most important subject that we cover in a world history course because what we're going to see here is a number of ideas and trends that will start to pave the way for the sentiments attitudes and the outlooks that we often define as of being a central part of our modern world now what is the enlightenment it is an intellectual movement and a philosophical movement throughout the broader 18th century really beginning in the late 1600s carrying on into the 1800s and it is one that is held together by a number of important authors collective public or widespread discussions about particular issues and facets of society mostly this is about individuals trading and sharing their ideas so-called republic of letters a network of really engaged uh authors philosophers social commentators who are not necessarily having their ideas dramatically widespread these rarely are you know best sellers but what they were doing starting to do is in engaging with one another and creating a broader network of social critics philosophers engaged in issues of trying to fix the society at large that's where we start to see this as a broader movement by the time we get to the end of the 18th century this is also a movement that is defining itself as the enlightenment the idea that they are going to now push aside centuries or at least an eternity of humans being confined by tradition superstitions and old practices that have gone unchallenged to now to really to say let's clear clear everything away start anew and how can we uh create a better society following the inspiration of the scientific revolution that said okay we have to kind of start again with our knowledge of the natural world this is what the enlightenment is now doing for a broader society we have to start again when we think about what makes a government efficient and protect the rights of individuals do individuals have rights we have to start again to kind of examine what those rights might be we have to start all over and agree think anew about how to conduct our economy how to conduct our laws the relationship between uh men and women the social hierarchies from nobility to commoners to slaves all this should be we need to kind of think anew and do away with these traditions no longer is an acceptable argument to say well why do we do this because it's tradition that no longer is tenable we have to really provide a rational argument for these institutions because one thing that's central about the enlightenment it is a focus on reason we're going to be saying that yes humans do their own senses and their own mental capabilities can tease out greater truths to create a better world using our own senses and using our own minds whether whereas we had seen particularly amongst the abrahamic traditions of judaism christianity and islam that had uh the mentalities that had dominated the medieval early modern period the argument was well truth comes from the divine we're really hopeless to kind of fix and reform the world outside ourselves it is only through divine intervention and the grace of god that we could achieve a better a more perfect society the idea here then is to critique uh every facet of the world around and while you have individuals saying you know be quiet and you know stop saying these things society's fine thank you very much uh um um please you know keep your opposition to yourself no what we start to see is a growing consensus opposition to a number of practices and so this uh emphasis of reason is important an emphasis of scrutinizing tradition at the core of the enlightened tradition an emphasis on natural rights remember we have discussed this before with hobbs and locke and others to say what are our rights in nature the argument here is to kind of create this thought experiment of what we have what rights we have in nature when we form associations together in simple communities what rights do we maintain what rights do we give up and this com philosophical experiment combined with the tradition of roman law that had argued that there should be rights that uh every human should have whether they are a patrician or an aristocrat or a common citizen or a non-citizen a foreigner a slave everyone should have basic natural rights that was a roman idea that now is exploding into a much broader meaning in this enlightened age and then of course you also have changes and critiques to religious practices uh the new developments in science begin uh to kind of shake the groundwork of uh religious institutions that had tried to say well if it is in the bible that is everything you need to know about the natural world now you're starting to explore other facets of the natural world sometimes they challenge uh biblical teachings or passages from the bible what you have therefore is a conservative population that in many ways will reject any new scientific innovation advancement and still maintain in this era you know at the world as at the center of all things but more and more people become rationalists to say science and faith can work together and even if you have to kind of move the margins here and there uh well they can actually work in together in a nice and tidy synthesis uh and in many ways learning science learning about the natural world is learning more about god's creation so you can find this harmony even at a time where we see pretty clear and long and sustained condemnations and denunciations of the practices of the catholic and lutheran and every other church in this era so this is an important uh but and we also have to remember that this is an era that sees this group in a small but active uh minority uh speaking out against practices within their society but the overwhelming population either is indirect in understanding them and the authorities the powers that be whether they are the church or the government or the aristocracies or anything else for that matter they are trying as best they can to keep those ideas out of public debates and they will banish books they will ban books they in fact even publicly execute some of these works in these big ceremonies of destroying this forbidden knowledge so this is a the censorship is something that these authors of the enlightenment all have to grapple with and while we will cover many of them and know their names most of their works are going to be done anonymously for fear of reprisal imprisonment et cetera et cetera but like with this salah here this gathering of uh prominent individuals to discuss matters of philosophy they're here reading a work by voltaire that's the bust of voltaire on uh in that marble stone statue there that is uh everyone kind of knows the work and knows they're talking talking about voltaire but his name might not be on that work for fear of um authorities uh cracking down so intolerance prescription banning books uh persecution these are all features of this age uh working against this push for a more rational uh society the epicenter of the enlightenment is in france and the reason why is because in many ways france is has been the most absolutist the most authoritarian but it's also a society that is relatively wealthy has a growing reading and engaged public that are seeing the world around them and particularly in constant conflict with a smaller less populated less wealthy british state that repeatedly defeats them in war and seemingly is much more balanced much more stable and the abuses in french society don't seem to be replicated in the same way in britain and so there is a a critique of france that they're not simply the greatest the friend the french state the french wealth french culture should be the leading light in europe really all it's done is seemingly spread uh um absolutism dictatorial authoritarian power uh rather than uh leading the society becoming more sophisticated um and leading the world uh in more favorable things so what you have broadly speaking is french society has a lot of wealth a lot of corruption and as we'll explore in later lectures that corruption imposes quite heavily upon the middle and lower classes in france uh and creates uh widespread debates usually in secret at first uh against all the problems uh in french society of its era a french monarchy where the individual in power doesn't seem to want to be in power and louis xiv certainly liked his power but he passes off power to louis xv a grandson and uh that individual wants to spend more time with his mistresses and not really engaged in in uh being a king what happens when you give all this power to a king and he doesn't really want to be king what's going on with that the church has uh he called this incredible wealth at a time most of the population uh are deeply impoverished uh why how was that work how come when you read a bible you talk about the humility of christ and you're surrounded by all the wealth and trappings of the church the time so there are a whole host of things that are causing real tension in france and in these broader debates then we start to see well if we had to start anew what would we change about for society how would we make a more rational government a rational church a rational state a rational culture rational economics all these things get debated and it allows france to kind of really theorize in a broad way at the same time britain had already made a number of reforms and ultimately we'll see most of the 18th century in this age of reason the british population sits back and says hey we did it we're the freest country in the world do we need to fix anything well we're freer than everyone else why would we fix anything so this is uh really helping create some of the underpinnings for why we start to see really radical new ideas in france and an era of kind of sitting back on one's laurels kind of something you know celebrating their doing their touchdown dance in britain and not really pushing and advocating new things something we'll highlight uh in uh the next couple lectures well to understand the origins of the enlightenment in france uh one figure that's uh of importance amongst many is madame amelie du is a french aristocratic woman meaning she is someone who's born into a family of wealth married into a family of wealth has a lot of independence in this era at a time of course when most women are lack any uh social or educational uh professional opportunities whatsoever you can always when you're rich as i think you'll probably learn ever increasingly over the years the rich don't really have to play by that game for this case though emily de chatelet is going to take her relatively important wealth and context to get an education and particularly in her interest in the mathematics and once she starts to learn these things and at to a high degree then she will create an opportunity for herself to write uh commentaries on the mathematical findings particularly in england she'll write a commentary on isaac newton's principia mathematica translating it from latin into french and then with the work of her friend confidant and perhaps lover uh voltaire she will help bring the principia mathematica and its significance uh to a french population making it much more easy to read so you get this kind of uh sparks notes or ask.com version of what the hell is the principia mathematica and so this is an important figure in her own life as she does as she publishes uh oftentimes the works of others or commentaries on other others and translations into french she will open up with a preface to say you know look if there's anything wrong with the work here or any ideas i get wrong well uh the fact the matter is you i didn't have a formal education had i been a man i maybe not would have made these mistakes in a society that prohibits educational opportunities for women hint and so it's a way for her to add a social commentary subtly into works about math and so she is a very important figure though tragically her career is cut short her estranged husband they reconvene she ends up becoming pregnant and in her 30s realizes she doesn't have the health uh to perhaps survive another uh labor with child and indeed she does die uh after uh um giving birth uh to her next child this ends a career that could have gone on for many more decades and done some more revolutionary things marie of course highlights uh the vulnerabilities for all women uh in society in this era even the wealthy well-connected aristocratic women well her close confidante is a voltaire seen in the larger portrait here and voltaire is of incredible significance because of this early worth work because of course he uses uh the desire to be a bit more like britain and its constitutional limited monarchy as an avenue in a way of challenging french society uh yes it's oftentimes kind of looking rosier over at another system elsewhere uh to critique your own uh that's something we still see in popular discourse today but it still is is grounded in real truths that french society is deeply corrupt and widely incompetent in a number of its practices and voltaire is in particular challenging uh uh issues of intolerance a lack of free speech the fact that he will live in a chateau right next to the swiss border in france and have enough friends i can tell him they're coming for you and so if he ever needed to he could flee across the border to safety in in switzerland uh nevertheless while he has this vulnerable position as a critique of government he is an absolute master of patronage and so he will be uh hob dubbing with high society throughout his prolonged career if you're going to host a party in the 18th century just invite voltaire if you got him you got yourself a party everyone's going to want to be around him his wit uh his uh charisma these are uh compelling things and he can therefore sit and dine with kings and emperors to say you know here's what i think about this silly idea that you do and everyone can laugh and the night rulers are going fun rather than saying okay off with his head uh and so this is incredibly capable individual who in many ways of course is allowing uh greater credibility to these type of social critiques and commentaries other prominent french and swiss authors include montesquiou up at the top here montesquieu is a gun a french aristocrat uh these are elites oftentimes criticizing elite culture he was uh grew up in a family interconnected into the um legal system of france uh was essentially a judge in his own right his critiques in the spirit of laws of 1748 a very seminal very important work because he's saying what's really wrong with the french government well all this power all this absolutist power is in the hands of the king right individual one individual person that makes the laws that has to enforce the laws has to interpret the laws all this is done in one individual and that's just going to pave the way for greater corruption there's there needs to be some type of balance power needs to be divided the ancient greeks had thought about dividing power into three and he advocates this yes you need a separation of powers the legislative to create laws the executive to enforce the laws and the judicial is to you know test whether those laws uh are fit within a wider legal framework this is the origins of our separation of powers that we'll see manifested uh in the 1770s and 80s uh hence why montesquieu is so uh critically important for us another figure that of course has uh both good and bad ideas uh uh that deserves our attention uh is jean-jacques rousseau who's a swiss unlike the uh the highest society folks of montesquieu and voltaire he is a commoner he's from a humble beginnings and he isn't the one to kind of say well i'm not gonna go amongst the elites and kind of laugh with them and enjoy uh a high society he of course sees much of uh the elite culture of the day is is deeply corrupt uh and certainly wants to fix it he's one of the first authors uh that uh is going to argue uh for a social contract far beyond what john locke had introduced what uh rousseau is going to say is really a government should represent the collective general will as he calls it of the people in this sense that you get this idea that a government works best when it is kind of working on behalf of this general will what we don't have in this era is a sense of democracy being a good thing democracy because it was only practiced in ancient athens and that ended up pretty bad and messy and all sorts of people died and socrates had to kill himself because he was philosophizing too much most people will spend for the last 2000 years have looked at democracy as well that just doesn't work you don't want to have just the people running things well what you have therefore is rousseau is the first person in this heir to say no really the government should be this not necessarily even a a voted by the people but should represent their collective will and we start to therefore see this emergence of an idea of public opinion uh and the wider public's desire for government having importance now we could talk a lot about the good things of versailles but we also need to highlight another important trend and this is outlined in many works when we focus on the issue of gender that in this age of enlightenment we will see not all the uh ideas that emerge are ones that certainly fit our modern mentality and rousseau is one who argues heavily for a separation of sexes you can't have everyone's kids raised up and enter into high society or society from birth because they will just adopt the corrupt nature of society you need kids to be separated to develop on their own to have a sense of independence to be in a private space and then they can have their own independent thoughts and they'll be better to challenge the corrupt nature of society well that's all fine and good but his argument is well it is the role of women to stay and home in that private space to look after the needs of children and men can enter in the public space and engage in economics and politics and so forth his separation of the sexes is going to be the defining philosophy for much of the 19th century in particular so even while it's coming from this idea of trying to challenge a corrupt society that can inculcate people from day one he's also introducing ideas that of course are marginalizing women in this broader social system but one of the great uh movements and projects of this age uh is also emerging in france in this era and it is the encyclopedia uh the encyclopedia what this is uh we've seen collection collections of knowledge before but denis did a row scene here one of the great figures the enlightenment this incredible commoner born middle class lower middle class that's going to just write write write and edit and edit and edit he's going to collect these volumes of book 28 volumes that he helps edit and create and gain sponsors for this is like where nowadays we kind of go back to kickstarter to this new uh kind of a very old system which isn't you just have a publisher publish everything and then make money uh you have this idea of going out and saying hey is i want to give me money to sponsor me to spend a very long time indeed working on this project of collecting the world's knowledge everything we can learn about everything we should be synthesized in these books and explained to a wider public why so that knowledge can't be hidden away how to build something how to create something how to to blow glass or make this type of furniture those are techniques privately controlled and information that that guilds keep secret nope let everyone do this so they can do this on their own uh what about uh what are the tenets of a particular religious faith oh your local church doesn't want you to think about other religions well here let's explain what they are and then you can make up your own opinion is this work free from bias oh absolutely not it's critical of absolute monarchy critical of the catholic church in its practices sometimes it also overly celebrates other equally corrupt things in trying to challenge french society at the time but what you have is even though this goes through periods of banishment and restriction it gains such support including by figures like madame de pompatour the principal and most influential mistress of louis xv that ultimately it will be published and it will be stopped for periods of time other people have to kind of pick up and champion this some editions have to spend a while being marginalized but all told then we get this incredible 72 000 articles diderot doesn't do it all himself he's just one of many people working on this but he's going to be a a chief contributor an incredible project the wikipedia of its age and a a real important achievement of the age of reason now what we have of course though is we have to discuss the fact that what does the enlightenment do in real time the fact that matter is is not a lot the idea that new ideas and new criticisms and many of which inform our modern viewpoint on on ideas uh well they don't overnight people just instantly adopt them what get rid of aristocracy and don't divide populations between uh elites and commoners sure why not let's just do that that just didn't just doesn't happen what you have though is slowly over time first and foremost the general public's opinions start to change and what we see in this moment is the growth of what has been called the public sphere what had existed before is few people engaged with the rule ideas of rulers if you're a farmer or peasant out on your own land when you say hey what do you what do you think of society nowadays they might be like well you know the fact that i can't access the mills to grind my wheat on saturdays because the no the my nobles abroad is just terrible you know fast forward a couple hundred years now you say how are things are you any opinions on what's going on the world yeah well you know we've got to fix the east india company's policy and how it relates to the government because i'm worried about a lot of the corruption we've got a lot of members of parliament that are making a lot of money there and i'm worried that that's informing our policies particularly getting us in another war with france right very different viewpoint thinking much more broadly now that's what the 18th century is about in new journals and articles and gazettes and magazines getting people in touch with the wider world the issues of the day and the issues of government where they can sit back in their uh not just in their taverns which was rarely done but now the new coffee house becomes the place where really animated individuals hopped up on caffeine like yours truly can discuss all their ideas and attitudes you can have articles read out even for people who are illiterate or don't read as much uh you can have uh bulletin boards and things where people can catch up on the news the day from far away places and so this broader engagement and a broader discussion of society is emerging in this era and it's the beginnings of an idea of public opinion an absolutist ruler wouldn't the answer to like hey you know the public opinion polls are showing that they don't really like this new war we're in who cares what the public thinks i'm the one in charge and i have been placed here by divine right that's the argument of absolutists in the past the idea that the general public was completely ignored had no role whatsoever to play in a wider society where everything was ruled from the top down that was certainly going to be challenged in this moment the public wants a greater say and it is even if they don't have a democratic means of changing the government they can create this wider consensus and opinions and oppositions and disruptions that those at the very top have to say fine okay we'll try to see what we can do to fix things there are of course other important elements to this changes in belief are really essential to this uh moving away from the kind of a pure knee-jerk violent animosity between uh various religious sects the idea to push for tolerance not just as a fine will let them practice what they want to practice but the idea that everyone should have a right to their own faith this is something that emerges in this era as are of course opinions about condemning the corrupt corruption of church practices and in condemning the way in which a church is corrupted it's also paving the way in which uh we start to see new religious faiths or a lack of faith in general emerge in this era one thing that's very important as a movement that you probably might have known about it might be your own particular belief you might encounter people that actually fit this but they've just never been able to actually put a word to it a sense that you believe in god but you don't necessarily go to a church or you don't know necessarily how that's manifested in a series of miracles or answers to prayers you might just say well look there's an architect of thing we're all brought together in this wider cosmos and i believe in a higher power that's good and virtuous that gives does good things for the right people but you might not have individuals to say what is that what you might say then is i'm kind of religious but not practicing or i believe in god but i'm not a christian you'll probably know a lot of people like that the word for this is deism a belief in a just god that created the universe uh but one and created a universe that uh supports doing good living virtuously caring for one another as being charitable doing the right thing but also one of course therefore that you don't have a series of tenets that you have to go okay what hat do i have to wear and when and when do i go attend this particular ceremony for this particular element of one's faith these are the types of things that emerge in this moment that are uh really important as a new religious movement that notably deism is at the core at the absolute epicenter of our founding father's belief uh in uh religion uh george washington was a an episcopalian he was a member of the church of england uh and carries on some of those faiths albeit one that not necessarily swept up in uh the minutia of christianity but i believe we're in providence which kind of matches a little bit of this deistic influence the same thing is with alexander hamilton those are the two christians amongst our principal founding fathers what you have therefore is with whether it's benjamin franklin john adams james monroe uh james madison uh these are uh thomas payne they are deists they believe in a wise and just god that wants us to kind of reveal and understand the world through scientific experimentation experimentation but don't necessarily respond to prayer uh and of course that what does that leave jesus or christianity in general they broadly reject it even if they have adopted many of the philosophies of christianity they are not practitioners uh thomas jefferson is a unitarian slightly different rather than uh pushing away from all religions to say well all religions are essentially doing the same thing we can kind of unify all these faiths into one religion philosophy and he of course uh studied the quran and a number of other religious works uh even uh whilst being president so this is at the core of uh the religious uh attitudes and outlooks of our founding fathers but we also see in this era the first beginnings of atheism uh the idea of a rejection of god or a divine uh creator in general and this of course is a very important trend because very rarely do we see an atheistic tradition emerge one prominent one was around the fourth fifth century bce in india which also be creates some of the underpinnings of the earliest traditions in buddhism but more uh generally speaking kind of a modern atheistic outlook is one that begins in this era as well now the key thing to do is these are seeing we're seeing some pretty profound changes in this moment and what is the response of all these things well they are debates that doesn't mean churches are uh being taken down or uh flattened to make way for some secular institution no uh what you have of course is the much of european society carries on but we start to see some changes outside of just the mentalities of europeans and colonial americans in this era what we see actually is a a series of reforms those reforms tended a lot to do about punishment and imprisonment and things like that what you see in this diagram on the right is someone being tortured judicial torture the idea that you're allowed to squeeze out of someone uh truth to get them to confess that was still legal and widespread practice uh cesar bakaria is going to come along an italian member of the enlightenment and critique this so persuasively that the practice is largely abandoned uh in the few years after uh his principal work other problems like debtors prison capital punishment in a lot of ways the enlightenment impacts law first and foremost before it goes on to change any other aspect of european or colonial society but what about those absolutist rulers that have all this power in their little hands that are arguing that they were ruling by divine right well in the 17th and early 18th century the argument was uh i am ruler why because if i wasn't supposed to be ruler god wouldn't have made me ruler so whatever i'm going to do is the right thing to do because god would know what i'm going to be doing and if he didn't like what i was going to do he wouldn't have me in charge there it is cool well that isn't very satisfying for a majority of the population but in this era of demands for greater changes and absolutist monarchies uh what you have of course is absolute rulers are going to try to redefine their role uh frederick ii of prussia is one who's going to argue oh the monarchy is the first citizen of the state and you want to have uh me as monarchs because if you're brought into a family that you're going to be destined to be king you have this sense of responsibility to the office to which you belong if you just pluck someone off the street and make them an absolute sovereign there might be all sorts of problems emerge so best have it in the hands of a hereditary dynasty that can kind of carry on these traditions they know what to do you're born into that responsibility and we will use it justly trying to use a little bit more uh um reason in this and uh if you're not persuaded i don't blame you we do have a sense of a reforming spirit uh here's joseph ii of austria the austrian habsburg dynasty uh out with a in a in a field testing new plows right you know these kind of photo ops from presidents right you were going to factories going to all these different things uh and kind of experimenting you know what's this and what's that uh well this is kind of the era where this begins you know the rulers in the prior to this point actually care about the experience of farmers no but this is a way in which you kind of create this consensus hey look we're going to look uh into new and in which joseph did were reforming taxes for farmers doing us a whole sorts of things that might help out uh farming communities throughout throughout our dominion uh and so these kind of uh depictions of him you know plowing for a couple minutes uh are widely celebrating the show look we're doing something we're enlightened rulers uh we are actually in fact working for you but there are of course a limited effect uh example uh being frederick ii still maintains power he's known as frederick the great not because of any reform he makes in his own lifetime uh it's because as you see here he'll be leading the charge a number of wars uh won by him and his small kingdom of prussia which they had no right to win other than the fact that while he was off practicing his flute and corresponding with voltaire and bach and all these other individuals he was also learning uh best uh uh how to be a military commander and what tactics and strategies might win a war and implementing those is why he will expand his dominion and get the title the great the same thing is true with catherine the great another absolutist uh ruler and contemporary of frederick the great uh she of course does not lead any armies in battle but will of course be important for expanding russia particularly increasing russia's uh uh influence in europe she arrives at a time of course uh uh married to peter iii of the tsar peter iii but what ends up happening in uh a war with this guy uh frederic the great well in this seven years war that we know as the french and indian war the russia was actually occupying much of prussia at the time and at the time uh peter the third's mother elizabeth will die he becomes czar and his favorite person in the world is frederick the great and he looks and says well i can't go to war with like my hero and you could imagine almost peter having like frederick the great posters on his walls of his room well i'm at war with my hero i'm a member of his military order i don't want to destroy federally great i love the guy and so he ends up saying okay we're ending this war we'll let prussia be yes we fought this war for six years uh but and we're making good gains but uh no no no let him be well in this act uh her or his uh wife uh catherine says well that's not what i want and she will plot with a number of uh um co-conspirators within the palace uh and have peter uh uh um executed she then becomes zarina and doles out power to a few favorites and then begins to expand russia in pretty dramatic ways uh it should be noted that there will be a pretty violent and vast rebellion against her rule uh by this individual by the name of purgachev and pukachev's rebellion is an enormous anti-azarist uh anti-uh um uh serfdom anti-tax policy anti-everything in russian society at the time this huge uh rebellion uh but polka chap is arguing he's actually it's me peter the third i'm not dead for everyone follow me i'm gonna take back my my country uh and so it creates this huge rebellion but ultimately is quashed catherine the great of course is important because she's going to pave the way for russia's greater influence in the centuries ahead but she will be noted uh more importantly for all these scurrilous rumors about her persona her personality i don't want to get into them in this class uh and even kind of worry about the pg-13 cartoon i've added here and that's because i want to at least highlight the fact that this incredibly influential this powerful woman in the european uh landscape is going to have a lot of these rumors and scurrilous tales told about her as a means of kind of demeaning her power and influence and even in this cartoon here where she's kind of uh reaching from moscow to istanbul uh what you have of course in the cartoon is everyone kind of under beneath or skirt making all sorts of insults against her it's the way in which we start to see one of the things that threatens people then in many ways now is women in charge women with power independent women acting uh and sorting themselves on a global stage uh the type of uh sniping that we see in modern times of course it's been around for quite a while catherine of course though deserves uh some uh uh like a whole host of criticisms because in part b rather than uh adopting these enlightened practices uh she'll kind of make a show of it she invites denny dittero uh and a bunch of other prominent members enlightenment to kind of dine with her and to kind of say hey what would you fix about russian society to make it better and their response is we'd get rid of serfdom and she goes oh okay thanks for that uh yeah anyways bye uh no way that she'd get rid of this system that brings her so much wealth and keeps russian society in the hands of the boyars who uh support her reign so this is a way in which and the enlightened rulers can can show off that they are kind of playing along and swept up in this enlightenment as well but how much are they actually reforming uh not a lot some of the other areas in the enlightenment that deserve some a brief mention uh one of them of course is important to set up things in later lectures critiques of mercantilism don't fall asleep uh and monopolism uh and the idea that controlling economies for the benefit of the ruler what you want to have individuals say no that's actually limiting national wealth that's limiting trade you could be wealthier if you get all these restrictions away and the great trend of the 18th and into the 19th century is trying to do away with all those old laws and policies that were controlling trade meaning this could item can only produced in one place it has to be sold at this amount and you can't sell it to these individuals and it has to be made in this particular manner all those types of restrictions that had kept the old system in power they are being challenged in what was uh by the physiocrats of france called laissez-faire this inspires adam smith a scottish member of the enlightenment scotland was a part of britain you know scotland england but since it was the junior partner in this partnership there is a prominent scottish enlightenment saying yeah we're a part of this but we could do better than what the english have been doing uh and this uh sees individuals like david hume uh and um adam smith emerge his wealth of nations in the fateful year of 1776 is arguing for free trade if you want to create a powerful wealthy uh nation uh a wealthy state uh then actually getting rid of those restrictions allows greater productivity more wealth moving around more wealth channeled into your own country by that means it's going to lead to greater national wealth and a wealthier state as well that doesn't have to militarily hold on to these far-flung outposts it can merely bring the world's resources uh to its cities by engaging in efficient and productive practices so he believes in a free trade a believes in the division of labor and this faith in the invisible hand of the market it shouldn't be governments that determine what to buy or sell it should be this invisible hand that can kind of turn uh people towards goods let individuals seek their own interest in what they want to buy and what they want to sell how they want to create things and then let the demands of the market determine whether or not that's the right way of doing things smith it should be noted is going to argument that there is a role of government when there is no money to be made or institutions of society that are of a collective good but can't become profitable that's where government belongs so smith isn't in the kind of modern libertarian definition someone who's advocating just no government whatsoever in nothing mother than maybe an army to keep the peace the idea is no he's going to argue beyond military there are other rules for a state to have it's just not shouldn't be in interjecting itself uh into industry and economy last thing to note in this incredibly long lecture uh i realize is that we're focusing on human rights and humanitarianism this is an error that starts to of course say look we need greater rights particularly the rights of common population merges into a argument for a greater rights of all mankind which becomes then an argument for the greater rights of men and women and this is one of the areas where we start to see really important reforms uh the marquis de condorcet uh but most prominently mary wollstonecraft seen here at the end of the 18th century are important and significant contributors to debates uh propos supporting uh the rights of uh women and that they should be equal to the rights of men any educational and employment opportunity that men have those should be uh the same for women and so this becomes the first wave of feminism where you're starting to see challenges to the old uh gender hierarchies of the past largely borrowing the language of the enlightenment we also see another important trend what had existed in centuries before was the sense that non-uh europeans non-christians were inferior were less civilized and uh since they weren't as sophisticated their value in the world wasn't as much uh they could be expunged killed uh uh or forced away um without any great break in one's conscience uh but what we start to see now in this era that hey the society we have is deeply corrupt we need to fix it and the argument then is well the people who aren't corrupted by this complex organized society they're closer to nature they're more virtuous uh their instincts are are better not uh suppressed by the society that gets us to value uh irrelevant things they are therefore more morally and culturally virtuous this idea of the noble savage emerges in this era and denis dittero and others make some very important contributions to this philosophy we can still see this today in many ways where we divide the united states generations of critiquing the behavior in the society of native americans as justification for conquest uh and now and really since the 1970s onwards uh often times of an overcelebration of native american harmony with nature uh or the uh uh an ideal harmonious society before white settlers arrived uh kind of swinging the other way from going from one stereotype to another the noble savage nevertheless though does have an important role in starting to change people's population mentalities and the 19th century will see at least a small minority uh particularly in places like america celebrate native american culture traditions uh as opposed to uh merely being one of the majority uh that we're seeking to marginalize uh and force onto reservations uh native american peoples we also see in this era the heyday the the apex the height of the slave trade uh being the 18th century we also therefore see the era of greatest opposition to these practices uh and the barbarities of uh um the slave trade and the middle passage these become uh uh addressed publications highlighting these uh abuses so it's not just out of sight out of mind it's people who wake up in the morning and with their coffee and tea or adding a little bit of sugar reading the experiences of those sugar plantations in the caribbean starting to really actually think well maybe i won't do tea or maybe i'll just leave my sugar out uh and of course this starts to create a wider consensus in opposition to the slave trade still people are saying well that what would you do there would be kill jobs if you got rid of uh of the slave trade we'd lose our sugar above plantations we lose all this national wealth we gotta keep slavery but nevertheless the slave trade of making more slaves we're buying more slaves from west african states that's the first uh uh reform to happen and we start to see that happen at the beginning of the 19th century at least in a more sustained way well i know it's a whole bunch of things and i appreciate your patience with this uh is incredibly important and hopefully you've understood many of the modern ideas and attitudes towards things that we have and how they originate here and the enlightenment and how incredibly important some of these ideas are going to be going forward in the next uh several lectures all right thanks so much