Jansen, and Jansenism.
No idea what this is tbh.
But it influenced a bunch of ideas.
After the reformation there was still a kind of controversy between people who liked Augustine, pessimistic idea about being jusitfied, and those who thought that many people would be justified.
If there is a way to be freed, it is by being obediant entirely.
The jesuit side defended a kind of morality which is more relaxed. There is a posssibility to reconcile through the sacraments of Christ. There is a possibility to be freed from original sin.
Jansenius commented Augustine on Pelagius, the one who defended that people by nature, on their own, could find the right way to live. As such revelation is not entirely important, though this is not something Augustine believed, nature is not sufficient to have Grace.
Jansenius was talking about Augustine anyways, and Augustine’s pessimism. This awoke that kind of pessimistic world-view, which was quite influential among common people, who opposed the nobility and other rich-affluent people.
Parts of the reformation was not only theological, but was also a reaction against the upper class. Jansenius critiqued upper class people for not being sincerely christian and thinking that they could act as they like. Jansenius was in Leuven, from Netherlands.
Jansenism became a kind of religious movement after Jansenius’ death.
This movement became important in and around Paris. Blaise Pascal for example is among these. They wrote specifically against the Jesuits, and remarkably did it in a pamphlet format. Blaise Pascal read it aloud for young people and marked each time they lost attention, in order to make them as easily digestible as possible. It is a critique of the kind of life of Louis XIV.
Racine was also present in those circles. Everyone cared about Jansenism apparently. They were guided by using a kind of cultivation of style that was easily digestible. They wanted to be writing for the people in a sense.
Quietism: believing that loving God, after a certain point implies that there are moments at which words no longer express that love fully, and so one needs to just be quiet about one’s love. [Not sure how this is reletated lol].
Fenelon: important for morality in French discourse. Was a bishop who was responsible for the education of Louis XIV. He tried to make a course that was intriguing for him. He did this by writing stories about some Greek guy called Telemaccus (Telemacque) [or something] from the Odyssey. The stort is about Telemaccus looking for his father after the Iliad. This young guy is also gonna be king, and is travelling with an old wise person, Athena herself. They encounter all kinds of people with political regimes. He describes different ways in which a king can rule, and for how the prince should behave to be a good king. He idealises a kind of sober life, living close to nature and so on, where greedy people are put in a bad light.
Louis XIV then started hating Fenelon and put him away from court. The prince that Fenelon educated died before becoming king. He later published the book by himself.
Rousseau is likely inspired by Fenelon, wanting to get close to nature, living without too much property, not being seduced by glory and bad social control. There was much sympathy for sparta, as they were sober, simple and close to nature.
The Jesuits, who taught humaniora, were however powerfully holding onto some kind of knowledge status quo, and didn’t like these above persons.
It is only during the republic that religious schools become out of vogue.
Joel Mokyr, A culture of Growth: didn’t listen to what he said about this. Something about Diderot’s encyclopedianism.
All these people writing created a kind of republic of letters. Letters were incredibly important during the 18:th century. Everyone was suddenly aware of what was happening around them in Europe. There was more Europe in the 18:th century than in the 19:th. After this, nationalism actually became a thing, before this Europe was probably more interconnected than now as Europe, or the ”civilised world”.
London becomes important in the 17:th century: ew.
Habermas was interested in public opinion and how it developed. In London we have the first instance of a public opinion that is influential for politics. Before this, the king was almighty and the public opinion was generally not taken into account. In England instead, there was the development of the party system of the Wigs and the Tories. These two parties were vying to get sufficient power. And all their arguments were communicated through news letters which the public read. Using broad rhetorics to reach those of the coffee houses, using reasoned argument as to why they had one opinion or another.
Democracy is then the result of a deliberation of the kind of things one should do. When one entered a coffee house, one was just one of the many, and could discuss things together, as equals. However, it was only the upperclass who had the time and money to go here, so it was still a democracy for one specific class. They were however discussing in an open public atmosphere, a kind of origin of real democracy.
The people who went to coffeehouses were quite autonomous from their masters, or landlords, as they were successful in their own business. Doing business became the new way of being rich. There was no direct influence from the traditional ruling classes. Basically bourgois revolution! Yay! One step further!
Locke defends that the industrial behaviour of those who invest, therefore having the right to what they have, is a positive mission, which was morally good. From Locke’s perspective, this was fundamental. The new class of free people were able to deal with things ”on their own”, as it were. In the turning moment from the 17:th to 18:th century, the real modern atmosphere is developed.
BoE was 20 years after the swedish royal bank!!!!! Get dunked on England, our capitalism is better than yours. Anyways it was created as a cause of the glorious revolution and so on.
Freedom of the press was then established.
The freedom of the press was not initally established because some intellectuals thought it was a good thing, it was just a revelation of what came before, in that censorship could no longer be prolonged. It wasn’t the case that they ”wanted this”, but rather that they realised that its opposite couldn’t be further in existence. DIALECTICS lol.
The philosophy of licensing was the idea that things need to be controlled before being released, in order to ensure the quality of what is published. One cannot publish things that are too insane or too ill-written, the actual ideas didn’t often matter too much. The people in charge of censorship were generally the authors and owners of author guilds-like structures themselves. Diderot and Voltaire were of course heavily censored during their time.
It was realised that censorship was just not practical. The procedure is too lengthy, and one looses a lot of money, and the investment might be in shambles.
Daniel Defoe was hired by both parties to write political articles. Same with Swift. They loved hiring authors who were good at expressing themselves. There was a culture for well-educated people to use language in a refined, spritual and engaging way. In England, people seriously read and cared about the kind of columns that these kind of authors were making. They received a kind of special status as some kind of superstars.
Eg. Hume thought Joseph Addison would be read longer than Locke because his style was so simple to read. Often the topic was on morality.
Teacher likes Richard Steele.
Inkle and Yarico.
Story about a colonial man who has a relation with some native or something. Idk.
He read out the story, I didn’t listen.
It was about a woman who was liked by people for having good traits at some coffee house.
The story is about how bad men and women can be. This story is like refined or something. I am too low-cultured to get it.
Samuel Johnson. Don’t know this guy.
There were 3 types of newspapers at the time. The factual news; the partisan news; and then the essayistic reflective type of newspaper. The Observer is a case of the last. A kind of impartial observation about the human goings on about society. Your supposed to feel what is at stake, which isn’t just purely numerical.
The culture of politeness; whatever that is. It’s like being nice vibes.
The approach of nobility: refined way of doing things, being prudent with passions, but giving them sufficient air to still seem deep and refined. This is a culture of the upper-class, they don’t work. They just travel and have fun for themselves. They amuse themselves more or less and nothing else.
Being a man of letters actually meant that they fucking sent a lot of letters, who could’ve thought lol.
Hume was part of this kind of culture.
When his first publication failed, he thought that he would become an essayist like Addisson. He explains in a condenced way his thought instead.
Examination: think for yourself.
When people talk about Hume. He is often associated with sympathy, and the fact that sympathy is an important feature of morality. The same with empathy. If everyone had more empathy, the world would be better. The problem of the world is that people don’t care enough about each other… SAD!
This is not really what Hume talked about though.
For some reason, he went to France, and it is speculated that this is because he defended a too harsh moral theory which did not fit well in christian-inspired morality. Hobbes was forbidden, and seen as quite awkward. Locke was inspired by Hobbes without daring to mention it, and wrote it in such a style so that no one could take offense.
There were other people who had a strong moral vision in line with Hobbes who were persecuted. Perhaps this is why Hume went to France.
Later on he moved to Edinburgh, became a librarian and wrote historical texts.
Then he came in contact with the radical enlightenment people.
In Hume’s perception, we don’t start from a perfect soul that already has a positive tendency to the good, or an affinity for a telos wherein one finds self-fulfillment. This kind of position is too idealisitc, so it’s not so realistic.
Human beings have simple feelings, like other animals. Let’s look at people as they are.
And from this, we can make a genaology about how human morality came to be. (Hobbes’ theory is a kind of psychology of human beings).
Hume tries to do a similar thing to Hobbes. He starts however with passions. Morality has nothing to do with the head. It has to do with emotions. If we understand our emotions, then we can understand morality.
In analysing these features, he makes the distinction between artifical and natural virtues. The natural virtues are the kind of tendencies people have spontaneously. Some people are benevolent in a spontaneous natural way. Next to that, there are the artifical virtues, which are not the result of a spontaneous feeling. He is placed before the same problem as Hobbes; by nature people are not just interested in creating a lovely community together, they want safety for themselves, and so on, and not for others, or for togetherness [inspiring later classical economy].
It is important to realise that poverty and surivial is not that problematic. In the 18th century life was short and sad. L BOZO. Suriving was a real thing with a different meaning than now.
And this is because we collaborate. If we did a lot of things by ourselves, a lot of things would be more troublesome. On one hand we are egoistic, but on the other we need each other [I would say to fulfill that egoism….]
And so, justice is an artifical virtue. This starts with accepting each other’s property. The reasoning going as follows: by reason we would never be able to conquer the passion of egoism. You cannot convert people by saying that they should imagine a better world. This kind of explanation will never be strong enough to change passions. If you want to change an egoistic passion, it must be with the same egoistic passion. Only another passion can overcome another passion. If you realise that one respects someone else’s property, on the condition that they respect the others, it is for their benefit to respect someone else’s property. As such, the main reason one is social is because one wants to preserve something for themselves, and this can be done by trusting another enough. The moment this kind of trust is breached, the entire system collapses. So respecting property is not a kind of promise, but is a bit like two people rowing a boat: it means that you need to coordinate in order to reach the same destination. Most rowers do this spontaneously, without discussion. They devleop their joint intentionality. It doesn’t require any thinking instance. Property is the same: I respect someone else’s property because everyone else will respect mine. And if this is breached, it is everyone for themselves: war against all.
This system is however quite fragile.
It is fixed somehow through pride?
Pride is the feeling that others sympathise with me. So one needs to be careful to not lose the sympathy of others; creating an additional rational reason to respect other’s things. If I lose the sympathy of others, I lose my pride. It is about not wanting to lose what others give me. As such, I will behave virtuously.
This is in line with Locke’s explanation. Locke thinks it is because everyone follows ethical principles from God, and answering them, or because they are punished by the law, or it could be because they want to keep their status among their fellows if they do things wrong. The law of God; the law of justice; and the law of fashion. So people don’t want to do things wrong in order to keep up their identity of being upstanding human beings.
For Hume, the being aware of what can be expected from me is the beginning of morality. If one spontaneously behaves well, this is not really moral. It is moral when it depends on collaboration and trust.
He doesn’t think that it is necessary to make people better (which makes sense).
He isn’t really trying to come up with a theory about why we are right and wrong, but rather a theory about how this theorising happens, quite descriptively.
When Hume went to France he encountered the radical enlightenment, who believed that the church were suffocating freedom. Diderot and others like Hume tried to understand ethics from a naturalistic perspective. A kind of pre-supposed darwinism. We lived initially as animals and then cultivated ourselves as human beings.
Among these: Voltaire.
Was good at gaining money. His style was saracastic, trying to make ridiculous many traditional habits, suggesting that there is a more humane way of dealing with the world. He was known for his defense of freedom of speech. However, he also defends Louis XIV. He was convinced that censorship was important against trash, and so good literature needs to be selected; tabloids are evil for Voltaire. He was convinced that his works were good enough.
Also earned a lot of money from hanging out with different publishing houses.
Antoine Arnauld. Didn’t listen what he did.
Nicolas Malebranche, tried to give God a place, we discover that nature is governed by natural laws whose telos are from God. Thought that the best kind of creation is not to have a creation in which one decides specific features, but rather regularities. So if nature is organised by natural laws, it will have a far more logical result than if one makes every specific thing, a referens to a general rule of law. One cannot pray to God about specific things, because God only has general wills. Only we have specific wills, in being in God’s image. However, God can of course still do miracles.
Gottfrid Leibniz. Tried to figure out from a theological perspective how everything seems to fit in. Trying to give an account of how the world is actually the best possible world that one can imagine. God actually created the best world.
Due to Lisbon earthuquake, Voltaire went against Leibnizian optimism. Candide is also about this.
The priest Jean Meslier left some kind of testiment. He acknowledged that he has really treated people in a bad way, because the entire religion is fictitious. What a boss. He made a post-mortem script about a long critique of the church. The entire French enlightenment read this kind of atheistic text.
Philipp Blom, A Wicked company: The forgotten radicalism of the european enlightenment.