Speaker 1: Hey there everyone, it's me Josh, and for this week's
Speaker 1: s Y s K Selects, I've chosen How the Enlightenment Works.
Speaker 1: And the reason we named it works rather than worked,
Speaker 1: just because we realized during this episode that this battle
Speaker 1: between rationalism and superstition is still going on today. The
Speaker 1: Enlightenment is still going on today. And I've chosen it
Speaker 1: this week because I feel like it explains a lot
Speaker 1: a lot of the division in the world today, not
Speaker 1: just in the United States, not just in the West,
Speaker 1: but all over the world where there's a dividing line
Speaker 1: that is separating people. That this gulf, this wedge is
Speaker 1: getting deeper and deeper, and I think that this is
Speaker 1: the basis of the whole thing. See if you agree,
Speaker 1: If not, it's fine. It's still an interesting episode either way.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles
Speaker 1: w Chuck Bryant and Jerry are So this is Stuff
Speaker 1: you should Know. The Enlightened Ones exactly, the three of us,
Speaker 1: no one else, No, we're the Enlightened Ones. I am
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and preface this what what I just
Speaker 1: said off the air. This is a very tough subject
Speaker 1: to distill in a thirty to forty five minute podcast
Speaker 1: because volumes of books can be written on the Age
Speaker 1: of Enlightenment and have been and have been. So this
Speaker 1: is this is stuff. There's gonna be a very bird's
Speaker 1: eye view. Yeah, there's a dude named Jonathan Israel who
Speaker 1: just came out with I think this third volume of
Speaker 1: a three volume set on the Enlightenment, and he wrote
Speaker 1: literally several thousand pages of it and it's considered an
Speaker 1: obscure text. Yeah, he probably doesn't even think that he
Speaker 1: covered it in full. No, Betty doesn't. Although he's for
Speaker 1: flame coming right. I think he does have another one coming,
Speaker 1: So maybe it was a second but um he uh
Speaker 1: that that The idea that um, he doesn't think that
Speaker 1: it's done, that it's not finished is actually a pretty
Speaker 1: standard view of the Enlightenment. Like during research for this,
Speaker 1: I realized that there are tons of intellectual arguments going
Speaker 1: on right now, like the Bill Maher thing. Bill Maher
Speaker 1: and Islam. He's been accused of being like a just
Speaker 1: a complete racist, xenophobic dude. Um because of his recent
Speaker 1: statements on Islam. Did you see him and Ben Ben uh?
Speaker 1: Did you see them get into it? Okay, that argument
Speaker 1: is an Enlightenment argument. Yeah, it's like it provided the
Speaker 1: Enlightenment was so massive that the ripple effects are still
Speaker 1: being felt on a daily basis because it was such
Speaker 1: an enormous change in the way humans think that we're
Speaker 1: still trying to sit there and analyze what the heck happened,
Speaker 1: And that is one manifestation of it. Yeah, is is
Speaker 1: like what Bill Maher is saying is, well, you know,
Speaker 1: Islam is a religion or whatever, and therefore it's um
Speaker 1: an athetical to progress and culture and like real thought
Speaker 1: and rationalism. And Ben Ben yeah, Ben Affleck is saying, like,
Speaker 1: you can't say that about a culture, Like each culture
Speaker 1: is its own thing. So what we're seeing there is
Speaker 1: the idea of moral absolutism arguing with moral relativism, and
Speaker 1: that is like textbook Enlightenment argument. Pretty interesting. Sure. Like
Speaker 1: researching this article seriously, I tied together probably ten different
Speaker 1: things that I didn't realize We're connected. Yeah, I love
Speaker 1: it when stuff like that happened. It was the start
Speaker 1: of and you know, the age of Enlightenment. Quote unquote
Speaker 1: started and ended, but it was the birth of just
Speaker 1: a new kind of thought, a new value system, UH, philosophical, scientific, cultural, intellectual,
Speaker 1: basically saying reason over this previous long held belief that
Speaker 1: just strict religious dogma is all you need to worry about,
Speaker 1: don't question anything, don't try and think about science and
Speaker 1: nature and things like that other than just this is
Speaker 1: God's creation and what does it mean in terms of
Speaker 1: religion exactly. So of course it's still going on. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't. It wasn't just that it was definitely Enlightenment
Speaker 1: was the If you're an Enlightenment UM fan, you would
Speaker 1: say Enlightenment was the domination of reason over religion or faith.
Speaker 1: It was a value system basically. But there was another
Speaker 1: aspect of the Enlightenment, the domination of UM, the will
Speaker 1: of the people over the monarchy, UM, economic economic change, UM,
Speaker 1: huge economic changes. Think. To Adam Smith, there were a
Speaker 1: lot of like huge monumental changes in the way people thought, UM.
Speaker 1: So much so that modern historians who are trying to
Speaker 1: unpack the Enlightenment still one of the schools of thought
Speaker 1: is that you can't just call it the Enlightenment. It
Speaker 1: happened in too many different places under different circumstances. Um.
Speaker 1: And then the again, like the the different aspects of it,
Speaker 1: the fact that one part of it dealt with governmental change,
Speaker 1: one part of it dealt with religious change, another part
Speaker 1: that with economic change. That they it's been kind of
Speaker 1: distilled into separate compartments. Now, yeah, I mean separate compartments
Speaker 1: somewhere divergent and contradictory. Uh. Occurred nearly simultaneously in the
Speaker 1: eighteenth century in France, Great Britain, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Portugal,
Speaker 1: American colonies all over the place. Um. I like to
Speaker 1: say it's the period of time where the world started
Speaker 1: waking up, pulled their heads from their rear ends. Right basically, Well,
Speaker 1: the the the question now, I mean, if you're a
Speaker 1: religious type, you're probably happy about the fruits of the Enlightenment.
Speaker 1: Like everybody points at, the Industrial Revolution is proof positive
Speaker 1: the Enlightenment was great. Where the American experiment proof positive
Speaker 1: the Enlightenment was great. But you probably don't like the
Speaker 1: fact that the world completely turned its back on religion,
Speaker 1: or not completely but largely did. If you're a pro
Speaker 1: Enlightenment type, you're probably saying this was for the best,
Speaker 1: like we were backwards, we emerged from the dark Ages
Speaker 1: thanks to the Enlightenment. Um. And this is the argument
Speaker 1: that's still going on today, like, yes, the Enlightenment changed everything,
Speaker 1: but did it go too far? So that's we'll get
Speaker 1: into all that. But Conger, who wrote this article, I
Speaker 1: think did a very good job of taking the whole
Speaker 1: thing back further than the eighteenth century out of the
Speaker 1: French salons and set the stage for what created the
Speaker 1: basis for this this change in thinking. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: Kristen did a great job of distilling a complex topic
Speaker 1: down to like an eight page article, but she does
Speaker 1: take it back to Um. There were a couple of
Speaker 1: things that sort of laid the groundwork. Um, well, a
Speaker 1: lot of things, but a couple of them are Mr
Speaker 1: Sir Isaac Newton and the famous story of the apple
Speaker 1: falling on his head, which makes a great story. He
Speaker 1: told a lot of people that I don't know how
Speaker 1: uh factually exactly true that is, but it makes for
Speaker 1: a great story. But either way you want to look
Speaker 1: at it, Isaac Newton looked at the space at some
Speaker 1: point between that apple in the ground and said, there's
Speaker 1: something going on in that empty space. That should be
Speaker 1: explained because that apple doesn't fall up. Something's keeping us
Speaker 1: all rooted here on the ground, and I want to
Speaker 1: look into that. Although if you were a fan of
Speaker 1: David Humes, you would say, uh, well, actually it could
Speaker 1: consumably fall up, because we've never proven it won't fall up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and him was one of the proponents, were not proponents,
Speaker 1: but uh he was active in the Age of Enlightenment.
Speaker 1: Another thing that really laid the groundwork was the Thirty
Speaker 1: Years of War from six eighteen to sixty eight, which
Speaker 1: pretty much paved the way for Protestant Reformation, and the
Speaker 1: Roman Catholic Church took a lot of the teeth away
Speaker 1: from the Roman Catholic Church first time. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: There was a huge change. So what you just described, Chuck,
Speaker 1: is a the foundation for the intellectual branch of of
Speaker 1: the Enlightenment thinking usurping the power from theological thinking. And
Speaker 1: then with the Thirty Year War, the political power was
Speaker 1: taken away from the Church because for the first time
Speaker 1: now the precedent has been set that you, as a citizen,
Speaker 1: your allegiance is not split between church and state. Your
Speaker 1: allegiances first and foremost to the state. And we see
Speaker 1: that still today. Like if somebody uh kills their um,
Speaker 1: their parents or whatever because it's the Seventh Sign and
Speaker 1: Demi Moore's running around and they it turns out that
Speaker 1: they were brother and sister, so you kill them because
Speaker 1: it's the will of God. State says, I don't care.
Speaker 1: If it's the will of God, you can't kill your parents.
Speaker 1: The state's law is more powerful and more important than
Speaker 1: God's law. That's straight out of the Thirty Years War
Speaker 1: that changed everything. Have very seen the Seventh Sign, Man,
Speaker 1: I saw that, like when it came out. I don't
Speaker 1: remember anything about it. I just remember like one of
Speaker 1: the characters was this kid with down syndrome and he
Speaker 1: murdered his parents because he found out that they were
Speaker 1: brother and sister and he was super religious. They were
Speaker 1: going to execute him. Yeah, when they execute I think
Speaker 1: he was like the last martyr. Man. I'll have to
Speaker 1: check that out again. Yeah, tell me more. Uh So,
Speaker 1: Conger points out even further back about the Dark Ages,
Speaker 1: sort of laying the groundwork which the Dark Ages were
Speaker 1: dark for many reasons. It one of the big ones
Speaker 1: was that the Roman Catholic Church basically ruled everything. Uh.
Speaker 1: Latin was the language, the center of life and academia
Speaker 1: where monasteries and abbeys, you weren't encouraged to get educated
Speaker 1: outside of uh theological uh realms. It was not encouraged.
Speaker 1: Do you have to actually, I want to say, you
Speaker 1: have to be carefully using the term Dark Ages, because uh,
Speaker 1: apparently it is a disparaging label that people on the
Speaker 1: pro Enlightenment side of the argument, the humanists, they say,
Speaker 1: they say, these are the Dark Ages. That was back
Speaker 1: when the Church controlled everything, when everybody was just an ignoramus.
Speaker 1: Once the Enlightenment came along, we emerged from the Dark Ages. Technically,
Speaker 1: once the Renaissance came along, we emerged from the Dark Ages.
Speaker 1: So if you're in a Storian, you call it the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages. But even the Middle Ages are kind of
Speaker 1: sad because it just says these a just kind of
Speaker 1: existed between this important age and this important age. We
Speaker 1: just call those the Middle Ages. But it's better than
Speaker 1: the Dark Ages, like dark Ages. But that's a that's
Speaker 1: a um an argument or a label that a disparaging
Speaker 1: label that UM humanists use. Yeah, unfairly, because there were
Speaker 1: scientists working and laying the groundwork for future science in
Speaker 1: the Dark Ages and congret even mentions them in this article,
Speaker 1: like Thomas Aquinas came up with scholasticism. Yeah, And scholasticism
Speaker 1: is basically the idea that you can understand God even
Speaker 1: more and be even more pure and divine yourself by
Speaker 1: studying nature. Yeah. Roger Bacon was another monk who as
Speaker 1: a proponent of that, and I think, um, that allowed
Speaker 1: them and don't I don't think that's the reason they
Speaker 1: did it, but that allowed them to pursue the scientific
Speaker 1: avenues because it was still tied to God. Another big
Speaker 1: change was, uh, Like I said before, in the not
Speaker 1: so Dark Ages, perhaps Latin was the language, and they
Speaker 1: didn't have something called the printing press until Johann Gutenberg
Speaker 1: came along in fourteen thirty eight and says, you know what,
Speaker 1: everyone should be able to read, start printing stuff in
Speaker 1: your native tongue. Uh. And that led directly to people
Speaker 1: starting to educate themselves. It was the democratization of education
Speaker 1: right exactly. And all of this didn't happen like out
Speaker 1: of the blue, like Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas and
Speaker 1: a guy named Leonardo Bruney, they didn't necessarily come up
Speaker 1: with their ideas on their own there was some this
Speaker 1: really seminal thing that happened back in the mid UH
Speaker 1: century where somebody, I don't know who did somebody translated
Speaker 1: Um Aristotle I believe, his works into Latin, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, the Greek rational thinkers of antiquity, their
Speaker 1: ideas were suddenly available to the West for the first time.
Speaker 1: And it just so happened that some people started paying
Speaker 1: attention to these things. Leonardo Bruney read Petrarch and revived
Speaker 1: the idea of humanism, which was a huge sea change,
Speaker 1: because humanism says humans are pretty awesome and the fruit
Speaker 1: of our labors, the fruit of our intellect, the fruit
Speaker 1: of everything that we do comes from human ability, not
Speaker 1: God Like, we're not just vessels for God's brilliance to
Speaker 1: be shown through. If you create something, you come up
Speaker 1: with a work of art because God did that. You
Speaker 1: did that, and let's figure out how you did it.
Speaker 1: That's humanism. And this is what the Renaissance started to
Speaker 1: revive and was a huge change, like, maybe we should
Speaker 1: start paying attention to ourselves a little more exactly, let's
Speaker 1: explore the human condition. Yeah, Um Aristotle was not a
Speaker 1: heretic because he tied his geocentric universe ideas to God
Speaker 1: as well. Um, he thought the universe was composed of
Speaker 1: ten separate crystal spears, and beyond the tenth sphere that
Speaker 1: was Heaven and God. Uh. Copernicus um Shah pretty said no,
Speaker 1: that's not true. The universe is infinite. Uh. And he
Speaker 1: was pretty alone in that thinking. Early on, he faced
Speaker 1: a lot of criticism from like every every religion, Protestants
Speaker 1: and Catholics. Yep, it was a They thought it was
Speaker 1: a dangerous way of thinking because he didn't make room
Speaker 1: for God in the cosmos. And it definitely was a
Speaker 1: dangerous way of thinking to the Church. Like the Protestant
Speaker 1: Reformation was going on, you had the Thirty Years War
Speaker 1: coming down the pike, you had Copernicus Um thanks to
Speaker 1: this revival of interest in astronomy and yeah, starting to
Speaker 1: to look at the the universe around us and finding
Speaker 1: even like symbolic stuff like, um, who was it? Kepler,
Speaker 1: he was an assistant to Tycho Brahe and Kepler figured
Speaker 1: out that the planets uh revolve around the Sun in
Speaker 1: an ellipse. Yeah. Well, the Church, the Holy Roman Church,
Speaker 1: said that the circle was a symbol of perfection. So
Speaker 1: of course everything revolves around the Earth in a circle.
Speaker 1: Not only did things not revolve around the Earth, it
Speaker 1: revolved around the Sun. And they didn't even do that
Speaker 1: in a circle. They did an ellipse. So the church
Speaker 1: is just losing its mind because all these people are
Speaker 1: coming forward saying everything that you're saying over here is
Speaker 1: starting to prove to smell like bs. And the church
Speaker 1: is losing its power left and right, both politically and intellectually.
Speaker 1: It's losing its authority. Yeah, Galileo even recanted uh because
Speaker 1: he was accused of heresy for his theory that the
Speaker 1: Earth rotates on its axis. So he said, I'll take
Speaker 1: it all back. I didn't mean that. Please don't kill me,
Speaker 1: He's like, but just make sure my manuscripts survive. So
Speaker 1: we were talking about Bacon. He is a creator of
Speaker 1: the scientific method, and he says, you know what, we
Speaker 1: should use experiments to actually try and explain things, and
Speaker 1: so it's I think it's high time we have a
Speaker 1: method for doing so. So that was its is Bacon. Yes,
Speaker 1: I wonder if he was related to Roger Bacon. I
Speaker 1: don't know. They were separated by a few centuries, but
Speaker 1: they could have been fam Sure. I think so uh,
Speaker 1: and he was did you ever take philosophy in college? No? Um,
Speaker 1: I think I might have. I didn't get much out
Speaker 1: of it if I did, because I don't remember. I
Speaker 1: took one class. We'd studied Descartes um a lot. I've
Speaker 1: grown to be a little more interested in it, but
Speaker 1: I like them more. I like like existential crisis philosophy,
Speaker 1: like Nick Bostrom stuff, and I don't know what that is,
Speaker 1: just basically how the world's gonna end. Okay, this stuff is.
Speaker 1: I think like Descartes is interesting, but I'm not like
Speaker 1: a I'm not. It doesn't light my fire. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was all right. I think I made an a in
Speaker 1: that class actually because it interested me at the time.
Speaker 1: But I never took a follow up class. It just
Speaker 1: took the intro. So it clearly didn't mean that much
Speaker 1: to me. But I get it. Well. Yeah, And what
Speaker 1: dey Cart was saying is our experience is not It's
Speaker 1: not what you thought. Like mind and matter are two
Speaker 1: different things, and of the human experience as a subjective
Speaker 1: experience and the mind, what the mind produces is different
Speaker 1: than what is reality and really kind of um that
Speaker 1: changed things tremendously too, So You've got all these people
Speaker 1: like contributing to this. We haven't even reached the eighteenth
Speaker 1: century yet. Like the groundwork is definitely being late and
Speaker 1: it's still being laid. Um as far as the like
Speaker 1: the government goes. John locke Um was one of the
Speaker 1: people who contributed to the idea of the social contract
Speaker 1: and social contract. There was Hobbes Lock and later on
Speaker 1: Rousso and others contribute to this idea that humans are
Speaker 1: born with natural rights. You're born free, I'm born free,
Speaker 1: even Jerry's born free, look at her. And to form
Speaker 1: a society, you give up some of these natural rights.
Speaker 1: For example, one one thing that you give up is
Speaker 1: your right to kill and retribution. Uh. Any society typically
Speaker 1: demands a state monopoly on violence, which means that if
Speaker 1: somebody kills your family member, you don't go kill that person.
Speaker 1: You go to the state and say that guy killed
Speaker 1: my family member, triumph convictim, and kill him on my
Speaker 1: behalf because there's a state monopoly on violence. So that's
Speaker 1: a natural right that you give up, I think appropriately
Speaker 1: so and for the better, but as part of the
Speaker 1: social contract and so uh, the idea that that humans
Speaker 1: had these rights and that society in turn had rights
Speaker 1: because humans gave them rights. Um. That was a big
Speaker 1: basis of enlightenment thinking that would be added to later
Speaker 1: on too. Yeah. And Locke also was one of the
Speaker 1: first champions of uh, what would kind of become nurture
Speaker 1: over nature his idea of the tabu larassa that when
Speaker 1: humans are born, their minds are clean slate and they
Speaker 1: are shaped by experience and education and not some preordained
Speaker 1: thing that you're born with. And uh, this French intellect
Speaker 1: gobbled that stuff up. As name was Francois Marie Arouette,
Speaker 1: and he went by a name you might know, Voltaire,
Speaker 1: and he really loved this stuff and went back to
Speaker 1: France with all these ideals and said, we got to
Speaker 1: get on this and let's uh, you know, we can't
Speaker 1: go out in the streets right now and talk about
Speaker 1: the stuff, but we can meet in private and homes
Speaker 1: like a Tupperware party, and we'll call them salons and
Speaker 1: we'll we'll talk about these radical ideas and um, in
Speaker 1: this new way of thinking in the privacy of homes
Speaker 1: for those that are willing to host it. So he chuck,
Speaker 1: Voltaire has been lit up. He was in England from
Speaker 1: seventeen twenty nine, living in exile because he was already
Speaker 1: critical of the French monarchy. While he was there he
Speaker 1: ran into the ideas of lock of apparently Descartes as well.
Speaker 1: He he basically got turned onto rationalism and he was
Speaker 1: primed and ready for it. Like this guy was just
Speaker 1: waiting for these ideas to pour into him, and when
Speaker 1: they did, he became a lightning rod for what we
Speaker 1: think of as the Enlightenment. Like Voltaire was the main
Speaker 1: dude to start from what I understand. Yeah, and um,
Speaker 1: like we mentioned the salons, they had to do this
Speaker 1: in private because Louis the four that right, Yeah, getting
Speaker 1: better at that. Uh he he was pretty hard on
Speaker 1: to try. He didn't like that kind of talk. It
Speaker 1: threatened him for a good reason. Uh well, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean the reason why. It's like the power was taken
Speaker 1: from the church in place more in the monarchy. But
Speaker 1: in very short order, people said, you know, we're not
Speaker 1: really that fond of the monarchy either. We think we
Speaker 1: should rule ourselves, or at least a leed people to
Speaker 1: rule ourselves. To this divine right of kings. Things seems
Speaker 1: kind of hinky now that we think about it. So
Speaker 1: the monarchies were threatened as well by the Enlightenment. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the monarchy, like the dumb masses that stayed under their
Speaker 1: thumb and any kind of like radical thought or original
Speaker 1: thought was super dangerous. It sounds familiar exactly. It is
Speaker 1: interesting how you talked about. I think there are periods
Speaker 1: of time where things like the Age of Enlightenment keep
Speaker 1: popping up. That's like the nineteen sixties and the United States,
Speaker 1: and I think, like you said, we're in one right now.
Speaker 1: I think we're in probably more than even the sixties
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, And I think there are periods where
Speaker 1: that lulls, like maybe the nineteen eighties where they're the seventies,
Speaker 1: remember Disco, like a dumbing down of things. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: people not caring or whatever. Yeah, it's weird and cyclical.
Speaker 1: I've read I read this article um called Things Fall Apart,
Speaker 1: How social Media leads to a less stable world. It
Speaker 1: was by a guy named Curtis Howland, H. L and
Speaker 1: DY and it's on Knowledge at War there like the
Speaker 1: Warton Business School website, and it was basically saying it
Speaker 1: wasn't I thought it was condemning social media and this
Speaker 1: guy was just basically stating matter of factly that social
Speaker 1: media erodes the state, and that now we have ways
Speaker 1: to connect with other people in ways that are more
Speaker 1: important to us than, say, our allegiance to the state.
Speaker 1: So you may feel, um, you may feel more connected
Speaker 1: to somebody over Hello Kitty and your fondness for Hello Kitty,
Speaker 1: more than you would identify yourself as saying American. And
Speaker 1: with social media, you're able to connect with other people
Speaker 1: who feel the same way, and so you form on
Speaker 1: social media basically bodies that supersede the state in your opinion,
Speaker 1: no boundaries exactly. And as this happens, more and more
Speaker 1: of the states, what's called sovereignty erodes more and more
Speaker 1: and more um and it becomes a less and less
Speaker 1: stable world. The guy's point was that, yes, while it's
Speaker 1: very unstable and things are much more dangerous streaming periods
Speaker 1: like this, it's it's basically just a period of upheaval
Speaker 1: and change and then eventually things stabilize again. But what
Speaker 1: this guy was saying, using this as an example, is
Speaker 1: that we're in a like right now, possibly on the
Speaker 1: cusp of a period of tremendous fundamental change in the world.
Speaker 1: I see that every day Yeah, it's pretty interesting time
Speaker 1: to be alive. Yeah, a little scary to me. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's like the guy said, it's it's more
Speaker 1: dangerous than your average time because change frequently comes out
Speaker 1: of spasms of violence or um upheaval, like just where
Speaker 1: nobody's in charge because there's a power struggle going on,
Speaker 1: or our normal structures are being eroded. It's interesting, it's
Speaker 1: super interesting. Uh So back to the Salons, We're back
Speaker 1: to the age of Enlightenment, the traditional age of Enlightenment. Uh,
Speaker 1: the Salons, the members were known. There was a group
Speaker 1: of people known as the philosophics. Uh. We've mentioned a
Speaker 1: few of them. Rousseau, did Hero, Voltaire, Um. How do
Speaker 1: you pronounce that? Is that it's not montgue is it Montesquieu?
Speaker 1: Montesquieu um. And they were they're kind of skeptics and
Speaker 1: critics of not everything, but the establishment of government or
Speaker 1: the way government was at the time, especially the church.
Speaker 1: Hated the church. Yeah, like Voltaire especially hated the church
Speaker 1: in the very fact that it even existed. And a
Speaker 1: lot of the enlightened Uh ones were deists um and
Speaker 1: deism basically, I like the way Conger put it, um
Speaker 1: in a big picture way. They believe in a clockmaker God,
Speaker 1: which means maybe God created everything and set things in motion.
Speaker 1: But then I was like, all right, that's it. I'm
Speaker 1: out right. I'm not getting my fingers and all the
Speaker 1: pies of everyone. And it's you have free will basically
Speaker 1: after you're born. Um, which again was pretty dangerous to
Speaker 1: the religious establishment. Yeah. So you've got the basis. You've
Speaker 1: got the foundation of um, the Holy Roman Empire in
Speaker 1: the West losing tons of power, and and um political
Speaker 1: and intellectually, you've got the monarchy now being assaulted by
Speaker 1: the French salons who are planning the seeds of democracy.
Speaker 1: Like Monascu for example. Uh wrote in seventy eight The
Speaker 1: Spirit of the Laws, and he basically proposed the idea
Speaker 1: of a separation of powers. He's like the first guy
Speaker 1: to do that. He's the French lawyer who was in
Speaker 1: the salon scene. And Um, all of a sudden, it's
Speaker 1: like separation of power. What are you talking about? No,
Speaker 1: you've got a monarch and what the monarch says is right.
Speaker 1: And as a result of this kind of thinking, the
Speaker 1: seeds of democracy are planted, and then a hostility toward religion, um,
Speaker 1: of almost any kind that you still see today, like
Speaker 1: in the form of like Bill Maher or Richard Dawkins
Speaker 1: or formerly Christopher Hitchens. Um. All of this started coming
Speaker 1: out of the French salons. Yeah, um, all right, after
Speaker 1: this message, we're going to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: how the Age of Enlightenment manifested itself in different parts
Speaker 1: of the world. So we've mainly been in Europe this
Speaker 1: whole time. Uh. In France there was an emphasis on
Speaker 1: the arts. Uh. In England they had a more emphasis
Speaker 1: on UM. Science and economics. You mentioned Adam Smith at
Speaker 1: the beginning, Uh, Scottish man and night Uh some ninety
Speaker 1: six in seventeen seventy six wrote his Wealth of Nations,
Speaker 1: which basically said the government should not interfere with matters
Speaker 1: of finance and economics. There should be uh, the invisible
Speaker 1: hand guiding all these principles. Yeah. I read this article
Speaker 1: and by this guy who's explaining that change, and thought,
Speaker 1: like before that, it was that whole social contract thing,
Speaker 1: like Rousseau saying, you know, the the it's this is
Speaker 1: an interplay between citizens and citizens and citizens and their government,
Speaker 1: and the government's role is to protect um, the rights
Speaker 1: of people. What Hume said is the government is legitimate,
Speaker 1: and so we're not human, but Smith, it's the government's
Speaker 1: legitimate and so far as it steps out of people's
Speaker 1: affairs and let's free trade take place. Which that might
Speaker 1: sound familiar if you um subscribe to republican or conservative
Speaker 1: or libertarian ideology. You know, like the whole laz A
Speaker 1: fair attitude of government is what's what legitimizes government, and
Speaker 1: the government that medals in someone's affairs is an illegitimate
Speaker 1: government as far as classical economic thought goes. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we talked about that in our stuff you should know
Speaker 1: Guide to the Economy, Yeah, which we got an email
Speaker 1: someone bought that the other day. Yeah, that that was
Speaker 1: seventeen hours long or something. And then also in Scotland,
Speaker 1: um was David Hume, who's like my favorite philosopher of
Speaker 1: all time, just because he's like a he's the only
Speaker 1: when he studied, he's a meeting. Now he's a meeting.
Speaker 1: But he's the only one who's ever really spoken to
Speaker 1: me of the Enlightenment philosophers. And Hume was this meat
Speaker 1: and potatoes dude who basically said, like, show me the proof. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was a skeptic. He was an empiricist. Like he said,
Speaker 1: you basically can't believe anything that you can't see with
Speaker 1: your own eyes. My belief in his philosophy has been
Speaker 1: eroded with the idea that, like consciousness is a subjective experience,
Speaker 1: like just totally subjective basically. But I like his his idea,
Speaker 1: and it was like the the cause and effect right,
Speaker 1: Like I think he used like billiards as an example,
Speaker 1: where you hit a ball like you're playing a ball,
Speaker 1: you hit like the eight ball with the Q ball,
Speaker 1: Like you can predict where that's gonna go, like where
Speaker 1: the ball is gonna go based on how you hit
Speaker 1: it with the cue ball. But the Humes point is
Speaker 1: is you can't say for certain that that's what's going
Speaker 1: to happen. You're basing that strictly on previous experience rather
Speaker 1: than proof that this is what will happen. So we
Speaker 1: can't prove that hitting that cue ball will make this
Speaker 1: eight ball go in a certain direction ahead of time.
Speaker 1: And so therefore we've come up with this thing called
Speaker 1: cause and effect, which basically serves as a stop gap
Speaker 1: between what we think will happen and the phenomenon we've
Speaker 1: already observed like, in other words, you can't say for
Speaker 1: certain the sun is gonna come up tomorrow just because
Speaker 1: it's already come up so many days before. And the
Speaker 1: reason why it's because we don't have empirical proof. And
Speaker 1: I liked him for that. So you don't think the
Speaker 1: sun will come up tomorrow necessarily. That's It's not the
Speaker 1: point that I think it won't come up tomorrow. It's
Speaker 1: what human is saying, is we we we can't prove
Speaker 1: that it will. We we you can't prove that it
Speaker 1: will just based on previous experience. Well, Thomas Jefferson and
Speaker 1: John Adams were on board that train to a certain degree. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we mentioned earlier that most of the establishment was
Speaker 1: pretty threatened by most of these ideas and the people
Speaker 1: in power, but not everybody. Uh. Some people wanted to
Speaker 1: get on the Enlightenment train because I think it was
Speaker 1: progressive and maybe made them seem um open to ideas
Speaker 1: and modern perhaps um. Empress of Russia Catherine the Great
Speaker 1: was one of those who had a lot of dealings
Speaker 1: with the philosophs, and Frederick the Great of Prussia even
Speaker 1: had Voltaire over and said, you know what, don't you
Speaker 1: come and live here and he did, Yeah, he said
Speaker 1: for free, and he said for free. He said, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to think of Prussian money, but I
Speaker 1: have no idea. The prawlers the proval that's way better. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was also happening in Germany, um, all over the
Speaker 1: world with Emmanuel Kant. He was one of the first
Speaker 1: champions of freedom of the of the press. And his
Speaker 1: motto is one that I love, dare to know. And
Speaker 1: again he was just challenging people go out there and
Speaker 1: learn about something and don't just accept, uh, what these
Speaker 1: religious leaders are telling you you have to accept. And actually, um,
Speaker 1: he came up with this idea called the categorical imperative. Basically,
Speaker 1: can't gave the world the idea that there is such
Speaker 1: a thing as moral absolutes right. And I guess he
Speaker 1: didn't give the world that because the Judeo Christian ethic
Speaker 1: and most religious ethics say that there is such a
Speaker 1: thing as right or wrong. And today you have that
Speaker 1: argument of is there such a thing as moral absolutism
Speaker 1: or is moral or cultural relativism a thing. That's the
Speaker 1: argument that's that one of the arguments that's playing out
Speaker 1: right now in the intellectual world. I just think that's
Speaker 1: fascinating to it totally is uh So, what does this
Speaker 1: all lead to? Eventually, it's going to lead to warm
Speaker 1: because any time there is well not any time, but
Speaker 1: a lot of times, when there's a uprising of radical thought,
Speaker 1: people are gonna want to take action. And it happened
Speaker 1: in the United States by way of the American Revolution
Speaker 1: and in France by way of the French Revolution. And
Speaker 1: they had different results, to say the least, they were
Speaker 1: both experimentations in this new idea of democracy. Yeah, pretty much, um,
Speaker 1: and yeah, the American one worked out pretty well, some
Speaker 1: would say the French one not so much, because apparently
Speaker 1: robes Pierre, who was the head of the Jacobin Party
Speaker 1: that took power during the French Revolution, robes Pierre was
Speaker 1: a follower of Rousseau. Remember, Rousseau contributed to the social
Speaker 1: Contract by saying, um, the people will something and then
Speaker 1: it's up to the people in charge to carry out
Speaker 1: that well. And so rose Pierre took that to mean
Speaker 1: that the people stormed the best deal and overthrew the monarchy.
Speaker 1: And so it was his job as the head of
Speaker 1: the Jacobin Party, which is now a power to kill
Speaker 1: everybody who wasn't down with the revolution, and so thousands
Speaker 1: and thousands of French people lost their lives at the
Speaker 1: guillotine UM as a result during this reign of terror.
Speaker 1: So some people would say, America, uh, founded itself based
Speaker 1: on democratic principles, and UM, let's not pay attention to
Speaker 1: some of these darker spots over here and just pay
Speaker 1: attention to the democratic experiment. And it worked out great.
Speaker 1: And then the French one, there's a revolution. They tried
Speaker 1: to install democratic ideals and thousands of people had their
Speaker 1: heads chopped off, so it didn't work quite as well well.
Speaker 1: And some people say that effectively killed the age of
Speaker 1: Enlightenment as we know it the French Revolution because the
Speaker 1: chaos and violence that erupted, uh was in certain circles
Speaker 1: blamed on the Enlightenment and proof that we can't self
Speaker 1: govern and these are radical ideas and that's why we
Speaker 1: got stomped on. UM. Have you ever heard the theory
Speaker 1: that the French Revolution was due to moldy bread? No? Uh,
Speaker 1: there's one theory that people got ahold of bad bread,
Speaker 1: so it was ergo poisoning. And basically we're tripping on acid.
Speaker 1: On July fourteen s nine when they decided to storm
Speaker 1: the best deal. That was one of the explanations for
Speaker 1: the sale and witchcraft trials. Ye, crazy, I hadn't heard that.
Speaker 1: So they were like, let's it's go time, So let's
Speaker 1: get this party started. But like I said, some people
Speaker 1: say that ended the age of Enlightenment as we know it. Uh,
Speaker 1: Romanticism was soon ushered in and was way more appealing
Speaker 1: to the common folk, um than this weird radical thoughts
Speaker 1: that were going on before. Well, it was the Romanticism
Speaker 1: was the first time people questioned the idea on a
Speaker 1: large scale that maybe the rationalism of and the humanism
Speaker 1: of the Enlightenment went too far in the other direction,
Speaker 1: Like sure, maybe we were way too religious and the
Speaker 1: religious organizations had way to too much power, but we
Speaker 1: swung way over here, and just rationalism had this idea too,
Speaker 1: and it became dogmatic in and of its own right.
Speaker 1: And so this is we still never really figured out
Speaker 1: if how to how to fine tune it enough, And
Speaker 1: that's what we're still figuring out right now. A lot
Speaker 1: of people say, um, the Enlightenment, the idea that you're
Speaker 1: that the course of humanity is always towards civilization and
Speaker 1: rational thought, and that any culture that's not there is
Speaker 1: inferior to a culture that does think rationally. So that
Speaker 1: means that colonialism and imperialism was supported by Enlightenment thought,
Speaker 1: which is a huge Like the Enlightenment it's not supposed
Speaker 1: to be about that's supposed to be about good things
Speaker 1: and freedom and all that, but it also uh supported colonialism.
Speaker 1: That was a huge that's people are arguing about that
Speaker 1: right now too. Yeah, let's go conquer these people and
Speaker 1: make them modern and bring them into today's world exactly.
Speaker 1: So there there's another article I want to recommend. It's
Speaker 1: called um the Trouble with the Enlightenment. It's by a
Speaker 1: guy named Ali Kussen. It's on Prospect magazine. Awesome, awesome
Speaker 1: article about this that's just he basically reviews a couple
Speaker 1: of books, one one by Jonathan Israel who I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: where he basically says, like, forget the philosophics, you got
Speaker 1: to look at um Baruch Spinoza, who was a Dutch
Speaker 1: philosopher from I think the seventeenth century. He was the
Speaker 1: one who came up with the Enlightenment ideas and had
Speaker 1: we followed his Enlightenment ideas there wouldn't have been any
Speaker 1: governments now, or that there wouldn't be any religion whatsoever.
Speaker 1: He came up with the real revolutionary Enlightenment, and what
Speaker 1: we got, what we think of as the Enlightenment, was
Speaker 1: a watered down, moderate version that was changed. Sure, there
Speaker 1: was tons of change, but it was still palatable to
Speaker 1: the elite that the people could still be governed easily
Speaker 1: even in these new democratic experiments and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people who take issue with his book,
Speaker 1: but it's um pretty interesting to discuss it. What's it
Speaker 1: called democratic Enlightenment. I think he's the one who wrote
Speaker 1: that several thousand page trilogy. And then there's another guy
Speaker 1: in a Storian named Anthony Pageant. He believes um that
Speaker 1: the Enlightenment project is still going on, and basically that
Speaker 1: as long as there's religion in the world, the Enlightenment
Speaker 1: won't be fulfilled entirely, which is again it's it's like
Speaker 1: this this idea that rationalism has become dogmatic, and if
Speaker 1: you don't, if you're not just strictly rational, if you
Speaker 1: hold any kind of what could be considered irrational or
Speaker 1: superstitious belief, you're acting irrationally, you're not thinking correctly and
Speaker 1: therefore you have to be converted, which is just as dogmatic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: lots going on right now, huge time of change. And
Speaker 1: also go read The Dark Age myth and Atheist Reviews
Speaker 1: God's Philosophers by Tim O'Neil and Strange Oceans dot Com
Speaker 1: Tip O'Neal, and uh, I think that's about it. Huh.
Speaker 1: That is it for me. If you want to learn
Speaker 1: more about the Enlightnment, go check out those three articles,
Speaker 1: or check out and check out how the Enlightenment worked
Speaker 1: by typing that in the search part How stuff works.
Speaker 1: And now it's time for listening mail. I'm gonna call
Speaker 1: this mad cow theory from Seattle. Hey, guys, just listen
Speaker 1: to your podcast on fatal familial insomnia. In it, you
Speaker 1: mentioned the late eighteenth century cases in Venice and then
Speaker 1: wondered about the unrelated cases and what they were eating.
Speaker 1: This made me finally sit down and write my first email.
Speaker 1: For years, I've had a theory about prion disease and
Speaker 1: mad cow and specific years ago, I was watching a
Speaker 1: program on Egyptian mummies. They talked about how mummification may
Speaker 1: have started out with the Pharaoh but the practice eventually
Speaker 1: made it down to uh call it budget mummification. They
Speaker 1: talked about how in the late eighteenth nineteen century crips
Speaker 1: of these early mom is they would be ground up
Speaker 1: and sold as fertilizer, specifically in England. Sometime later, when
Speaker 1: I learned about prions and how nearly indestructible they were,
Speaker 1: I wondered, could ground up mummies have been used to
Speaker 1: fertilize the field? Then a cow comes along and eats
Speaker 1: grass that has been contaminated with prions, leading to mad
Speaker 1: cow disease. Human eats the mad cow's brain. Its courts
Speaker 1: felt yakops. Uh. So I've always wondered it. Could never
Speaker 1: figure out if you could prove it or disprove it.
Speaker 1: If CFJ it was a real mummy's curse of desecrated
Speaker 1: Egyptian corpses, And that is Darren Gray in Seattle, and man,
Speaker 1: I just like that kind of speaking of radical thought.
Speaker 1: I had not heard that one. Darren's having it, Well,
Speaker 1: it's Darren's own Gray. Is um nice going, Darren? Yeah? Uh,
Speaker 1: if you have anything to say about that, anybody else
Speaker 1: we would like to hear from you. Can you prove
Speaker 1: or disprove that Chris to Field yakubs disease is a
Speaker 1: mommy's curse. You can tweet to us at s y
Speaker 1: s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot
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Speaker 1: an email which seems appropriate to stuff podcast at how
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