ENG2206 The Enlightenment, A discussion about 500 words

Need help with my English question – I’m studying for my class.

Please read all the discussion thread prompts and then respond to at least TWO of them with short answers (at least 200 words each) by Sunday, 14 June. Come back next week and review some of your classmates comments. Altogether, your comments on this forum should total AT LEAST 400 words.

1. The Concerns of the Enlightenment

Of the introductory readings from the Enlightenment Era, which seem to you to continue to be the most relevant in today’s world? Why? What kinds of values and freedoms are the Enlightenment writers most interested in? What does it mean to them to be “enlightened”?

Indicate clearly, with the name of an author, what source(s) you’re refering to. Try to use a direct quotation (or a couple of them) from the source(s) in your response.

2. Swift’s “Modest Proposal”

Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” is a great example of what we think of as “Englightment” attitudes. But if the Enlightenment is characterized by a shift in society’s values from religious faith toward a greater reliance on reason, then how does this proposal fit that scheme? How is Swift’s essay reasonable/rational? How is it unreasonable/irrational? In what way is Swift commenting on the use of pure reason in governing and organizing society? In what other ways does Swift’s essay exemplify Englightenment attitudes?

How does Swift satirize government and social planners–and what, exactly, is satire? Who is Swift taking aim at in this essay? Should we make a list of them all? What comment does Swift’s essay make about the newly-opened field of capitalism, which is also an Enlightenment-era invention? (Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” was published in 1776, almost fifty years after Swift’s 1729 essay, though the actual forms of capitalist society were on the rise in the early 18th century.) Why does Swift use the term “modest” as a qualifier? What does “modest” mean, and how does Swift want us to regard his attitude (we might say, the persona he uses to voice this essay) toward his own plan?

Don’t feel you need to answer all these questions! I’m just giving you a few things to think about and respond to! Again, try using a quotation (or two) in your response!

3. The Enlightenment and Religion

Religion is an especially important subject in the Enlightenment.

Swift was an Anglican priest (a protestant–a priest of the protestant Church of England, which in America has become the Episcopal church) in largely Roman Catholic Dublin, Ireland–in other words, he was an elite member of a small and wealthy minority ruling class with a different religion than the vast majority of his countrymen, the Irish. Ireland was a Catholic country that had been colonized (and repressed) by the protestant English for centuries by the time Swift wrote his proposal. How does Swift seem to feel about the religious divisions in Ireland (that have been the cause of continued violence into our own lifetimes). Does he really think it would be a good thing to diminish the number of “Papists” (Roman Catholics)?

Voltaire’s Candide seeks to satirize many different facets of European life, and he especially takes aim at religion. Aside from Cunegonde’s sexual servitude to both a Catholic church official and a Jew, the auto-da-fe in which Candide and Pangloss are scapegoated for the Lisbon earthquake, and the activities of the Jesuits in Paraguay, among other episodes, we see a strong criticism of religion in the presentation of the religion of El Dorado. Comment on the religious discussion that Candide and Cacambo have with the old man they meet in El Dorado.

Immanuel Kant writes, in his essay, “What is Enlightenment?” about the ideal of religious freedom, and other writers, from the Encyclopists to De Sade to Descartes to the Deists (such as Benjamin Franklin, who avoided mentioning religion in his writings almost entirely), touch on religious issues.

Using a quote or two (and being very clear about your sources), COMPARE AT LEAST TWO of the writers we have read so far IN TERMS OF THEIR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. How would you characterize the Enlightenment’s attitude, in general, towards religion? Do you think the Enlightenment thinkers were more or less religious in their thinking than intellectuals today?

4. Women in the Enlightenment Era

Most readers, especially women readers, will notice how hard the world apparently was for women during the Englightenment. In Candide, we see several women – especially Cunegonde, the Old Woman, and Paquette – suffer outragous misfortunes. All the women in the novel, it seems, suffer from abuse and sexual assaults. Similarly, one of the primary reasons Swift wrote his “Modest Proposal” seems to have been the plight of women in Dublin. What do you think Voltaire and Swift want their readers to understand about being a women in the 18th century? Use a quote or two in your response.