What caused the Enlightening?

What caused the Enlightening?

The massive influx of wealth, goods and knowledge into Europe from the rest of the world.

How did money and stuff cause it? And what knowledge are you referring to?

Development of a large french middle class

Really thinking really making people think

For real

>How did money and stuff cause it?

Money into the hands of certain people allows interested parties to become patrons of scientists and the like. The intellectual class can rarely support itself. As for knowledge, certain philosophical ideas from India and China, perhaps. Leibniz was a fanatic Sinophile. The most important factor really, was probably an increase in communication. Once the broader intelligentsia were able to correspond with one another, ideas caught like wildfire and fed off of themselves.

The secularization of kingdoms due to religion being tied to a highly politically active outsider church-state, or protestant groups prone to rebelling again the social order due to catholic rulers being dominant.

The rulers weakened their constrictions on what may be discussed, allowing new ideas such as ideology to exist separate from religion. Religion was often helpful in promoting human thought, but in many cases every form of thought had to be "helping religious thought" in some interpretation. A lot of muslim scholars to this day view their academic pursuits through a holy lens. The ability to not have to view it through that lens, that you had other options, was revolutionary.

was "enlightened" the original "euphoric"?

Printing press, rising literacy, scientific revolution, and the growth of the political power of the bourgeoisie.

The printing press helped amplify available knowledge and dissenting information against the church

Rising literacy improved critical thinking and put the church's teachings in context

Scientific revolution overturned the myths about the cosmos peddled by the church

And the rise of the merchantile class established a new route to political power and secularism though purely economic obtainment, ensuring that the church and state were no longer the sole arbiters of who got what.

...

Why are Frenchies so much hotter than Englishmen?

>but because I am enlightened by my own intelligence

Voltaire was a notorious anti-semite

>Voltaire had initially condemned the persecution of Jews on several occasions including in his work Henriade.[118] As stated by Durant, Voltaire had praised the simplicity, sobriety, regularity, and industry of Jews. However, subsequently, Voltaire had become strongly anti-Semitic after some regrettable personal financial transactions and quarrels with Jewish financiers.

>That Paine quote

Tips fedora

>had become strongly anti-Semitic after some regrettable personal financial transactions and quarrels with Jewish financiers.

hahahaha

I like how that is why he became anti-Semitic.

Money comes from trading across the world and colonialistic exploits.

Knowledge comes from the arab worlds, the indian world, and the east asian world. Do you really think those missionaries who travel to those continents do not report back what they learn? The collection of knowledge gathered from across the world propelled europe to heights never seen before. Ofcourse you can't acknowledge this fact, as it would destroy the whole european exceptionalism belief.

I'm asking what the influx of money has to do with it

I'm pretty sure most foreign knowledge was imported from Islam long before the Enlightenment, unless you mean things like botanical knowlege of different plants

Money funds people to do leisure stuff rather than manual hard labor. It funds universities and libraries.

The Renaissance lead to the Enlightenment

By giving rise to the Humanist movement in Western Europe and loosened some of the grip in certain countries of the iron fist of religious ideology, but history tends not to be linear so in some places advanced in certain lines of thought, some diverged, and some went backwards

Whatever you say, Pajeet.

bingo

Therefore is actually correct.

Pretty much what this guy said
The turning point would probably be, ironically, the Hundred Years War. To realize what I mean by this, we need to go back to the Middle Ages.

What did Medieval Europe look like and how was labor divided? Well, Medieval Europe was a feudal system that arose from the absence of centralized (Roman) authority that could enforce order. As such, what could essentially be called maffia families arose: lower nobles (ie. those with the fewest cronies) would force unprotected farmers to pay them protection money. These mob bosses paid protection money to even more powerful mob bosses (counts, dukes, princes) until you got all the way up to the big don (the king). The nobility was thus justified as the warrior class that demanded protection money to protect the peasants from other nobles (ie. foreign powers). (The clergy also had loads of temporal power but let's leave that a side issue for now).

Now the Hundred Years War, why is that a turning point? As the English are eager to remind us, the French got their shit pushed in during the early stages of the war. What the English are eager to forget is that this inspired Charles V (who succeeded his literally insane predecessor) to abandon the system of a warrior nobility and create a professional, standing army of mostly lowborn gendarmes. This was possible due to the late medieval rise of cities and a merchant class that could match the nobility coin for coin, and thus afford expensive arms, armor and horses. This system proved highly effective and was copied by the rest of Europe.

From here on we saw the transition from the noblesse d'épee (nobility of the sword) to the noblesse de robe (nobility of the robe). In other words, the warrior-nobility became a privileged class of administrators, a role that was only cemented as powerful French kings on the one hand and British parliament on the other centralized power away from individual nobles.

cont.

With power centralized in the figure of the monarch (or the parliament, or some equivalent person or institution in other countries) and military affairs being the affair of professional lowborns, more and more members of the third estate (those who are neither noble nor clergymen) started getting upset. They were often the equals of nobles in wealth, but had very little influence due to their lower birth. Tensions were already present across much of Europe.

In England this was more or less 'resolved' with parliamentary sovereignity, though the nobility and clerty could still overrule by virtue of their birth rather than their total numbers in parliament (hence the commons in the lower house, and the lords temporal and spiritual in the upper house: even if the commons are the majority, the lords can still block their votes on the king's proposals). In France things didn't go down like that.

After the American Revolutionary War, both Britain and France were pretty down on their coin. France had a harder time recovering due to an outdated taxation system, which Louis XVI wanted to reform. Traditionally, for these kind of reforms the Three Estates needed to be summoned to vote on the matter. Problems arose when deciding how to vote: the nobility and clergy wanted to vote per estate, while the third estate wanted one vote per head (which would mean they would outnumber the nobility and clergy). This didn't go down to well, was rejected as a proposal and eventually led to the storming of the Bastille. The French Revolution wasn't so much led by starving peasants trampled under the heel of a cruel king as much as it was led by lawyers, bankers, merchants and clerks resenting the unearned privileges of an arbitrary nobility and the disproportionate power of the clergy. They resented feudalism: a system that once made perfect sense but had become outdated and even detrimental.

coffee

La noblesse de robe apparaît au XVIe siècle avec le développement de l'administration royale et son extension à tout le royaume après la disparition des grandes principautés territoriales. La noblesse de robe était formée de bourgeois anoblis grâce aux fonctions ou aux charges (les offices) qu’ils avaient exercées après les avoir achetées au roi. Ces fonctions étaient généralement exercées dans la magistrature, d'où le terme de « noblesse de robe ». Ces fonctions étaient devenues héréditaires au début du XVIIe siècle par le moyen d'une taxe versée au roi.

Cette noblesse, créée par la volonté royale, vit dans l'entourage du roi. C'est dans cette noblesse que Richelieu, Mazarin puis Louis XIV prendront leurs ministres. En outre, elle lui fournit les membres de ses conseils, comme les conseillers d'État et les maîtres des requêtes. Ce sont eux qui préparent les dossiers soumis à l'examen des conseils où roi aidé de ses ministres prend les décisions. C'est dans cette catégorie que le roi choisit les intendants de police, justice et finances qui le représentent et exécutent ses ordres dans les provinces. Ils sont aussi membres des grandes assemblées judiciaires (les parlements, les cours des comptes et les cours des Aides) qui rendent la justice au nom du roi.

Cette noblesse est compétente, instruite et cultivée. Elle participe activement à la vie intellectuelle et religieuse. Dans ce dernier domaine, elle se divise entre les dévôts (catholiques très favorables à la Contre-Réforme) et les jansénistes qui sont partisans d'une religion catholique plus rigoureuse et austère. La noblesse d'origine parlementaire est très critique vis-à-vis de la monarchie absolue, qu'elle prétend contrôler, mais elle tient à maintenir les différences sociales (ainsi, les parlements composés de nobles de robe s'opposeront constamment aux réformes envisagées par certains ministres, réformes qui prévoyaient une diminution des privilèges fiscaux de la noblesse).

Cette noblesse est aussi très riche. Elle accumule les seigneuries et les propriétés qu'elle administre parfaitement et où elle exige durement ses impôts seigneuriaux. Vivant surtout dans les villes, elle participe au développement de celles-ci. Elle construite des hôtels particuliers et des immeubles de rapport. Elle prête au roi, aux membres de l'ancienne noblesse qui ont de grands besoins et des revenus insuffisants. Il lui arrive aussi de prêter à des paysans aisés qui souhaitent améliorer encore leurs exploitations.

code : 1905

Coffee replaced gin.
t. Reedit historian

dafuq, English pls