Then we finish this segment of the course by looking at how Adam Smith sanitized Mandeville's ideas by casting them in a Newtonian mold. Our link here is Benjamin Franklin, himself a philosopher and an admirer (of a sort) of Mandeville who also hosted George Whitefield, the great Methodist revival preacher, when he visited Philadelphia. Then we remind ourselves that deists did not have the eighteenth century to themselves by turning to the Great Awakening in the American colonies. Students can work with either his notorious poem or with his essay, written afterwards as a sort of formal explanation of his ideas. The challenge here is coming to grips with Mandeville's sardonic, mocking tone. It asks students to compare Voltaire's and Mandeville's differing notions of Nature. The first class poses a straightforward task: How did Voltaire present Newton? The next pushes the envelope. In part we can go more deeply because students can choose their own paths into the materials. They are also accustomed to the notion of genius as it developed from the Renaissance and have just completed units on the Scientific Revolution and on the Stamp Act Crisis between Great Britain and its American colonies, during which we made numerous references to the Age of Reason. By this stage of the course, students are used to looking at paintings and expect to make connections between art and other developments. In part this is possible because we can build upon work we have already done, especially with art. You will note that it takes students far more deeply into the Enlightenment than is usual for an introductory course. The prosecutions surrounding the printing of The Age of Reason in Britain continued for thirty years after its initial release and encompassed numerous publishers as well as over a hundred booksellers.This sequence of assignments comes from my introductory "Modern Europe and U.S. In 1819, Carlile was found guilty of blasphemy and seditious libel and sentenced to three years in Dorchester Gaol with a fine of £1,500. He immediately published a second edition of 3,000 copies. Carlile charged one shilling and sixpence for the work, and the first run of 1,000 copies sold out in a month. This LibriVox recording of The Age of Reason is taken from Richard Carlile’s anthology of Paine’s writings, published in 1818. Paine argued against religion as it is revealed in the Bible, but he argued just as strongly for a Deistic religion and a Creator of Reason. Although these arguments were commonly known amongst the educated elite, Paine wrote in simple and irreverent prose that was easily accessible to a mass audience. Part 3 is an examination and rejection of the claims of prophecies concerning Jesus Christ. Part 3 was written in the United States sometime around 1800 but he delayed publication until 1807 for fears of violent backlash. In Part 2, Paine attacks the reliability of the Bible and points out numerous absurdities and contradictions. Part 2 was written either during or shortly after his confinement in a French prison in 1794. He urged his readers to employ reason over revelation. Part 1 was written sometime in 1793, and attacks the concepts of divine revelation and inspiration. Published in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1807, it was a bestseller in the United States, where it caused a short-lived deistic revival. The Age of Reason challenges institutionalized religion and challenges the legitimacy of the Bible, the central sacred text of Christianity. The Age of Reason Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology is a pamphlet, written by a British and American revolutionary Thomas Paine.
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