The Stuarts in 100 Facts by Andrea Zuvich

Author:Andrea Zuvich
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781445647302
Publisher: Amberley Publishing
Published: 2015-10-14T04:00:00+00:00

49. STUART PHILOSOPHERS USHERED IN AN AGE OF REASON

The philosophy of the seventeenth century is unquestionably important, especially when one considers that the philosophical works from this era paved the way for the Enlightenment thinking of the eighteenth century. Ideas spread, and so we have to look at the whole of Europe in this fact. In France, philosophy began to take interesting directions under great thinkers such as Rene Descartes (of ‘I think, therefore I am’ fame) and Blaise Pascal (notable for Pascal’s Wager). In England, Francis Bacon (1561–1626) and Thomas Hobbes were some of the most influential thinkers of the early Stuart era.

Francis Bacon, from whom we get the term ‘Baconian’, died when he developed pneumonia after conducting an experiment in the snow. Thomas Hobbes made a significant impact on modern philosophy as well. The term ‘Hobbesian’ refers to men’s lives, without laws or a power to keep them in line, as ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’. In other words, we need to be ruled because that is in our best interest. Hobbes was thoroughly admired during the Stuart period, and biographer John Aubrey wrote one of his longest and most detailed biographical entries for him.

The impact of Locke’s philosophy is readily apparent to those who have read both his writings and the Constitution of the Unites States of America. Locke voyaged across from the Dutch Republic to England when William and Mary took the throne in 1689, and he was a staunch supporter of their reign. His works, including An Essay Concerning Human Understanding as well as his Two Treatises of Government, were two of the most influential on the Founding Fathers.

The Stuart era as a whole was a period in history in which people seemed to have been frightened and confused. I say this because, on the one hand, they were thoroughly entrenched in superstition and deeply religious, but on the other hand, scientific endeavour was beginning to take off. In that century, we had the likes of Galileo, Newton, Leibniz, Cassini, Descartes and many others seeking answers to some of mankind’s greatest questions. To have such great leaps in science and industry while simultaneously maintaining religious and superstitious beliefs must have been difficult for some people.

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