"Enlightenment ideas really came into elite popular opinion, in what we call the public sphere — that is, people who are interested in ideas, and people who became interested in politics — in really three major ways in France:
First, through, académies. An academy was not a university... An academy was a group of erudites, sometimes including clergy, many nobles, many bourgeois people of education. The population that was literate increases in Western Europe decidedly in the eighteenth century. They would get together and discuss ideas. They had contests where people who wanted to make a little money would answer a question put out by the académie. They would write responses to questions about science, religion, and big ideas. Robespierre wins one of these contests. These académies meet in smaller rooms than this, but they discuss ideas. These ideas are putting in sharp analysis, or re-evaluation, the role of the church as an institution. They have to get around some way. People have to know about them. The academy is one way this happened.
A second one, moving to number three, are Masonic lodges. Masonic lodges still exist... Masonic lodges begin in Scotland. They are secularizing institutions that the members mostly all agree, agreed in the eighteenth century, that the church's public institution role is too important. Masonic lodges talk about these ideas as well. They talk about Rousseau, Diderot, Montesquieu, and all of these people. This is a second way in which these ideas get out.
The third is the salon. There's another French word that's so important it became an English word. A salon was a gathering of pretty elite people, but interested in the life of the mind. They were hosted by hostesses, again, the role of women in the Enlightenment... People would come together to eat, to drink, and to discuss ideas. When British guests came to Paris, the salons, they said, "All they do is eat and drink. They spend all their time eating and drinking, and they don't discuss ideas that much." In fact, they did... ...you can imagine people meeting there talking about the ideas of young Enlightenment hotshots, those people who have become part of the canon of western civilization. This is another way where these ideas get along. Young, would-be philosophes on the make coming up from the provinces, what they want to do is be introduced to one of these hostesses so that they will be invited to trot out their intellectual wares at one of these gatherings."
© John Merriman
Yale Lectures on European Civilization, 1648-1945 (2008)
[link]
First, through, académies. An academy was not a university... An academy was a group of erudites, sometimes including clergy, many nobles, many bourgeois people of education. The population that was literate increases in Western Europe decidedly in the eighteenth century. They would get together and discuss ideas. They had contests where people who wanted to make a little money would answer a question put out by the académie. They would write responses to questions about science, religion, and big ideas. Robespierre wins one of these contests. These académies meet in smaller rooms than this, but they discuss ideas. These ideas are putting in sharp analysis, or re-evaluation, the role of the church as an institution. They have to get around some way. People have to know about them. The academy is one way this happened.
A second one, moving to number three, are Masonic lodges. Masonic lodges still exist... Masonic lodges begin in Scotland. They are secularizing institutions that the members mostly all agree, agreed in the eighteenth century, that the church's public institution role is too important. Masonic lodges talk about these ideas as well. They talk about Rousseau, Diderot, Montesquieu, and all of these people. This is a second way in which these ideas get out.
The third is the salon. There's another French word that's so important it became an English word. A salon was a gathering of pretty elite people, but interested in the life of the mind. They were hosted by hostesses, again, the role of women in the Enlightenment... People would come together to eat, to drink, and to discuss ideas. When British guests came to Paris, the salons, they said, "All they do is eat and drink. They spend all their time eating and drinking, and they don't discuss ideas that much." In fact, they did... ...you can imagine people meeting there talking about the ideas of young Enlightenment hotshots, those people who have become part of the canon of western civilization. This is another way where these ideas get along. Young, would-be philosophes on the make coming up from the provinces, what they want to do is be introduced to one of these hostesses so that they will be invited to trot out their intellectual wares at one of these gatherings."
© John Merriman
Yale Lectures on European Civilization, 1648-1945 (2008)
[link]
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