2. European Salon

3.  Enlightenment ideas exchanged in
clubs, journals, newspapers and salons
 Salons presided over by elite women
with focus on sociable conversation
 “Woman question” – the role and
capabilities of women
 Two views: lesser access to education
meant women could not contribute as
men did; women had less intellectual
capacity

4. Jean-Jacques Rousseau

5.  Argued that men and women were
completely different with education
required only for boys – “Emile: Or, On
Education” (1762)
 Belief regarding the role of woman:
“Woman is made specially to please
man…and to be subjugated.”
 Women’s focus should be the home.
 Nature had created permanent
distinctions between the sexes.

6.  Salons however gave women
opportunities for learning
 The approval of salon hostesses often
required for men to gain access to
prestigious societies e.g. Academie
Francais (which did not allow women)
 Salons as part of the public sphere
 Women increasingly arguing for female
learning

7. Enlightenment Philosophers and
Gender
 Philosphers not keen to change the
situation of women
 Rousseau “Social Contract” – nature
gave man dominance over woman and
children
 Hobbes – no justification in nature or
scripture for male domination
 Mary Wollstonecraft “Vindication of the
Rights of Women” – women’s plight due
to the tyranny of men

8. Mary Wollstonecraft

9.  Early work “Thoughts on the Education
of Daughters” (1786)
 French Revolution attacked by Edmud
Burke
 Wollstonecraft’s response “A Vindication
of the Rights of Man” defending the
principles of the revolution
 “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”
(1792) – a milestone for women’s rights.

10.  Emphasizes women’s rationality and
argues for women’s education.
 Extended the Enlightenment philosophy of
reason to women.
 Women only passive as they were raised
as such – they were equal to men and
could have professions and careers.
 Proposed education of boys and girls
together
 Women to empower themselves

12. Introduction
 Race is not a permanent fixture but an idea
with a history
 Enlightenment focus on natural law – one
system of law that governed all human
behaviour
 Idea of common humanity and that
differences were as a result of
experience/environment
 However focus on science replaced
religion and led to a hierarchical ordering of
nature.

13. Carl Linnaeus

14. The Enlightenment and Race
 1735 – early attempt at scientific
classification of human types
 Differentiation of Europeans, American
Indians, Asians and Africans.
 Comte de Buffon – classification of all
races and everything else into a
“naturally” ordered hierarchy with
Europeans the top.
 Inferiority and superiority due to
environment

15. Classifying Race

16.  Context of discovery and exploration
and greater knowledge of rest of the
world
 Europe as living in the “Age of Light” in
comparison the “Dark Continent”
 “Reason” and “civilisation” = “white
people and northern Europe”

17. Burning the Jews

18.  Previously little interaction with other races
until Enlightenment
 Allowed for scientific categorization of
races
 Yet, at the same time, also believed in
individual rights and the notion that “all
men are created equal”
 Separation of church and state meant less
persecution of Jews
 French Revolution abolished slavery

19. 19th
Century Views on Race
 Monogenesis – all races had a common
origin
 Polygenesis – different races originated
from different species
 Ethnology – anthropology that dealt with
the “origin, distribution and
characteristics of human racial groups”

20.  JC Prichard – monogenesis and racial
differences due to “civilizing process”;
justified imperial expansion based on
“civilizing mission”
 French – polygenesis – other races
incapable of being raised to the level of
Europeans – influenced pro-slavery
groups in the southern US

21.  Pre-Darwinian scientific racism
particularly evident in US and France
despite democratic revolutions
 Biological unfitness could be used to
exclude people from citizenship –
women, children, the insane and other
racial groups

22. “Scientific” Racial Classification

23.  Germans reject civic nationalism of the
Enlightenment in favour of ethnic
nationalism
 However even civic nationalism can be
exclusionary if one is defined as being
less than human
 However Enlightenment still allowed for
racial inclusiveness e.g. SA post-1994