Soupçon II.iii The Public Sphere until the Enlightenment
As we travel from the Antiquity towards the modern times, one of the most interesting examples of an intellectual in the public sphere is the "Renaissance Man". Leonardo da Vinci (painter, sculptor, inventor) or Michelangelo (painter, sculptor, inventor) or Sir Philip Sidney (poet, critic, scholar, courtier, soldier) can be intellectual/creative giants who strode various fields masterfully.
The Enlightenment grants a clearly socio-political edge to the concept. Let us look at three major thinkers to understand it in some detail.
Who wrote that in the state of nature, the "life of man (is) solitary, poor nasty, brutish and short"? 1) John Locke 2) Francis Bacon 3) Michel de Montaigne 4) Thomas Hobbes. The correct answer is Thomas Hobbes's "Léviathan" (I. xiii). Hobbes argued for a strong central authority to avoid constant conflict and to maintain peace.
Who introduced the concept of 'natural rights' such as "life, liberty, right to property"? a) French philosphes 2) Voltaire 3) Diderot 4)John Locke. It was Locke who first asserted that the government must protect such natural rights.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the outsider against the establishment, sealed the concept of the 'social contract'. It legitimised the voluntary agreement among citizens who disapproved of the monarchical power granted by divine law, and instead as individual chose to surrender certain individual freedoms so as to gain a government protection of rights.
The Enlightenment, leading to the French Revolution (May 5, 1781) and the American Declaration of Independance (1776), becomes the major plinth of the public space celebrating democracy, individual rights and people's sovereignty.
Next let us look at the wor(l)ds of 'salons' and the rise of the print culture and their contribution to the notion of the public space. Oh, yes, it is better to look at a concept in some detail rather than determine it the weekly way. So Soupçon II, and all the following versions, would continue beyond the weekend in to the next week, if necessary.
Pratima Agnihotri Pune
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