Day 5 - A Little Enlightenment

"The purpose of law is, not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom." ~ John Locke 1632 - 1704


Today's guest lecturer was Dr. Paul Mormon from the University of Dayton.  (I've gone all the way to Vienna and I'm still surrounded by Mormons.  Not a bad thing, just an observation.)  He spoke at length about the enlightenment.  The lecture was absolutely fascinating and links directly to the United States and the Declaration of Independence.  If you haven't read much about the enlightenment I encourage you to do so.  Many of the beliefs of the enlightenment thinkers could easily be applied to modern society and the problems we are facing as a nation.  In addition, the founding fathers were philosophes and both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were high on the lists of invitees to the major salons of the time.


To boil the enlightenment down to it's most basic is this.  The holy Catholic church ran the world and was corrupt.  This corruption was rampant and it caused people to think about whether or not a sinful religious body was able to direct a devout follower into heaven when it was clear that these leaders were not going to make it there themselves.  This caused people to think about everything they knew and to question it.  Philosophes, that's what the members of the enlightenment called themselves, believed that to fully understand mankind, you had to understand nature.  More importantly you needed to understand natural law.  It isn't important that gravity works, what matters is figuring out why gravity works.  Observe, question, hypothesize, examine and come up with an answer that is always accurate and you will have understood one of Gods laws of nature.  If you understand natural law you can better live a life that, upon death, is likely to grant you admission into heaven.  This idea caused Copernicus to question our place in the universe (the earth is the center of the universe), and Galileo to find evidence that Copernicus was right (the earth isn't even the center of the solar system).  People began to question why they couldn't make decisions for themselves.

John Locke believed that it was the will of natural law that all people had the right to life, liberty and property.  (Jefferson paraphrased Locke in the Declaration of Independence.)

Locke also believed that it was the purpose of government to ensure that man had these rights.  In other words, you have the right to own property and no one has the right to take it away from you.  If they try, the government should stop them.  He also believed in religious tolerance.  IE. you have the right to believe whatever you want and as long as it doesn't violate civil law it's acceptable.  If your religion advocates child sacrifice, then we've got a problem because you are violating someones right to life.  He did not advocate religious equality.  "Your welcome to your religion, but it isn't as good as mine.  So Nyah!"

It was this belief in questioning everything, studying as much as you can, understanding nature and putting into practice your observations related to natural law, coupled with the Church wanting control, the aristocracy wanting control and the commoner asking why he can't make decisions for himself, that permeated the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

So, that's my starting point.  Getting into Mozart's world.  It's fascinating and worthy of further investigation.  Oh, wait, that's why I'm here!

What you really want to know is what did I do after lectures!  Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you but I came back to the hotel to type the blog and read for a while because tonight we are going to an authentic Viennese wine garden.  I'll be back late and am not going to be blogging about that tonight.  I'll add it in to tomorrow's post.  I did, however, stop by that little sandwich shop that I went to yesterday and picked up another ei spitz along with some cheese bread.  I took the sandwich apart before eating it today.  It has a mustard/mayo sauce with sliced hard boiled eggs and freshly chopped chives.  I can't tell what the spices are, but I think it may just be salt and pepper.  Whatever it is, I like it!