Absolutism and the Age of Enlightenment: What Do They Mean to Young People Today?

Christopher Balchin

(Note: This paper describes classes that took place during the school year in which the attack on the World Trade Center took place. The names of the students have been changed. In edited form this was published in the periodical The Right Of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known)

This year at Norman Thomas High School, where I teach social studies, there have been more fights than ever before, and they are increasingly vicious. I have seen veteran teachers reduced to tears, furious and frustrated that they can't get through to their students, and ready to give up. Young people all over New York and America see a world that is angry, and they are angry themselves. The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method is crucial in understanding that anger and having it change. Through this beautiful method--and I say this with 20 years of classroom experience--students, even those who have a history of failure, become really interested in learning, are no longer driven to fight the world or get away from it in their own thoughts. And they become kinder.

I owe my success in the classroom to what Eli Siegel, the founder of Aesthetic Realism, explained: that the deepest desire of every person--no matter what culture or country he or she comes from--is to like the world, and that is the purpose of all education. Through the Aesthetic Realism method, students see that every subject in the curriculum represents a world that can be respected. "The world, art, and self explain each other," Mr. Siegel stated, "each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites." This principle, great, solid, flexible, has been the basis of all my lessons, and through it, students come to see history as alive, and about themselves right now.

 

I. WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM AN ABSOLUTE MONARCH?

The "H3" Global History lessons I will describe were part of a course in early modern history, from the 16th to the 20th centuries. This includes the study of what are known as absolute monarchies and the opposition to them which led to the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason, in which a new, democratic way of seeing what human beings deserved came to be through John Locke, Voltaire, and Rousseau, among others.

At the beginning of the year, there was, in my classroom, an explosive anger simmering below the surface; a feeling of hostility between students, and they showed very little interest in what they felt were dull, remote historical events. Then, only a few days into the term, the devastating attack on the World Trade Center took place, and for about a week, they were numb, shocked, and very quiet. I also heard that some students in our school had shouted racist comments at Arab-American students and others who looked Middle-Eastern or Indian. As the days went on, the disgust and anger in the classroom increased--the feeling in students that the world is something you should get away from and have contempt for intensified.

Thomas came in 20 minutes late every day. Jay barged in eating grapes and dropping the pits and stalks on the floor at the front of the room by the board. Johnny Mercado constantly told jokes, and acted as if the whole class should center around him. Viviana, who missed several weeks of school, told me in tears that her aunt had died in the Twin Towers on September 11. When she did come to class, she would hardly speak, and it was clear her thoughts were elsewhere. Jerry muttered under his breath, making fun of every person's name as attendance was taken. Many students looked depressed, and didn't seem to be listening at all.

How could these young people, with all they were in the midst of, honestly feel that the study of history was useful to them, and related to what they were feeling? I knew it would be by their seeing, through the Aesthetic Realism method, that whatever fact of history we would meet, ethics was at the center. I learned from Aesthetic Realism and have seen in my years of teaching that ethics is the subject that interests students most. In a lecture, Eli Siegel said: "Every historical question whatsoever has in it the matter of ethics. Ethics is the study of how to give what is coming to yourself and at the same time to everything else."

These are the opposites of Self and World. My students would see that the biggest question all through history is: how will a person take care of oneself--by being just to the outside world or having contempt for it? That was the question answered so wrongly and horrifically by those who planned September 11. And it's the question we all have now. I told the class that the fight between narrow care for self and justice to other people was fierce during the age of absolute rulers, the unit we began with.

We learned about absolute monarchs like King James I of England, and Louis XIV of France--whose famous phrase "l'Etat, cest Moi"--"I am the state" epitomizes the idea of absolutism. We read the following description in our textbook, World History: Patterns of Interaction:

Many European monarchs...claim[ed] the authority to rule without limits. These...believed that all power within their state's boundaries rested in their hands. Their goal was to control every aspect of society. [They] believed in divine right, the idea that God created the monarchy.

And we learned that for a subject--a person--to go against what the king or queen ordered was considered blasphemy. I asked: In terms of ethics, what do we see here? Jay, who early on had barged into the classroom, seemingly unaware of what was going on, was very interested in this matter, and said, "The king could do whatever he liked, but other people had to obey him--that's not fair!" Others agreed. Yes, I said, absolutism, which occurred in many parts of the world and at different times in history, was a horrible, unethical relation of central opposites in government--one and many. These opposites are related to self and world, as one person, the monarch, had the power simply because of birth or marriage, to have his or her way, with unquestioned authority, regardless of the rights of other people. An absolute ruler we studied early was Louis XIV. We read this account of Louis from the Universal History of the World Volume IX, "The Age of Great Kings:"

Each morning he had his courtiers rise early to dress and powder themselves in time for the first important event of the day....

"What do you think that was?" I asked the class. Johnny Mercado, serious for the first time, asked: "Deciding what to do with the army--how to protect France?" and Wilkin thought it might have to do with the economy. I read:

Each morning he had his courtiers rise early to dress and powder themselves in time for the first important event of the day--the awakening of the king.

 

There were gasps and looks of disbelief on the faces of the students. Our history continues:

Well before eight o'clock, they were waiting crushed together in his anteroom, and when...the great news came that Louis was awake, they whispered to each other excitedly. At a quarter after eight he allowed the privileged to enter his bedroom and watch him receive his holy water and put on his getting‑up wig; a bit later he permitted 150 or so more to crowd in and watch him dress. His brown velvet trousers he put on himself.

The class was in uproar and could not believe Louis' blatant, phenomenal selfishness. "Did they really do that?" Harry asked. "I don't want no one dressing me," Thomas said firmly. I asked. "This is extreme, but does it have anything to do with us?" They looked surprised. "Do we, like Louis, ever think that we are the centre of the universe, that everything revolves around us, that other people were put on this earth to serve us?" I asked. Students nodded and smiled in recognition. And if people don't recognize our supremacy, how do we treat them? Louis had his way--for example, if someone had the nerve not to appear in court one day perhaps because of illness, and if that person's name was later mentioned, Louis would say loftily: "I do not know him." Everyone recognized something that goes on in the hallways and lunchroom--one student "cutting" another, because he or she supposedly insulted you. The fights this has led to have sometimes been brutal. Seeing this attitude in Louis XIV, and seeing it as both ridiculous and cruel, had a very good effect on my students.

RIGAUD, Hyacinthe Portrait of Louis XIV

We also learned that with all his selfishness, there was something else in Louis. During his reign, there was a flourishing of the arts in France; and such dramatists, writers, and painters as Corneille and Racine, La Fontaine, and La Rochefoucauld, Claude Lorrain and Nicholas Poussin. Meanwhile, at the time of Louis' death, France itself was in financial ruin. And my students were glad to learn that Louis' brutal injustice towards the people of France, his robbing the peasants to pay for his expensive castles, his 500 cooks, made for a beautiful anger which seventy-four years later, resulted in the French Revolution.

Part Two