Enlightenment Philosophers and Ideas

Enlightenment Philosophers

Lesson 5.6

Multiple Choice

Bell Ringer: This man used observations and experiments to learn how the world around him worked. His way of thinking lead to the Scientific Method we use today. Who is he?

• Francis Bacon

• Isaac Newton

• Emilie du Chatelet

Lesson Overview

Learners can:

• compare the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution

• explain Enlightenment thinkers’ ideas and write a constitution using their ideas
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Vocabulary:
deism, empiricism, Enlightenment, Individualism, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, liberalism, Mary Wollstonecraft, Montesquieu, natural rights, social contract, tabula rasa, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire

Video Question

What did the Enlightenment challenge?

Multiple Choice

What did the Enlightenment challenge?

• Equality for all people

• The power of the church and monarchs

• Market economies

The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Reason, was a philosophical movement in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.
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It was centered around the idea that reason is the primary source of authority and legitimacy.
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It advocated ideals such as liberty, progress, tolerance, people’s voice in government, and separation of church and state.
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The Enlightenment built on intellectual movements that occurred before it: the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution.

​The seventeenth and eighteenth century was an age in which European thought became "enlightened," or rational, thoughtful, and informed.

The Enlightenment

Humanism emphasized the value of life on earth and humans’ ability to solve problems.
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These values inspired Enlightenment thinkers, who wrote about the importance of the individual and sought to make changes to the problems they saw in society.
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The Renaissance’s respect for classical culture also carried over to the Enlightenment.
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Enlightenment scholars looked to Greek democracy and Roman republicanism as they considered how governments should work.

The Enlightenment

Scholars of the Enlightenment followed similar methods to those of the Scientific Revolution.
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During the Scientific Revolution, scientists questioned the world around them rather than accept ideas as true simply because the beliefs were widely held.
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They conducted experiments and used their observations and reason to form conclusions.
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Enlightenment thinkers applied these same principles to their examination of society and government.

The Enlightenment

They observed patterns in human behavior and how governments worked.
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These observations formed their beliefs about the nature of humanity and government.
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The Enlightenment led people to increasingly question long-held political and religious ideas. The ideas of the Enlightenment challenged the authority of monarchies and the churches.
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It paved the way for the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries, including the American Revolution that formed the United States.

Rationalism & Individualism

Rationalism was critical to the debates of the Enlightenment period. Rationalism is the idea that people should draw conclusions through the use of observation, calculation, and logic rather than tradition, faith, or emotion.
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Enlightenment thinkers drew on the ideas of Rene Descartes.

Descartes was a devout Christian and believed that faith and reason could coexist.
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He believed knowledge comes from logic and experience rather than from innate ideas a person is born with.
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Rationalists of the Enlightenment believed that individual people and governments should behave based on logic and what they have learned from experience.

Rationalism & Individualism

Individualism is the belief that people have value as individuals, not only as members of a larger group.
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It includes the idea that individual rights are important. The influence of individualism is clearly visible in the United States today.
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Individual rights, such as freedom of religion and freedom of speech, are enshrined in the United States Constitution. Individualism is a strong part of the country’s culture.

Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher who primarily wrote about politics, human nature, and morality and these subjects’ impacts on one another.
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He was heavily influenced by political theory, war, history, and the advancement of science during the period. The English Civil War greatly impacted Hobbes and his philosophies.
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It was a war that occurred from 1642 to 1651 between supporters of the English king and supporters of the English Parliament
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The violence of the war affirmed his belief that humans are innately greedy, violent, and self-serving.

​The title page of a 1651 copy of Hobbes's work Leviathan

Thomas Hobbes

Hobbes believed the best type of government was under the rule of an absolute monarchy. This gave all the power to a sovereign ruler.
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Hobbes called this ruler the Leviathan, a Hebrew word for a sea monster, suggesting fearsome power. Hobbes believed that people rationally decide to protect their safety and self-interests by entering into a social contract.
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A social contract is an agreement between those in power and those who are ruled over. Within this contract, people lay down their natural rights
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natural rights, rights such as freedom and equality that all people have, They did this in exchange for conditions that promote justice, culture, protection, and wealth.

​Thomas Hobbes

John Locke

John Locke was an English philosopher, intellectual, and medical researcher. He promoted the concept of empiricism.
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Empiricism the idea that all knowledge is derived from senses and experience. According to Locke, people are not naturally good or evil at birth, but are instead formed by their life experiences.
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He explained that at birth, a person’s mind is a tabula rasa, meaning “blank slate.” This slate is filled with knowledge based on experiences.

According to Locke, a person is born without any traits, like an blank chalkboard. The person forms traits based on experiences, like a chalkboard being filled with information.

John Locke

He was also known for his philosophy of political liberalism. He developed by building on the idea of Hobbes's social contract to examine how the individual and government should interact.
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Locke’s principles of liberalism focused on limiting the government rather than permitting a monarchy to rule. Liberal thought included the limitation of government and the promotion of individual rights.
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Conservative thought supported the established order of the time, including rule by monarchies. The words in this context have different meanings than they do in modern United States politics.
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Some values associated with present-day conservatism, such as limiting the role of government, come from Enlightenment liberalism.

​John Locke

John Locke

Locke wrote that humans' natural rights include life, liberty, and property. He argued that individuals enter into civil society to protect their natural rights via an “unbiased judge” or common authority, such as courts.
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In 1689, Locke published An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises of Government.
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In these works, he emphasized how governments during the period violated people’s rights and oppressed them.
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A century later, his writings greatly influenced the founders of the United States and fueled the ideologies of the American Revolution and the French Revolution.

Video Question

What idea did Locke reject in his political writings?

Multiple Choice

What idea did Locke reject in his political writings?

• The necessity of war

• The need for a monarchy

• The divine right of kings

Montesquieu

Montesquieu (MON-teh-skyoo) was a French nobleman and one of the most prominent French political philosophers of the 18th century.
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Montesquieu’s most famous work was The Spirit of Laws, published in 1748. This work focused on political principles, including the idea of dividing the powers of government into three main branches—legislative, executive, and judicial.
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1. The legislative branch legislates, or makes laws.

2. The executive branch executes, or carries out, laws.

3. The judicial branch judges laws.

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Montesquieu

Montesquieu

Montesquieu stated government should be divided according to their specific jobs and separate from one another.
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In doing so, no one office in the government holds power alone without the influence of the other two. Each branch has the responsibility to overrule or stop actions from other branches that are unfair or against the law.
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This is called the checks and balances process. The branches check each other, meaning they limit the power of each other, and they balance each other so no branch dominates the others.

Video Question

Which branch of government can declare laws unconstitutional?

Multiple Choice

Which branch of government can declare laws unconstitutional?

• Executive

• Legislative

• Judicial

Voltaire

Voltaire, a French writer, philosopher, and critic.
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He challenged different aspects of French society and life but focused primarily on questioning political leadership and the Catholic Church.
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Much of Voltaire’s philosophies focused on the separation of church and state, religious freedom, and the right to one’s own thoughts.

Voltaire

Voltaire embraced the intellectual movement of deism. Deism is the belief in the existence of a supreme being who is not currently involved with or active in the world, humankind, or universe.
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Voltaire also believed that people should be allowed freedom of expression or to obtain and convey knowledge and beliefs without government power interfering.
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In his most popular works, a fictional satire called Candide, published in 1759, Voltaire accused governments based on or controlled by religion of oppressing the populace. He criticized the noble class of being arrogant and out of touch with the rest of the French society.

​Deism views God as similar to a clockmaker. According to deism, God created the universe and lets it run without interference, just as a clockmaker creates a clock and lets it run.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Jon Jahck Roo-SOH) was a Swiss philosopher best known for his political and moral philosophies.
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Rousseau focused a lot of his work on tolerance, personal freedoms and decision-making, education, democracy, and equality.
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He believed that humans were not necessarily naturally evil, as Hobbes did. He believed humankind could be kind, gracious, moral, and sympathetic as needed.
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Rousseau argued humans should be free to decide their fate and have free will to do as they please.

Rousseau’s Writing

Rousseau wrote Discourse on the Origins of Inequality and the Foundation of Inequality Among Men in 1754. In the work, he examined what he called the natural man—the natural state of humans.
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This natural state was similar to that of other animals in that natural humans sought to protect themselves from harm and did not have rational thoughts. Natural humans learned to do complex things, such as developing large societies.
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Rousseau explored how inequalities started to occur in societies. In his 1762 work Social Contract, Rousseau argued that a government should be formed by an agreement among individuals who have input into the laws of the government—not by a monarch.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women’s rights.
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In the 1780s and 1790s, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children’s book.
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She wrote about education, emphasized the importance of teaching children to reason, and advocated the education of women, a controversial topic at the time.
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Wollstonecraft promoted women’s equality and critiqued conventional views of femininity. Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers.

Wollstonecraft’s Writing

Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Man (1790) was a response to a work by another author . That author defended constitutional monarchy, aristocracy, and the Church of England.
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Wollstonecraft’s response attacked aristocracy and monarchy and advocated republicanism. In another work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Wollstonecraft argued that women ought to have an education appropriate for their position in society. She explained that women are essential to the nation because they educate its children.
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She wrote that women are not property to be traded in marriage, but human beings deserving of the same rights as men.

Poll

Exit Ticket: Which philosophy seems like something you agree with or would follow?

• Rationalism: the idea that people should draw conclusions through the use of observation, calculation, and logic rather than tradition, faith, or emotion

• Individualism: the belief that people have value as individuals, not only as members of a larger group. It includes the idea that individual rights are important.

Summary

In this lesson, you learned:

• The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth century that emphasized liberty, rights, rationalism, and individualism.

• Enlightenment thinkers wrote about their ideas about the nature of humans, the purpose of governments, and the best types of governments.

• Enlightenment thinkers wrote that people enter a social contract with a government—they agree to be ruled in the hope that having a government will benefit society.