Enlightenment Unit Test

Name:

Why might some women have been critical of the Enlightenment?

• many of its thinkers had little interest in improving women’s rights.
• it was a movement without reason, thought or intellect.
• it was rooted in the tradition of a monarch’s rule being justified by divine right
• it improved women’s rights too much

The idea that there was a time before civilization when humans were living in a state where they were all free and equal is known as the ___________. This period was thought to be the best time for humans.

• State of Nature
• Social Contract
• Enlightenment
• Scientific Revolution

Rather than placing all of the faith in religion, during the Enlightenment people began to also look toward _______ for answers as well.

• nature
• progress
• sketicism
• reason

What is one advantage a parliamentary democracy has over presidential democracy?

• a. the executive is chosen by birthright/heredity
• b. there is no freedom of speech in a presidential democracy while there is in a parliamentary democracy
• c. in parliamentary democracies the executive has a lot of political experience and is chosen by a small group of people who are familiar with his experience

In general, the philosophes believed in which of the following?

• all Church decrees
• progress for society
• natural rights

John Locke was an Enlightenment thinker & writer. He believed that government should act to protect people’s rights, but only with the consent of the people who were governed. Locke wrote, the people can remove the government from power it those rights are not protected. People who agreed with Locke would have:

• supported the concept of divine right of Kings
• believed in absolute monarchs
• supported the ideas written in the Declaration of Independence
• opposed the ideas written in the Constitution

Which of the following is NOT true of the State of Nature

• a person is only bound by his or her conscience to do what is right or wrong
• people are inately good or inately evil
• people were free and equal
• people could not make decisions for themselves

The belief of natural rights (life, liberty & property) as proposed by John Locke can be found in what U.S. government document?

• Bill of Rights
• Declaration of Independence
• Preamble to the Constitution

Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau challenged the idea of the divine right of kings. They wrote about a government’s obligations to uphold people’s rights and how the government should be based on the consent of the governed. These new ideas encouraged people to:

• remain firm in their support of absolute monarchs.
• look for leaders who would exercise dictatorial powers.
• engage in revolutions to establish democratic governments.
• call for church leaders to create theocracies and replace the monarchies