• You are now your own country so you need a few
things (make sure to write this on a piece of
paper):
– Name your country
• Design a flag
– System of government:
• Chose between a monarchy, an absolute monarchy, a
democracy, or an anarchy but the most important thing is
why?
– A way to choose your leaders
• Is it passed down? Do you vote? Something else?
– How do you defend yourselves?
The Enlightenment
The Social Contract Theory
• Thomas Hobbes
– Not as negative as everyone says, he’s more of a realist
– He believed that there would be “war…of every man
against every man”
– The phrase life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”
is one of his most famous quotes
– He argued in his book the Leviathan (1651) that in order to
escape the life that existed, me had to give up their rights
to one strong ruler
• This was called the Social Contract, we saw it as the
Commonwealth
• He wanted an absolute monarchy because he felt that was the
best way to avoid unnecessary war since the monarch (king)
would have complete control over the people he was governing
– This kept them from fighting amongst themselves, something that
Hobbes said men did because they were too selfish to work for the
betterment of society
John Locke
• Much more of an idealist
• Believed people were able to improve themselves and learn from
experience
• A key difference between Locke and Hobbes was how they felt men thought
– Hobbes looked at men as intelligent animals that never really lost their need to
compete and provide only for oneself
– Locke felt men were reasonable and able to govern themselves while thinking
about what was the best for society
• Locke hated absolute monarchies and championed the idea that men
should be allowed to govern themselves
• He believed that all men had inalienable, or natural, rights:
– Life, liberty, and property
– The purpose of gov’t is simply to protect these rights
– If the gov’t fails to protect the rights, men have the right to overthrow the gov’t
because its not working anymore
• The key to all Locke’s ideas uses the Social Contract in a different way
because he said, men have the right to rebel because they give the gov’t
the right to exist in the first place so they can also disband if its not
protecting them
The Philosophes and Reason
• Philosophes were philosophers who focused on social
critiques
– They believed in using reason in all aspects of life, including
government
– They had five concepts that formed the core of their belief:
• Reason – truth discovered through reason or logical thinking
• Nature – what was natural was good and reasonable
• Happiness – believed that men should find fulfillment on earth
(easy to say when you are the wealthy but whatever)
• Progress – stressed that society and humans could improve
• Liberty – This tends to be more strictly French but the French
philosophes wanted the same rights the English people had won in
the Glorious Revolution
Voltaire
• Born Francois-Marie Arouet, he would become on of the most influential
writers in the Enlightenment
• He wrote in satire (a lot like Erasmus) and would go after the clergy, the
Church, the state, pretty much anyone in the establishment – he had a
problem with authority
• He wrote extensively including writing plays, poetry, historical works, and
philosophical works but he did it all to further his fight to say what he
wanted
– This would become the idea of free speech when it made it to America but
Voltaire never expressly named it that
• He went to jail (the Bastille in France) twice and was exiled twice
– The second time he was sent to England for three years until he moved back
to Paris only to insult someone else and be run out again
– He still lived outside of Paris for 15 years before he was eventually granted
reentry
• He died in 1778
• One of his most famous quotes is, “I do not agree with a word you say
but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
• What kind of rights would the people of your
country have?
– You don’t have to model this on the United States
either, use your own experiences
– Are there certain things you think people should be
allowed to do and aren’t?
– Are there things that you think people should not be
allowed to do and are?
Baron de Montesquieu
• This guy was interested in quite a lot of stuff
– He studied law at the University of Bordeaux and when he
uncle died and he was left the title of Baron de
Montesquieu he settled down to study:
•
•
•
•
Roman Law (which is really dense by the way)
Geology (yay rocks!)
Biology (yay living things!)
Physics (yay stars and laws!)
– Then he decided he really wanted to be a writer so he
attempted to enter the academie francaise and he was
elected there in 1728
• From here he traveled to England on multiple occasions and met
many people there, he made so many acquaintances that he
became a member of the Royal Society
Montesquieu con’t
• He wrote mostly about law and how law should
govern a country
– He felt Britain was the best governed country of the day
and also believed they were the most politically balanced
– In his model:
• The king and his ministers held executive power to carry out the
laws of the state
• The judges interpreted the law, judicial power
• Parliament held legislative power because they were the ones
who were making the laws
– We see this today as the separation of powers, this came
out of his most famous book, On the Spirit of Laws (1748)
• Take few minutes to modify your country
now…if you wish
– You don’t have to change it at all if you don’t want
to
Jean Jacques Rousseau
• Committed to individual freedom
• Believed that civilization corrupted people’s natural
goodness
– “Man is born free and everywhere else, he’s in chains.”
• Wanted a direct democracy, which he explained in
his book The Social Contract (1762)
– Controlled completely by the people directly and guided
by what he called the “general will” of society
– He said, much like Hobbes and Locke, that some rights
had to be given up in order to make this work but he
varied in that:
• Hobbes said the Social Contract was between the society and the
gov’t
• Locke wanted a much more narrow democracy that what
Rousseau wanted
Cesare Beccaria
• Believed that law existed to preserve social order, not
avenge crimes
• Criticized ideas of what he considered common abuses of
justice
– This included torture (of suspects), irregular proceedings in
trials, and cruel punishments
– Said a person accused of a crime should have a speedy trial
(because they would hold them in prison and that sucked really
bad) and torture never be used (because it never got any
accurate results)
– Also believed that the degree of punishment should be based
on the seriousness of the crime
– Believed capital punishment should be abolished
• Gov’ts should seek the greatest good for greatest number
of people
• Someone in your country just broke the law,
what do you do with them?
– What was the offense?
– Now, how do you deal with it?
Women in the Enlightenment
• Mary Astell
– She was taught at home by her uncle who would die when
she was 13
• She continued to read more subjects including philosophy and
political debates
• She was mostly self educated but was able to exist in well-known
and educated circles, including the London aristocracy
• Astell realized that women could be intellectual and had ideas to
offer to the Enlightenment and she pushed for that
– A Serious Proposal to the Ladies
• This addressed the lack of educational opportunities for women
• “If absolute sovereignty be not necessary in a state, how comes it
to be so in a family?...If all men are born free, how is it that all
women are born slaves?”
Mary Wollstonecraft
• Wollstonecraft built on the ideas of Astell
• She was raised by an abusive father and so at 21 she left
home to make a living as a writer
– She worked as a teacher and then became a governess for
wealthy family in Ireland
– From here she found herself working as a translator and
advisor to Joseph Johnson (a publisher of radical texts) and this
is where she got the experience and platform to write her most
famous work
• A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
– She took on Rousseau directly, arguing that women should be
educated like men because it made women useful and virtuous
– And more controversially, argued that women should enter
male-dominated fields like medicine and politics
• What role will women have in your country?
– Will they have a role? Why?
• What role will men play?
Yes this is something that people had (and still
have) to think about
Legacy of the Enlightenment
• What you guys just did is a legacy of the Enlightenment
• The importance of progress
– This era is providing answers to old questions as well as creating new
questions that needed answers
– That is considered a good thing by the period (at least the wealthiest
people)
• A wider focus on the secular
– Thinkers are beginning to question the way governments have been
run for a long time
– Coming up with new ways to construct society and the laws that
govern it
• The importance of the individual
– There was an increased stress on what the person could do and
should be expected to do
– Stressing education and the importance of people in governmental
decisions are good examples of this