


Rationalism: All truths must be arrived at through
logical, critical thinking, and none should be accepted
on faith or authority alone.
Science: Scientific methods could be used to examine
the human world as well as the natural world to
discover the laws of human society as they had
discovered the laws of the physical world.
Progress: Humans could use scientific research to find
ways to improve life and advance humanity.
 The golden age was not behind us in classical
antiquity or the Garden of Eden but ahead of us.













philosophes
Voltaire
Alexander Pope
Encyclopedia
Diderot
D’Alembert
deism
John Toland
David Hume
Edward Gibbon
Baron d’Holbach
Immanuel Kant
Spinoza












Mendelsohn
Cesare Beccaria
physiocrats
François Quesnay
Adam Smith
laissez-faire
Montesquieu
Rousseau
Mary Wollstonecraft
Frederick II, the Great
Joseph II
Catherine the Great
In general, the Enlightenment had a
positive impact on society but it also
provided justification for racism.





Talented individuals gained influence
because of their intellect.
The reading revolution empowered
individual readers to learn and interpret on
their own.
The huge explosion in publishing and
empowered people without formal
education.
Libraries disseminated books to the poor.
Coffeehouses provided venues for the
discussion of new ideas.



Legal reforms enacted by enlightened
monarchs eliminated or reduced torture and
the worst abuses of the traditional legal
system.
Enlightened monarchs also encouraged the
education of the lower classes in order to
have better trained soldiers and workers.
The secular and skeptical spirit of both
movements helped reduce the influence of
religion and the church – could be see as a
negative effect by some.


Philosophes often used non-European cultures
as foils in their work
As some scientists had observed nature as
being organized hierarchically, humans too
were organized into hierarchies determined by
race, defined as biologically determined
differences, which was new
 Previously, Europeans grouped other
peoples into “nations” based on their
historical, political, and cultural affiliations,
rather than on supposedly innate physical
differences
 Europeans began to define themselves as not
only culturally superior but racially superior
as well



Hume and Kant both popularized such ideas,
describing other races as uncivilized, inferior,
degenerate.
Some intellectuals challenged such ideas
 Diderot criticized European arrogance and
exploitation
 Beattie pointed out that Europeans started out as
savages and that non-Europeans had achieved
high levels of civilization
 Herder argued that it was silly to classify
humans into races by skin color and that each
culture was as intrinsically worthy as any other.
These challenges to ideas of racially inequality
were in the minority. Most Enlightenment
thinkers agreed with Kant and Hume.