"Man is born free but everywhere is in chains."
Deism
Tolerance
Progress
“Dare to Know” Cogito, ergo sum
“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him”
The Eighteenth
Century:
An Age of
Enlightenment
The Enlightenment
New
ideas
about the
human
potential for
progress.
Grew
in
part out of
the
Scientific
Revolution
Sir Isaac Newton 1702
Became
one
of the
foundations of
the American
and French
Revolutions.
Appealed
primarily to
middle and
upper classes,
particularly in
urban areas.
Key Ideas of the Enlightenment
Scientific
laws should be
used to understand the world.
Laws
of human society and
the physical world could be
discerned through the
scientific method
Humanity could progress.
Immanuel Kant
The
German philosopher
Immanuel Kant proclaimed
the motto of the
Enlightenment to be:
“Dare to Know!”
The
Popularization of
Science
Bernard de Fontenelle
The
scientistphilosopher Bernard de
Fontenelle provides a
link between the
scientists of the 17th
century and the
philosophes of the
Eighteenth century.
The
works of Fontenelle
announced the Enlightenment
by encouraging amateur
conversations about scientific
matters.
He
popularized the growing
skepticism toward the claims of
religion and portrayed churches
as clear enemies of scientific
progress.
Fontenelle
was best known for
his Plurality of Worlds, which
popularized the new ideas of a
mechanistic universe and
clearly showed a woman’s
interest in scientific discourse.
The Rise of Skepticism
Questioning
the Church’s
dogma concerning the
physical world led to
skepticism regarding all
aspects of Church authority.
Pierre Bayle
Pierre
Bayle exemplified
the new skepticism about
religious explanations of
anything.
Bayle's
Historical and Critical
Dictionary is a work demonstrating
the author's conviction that new
rational principles of textual
criticism should be applied to all
types of writing including the
Bible.
The Impact of Travel Literature
A key
new type of enlightened
writing fueling skepticism about
the "truths" of Christianity and
European society were travel
reports and comparative studies of
old and new world cultures.
What
had been seen as practices
grounded in reason were seen to be
matters of custom and traditions.
Cultural Relativism was
accompanied by religious
skepticism.
The Legacy of
Newton and Locke
Isaac
Newton and John Locke
provided inspiration for the
Enlightenment by arguing that
through rational reasoning and
the acquisition of knowledge
natural laws governing human
society could be discovered.
John Locke (1632-1704)
 English
philosopher, who
founded the school of
empiricism.
 Locke gave Bacon’s
empiricism systematic
expression in his Essay
Concerning Human
Understanding (1690).
Locke's
empiricism
emphasizes the
importance of the
experience of the senses
in pursuit of knowledge
rather than intuitive
speculation or deduction.
"No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience."
(Locke.)

He regarded the mind of
a person at birth as a
tabula rasa, a blank slate
upon which experience
imprinted knowledge,
and did not believe in
intuition or theories of
innate conceptions.

Locke also held
that all persons
are born good,
independent,
and equal.
Locke’s Political Theories
 He argued that
government
should be based
on the consent of
the governed.
There
was a
contract between
governments and
the governed.
The Philosophes
Philosophers
who
questioned the
human
condition.
They
saw
themselves as the
heir to the
philosophers of
antiquity and the
Renaissance
Humanists.

They advocated
reform through
the acquisition of
knowledge by
scientific
methods.
They
believed
in the perfection
of human
institutions
through reason.
The
French
philosophes
included people
mainly from the
nobility and the
middle class.
Jean Huber
La Sainte Cène du Patriarche
(c.1772)
Paris
The
recognized capital of the
Enlightenment was Paris, but
the movement was
international.
Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755)
Charles
Louis de
Secondat was
born in Bordeaux,
France, in 1689 to
a wealthy family.
He
was a member of the
Bordeaux and French
Academies of Science and
studied the laws and customs
and governments of the
countries of Europe.
He
gained fame in
1721 with his
Persian Letters,
which criticized the
lifestyle and liberties
of the wealthy French
as well as the church.
L’Esprit des Loix
Montesquieu's
book
On the Spirit of
Laws, published in
1748, was his most
famous work.
It outlined his ideas
on how government
would work best.
Montesquieu
believed that a
government that was elected
by the people was the best
form of government, but that
geography and environment
determine the form.
Montesquieu
argued that the
best government
would be one in
which power was
balanced among
three groups of
officials.
 He
thought England which divided power
between the king (who
enforced laws),
Parliament (which
made laws), and the
judges of the English
courts (who interpreted
laws) - was a good
model of this.
 Montesquieu called
the idea of dividing
government power
into three branches
the "separation of
powers."
He
thought it
most important to
create separate
branches of
government with
equal but different
powers.
Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
"When
the [law
making] and [law
enforcement]
powers are united
in the same
person... there can
be no liberty."
His
ideas about
separation of
powers became
the basis for the
United States
Constitution.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
Voltaire
was born
François Marie Arouet in
Paris, November 21,
1694, the son of a notary.
He was educated by the
Jesuits at the College
Louis-le-Grand.
Voltaire
chose literature as a
career.
He began moving in
aristocratic circles and soon
became known in Paris salons
as a brilliant and sarcastic wit.
A number
of his writings
resulted in his imprisonment
in the Bastille.
While in prison he began
writing plays, which were
widely acclaimed.
A quarrel
with a member of an
illustrious French family, the
chevalier de Rohan, resulted in
Voltaire's promise to quit France and
proceed to England.
Accordingly he spent about two
years in London.
In
Voltaire's Philosophic Letters
to the English he expressed
deep admiration for the English
love of freedom, tolerance, and
commercial excellence.
He
spent time at the the court of
Louis XV and became a member of
the French Academy.
After a brief sojourn at the Prussian
court he settled at Ferney near the
Swiss border and devoted the rest of
his life to writing.
His
morality was founded on a
belief in freedom of thought and
respect for all individuals, and
he maintained that literature
should be useful and concerned
with the problems of the day.
During
his later life,
Voltaire became
increasingly critical of
religious intolerance
“écrasons l'infâme”
The
flavor of Voltaire's
activities could be
summarized in the phrase
he often used: écrasons
l'infâme ("let us crush the
infamous one").
he
referred to any form
of religion that persecutes
non-adherents or that
constitutes fanaticism.
For
Christianity he would
substitute deism, a purely
rational religion.
Deism
Deism
was based on
the Newtonian
world-machine with
God as its benevolent
mechanic, designing
the universe in
accord with rational
laws.
His
most famous work is
perhaps Candide, in which
Voltaire analyzes the problem
of evil in the world, depicts the
woes heaped upon the world in
the name of religion.
Diderot, Denis (1713-1784),
French
Encyclopedist
and philosopher,
who also wrote
novels, essays,
plays, and art and
literary criticism.
Diderot
was born
in Langres on
October 5, 1713,
and educated by
Jesuits.
Portrait by Fragonard
His
first serious
work was Pensées
philosophiques
(1746), which
stated his deist
philosophy.
He
was the most
versatile of all the
philosophes, as
exemplified by the
various types of
provocative
literature he wrote.
In
1747 he was invited to
edit a French translation
of the English
Cyclopaedia by Ephraim
Chambers.
Encyclopedia
Diderot
converted
the project into a
vast, new, and
controversial 28volume
Encyclopedia
compiling articles
by many influential
philosophes.
 The
skeptical, rationalist
Diderot used the
Encyclopedia as a powerful
propaganda weapon against
Ecclesiastical authority and
the superstition,
conservatism, and semifeudal social forms of the
time.
He
renounced
chastity and the
narrow Christian
definitions of
acceptable sexual
relations and
expressions of
love.
Consequently,
Diderot and his
associates
became the
objects of clerical
and royal
antagonism.
The New “Science of Man”
The
belief in natural laws
underlying all areas of
human life led to the
emergence of the social
sciences.
David Hume
 David
Hume (1711-1776),
a Scottish historian and
philosopher, who
influenced the
development of
skepticism and
empiricism, two schools
of philosophy.
 Born
in Edinburgh
on May 7, 1711,
Hume was educated
at home and at the
University of
Edinburgh, at
which he
matriculated at the
age of 12.
 His
most important
philosophical work, A
Treatise of Human Nature,
published in 1739, embodies
the essence of his thinking.
 His
work encouraged the
belief in the possibility of a
science of man.
In
a revolutionary step in
philosophy, Hume rejected the
basic idea of causation,
maintaining that “reason can never
show us the connection of one
object with another.”
Hume
denied the existence of the
individual self, maintaining that
because people do not have a
constant perception of themselves
as distinct entities, they “are
nothing but a bundle or collection
of different perceptions.”
 As
a historian Hume broke
away from the traditional
chronological account and
attempted to describe the
economic and intellectual
forces that played a part in
history.
 His
History of England was
regarded as a classic for many
years.
Hume's
contributions to economic
theory included his belief that
wealth depends not on money but
on commodities and his
recognition of the effect of social
conditions on economics.
These
ideas influenced the
Scottish philosopher and
economist Adam Smith and
later economists.
The Physiocrats
A school
of French thinkers
who sought to create the first
complete system of economics.
They were also referred to
simply as “the economists” or
“the sect.”
The founder
and leader of
physiocracy
was François
Quesnay.

First Axiom
all
wealth originated with the land
and that agriculture alone could
increase and multiply wealth.
Industry and commerce were
basically sterile and could not add
to the wealth created by the land.
Second Axiom
only
abundance combined with
high prices could create prosperity.
This could be obtained only if the
“economic law,” which the
physiocrats envisaged as being as
immutable as the law of gravity,
was allowed to act untrammeled.
Laissez-faire
Absolute
freedom of trade was
necessary to stabilize prices at a
fair level, and laissez faire was
to restore the economic process
to its natural course, from which
all further benefits would flow.
Adam Smith (1723-1790)
 British
economist, whose
treatise An Inquiry into
the Nature and Causes of
the Wealth of Nations was
the first serious attempt to
study the nature of capital
and the historical
development of industry
and commerce.
He
espoused
three basic
principals of
economics in his
attack on the
economic system
of Mercantilism.
First Principal
Nations
should
not rely on
protective tariffs each nation should
produce what it
does best without
artificial barriers.
Second Principal
The labor theory of
value - he claimed
that gold and silver
were not the source
of a nation’s wealth
- labor was.

Third Principal
Capital
is best
employed under
conditions of
governmental
noninterference,
or laissez-faire,
and free trade.
laissez-faire

the production and
exchange of goods can be
stimulated only through
the efficient operations of
private industrial and
commercial entrepreneurs
acting with a minimum of
regulation and control by
governments.
The Invisible Hand

To explain this concept
of government
maintaining a laissezfaire attitude toward
commercial endeavors,
Smith proclaimed the
principle of the
“invisible hand.”
The Invisible Hand
 Every
individual in
pursuing his or her
own good is led, as if
by an invisible hand,
to achieve the best
good for all.
Therefore
any
interference with
free competition
by government is
almost certain to
be injurious.
The Function of Government
According
to Smith, government
only has three functions:
1. Protect society from invasion
(Army)
2. Defend individuals (Police)
3. Provide certain public works.
The Later
Enlightenment
Baron Paul d’Holbach
Reached an extreme degree
of atheism in his work
System of Nature (1770) in
which he said that men were
machines and God, as a mere
product of the human mind, was
unnecessary for leading a moral life.

Marie-Jean de Condorcet
In
his work The
progress of the
Human Mind he
expressed the idea
that human
perfectibility is
limitless.
Jean Jacques Rousseau
 Jean
Jacques Rousseau
(1712-1778), French
philosopher, social and
political theorist,
musician, botanist, and
one of the most eloquent
writers of the Age of
Enlightenment.
Jean Jacques Rousseau
“man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains”
In
his Discourse on the
Origins of Inequality of
Mankind he says that
private property was
the source of inequality
and the chief cause of
crimes.
In
The Social Contract,
he expressed his belief
that government was a
necessary evil and that
freedom is achieved by
being forced to follow
the "general will.”
 Rousseau's
influential novel,
Emile, deals with
the key
Enlightenment
themes of proper
child rearing and
human education.
He
believed that
young children
should be allowed
to encounter nature
directly and learn
by experience - thus
fostering a child’s
natural instincts.
This
emphasis on the
heart and sentiment
over reason had a
direct impact on the
intellectual
movement called
Romanticism.
Women in the
Enlightenment
Mary Astell
The
first selfavowed feminist
writer in
English.
 Author
of 2 great
feminist works, A
Serious Proposal
to the Ladies
(1697) and Some
Reflections Upon
Marriage (1700).
Daughter
of a
Newcastle coal
merchant, Astell
never married and
was supported
throughout her life by
a series of wealthy
female friends.
If all Men are born free, how is it that all
Women are born Slaves?— Mary Astell,
Some Reflections on Marriage
 Although
she wrote
anonymously, her authorship
was widely known.
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)
English
author and
feminist,
probably born
in London.
 She
became a member of
an intellectual group that
included the English poet
and artist William Blake,
the Anglo-American
political philosopher
Thomas Paine, and the
English chemist Joseph
Priestly.
 Her
best-known work, A
Vindication of the Rights
of Woman (1792), asserts
that intellectual
companionship is the ideal
of marriage and pleads for
equality of education and
opportunity between the
sexes.
Her
daughter, Mary
Wollstonecraft,
became the wife of
Percy Bysshe Shelley
and a writer on her
own (Frankenstein).
The Salons of Paris
 Women played an important role in the
Enlightenment as hosts of gatherings of
thinkers and artists called Salons.
The
salons
were usually
run by women
but for male
guests .
Madame de Pompadour
They
gave social mobility to
both men and women and
provided a forum for the serious
discussion of the ideas of the
philosophes.
Et in Arcadia Ego