I. The rise and diffusion of Enlightenment thought that questioned
established traditions in all areas of life often preceded the revolutions and
rebellions against existing governments.
A. Thinkers applied new ways of understanding the natural world to human
relationships, encouraging observation and inference in all spheres of life.
B. Intellectuals critiqued the role that religion played in public life, insisting on
the importance of reason as opposed to revelation.
C. Enlightenment thinkers developed new political ideas about the individual,
natural rights, and the social contract.
D. The ideas of Enlightenment thinkers influenced resistance to existing
political authority, as reflected in revolutionary documents.
Required examples of revolutionary documents:
• The American Declaration of Independence
• The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen
Teach one illustrative
• Bolivar’s Jamaica Letter
example of Enlightenment
See Freeman Pedia summary
thinkers, either from the
list below or an example of
your choice:
• Locke
• Montesquieu
The state of nature is a concept in
moral and political philosophy used in
religion, social contract theories and
international law to denote the
hypothetical conditions of what the
lives of people might have been like
before societies came into existence.
The Social Contract
What do these definitions have in common?
(1) an implicit agreement among the members of a society
to cooperate for social benefits, for example by sacrificing
some individual freedom for state protection. Theories of
a social contract became popular in the 16th, 17th, and
18th centuries among theorists such as Thomas Hobbes,
John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as a means of
explaining the origin of government and the obligations of
subjects.
(2) (Philosophy) (in the theories of Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, and
others) an agreement, entered into by individuals, that results in the
formation of the state or of organized society, the prime motive being
the desire for protection, which entails the surrender of some or all
personal liberties
(3) the voluntary agreement among individuals by which, according to any of
various theories, as of Hobbes, Locke, or Rousseau, organized society is brought
into being and invested with the right to secure mutual protection and welfare or
to regulate the relations among its members.