2.4How did the Enlightenment impact Europe?

CLASSWORK: Use the reading to complete the rest of the graphic organizer

HOMEWORK: Create a list of questions you would like to ask each Enlightenment thinker (you should have two questions for each person). Try and devise answers for each question based on what you know about each particular thinker.

The Enlightenment in France

In the 1700s, France saw a flowering of Enlightenment thought. Enlightenment thinkers applied the methods of science to better understand and improve society.

Voltaire Probably the most famous philosopher was Francois-Marie Arouet, who took the name Voltaire. “My trade,” said Voltaire, “is to say what I think,” and he did so throughout his long, controversial life. Voltaire used biting wit as a weapon to expose the abuses of his day. He targeted corrupt officials and idle aristocrats. Barbs flew from his pen against inequality, injustice, and superstition. He detested the slave trade and religious prejudice. Voltaire’s attacks offended the government and the Catholic Church. He was imprisoned and forced into exile. He saw his books censored and burned, but he continued to defend freedom of speech. “I do not agree with a word that you say,” he supposedly declared, “but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Montesquieu In 1748, Baron de Montesquieu published The Spirit of the Laws. In it, he discussed governments throughout history and was sharply critical of absolute monarchy.He wrote admiringly about Britain’s limited monarchy. Montesquieu felt that the British had protected themselves against tyranny by dividing the functions and powers of government among three separate branches: the legislative, executive, and judicial. To him, the separation of powers was the best way to protect liberty. Montesquieu also felt that each branch of government could serve as a check on the other two, an idea that we call checks and balances. Some 40 years after Montesquieu’s book appeared in France, the ideas of separation of powers and checks and balances in government were written into the Constitution of the United States.

Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that people in their natural state were basically good, but this natural innocencewas corrupted by the evils of society, especially the unequal distribution of property. In 1762, Rousseau set forth his ideas about government and society in The Social Contract. It begins: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” The chains, according to Rousseau, are those of society, which controls the way people behave. He argued, however, that some social controls –like control by a freely formed government - are good, not evil. In consenting to a form of government, individuals choose to give up their self-interest in favor of the common good. Although people surrender their rights, they retain their freedom because the government is based on the consent of the governed. Rousseau put his faith in the “general will” - the will of the majority. He belived that the majority should always work for the common good. Even those who resist should be compelled to accept the general will - they must “be forced to be free.” Thus, unlike many Enlightenment thinkers who put the individual first, Rousseau felt that the individual should be subordinate to the community.

The ideas proposed by Enlightenment thinkers had a great impact throughout Europe in the 1700s. Greater numbers of people began to question established beliefs and customs. Enlightenment beliefs affected leaders and the development of nations. As Enlightenment ideas gained in popularity, government and Church leaders worked to defend the established systems. They started a campaign of censorship to suppress Enlightenment ideas. Many writers, including Voltaire, were thrown into prison, and their books were banned and burned.

Enlightenment ideas inspired a sense of individualism, a belief in personal freedom, and a sense of the basic equality of human beings. These concepts, along with challenges to traditional authority, became important in the growth of democracy. Nationalism also grew. As people in a country drew together to fight for democratic government, strong feelings of nationalism arose. In the late 1700s, Enlightenment ideas would contribute to an age of revolution.

Rights for Women

The Enlightenment slogan “free and equal” did not apply to women. Women did have “natural rights,” but unlike the natural rights of men, these rights were limited to the areas of home and family. By the mid-1700s, a small but growing number of women protested this view. They questioned the notion that women were by nature inferior to men and that men’s domination of women was therefore part of “nature’s plan.” Germaine de Stael in France and Catherine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft in England argued that women had been excluded from the social contract itself. Their arguments were ridiculed and often sharply condemned. Wollstonecraft was the best known of the British female critics. She accepted that a woman’s first duty was to be a good mother. At the same time, however, she felt that a woman should be able to decide what is in her own interest and should not be completely dependent on her husband. In 1792, Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. In it, she called for the same education for girls and boys. Only education, she argued, could give women the tools they needed to participate equally with men in public life.

2.4How did the Enlightenment impact Europe?

WANTED TO ELIMINATE ABSOLUTISM continued
Voltaire
Baron de Montesquieu
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
WANTED MORE RIGHTS FOR WOMEN
Mary Wollstonecraft
IMPACT OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT