The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement in the 1700s where thinkers focused on applying reason to understand nature and its natural laws. They believed that everything, including human behavior and social constructs, were governed by discoverable natural laws. Thinkers like Newton showed natural laws could be understood through science and reason. Enlightenment philosophes like Voltaire and Diderot spread these ideas through publications, criticizing the church, government, and traditions. They believed understanding natural laws was key to social progress.

1. AMERICAN AND FRENCH
REVOLUTION

2. THE ENLIGHTENMENT
• The enlightenment was an intellectual
movement from the 1700s, in which
people began to focus their attention to
nature and the perceived rules that
applied to it.
• For the thinkers of the enlightenment
every event has a cause and an effect.
• For them, man was a part of the natural
world, and great importance was given to
the idea of ‘natural laws’.

3. • These natural laws referred not only to
what we commonly call nature (the
outdoors, animals, plants, minerals), but
also to human behavior itself.
• As humans are seen as a part of the
natural world, all of their social creations
(economics, ideas, government, rules, etc)
have a ‘nature’ in itself.

4. • The enlightened believed that objects in
nature were governed by laws, which
could be understood and predicted by
men.
• The discoveries of, for examples,
Newton’s laws of physics, gave impulse to
the desire of finding rules and systems in
all aspects of nature.

5. Newton’s laws
• First Law: The velocity of a
body remains constant
unless the body is acted
upon by an external force.
• Second law: Force=Mass X
acceleration
• Third law: The mutual
forces of action and
reaction between two
bodies are equal, opposite
and collinear.

6. • This idea of ‘rules of nature’ gives birth to
modern natural sciences.
• For many of the enlightened scientists,
God had created the world and made
rules for it.
• Living in harmony and achieving progress
was seen as a byproduct of understanding
these laws.

7. RATIONALISM
• Is an idea of the enlightenment.
• It states that truth can only be achieved
through reason.
• That is why we call the age of the
enlightenment as the ‘Age of Reason’.
• Even for those more inclined toward
religion, science and reason became the
ways to understand God’s plan, and thus
be closer to him.

8. • This time also saw a
more tolerant view of
religious ideas, including
a more tolerant (if not
favored or encouraged)
take on atheism.
• Great thinkers, like
Baruch Spinoza,
forwarded the idea of
intellectual tolerance.

9. • The thinkers of the enlightenment were called
the ‘philosophes’.
• This is the French word for philosopher.
• They were philosophers, but also scientists,
social critics, mathematicians, etc.
• The philosophes used the printing press
effectively, keeping touch with each other and
publishing books, notably, the encyclopedia.

10. • The Encyclopedia, the
most important and
popular work of its time,
edited by Denis Diderot
and Jean D’alembert,
became a ‘handbook’ of
the enlightenment.
• This book was a
compendium of the
scientific, social and
political knowledge of its
time, but it also criticized
the church, government,
slave trade, torture, taxes
and war.

11. • French authorities frowned upon this type
of critical thinking (as did most of the
western rulers) and Diderot and other
philosophes were incarcerated.
• The ‘damage’ was done, though, and
people all through Europe (and eventually
the new continent) read and soaked in the
ideas of the enlightenment.

12. Montesquieu
• Wrote on his idea of perfect
government, in which power
is equally divided among
three branches:
– Legislative (which makes laws)
– Executive (which administers
laws)
– Judicial (which interprets and
applies the law)

13. Voltaire
• Voltaire was the
pseudonym of French
writer Francois-Marie
Arouet.
• He was sternly critical
of superstitious beliefs,
and of society and its
rules in general.

14. Rousseau
• Wrote on how a
government must be
chosen by its people.
• He wrote that people
are naturally good,
but corrupted by their
environment,
education and laws.