This document provides an overview of the Enlightenment period and key ideas that emerged. It discusses how Newton's Principia divided the Scientific Revolution into two phases, with the period after 1687 seeing consolidation of new ideas. During the 18th century, Enlightenment thinkers applied scientific theories to increase wealth, comfort and happiness. Major figures of the Enlightenment like Montesquieu, Rousseau, Jefferson and Burke are examined in how they viewed the state, progress, and popular sovereignty. The document concludes that the issues debated during this period remain unsettled.

1. Justice & Power
session vii
Democratic Revolution
Newton’s Principia is commonly taken to divide the first and second phases of the
Scientific Revolution. For a century and a half before 1687 the “new learning” had spread
and gained momentum. Then, after giving birth to calculus and Newtonian mechanics,
the Revolution entered a period of consolidation called the Enlightenment. The next
century saw diverse and widespread attempts to apply the new theories to increase
wealth, comfort, and happiness. New attention was focused on the “soft” social sciences,
whereas the focus had previously been upon the “hard” physical sciences.
In these four sessions we will consider together four disparate representatives of
Enlightenment thought. A major concern of this part of the course will be to see
America’s foundation in the context of Western Civilization. The ideas which “[impelled
us] to the separation,” natural rights, government by consent, sovereignty of the people,
and separation of powers, all were perfectly familiar in Europe during the Enlightenment.
As Robert Palmer suggests, “the most distinctive work of the [American] Revolution was
in finding a method, and furnishing a model, for putting these ideas into practical effect.”
(The Age of the Democratic Revolution, vol. i, p. 214)
Tendencies to attack traditional authorities like Aristotle and the Church were manifested
as early as the sixteenth century. By the eighteenth century the trickle of scepticism had
become a flood. Even Spain finally had to give up burning heretics. In one sense this
“rise of modern paganism” was part of the stalemate after two centuries of religious wars.
Toleration and freedom from dogmatism created deism as preferable to the type of
sectarian slaughter displayed today [1977] in Lebanon, Ulster, and Uganda. [Today,
2012, we may substitute jihad and southern Sudan as examples] How widespread the new
faith in Reason was can be argued. Certainly ignorance and superstition had their
disciples. But there is no denying that scientific progress did fire the imagination of
many.

2. The [famous] historian Georges Lefebvre [1874-1959] links the Enlightenment to class.
The temper of the bourgeoisie...had differed since the beginning from that of the warrior or the
priest….Experimental rationalism had laid the foundations of modern science and in the
eighteenth century promised to embrace all man’s activity. It armed the bourgeoisie with a new
philosophy which, especially in France, encouraged class consciousness and a bold inventive
spirit.
(The French Revolution, p. 54)
This should not blind us to the fact that some of the most famous philosophes were
aristocrats like Montesquieu, some self-imposed exiles from society like Rousseau,
natural aristocrats like Jefferson, or gentry like Burke.
Enlightenment thought on the nature of the state was broad enough to include organic
theorists like Montesquieu and Burke and also instrumentalists like Jefferson and
Rousseau. The degree of bitterness with which critics denounced the status quo varied
widely also. Montesquieu and Burke were basically enlightened aristocratic [Burke was
not himself an aristocrat, but he strongly identified with hierarchy] reformers who
believed that popular sovereignty was a dangerous seducement. Rousseau and Jefferson
would not settle for half a revolutionary loaf. When we apply the criteria of optimism,
faith in progress, and the perfectibility of man, we find different pairs. Jefferson and
Montesquieu looked to the future with the greatest confidence. Burke and Rousseau both
suspected conventional notions of progress.
By the end of the eighteenth century events forced men to choose. Men either sided with
Rousseau and Jefferson in sharing “...a new feeling for a kind of equality, or at least a
discomfort with older forms of social stratification” in Palmer’s succinct description of
the Democratic Revolution’s core. (Democratic Revolution, p. 4). Or, men recoiled from
the forces which events had called forth and sought conservative checks on the power
unleashed from the depths of society.
As you review the history and read the excerpts from this decisive period, remember that
the issues which these men argued are not closed, not settled once and for all. When
Franklin was leaving the Philadelphia Convention in September, 1787, a lady asked him
what form of government they had settled upon behind closed doors. The answer was “A
Republic, Madam, if you can keep it.” As the Greeks knew only too well, democracy has
a habit of giving way to tyranny.
Jim Powers, Justice & Power; A Primer in Political Philosophy. 1977, p.p. 28-29