This document provides an overview of the Enlightenment period in the 18th century and some of its key thinkers and ideas. It summarizes that the Enlightenment was an age of optimism in humanity's ability to use reason to reform society and advance knowledge. Major figures discussed include Voltaire, Rousseau, and Adam Smith. Voltaire and other philosophes advocated using reason to critique tradition and institutions in order to promote freedom, rights, and social progress. Rousseau emphasized concepts like the social contract and general will. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations analyzed free market economics. Enlightened despots also sought to implement Enlightenment ideals through legal and economic reforms.

1. The Enlightenment

2. ❖18th century.
❖Age of optimism, belief in
progress, new values of
freedom, rights, and equality.
❖Humanity beginning to
master the world.
❖Reason triumphs over the
authority of tradition.

3. ❖Hierarchical
societies – monarchs.
❖Societies of old
regime based on status
and divided into three
main groups known as
orders, or estates.
Old Regime

4. 1.Clergy – those who pray;
2.Nobility – those who fight;
3.Everyone else – those who toil.
Not connected with money – many
members of third estate were
richer than other two.
Old Regime

5. ❖First two estates usually
represented less than 5% of the
population.
Old Regime

6. 6

7. ❖Old regime also a society of
privileges, enforceable at law.
❖Certain noblemen could wear
a sword in public, have a coat
of arms, and not have to
remove their hat in the
presence of the king.
Old Regime

8. ❖Some regions were exempt from
certain taxes or did not have to
send men to do military service.
❖Nobility and Church had tax
exemptions or reduced rates.
❖Church had special courts to try
clergy for violations of law.
Old Regime

9. ❖Top of hierarchy
were absolute
monarchs who ruled
by divine right.
❖Most famous: Louis
XIV (1643-1715) of
France.
Old Regime

10. ❖Leading intellectual figures
of Enlightenment were
French.
❖Referred to themselves as
philosophes.
❖Liberal and curious about the
world.
Knowledge and Progress

12. ❖Hated evils of society and
spoke out against
intolerance.
❖Shared belief in progress
of knowledge and making
the world better for all.
Knowledge and Progress

13. ❖Philosophes accepted scientific
method as basis of new
knowledge.
❖Great faith in power of reason.
❖Also tended to be skeptics,
refusing to accept anything as
true unless proof was verifiable.
Knowledge and Progress

14. ❖Philosophes produced an
Encyclopedia.
❖Believed knowledge was
power.
❖Knowledge needed to undo
evil, reform laws, educate, and
promote new values.
Knowledge and Progress

15. ❖Most famous philosophes was
Francois Marie Arouet
(1694-1778).
❖Pen name – Voltaire.
❖Took a critical and witty
stance on wide variety of
issues.
Knowledge and Progress

17. ❖Major work, Philosophical
Letters, resulted from years
living in England.
❖Contrasted France with
England – praised English
liberty and attacked French
absolutism.
Knowledge and Progress

18. ❖Also challenged the
Catholic Church in France.
❖Attacked political structure.
❖Voltaire admired thinkers
like Bacon, Locke, and
Newton.
Knowledge and Progress

19. ❖Resented by French
authorities, who burned
Voltaire’s book.
❖Voltaire admired time of
Louis XIV, Athenian Greece,
Roman Empire, and Italian
Renaissance.
Knowledge and Progress

20. ❖Measure of greatness for
Voltaire was culture.
❖In Candide (1759), Voltaire used
philosophical tale to express
doubts about all being for the
best.
❖http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/voltaire-francois-
marie-arouet-known-1694-1778-writer
Knowledge and Progress

21. ❖His main character, innocent youth,
journeyed through the world,
encountering ideas and experiences that
ridiculed the philosophy of optimism.
❖Pangloss, Candide’s teacher, kept
telling him in the face of misfortune and
injustice that this is “the best of all
possible worlds.”
Knowledge and Progress

22. ❖Another character, Martin, a
gloomy pessimist, believed that
the devil is in control of the world.
❖It was Candide who chose
neither optimism nor pessimism,
but told his friends, “we must
cultivate our garden.”
Knowledge and Progress

23. ❖Voltaire’s attacks on existing
institutions in France often
centred on Catholic Church.
❖He viewed the institution as
corrupt and intolerant.
❖Also anti-Semitic.
Knowledge and Progress

24. ❖(1712 – 1778), more
popular than Voltaire.
❖Wrote The Social Contract
(1762): “Man was born free,
and everywhere he is in
chains.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

26. ❖For Rousseau, civilization had
its drawbacks.
❖He ascribed evil in society to
the institutions that it supported.
❖Private property made us
selfish and destroyed natural
goodness.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

27. ❖Did not mean an
abandonment of civil society.
❖He redefined sovereignty by
placing it in the hands of the
people, who were the ultimate
judges of public interest.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

28. ❖Human beings need both liberty
and society.
❖They entered into a social
contract among themselves
whereby they gave up certain
personal liberties in exchange for
protection, but retained ultimate
sovereignty.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

29. ❖Rousseau focused on the nature
of community.
❖Believed individuals needed civil
society; sociability was part of
nature.
❖Yet, he maintained that the
community was more than the sum
of the individuals and their wishes.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

30. ❖Community had an identity
and a will, what Rousseau
referred to as the General Will.
❖Not the will of the majority
(could be evil); but will of
community in its noblest
sense.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

31. ❖Egalitarian thinker.
❖Attacked private property.
❖Believed direct democracy in small
polity or government.
❖Introduced new element into
Enlightenment thought –
sentiments and feelings, rather than
reason alone.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

32. ❖Unhappy with philosophes
and attacked artificiality of
society.
❖Claimed that each child
was a special person who
had to be carefully nurtured.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

33. ❖Children were innocent.
❖His pleas for a life of sentiment
and passion became the basis of
the Romantic Movement in the
next generation.
❖https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=VqOaG24aPSc
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

34. ❖Thinkers unconcerned with
economic questions.
❖Those who attached Church
and nobility proposed
reforms that would allow
greater freedom of economy.
Economy

35. ❖A. R. J. Turgot invented slogan
of economic liberalism: laissez-
faire.
❖Most influential economic work
of century was Adam Smith’s An
Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of
the Wealth of Nations (1776).
Economy

37. ❖Smith wished to encourage
free trade and competition in
order to create more wealth.
❖He believed that the
economy should be self-
regulating based on the law of
supply and demand.
Economy

38. ❖If individuals would pursue
their own self-interest, wealth
would be increased and the
economy would work
according to natural laws
(put forth by Newton).
Economy

39. ❖Division of labour would
result in greater efficiency
and free trade would force
industries and states to
operate only in areas where
they could compete.
Economy

40. ❖Imagined a free
expanding economy
working harmoniously if
regulated by an “invisible
hand.”
❖Criticisms?
Economy

41. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAJDD1_Oexo&noredirect=1
❖ The Wealth of Nations became
standard modern economic
theory.
❖ The new industrial capitalism
would cite this as its theoretical
base.
Economy

42. ❖Well-known Enlightenment
thinkers were virtually all men.
❖Women did have important
role – organizers of the salon.
❖Began as a way for small
group of elite women to satisfy
educational needs.
The Salon

43. ❖Evolved into meetings of
intellectuals guided by hostesses.
❖Most famous was Marie-
Therese Geoffrin (1699-1777).
❖Ran two salons (Monday for
artists, Wednesday for men of
letters).
The Salon

44. 44

45. ❖Participants were
admitted based on their
accomplishments, rather
than social status.
❖Main activity of the salon
was conversation.
The Salon

46. ❖Hostess would direct
conversation and keep male
participants under control.
❖Women held this position
as a result of Enlightenment
beliefs about gender roles:
The Salon

47. ❖Women and men are
different in nature but
complimentary, “feminine”
sensibility balancing
“masculine” reason.
❖1770s, salons began to
decline.
The Salon

48. ❖New institutions, such as
Masonic lodges and clubs,
came to displace salons.
❖These institutions were more
open, no letter of introduction
necessary, and offered
marginal role for women.
The Salon

49. ❖Women in Enlightenment were
affected by new ideas about nature,
human nature, and society.
❖Also put forth concepts of separate
spheres for men and women based on
“natural” differences between genders
and women’s inferior intellectual
qualities and superior sensibility.
The Salon

50. ❖Desire among certain rulers to
make governments more effective
and strengthen their economies
and make military more powerful.
❖Method was to employ
Enlightenment principles of
reason and tolerance to challenge
tradition and carry out reforms.
Enlightened Despotism

51. ❖Believed they should
foster prosperity and social
progress.
❖Resulted in formal law
codes in Austria and
Prussia in the late 1700s.
Enlightened Despotism

52. ❖Most important
enlightened
despots: Frederick
II (the Great) of
Prussia (1740-1786)
❖http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=_WMNkd6-CMY
Enlightened Despotism

53. ❖Joseph II of
Austria (1765
-1790)
❖http://www.biography.com/
people/joseph-
ii-9358214#awesm=~oHjMuN8w9eV
li7
Enlightened Despotism

54. ❖Catherine II (the
Great) of Russia
(1762 -1796)
❖http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=k3Mo1qRk3e8&feature=related
Enlightened Despotism

55. ❖Charles III of
Spain (1759 -1788)
Enlightened Despotism

56. ❖Jose I of
Portugal (1750
-1777)
Enlightened Despotism