Enlightened Thought

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What's My Question
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Goals

• Reason applied to Natural Laws
• Intellectual, Economics, and Political Causes
• Political, Religious, Economics, Intellectual
  Effects.

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Enlightened Thought
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Apply Reason to the Nature of Mankind
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Enlightened Ideas

• Views of nature, mankind, society, government,
  and the value of freedom.
• Progress restrained by social and political
  institutions.

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Challenged the church and secularized
institutions.
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Ruled by law, not rules, and a separation of power
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Religion and Absolute Truth
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What does it mean to be enlightened?
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Spinoza
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Deism
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• Philosophy becomes scientific method and critical
  inquiry.
• Locke believed the scientific method could be
  applied to the study of society.

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John Locke
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Governments based on a Social Contract
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Republic of Ideas
How can the pen be mightier than the sword?
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Montesquieu

• In Persian Letters, nature reveals a universal
  standard of justice that applies to all people.
• Was against Slavery.

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Spirit of Laws 1748

• Applied the principles of observation,
  experimentation, and analysis to social and
  political foundation of state.

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Voltaire Francois-Marie Arouet

• Extolled Britain, it's commercial empire,
  relative religious toleration, and freedom of
  press.
• Parliaments represented the interests of the
  nobility.

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• Looked toward Enlightened monarchs to protect
  their people against noble self-interest.
• Believed the Church blocked the development of
  freedom.
• Crush the Infamous Thing

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Denis Diderot

• Encyclopedia reflected the nature of the
  enlightenment.
• Knowledge was rational, and therefore ordered,
  following the laws of nature.
• Social and political institutions should be
  submitted to standards of rationality.

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• Published over a period of 20 years.
• Consisted of 60,000 articles and 2,885
  illustrations in 28 volumes
• Learning more could improve the world
• Wanted the Enlightenment carried beyond the
  borders of France

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Candide
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Rousseau
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The Social Contract
Men are born free yet everywhere they are in
chains.
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In the Social Contract, individuals
surrendered their natural rights to the general
will in order to find order and security. The
General Will was the consensus of a community of
citizens with equal rights.
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• Social changes that affected the climate of
  opinion also laid the groundwork for the
  Enlightenment.
• Emile

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Painting

• French nobles lavished more attention on
  decoration.
• Elements drawn from nature replaced religious
  objects as decoration.
• Paintings reflected satirical look at life.

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Music

• Operas associated with the nobility.
• Franz Joseph Haydn conducted symphonies in public
  in London.
• Mozart reflected the emergence of the public
  concert.
• The operas The Marriage of Figaro (1786) and Don
  Giovanni (1787)

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Spread of Enlightened Ideas

• Salons, academies, and Masonic lodges
• Salons were concentrated in Paris
• Masonic lodges began in Scotland as stonemasons
  guilds
• Masons shared a general faith in progress and
  toleration

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Rejecting what they considered unnatural
hierarchies that fettered progress, they
proclaimed that the public had rights and that
freedom was good. Enlightenment thought helped
create opposition to absolutism.