Philosophy in the Age of Reason

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Philosophy in the Age of Reason

• Dr. Matthews World History

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• In the 1500s and 1600s the Scientific Revolution
  introduced the world to reason and the scientific
  method as the basis of knowledge
• Rules discovered by reason, or natural law, were
  used to study human behavior and solve societal
  problems (in theory!)
• Natural Law led to a revolution in thinking known
  as the Enlightenment

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• John Locke

• Thomas Hobbes

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Enlightenment Thinkers

• Thomas Hobbes
• Believed people are brutish by nature and need to
  be controlled by an absolute monarch
• Citizens enter into a social contract with their
  government in which personal freedoms are given
  up for organized social order
• John Locke
• Thought that people are generally reasonable and
  moral
• People have natural rights such as life,
  liberty, and property
• Government should be limited and overthrown if
  natural rights are taken away

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Baron de Montesquieu
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Enlightenment Thinkers

• Enlightenment thinkers in France, known as
  philosophes, felt reason could reform government,
  society, and law
• Baron de Montesquieu proposed checks and balances
  and separation of powers as protection for
  liberty
• Greatly effected the creators of the United
  States Constitution

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• Adam Smith

• Voltaire

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Enlightenment Thinkers

• Voltaire exposed the abuses of power and defended
  freedom of speech
• Adam Smith applied reason towards economic reform
• He rejected government regulation of the economy
  and urged the policy of laissez faire, which
  means
• let it be
• Advocate for free trade and opposed tariffs

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• Believed that people in their natural state were
  basically good.
• However, this natural innocence was corrupted by
  the evils of society.
• In The Social Contract he wrote that government
  should place minimal controls on its people, and
  this government should be freely elected.
• Thomas Paine and Marquis de Lafayette were among
  the American and French revolutionary leaders who
  adopted Rousseaus philosophy.

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Denis Diderot
Produced the first Encyclopedia
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Mary Wollstonecraft

• Argued that women should be able to decide what
  was in her own interest without depending on her
  husband.
• However, she accepted that a womans first duty
  was to be a good mother.