Enlightenment B

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Enlightenment B
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Enlightenment Ideas

• Spread from Europe to the Americas
• the philosophes, create the mvmt of the
  Enlightenment
• Centered in France and England, also Scotland,
  Italy and Netherlands
• Kant Dare to know!
• Influenced the American Revolution

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Core Beliefs

• Truth discovered through reason
• What is natural is also good and reasonable
• People can find happiness in this life
• Society and humankind can progress and improve
• Peoples liberty should be protected by the law

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Enlightenment Philosophers
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Thomas Hobbes

• Leviathan
• Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor,
  nasty, brutish and short
• Influenced by science and math constructed a
  completely mechanical model of the universe

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John Locke

• English
• People are born with natural rights
• People have the right to change or overthrow a
  govt that does not protect their natural rights

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Baron de Montesquieu

• French
• separation of powers
• Checks balances

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Jean Jacques Rousseau

• French
• natural goodness individual freedom
• Govt by general will of the people

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Cesare Bonesana Beccaria

• Italian
• justice system
• people accused of crimes had certain rights, and
  advocated abolishing torture
• His ideas were based on the belief that
  governments should seek the greatest good for the
  greatest number of people

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Simon Bolivar and Jose de San Martin

• San Martin-role in the independence of Argentina
  and Chile.
• Greatest liberator-Simon Bolivar who freed
  Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru
  from Spanish rule. 
• Brazil and a number of Caribbean Islands followed
  suit. 
• Constitutions were drafted and democratic
  institutions were established.

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Common Sense

• Pierre Bayles Historical and Critical Dictionary
  
• demolished traditional concepts
• Denis Diderots Encyclopedia (1751-1781),
• encapsulated the whole of human knowledge
• Voltaires Philosophical Letters
• encouraged readers to cast off inherited
  misconceptions
• Jean-Jacques Rousseaus Émile (1762)
• Argued for new pedagogy (methods of teaching)

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War on tradition

• Voltaire Christianity often was linfame, the
  detestable thing
• Deism
• belief in natures God who created universe
  according to natural laws
• John Lockes Letter Concerning Toleration
• urged openness to all religious expressions
  (except Roman Catholicism and atheism)
• Freemasonry
• blend of Egyptian polytheism with medieval guilds
  and brotherly love

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Social Contracts

• John Lockes Second Treatise of Civil Government
• government contract powered by consent of
  property owners
• Montesquieus Spirit of Laws (1748)
• laws evolved to be spirit of a nation
• constitutionalism should protect freedoms of
  citizens
• separation of powers create checks and balances
• executive, legislative, judicial
• Rousseaus Social Contract (1762)
• state guided by moral and collective body of
  individual citizens
• Jefferson adopted ideas in American Declaration
  of Independence

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Effects of the Enlightenment
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Enlightenment Ideas

• Encouraged people to use observation to make new
  discoveries
• Rely on reason
• Question traditional authority