1. The Enlightenment: The Age of Reason
What factors contributed to the start of the Enlightenment?

2. Factors Contributing to the Start:
The English Civil War
Backlash against Absolutism (In France mostly)
The Scientific Revolution (Newton publishes Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy in 1687)

3. First Major Enlightenment Thinkers?
Thomas Hobbes
John Locke
Major Work?
View of People?
View of Life?
View of Govt.?
Social Contract?

4. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government…”

5. Create your own “social contract” between one of the following pairs:
1. You:Your Parents
2. World Studies Students:World Studies
Teachers
3. You:Your Siblings
4. You:Your Friends
5. Mr. McKee:LMHS Students

6. Five Basic Principles of the Enlightenment?
Reason: Man can explain all of life’s mysteries through logic and thought
Nature: Nature was good and reasonable. It held all of the answers for mankind. It gives us natural law.

7. Happiness: One who lived by nature’s laws would be happy
Progress: Society could be perfected if all mankind used reason and lived by natural law.
Liberty: Reason would lead to the freedom of all people

8. Who were the Philosophes?
Thinkers who applied Newton’s methods to all of society, including politics, economics, religion, and science

10. Major Impacts of the Enlightenment?
Sparked three revolutions:
American: 1776
French: 1789
Industrial

11. Impacts: Cont. Inspires push for social progress (salons of Paris)
End to slavery
Social equality
Improved education

12. Impacts: Cont. Increases Secularism: Deism = God as “watchmaker”
Builds upon “Humanism” of the Renaissance
Secular Humanism

13. Impacts: Cont. Individualism Use own reason to judge right and wrong
Protection of individual rights
Govt. created by collections of individuals