1. Ch. 22 Sec. 2 The Enlightenment

2. *ENLIGHTENMENT
THE IDEAS OF THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION PAVED THE WAY FOR A NEW GOVERNMENT THAT
*APPLIED REASON AND LAWS OF NATURE TO GOVERNMENT
*ENCOURAGED SPREAD OF IDEAS
*CHANGED FROM DIVINE RIGHT TO CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED

3. Views on Government *JOHN LOCKE
All people had “natural rights” (life, liberty, property)
Government should be based on consent of the governed
*Purpose of government is to protect the rights of the citizens
*Believed in a Democratic Republic
Although he completed a philosophical education at Oxford, John Locke declined the offer of a permanent academic position in order to avoid committing himself to a religious order. Having also studied medicine, he served for many years as private physician and secretary to Anthony Ashley Cooper, the first Earl of Shaftesbury and one of the Lord Proprietors of the Carolina Colonies. Locke's involvement with this controversial political figure led to a period of self-imposed exile in Holland during the 1680s, but after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 he held several minor governmental offices. A friend of Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle, Locke was also an early member of the Royal Society. He studied and wrote on philosophical, scientific, and political matters throughout his life, in a voluminous correspondence and ample journals, but the public works for which he is best known were published in a single, sudden burst.
The fundamental principles of Locke's philosophy are presented in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), the culmination of twenty years of reflection on the origins of human knowledge. According to Locke, what we know is always properly understood as the relation between ideas, and he devoted much of the Essay to an extended argument that all of our ideas—simple or complex—are ultimately derived from experience. The consequence of this empiricist approach is that the knowledge of which we are capable is severely limited in its scope and certainty. Our knowledge of material substances, for example, depends heavily on the secondary qualities by reference to which we name them, while their real inner natures derive from the primary qualities of their insensible parts.
Nevertheless, Locke held that we have no grounds for complaint about the limitations of our knowledge, since a proper application of our cognitive capacities is enough to guide our action in the practical conduct of life. The Essay brought great fame, and Locke spent much of the rest of his life responding to admirers and critics by making revisions in later editions of the book, including detailed accounts of human volition and moral freedom, the personal identity on which our responsibility as moral agents depends, and the dangers of religious enthusiasm. One additional section that was never included in the Essay itself is Of the Conduct of the Understanding, a practical guide to the achievement of useful beliefs about the world. The bachelor philosopher's notions about childrearing appeared in Some Thoughts concerning Education (1693).
By contrast, Locke chose to avoid controversy by publishing his political writings anonymously. With the Two Treatises of Civil Government (1690) Locke established himself as a political theorist of the highest order. The First Treatise is a detailed refutation of the (now-forgotten) monarchist theories of Robert Filmer, but the Second Treatise of Government offers a systematic account of the foundations of political obligation. On Locke's view, all rights begin in the individual property interest created by an investment of labor. The social structure or commonwealth, then, depends for its formation and maintenance on the express consent of those who are governed by its political powers. Majority rule thus becomes the cornerstone of all political order, and dissatisfied citizens reserve a lasting right to revolution. Similarly, Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) argued for a broad (though not limitless) acceptance of alternative religious convictions.
*”If the commentaries had not been written when they were written, I think it very doubtful that the United States, and other English speaking countries would have so universally adopted the common law.”

4. Views on Government HOBBES
Leviathan (1651)
Social Contract
Agreement between society and its government to “give up” some personal rights for law and order.
Decades after completing his traditional education as a classicist at Oxford and serving as tutor of William Cavendish, Thomas Hobbes became convinced that the methods employed by mathematicians and scientists—geometry, in particular—hold the greatest promise for advances in human knowledge. Voluntarily exiled to Holland during the years of Parliamentary Rule, the royalist Hobbes devoted much of his time to the development and expression of a comprehensive philosophical vision of the mechanistic operation of nature. Although he returned to England with the restoration of Charles II, Hobbes was for the remainder of his life embroiled in bitter political and religious controversies. They did not prevent the ninety-year-old Hobbes from completing his English translation of the works of Homer.
Hobbes's first systematic statement of a political philosophy, Elements of Law, Natural and Politic (1640), relies heavily upon the conception of natural law that had dominated the tradition from Aquinas to Grotius. But his views had begun to change by the time he reissued portions of his work in a Latin version known as De Cive (1642).
The Leviathan (1651) is the most complete expression of Hobbes's philosophy. It begins with a clearly materialistic account of human nature and knowledge, a rigidly deterministic account of human volition, and a pessimistic vision of the consequently natural state of human beings in perpetual struggle against each other. It is to escape this grim fate, Hobbes argued, that we form the commonwealth, surrendering our individual powers to the authority of an absolute sovereign. For Hobbes, then, individual obedience to even an arbitrary government is necessary in order to forestall the greater evil of an endless state of war.
"All mankind [is in] a perpetual and restless desire for power... that [stops] only in death."

5. Views on Government *VOLTAIRE
Ideas
Tolerance
Freedom of religious belief
Freedom of speech.
Purpose of government is to protect the rights of the people
“I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your write to say it.”
French philosopher. Like the other Encyclopedists, Voltaire greatly admired the philosophy of John Locke, and he defended his own version of sensationalism in the Dictionnaire Philosophique {at Amazon.com} (Philosophical Dictionary) (1764) {at Amazon.com} and Lettres Philosophiques {at Amazon.com} (Letters Concerning the English Nation) (1734) {at Amazon.com}. As a freethinker and deist, Voltaire opposed institutional religion generally. In Poème sur la Désastre de Lisbonne (On the Lisbon Disaster) (1756) and Candide, ou l'optimisme {at Amazon.com} (Candide) (1759) {at Amazon.com}, Voltaire's acknowledgement of the presence of evil grounded a bitter rejection of Leibniz's conviction that god has created the best of all possible worlds.

6. Views on Government MONTESQUIEU
Separation of Powers - division of power among three different branches.
Checks and Balances - where one branch would serve as a check on the other two.
*Believed in a Democratic Republic
*Purpose of government is protect the rights of the citizens
French political philosopher who significantly influenced the founders of the American republic. In the multi-volume L'esprit des lois {at Amazon.com} (On the Spirit of the Laws) (1748) {at Amazon.com}, Montesquieu considered the fundamental principles of government, emphasizing respect for individual liberty and (extrapolating from a suggestion of Locke) urging a sharp separation of executive, legislative, and judicial powers.

7. Views on Government *ROUSSEAU
Committed to individual freedom and freedom of speech
Popular sovereignty (power in the hands of the people)
Government based on consent of governed
*Believed in a Democratic Republic
As a brilliant, undisciplined, and unconventional thinker, Jean-Jacques Rousseau spent most of his life being driven by controversy back and forth between Paris and his native Geneva. Orphaned at an early age, he left home at sixteen, working as a tutor and musician before undertaking a literary career while in his forties. Rousseau sired but refused to support several illegitimate children and frequently initiated bitter quarrels with even the most supportive of his colleagues. His autobiographical Les Confessions (Confessions) (1783) offer a thorough (if somewhat self-serving) account of his turbulent life.
Rousseau first attracted wide-spread attention with his prize-winning essay Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts (Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts) (1750), in which he decried the harmful effects of modern civilization. Pursuit of the arts and sciences, Rousseau argued, merely promotes idleness, and the resulting political inequality encourages alienation. He continued to explore these themes throughout his career, proposing in Émile, ou l'education (1762) a method of education that would minimize the damage by noticing, encouraging, and following the natural proclivities of the student instead of striving to eliminate them.
Rousseau began to apply these principles to political issues specifically in his Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality) (1755), which maintains that every variety of injustice found in human society is an artificial result of the control exercised by defective political and intellectual influences over the healthy natural impulses of otherwise noble savages. The alternative he proposed in Du contrat social (On the Social Contract) (1762) is a civil society voluntarily formed by its citizens and wholly governed by reference to the general will [Fr. volonté générale] expressed in their unanimous consent to authority.
Rousseau also wrote Discourse on Political Economy (1755), Constitutional Program for Corsica (1765), and Considerations on the Government of Poland (1772). Although the authorities made every effort to suppress Rousseau's writings, the ideas they expressed, along with those of Locke, were of great influence during the French Revolution. The religious views expressed in the "Faith of a Savoyard Vicar" section of Émile made a more modest impact.

8. Impact of the Enlightenment
Belief in Progress – After scientists started to make new discoveries, other people had confidence that human reason could solve problems.
More Secular Outlook –began to more openly question the teachings of the church..

9. Impact of the Enlightenment
Importance of the Individual – *People were encouraged to use their own ability to reason in order to judge what is right or wrong. (demand more involvement in their government)
Rise of Enlightened Despots
- *Absolute monarchs used enlightenment ideals to reform their country but retained their power

10. *Declaration of the Rights of Man
“Men are born free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good…”
Which principle of the Enlightenment is expressed in this quotation?

11. *Declaration of Independence
“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…”
Whose philosophy most closely reflects the statement above?