1. Enlightenment Thought

2. Enlightenment – an effort to apply the methods and principles of the Scientific Revolution to issues of political, economic, and social reform
Human reason and observation could discover the same laws of human affairs

3. Settings of the Enlightenment
Paris
French served as the unifying language of intellectual discourse
Salons
Ran by women and attracted philosophers, economists and writers from all over Europe

4. Important Women Madame de Geoffrin – hosted salons for 25 years
Julie Lespinasse
Suzanne Necker
Mary Wollstonecraft
Women gained few tangible benefits from their participation

5. Outside salons…
Middle class congregated at coffeehouses and reading clubs
The bourgeoisie imitated the fashions and intellectual interests of the nobility
A more secretive setting for the spread of the Enlightenment was the Freemason Lodge

6. The Philosophes
Majority of philosophes were not professional philosophers
Wanted to subject all of human custom and tradition to criticism
Progress should occur through gradual acceptance of the Enlightenment method of reform

7. Principles of the philosophes
Reason
Secularlism
Science and rational inquiry
Equality
Progress