1. The Enlightenment
A period when it was hoped knowledge would, conquer fear, superstition, extremism and prejudice 

2. Une soirée chez Madame Geoffrin

3. Causes of the Enlightenment
Growth in secular learning and scientific reasoning led to a questioning of the philosophy of power
Increase in literacy and the growth of vernacular literature
Knowledge gained from other world regions after exploration and colonization
Weakening of the power of the Catholic Church and its dogmatic attitudes
Desire for a new type of government after decades of European warfare

4. Emanuel Kant wrote an essay called, Was ist Äufklarung?
Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's mind without another's guidance. Sapere Aude! Dare to Know! Have the courage to use your own understanding is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment

5. Aim of the Enlightenment
The thinkers of the Enlightenment had a common goal- social reform.
They saw themselves as the social engineers of a New Europe.
Their plans for social reform were a reflection of the world of abundance in which they lived. 

6. John Adams second president of the United States once remarked that:
“The arts and sciences, in general, during the three or four last centuries, have had a regular course of progressive improvement. The inventions in mechanic arts, the discoveries in natural philosophy, navigation and commerce, and the advancement of civilization and humanity, have occasioned changes in the condition of the world and the human character which would have astonished the most refined nations of antiquity. A continuation of similar exertions is everyday rendering Europe more and more like one community, or single family.”

7.  John Locke ( ) 
The human mind was a tabula rasa, a blank slate upon which experience records itself as human knowledge
“Let us suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas:--How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety. Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE.”

8. Mainstays of the Enlightenment theories
Francis Bacon ( ) argued Newton’s system of natural laws could serve as the justification for a science of man.
The scientific study of Nature implied that man and society could also be the object of scientific study.
John Locke's essays on toleration and education, and his two treatises on government secured his reputation as the third patron saint of the 18th century.

9. Who were Les Philosphes?
They were cosmopolitan, humanist, men of letters
They were persuasive and lucid writers, not associated either with Church or university.
They advocated not just of reason but reasonableness.
They believed in the concepts of humanity and secularism
In Denis Diderot's multi-volume Encyclopedia, an anonymous essay entitled "Philosophe" described the philosophe as one who:
“trampling on prejudice, tradition, universal consent, authority, in a word all that enslaves most minds, dares to think for himself, to go back and search for the clearest general principles, to admit nothing except on the testimony of his experience and his reason.”

10. Voltaire Crusaded against social injustice and religious intolerance.
Adhered to deism (a view of God as removed from the actions of humans)
Learned English in order to read John Locke and Isaac Newton
Became outspoken against religious intolerance and torture, against the injustices of the Catholic Church
Corresponded with King Frederick II of Prussia and Catherine the Great

11. Baron de Montesquieu
Created a highly original satire of French society called Lettres persanes (The Persian Letters) - a ridiculous portrait of many of the French institutions and values of the early 18th century. It was particularly critical of Catholic Jansenism and the French monarchy. 
His most famous work, The Spirit of the Laws, contained an argument in favor of the separation of powers within a government
The Roman Catholic Church placed it on its index of forbidden books.

12. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Argued that humans had originally existed in a "state of nature" that was morally superior to that of the contemporary world
In The Social Contract, Rousseau argues that civil liberties are "natural" rights of all human beings.
 "Man was born free, but he is everywhere in chains." 
 Believed that civil society should be based on a social contract by which citizens are guaranteed individual liberty.
The Social Contract had an enormous influence on the revolutionaries of the late 18th century, who used his ideas to justify their challenges to royal despotism. 

13. Cesare BECCARIA
Italian essayist who wrote On Crimes and Punishments in 1764
Believed that criminals were treated inhumanely and that capital punishment and torture should be abolished.
Father of criminal sociology and an early voice for the abolishment of capital punishment
Claimed that there were no bad people, only bad laws, and believed crime could be prevented with education

14. Adam Smith The father of the science of political economy
Presented an ordered explanation for the market forces of 18th-century Great Britain
Synthesized a wide array of intellectual thought in regard to the interaction between society, the economy, and the ultimate quest for worldwide prosperity in his landmark book, The Wealth of Nations.
Recognized that people were motivated primarily by their own self-interest, but he argued that self-interest was naturally regulated by the "invisible hand" of market forces
Maintained that government interference in either the market or society would undermine the natural order of the whole system “laissez faire” economics

15. Effects of Enlightenment
The ideas of Enlightenment philosophers, as reflected in revolutionary documents influenced resistance to existing political authority.
American Declaration of Independence
French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen
Bolivar’s Jamaica Letter
These enlightened ideas resulted in revolutions.
Enlightenment ideas influenced many people to challenge existing notions of social relations, which contributed to the expansion of rights as seen in
expanded suffrage
abolition of slavery
end of serfdom

16. Effects of Enlightenment
Enlightened despotism developed in Europe
Joseph II of Austria, Catherine the Great of Russia, Frederick II of Prussia (also Napoleon Bonaparte)
rulers sympathetic to reforms
stronger economies
religious toleration
improved education
legal reforms
abolition of torture, corporal and capital punishment
abolition of censorship - freedom of press