Enlightenment Era

Scientific Revolution Leads to Enlightenment 1500-1700: European scientists using reason to discover laws of nature Very successful: Planetary movements, chemistry, vaccine for smallpox, etc.

Use of Reason Early 1700’s: If people used reason to find laws that governed the physical world, why not use reason to discover natural laws? Laws that govern human nature Reformers begin studying human nature and societal problems

Philosophies “The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of Nature for his rule. The liberty of man in society is to be under no other legislative power but that established by consent in the commonwealth, nor under the dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact according to the trust put in it.” – John Locke, Second Treatise of Government

Philosophies   “Every man having been born free and master of himself, no one else may under any pretext whatever subject him without his consent. To assert that the son of a slave is born a slave is to assert that he is not born a man.” Jean –Jacques Rousseau

Belief- Philosophers Every social, political and economic problem could be solved through the use of reason John Locke Baron de Montesquieu Jean Jacques Rousseau

Enlightenment Thinkers In terms of the American political system the most significant of the theories is that of the “social contract,” Developed by seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophers. It challenged the idea of divine right.

John Locke In Two Treatises on Civil Government (1690) Locke wrote that the social contract creates a limited government which relies on the “consent of the governed.”

John Locke Government’s job is to secure people’s natural rights (life, liberty, and property) which all people have simply because they are human beings. If government fails to preserve the rights of the people, the people could justly break the contract.

Jean Jacques Rousseau French philosopher who wrote in The Social Contract (1762) that people alone had the right to determine how they should be governed and that the main duty of government should be to maintain as much freedom as possible in a civilized society.

Baron Montesquieu He wrote in The Spirit of the Laws (1748) that no one person should make, enforce, and interpret the laws, proposed a division of government powers into three separate branches with different duties

Economy Laissez-Faire: allowing business to operate with little or no government interference. Adam Smith: Free market should be allowed to regulate business activity Manufacturing, trade, wages, profits and economic growth are all linked to the market forces of supply and demand.