1. English Enlightenment
Chapter 11 Section 4
English Enlightenment

2. Essential Questions In what year did the “Age of Enlightenment” occur?
Define Enlightenment
Define Rationalism
What was the goal of the Encyclopedia?
List the goals of the enlightenment thinkers.

3. Early Enlightenment 1700’s “Age of Enlightenment.”
The belief that reason and scientific method could logically explain human nature.
Rationalism: truth can be determined solely by logical thinking.

4. Philosophes Thinkers of Enlightenment
They were not only philosophers, but critics of society.
Denis Diderot
Published the 1st edition, 28 volumes of the Encyclopedia.

5. Encyclopedia Articles on all subjects Attacked
The Church
Government
The Slave Trade
Torture
Taxes
War
French government imprisoned Diderot

6. Political Criticism
Philosophes- examined government and compared it to the democratic-republican governments of classic Greece and Rome.
Criticized the power of kings, nobles and clergy.
Adopted ideas of John Locke

7. Baron de Montesquieu The Spirit of the Laws
Described the perfect government
Believed in balance of power.
Executive
Legislative
Judicial
Provides checks to political power

8. Voltaire
Wrote against the French Monarchy, and the religious controls of the Church.
Critical of intolerance and of attempts to suppress personal freedoms.
Fled France to go to England.

9. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Social Contract
People are naturally good, but that environment, education, and laws corrupt them.
Popular Sovereignty
Government must be created and controlled by the people.

10. “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains
“Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
The Social Contract
Did not trust reason
It brought Corruption
And Misery.
Opposed a strong Gov.

11. Mary Wollstonecraft Spokesperson for women’s rights
Argued that Enlightenment ideals if equality should be extended to women as well as men.