IN THIS CHAPTER
Summary: In the eighteenth century, social and political thinkers built on the achievements of the Scientific Revolution to create a vision of society based on natural law and human reason.
Key Ideas
• Following Newton, the men and women of the Enlightenment, known as philosophes, argued that the natural laws that govern human behavior could be discovered.
• The philosophes originally pinned their hopes on enlightened despotism, the hope that the powerful monarchs of European civilization, once educated in the ideals of the Enlightenment, would use their power to reform and rationalize society.
• In new institutions like salons and Masonic lodges, a more radical Enlightenment developed, which derided traditional institutions.
Key Terms
Second Treatise of Government
civil society
Spirit of the Laws
Essay Concerning Human Understanding
tabula rasa
Wealth of Nations
invisible hand
The Vindication of the Rights of Women
sacred covenant
consent
salons
philosophe
Masonic Lodges
deism
enlightened despotism
Candide
Encyclopedia
System of Nature
The Social Contract
Almanacs
"philosophical texts"
Introduction
“The Enlightenment” refers to an eighteenth-century cultural movement whose proponents argued that society and its laws should be based on human reason rather than on custom or tradition. Its roots can be traced to the late seventeenth century, when political writers like John Locke began suggesting that there were natural laws that govern human behavior which could be discovered through reason. In the eighteenth century, intellectuals known as philosophes developed a program for reforming society along the lines of reason, which they initially hoped to implement by educating the powerful rulers, or enlightened despots, of Europe. Later in the century, when enlightened despotism seemed to have failed, Enlightenment ideals began to be applied in more revolutionary contexts.
New Ideas about Natural Law, Human Nature, and Society
Galileo had argued that God gave man two “books” to guide him in his quest for knowledge: the Bible to show him how to find salvation, and nature to teach him about the mind of God. Isaac Newton had shown that, through the rigorous application of empirical observation and reason, man could discern the laws that God had created to govern the natural world. Their eighteenth-century successors, the philosophes, argued that the same process could lead to knowledge of the natural laws that govern human behavior. Accordingly, the Enlightenment view of society rested upon certain assumptions about the “natural state” of human beings.
Thomas Hobbes
One assumption about human nature that was foundational to Enlightenment thought was the belief that human beings could discern and would naturally follow their own selfinterest. Thomas Hobbes, the author of Leviathan (1651), asserted that self-interest motivated nearly all human behavior. Specifically, Hobbes argued that human beings were naturally driven to quarrel by competition, diffidence, and glory. Hobbes therefore concluded that “without a common power to keep them in awe,” the natural state of man was one of war.
John Locke
More typical of Enlightenment thought about human nature were the ideas of John Locke. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689—1690), Locke argued that humans are born tabula rasa (a blank slate). This contradicted the traditional Christian notion that humans were born corrupt and sinful, and it implied that what humans become is purely a result of what they experience. Accordingly, Locke argued that an educational and social system that taught and rewarded rational behavior would produce law-abiding and peaceful citizens.
Locke shared Hobbes’s belief in self-interest, and its importance in Locke’s thought can be seen in his influential theory of private property that also appears in the Second Treatise.
Locke argued that God created the world and its abundance so that man might make it productive. To ensure that productivity, God established a natural right to property. Private property is created, Locke argued, when an individual mixes a common resource with his individual labor. For example, when an individual does the work of cutting down a tree and crafting the wood into a chair, he has mixed a common resource with his individual labor to create something that did not exist before. That creation is his private property and, therefore, his incentive to be productive.
Adam Smith
A typical eighteenth-century example of self-interest as natural law can be seen in the work of Adam Smith, who applied Enlightenment ideals to the realm of economics. In Wealth of Nations (1776), Smith argued that there were laws of human labor, production, and trade that stemmed from the unerring tendency of all humans to seek their own self-interest. The economic laws that Smith identified, such as the law of supply and demand, are all by-products of human self-interestedness. Smith asserted that the sum total of these natural economic laws functioned like an invisible hand that guided the economy. Efforts by governments to alter the natural laws of an economy, such as putting a tax or tariff on foreign products, would ultimately fail, Smith argued. Accordingly, Smith and his followers advocated a hands-off, or Laissez-faire, economic policy.
Mary Wollstonecraft
In 1792, the English philosophe Mary Wollstonecraft published The Vindication of the Rights of Women, in which she argued that reason was the basis of moral behavior in all human beings (not just men). From that basis she went on to assert that the subjugation of women in European society was based on irrational belief and the blind following of tradition, and she challenged all men of reason to acknowledge the equality and human rights of all men and women.
New Political Ideas
Enlightenment ideals about natural law, human nature, and society led Enlightenment thinkers to ponder the question of the origin and proper role of government. Both Locke and Hobbes wrote in the context of the English Civil War that pitted Royalists against Parliamentarians. The Royalists supported the traditional power and privilege of the aristocracy and the king. In contrast, the Parliamentarians were seeking to limit the power and privilege of the aristocracy and the king.
Thomas Hobbes
Hobbes was a Royalist. From his point of view, the Parliamentarians had brought chaos to England by naively ignoring the fact that the natural state of humanity was war. Peace, Hobbes argued in Leviathan, required a government capable of simultaneously striking the fear of death in its subjects and guaranteeing that lawful subjects would attain a good quality of life. In order to accomplish the task, the government required absolute power, which they acquired by entering into an unbreakable contract, or sacred covenant, with the people.
John Locke
Locke, a Parliamentarian, agreed that men were often ruled by their passions. But in the Second Treatise he argued that in civil society men settled disputes dispassionately and effectively by creating impartial judges and communal enforcement. In such a system, the power of government came from the consent of the people and its use was limited to protecting the people’s natural rights, particularly their right to property. Any government that did not use its power to protect the rights of its people was no longer legitimate and could and should be deposed.
In the eighteenth century, it was Locke’s vision of government and law that came to dominate the Enlightenment. The Italian philosopher Cesare Beccaria carried Locke’s line of thinking about the proper function of government further, arguing, in Crime and Punishment (1764), that the purpose of punishment should be to rehabilitate and reintegrate the individual into society. Accordingly, the severity of the punishment should reflect the severity of the crime.
Baron de Montesquieu
The Baron de Montesquieu was a French aristocrat and judge who expanded on Locke’s theory of limited government by investigating the effects of climate and custom on human behavior. In Spirit of the Laws (1748), he stressed the importance of the rule of law and outlined a system where government was divided into branches in order to check and balance its power.
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson made the notion that the only legitimate role of a government was to guarantee its citizens “unalienable” rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the philosophical justification for the American Declaration of Independence from the rule of George III and Great Britain in 1776.
The Philosophes and Enlightened Despotism
The term philosophe, originally just the French term for philosopher, came to identify a new breed of philosopher who was dedicated to educating the broader public. Many were popu- larizers of the ideas of others, looking to spread an ideal of a society governed by reason. To reach the broadest possible audience, they wrote in many different genres: histories, novels, plays, pamphlets, and satires, as well as the traditional philosophical treatises.
The term enlightened despotism referred to the hope shared by many philosophes that the powerful monarchs of European civilization, once educated in the ideals of the Enlightenment, would use their power to reform and rationalize society. To one degree or another, many eighteenth-century European monarchs instituted reforms, but within limits:
• Frederick II (the Great) of Prussia abolished serfdom, instituted a policy of religious toleration, and attracted French Protestants and dissidents such as Voltaire to his kingdom, but Prussia remained a militaristic state under an absolutist regime and Voltaire eventually became disenchanted.
• Joseph II of Austria legislated religious toleration for Lutherans and Calvinists, abolished serfdom, and passed laws that liberalized the rules governing the press, but when pamphlets about the French Revolution appeared, he re-imposed censorship.
• Catherine II (the Great) of Russia read the philosophes, befriended Voltaire and Diderot, and called a legislative commission to study reform, but she dismissed the commission before most of it had even reported and had no intention of departing from absolutism.
In the final analysis, enlightened despotism was the use of certain Enlightenment ideals to help monarchs modernize and reform certain government and social institutions for the purpose of centralizing and strengthening their grasp on power. In the end, the interests of a ruling monarch ran counter to the more democratic and egalitarian ideals of the Enlightenment.
Salons and Lodges
The development and spread of an intellectual movement required places for people to congregate and share ideas. While philosophes could be found in most major European cities, the culture of the salons flourished in Paris, making it the center of the Enlightenment. Originally, the term salon had referred to the room in aristocratic homes where the family and its guests gathered for leisure activities. During the Enlightenment, however, aristocratic and, eventually, upper-middle-class women transformed such rooms (and the term) by turning them into a place where both men and women gathered to educate themselves about and discuss the new ideas of the age in privacy and safety. In the more prestigious houses, the leading philosophes were often invited to give informal lectures and to lead discussions.
It was through the salons that women made their most direct contribution to the Enlightenment. As hostesses, they controlled the guest list and enforced the rules of polite conversation. They were, therefore, in control of what ideas were discussed in front of which influential men, and were somewhat able to affect the reception that those ideas were given. Additionally, they controlled an extensive international correspondence network, as they decided which letters from philosophes in other cities were to be read, discussed, and replied to.
Another eighteenth-century home of Enlightenment thought was the Masonic Lodge. The lodges were established and run by Freemasons whose origins dated back to the medieval guilds of the stonemasons. By the eighteenth century, the lodges were fraternities of aristocratic and middle-class men (and occasionally women), who gathered to discuss alternatives to traditional beliefs. Following the customs of the old guilds, the Masonic fraternities were run along democratic principles, the likes of which were new to continental Europe. Linked together by membership in the Grand Lodge, the lodges formed a network of communication for new ideas and ideals that rivaled that of the salons. Some of the most influential men of the eighteenth century were Masons, including the Duke of Montagu in England, Voltaire and Mozart in France, and Benjamin Franklin in America. In Berlin, Frederick the Great cultivated the Masonic lodges as centers of learning.
Skepticism, Religion, and Social Criticism
Skepticism, or the habit of doubting what one has not learned for one’s self, was also a key element in the Scientific Revolution that was developed more widely in the Enlightenment. A particular target of Enlightenment skeptics was religion. In his Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697), the French religious skeptic Pierre Bayle included entries for numerous religious beliefs, illustrating why they did not, in his opinion, stand the test of reason. More generally, Bayle argued that all dogma, including that based on scripture, should be considered false if it contradicted conclusions based on clear and natural reasoning.
The most prevalent form of religious belief amongst the philosophes was deism. The deists believed that the complexity, order, and natural laws exhibited by the universe were reasonable proofs that it had been created by a God. But reason also told them that once God had created universe and the natural laws that govern it, there would no longer be any further role for him in the universe. A typical deist tract was John Toland’s Christianity Not Mysterious (1696). There, Toland argued that the aspects of Christianity that were not compatible with reason should be discarded and that Christians should worship an intelligible God.
Some philosophes went further in their skepticism. The Scottish philosopher David Hume rejected Christianity, arguing that Christianity required a belief in miracles and that the notion of miracles was contradicted by human reason. Hume also attacked the deist position, arguing that the order we perceived in the universe was probably the product of our own minds and social conventions, concluding that all religion was based on “hope and fear.” In the final analysis, Hume contended that reason must be the ultimate test and that belief should be in proportion to evidence.
The most famous skeptic of the Enlightenment wrote under the pen name of Voltaire. He raised satire to an art form and used it to criticize those institutions that promoted intolerance and bigotry. For his criticism of the French monarchy, aristocracy, and the church, he was briefly imprisoned in the Bastille. While in exile in England, he became an admirer of Newton and Locke. In Letters Concerning the English Nation (1733), he compared the constitutional monarchy, rationalism, and toleration that he found in England with the absolutism, superstition, and bigotry of his native France. Later, he produced a sprawling satire of European culture in Candide (1759). For a time he lived and worked with the most accomplished female philosophe, Madame du Châtelet, who made the only French translation of Newton’s Principia.
The Radical Enlightenment
As the monarchs and ruling regimes of Europe showed the limits of enlightened despotism, the elements of Enlightenment thought came together in increasingly radical ways. The multivolume Encyclopedia (1751—1772) was produced by the tireless efforts of its co-editors Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert. Their stated goal was to overturn the barriers of superstition and bigotry and to contribute to the progress of human knowledge. The entries of the Encyclopedia championed a scientific approach to knowledge and labeled anything not based on reason as superstition. Its pages were strewn with Enlightenment thought and the rhetoric of natural rights that were egalitarian and democratic. King Louis XV of France declared that the Encyclopedia was causing “irreparable damage to morality and religion,” and twice banned its publication.
Another more radical position was that of the German-born French philosophe the Baron d’Holbach, whose philosophy was openly atheist and materialist. In System of Nature (1770), d’Holbach offered the eighteenth-century reader a view of the world as a complex system of purely material substances, acting and developing according to laws of cause and effect that were purely mechanical rather than imposed by a rational God.
Perhaps the most influential radical voice emerged at mid-century, articulating a view of human nature that differed from Locke’s tabula rasa and which suggested different political implications. In Emile (1762), Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that humans were born essentially good and virtuous but were easily corrupted by society. Accordingly, Rousseau argued that the early years of a child’s education should be spent developing the senses, sensibilities, and sentiments.
Politically, Rousseau agreed with his predecessors that men come together to form a civil society and give power to their government by their consent. But where Locke and Montesquieu were content with a constitutional monarchy, Rousseau’s model was the ancient Greek city-state where citizens participated directly in the political life of the state. He expressed his discontent with the political state of affairs in The Social Contract (1762), where he wrote: “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.” Accordingly, Rousseau believed that the virtuous citizen should be willing to subordinate his own self-interest to the general good of the community and he argued that a lawful government must be continually responsible to the general will of the people. Towards the end of the century, as the ruling regimes of Continental Europe mobilized to protect their power and privilege, it would be Rousseau’s version of the Enlightenment that resonated with an increasingly discontented population.
The Other Enlightenment
The Enlightenment of the philosophes, with their salons and lodges, was primarily a cultural movement experienced by aristocrats and upper middle-class people. But further down the social hierarchy, a version of the Enlightenment reached an increasingly literate population through:
• excerpted versions of the Encyclopedia
• popular almanacs which incorporated much of the new scientific and rational knowledge
• “philosophical texts," the underground book trade’s code name for banned books that included some versions of philosophical treatises, and bawdy, popularized versions of the philosophes" critique of the Church and the ruling classes
In these texts the most radical of Enlightenment ideals—particularly those of Rousseau and d’Holbach—together with satirical lampooning of the clergy and the ruling class, reached a broad audience and helped to undermine respect for and the legitimacy of the ruling regimes.
• Rapid Review
In the eighteenth century, writers known as philosophes developed and popularized a vision of society based on reason. They wrote philosophical treatises, histories, novels, plays, pamphlets, and satires critical of the traditional social and political conventions and institutions like absolute monarchy and the Church. Initially, they hoped to reform society by educating the powerful monarchs of European kingdoms. When that strategy (known as enlightened despotism) faltered, the movement found new venues such as salons and Masonic Lodges, and the more egalitarian and democratic aspects of Enlightenment thought came to dominate, contributing to an atmosphere of political and social revolution that flourished in modern Europe at the end of the century.
• Chapter Review Questions
1. Hobbes and Locke DISAGREED in their belief that
(A) men are created equal
(B) men tend to follow their own self-interest
(C) the natural state of men is one of war
(D) a government’s power comes from the people
(E) men are often ruled by their passions
2. Locke argued that the primary aim of government is
(A) to guarantee peace by putting the fear of death into its subjects
(B) to follow and enact the general will of the people
(C) to provide and protect democracy
(D) to assure the right to property
(E) to institute a constitutional monarchy
3. Which of the following is NOT true of the philosophes?
(A) They used their positions as university professors to influence society.
(B) They aimed to educate the public.
(C) Their ultimate goal was a society governed by reason.
(D) They wrote in many different genres.
(E) They were often guests of and correspondents with the women who hosted salons.
4. The economic policy known as Laissez-faire
(A) advocates protectionist tariffs
(B) is based on the notion that everyone has a right to do anything they want
(C) is based on the notion that human selfinterest produces natural laws that govern economic behavior
(D) argues that the government should act as an “invisible hand” to regulate the economy
(E) was instituted by enlightened despots
5. The religious belief of the majority of the philosophes was
(A) Catholicism
(B) Lutheranism
(C) Calvinism
(D) Deism
(E) Atheism
6. The style of Enlightenment literature made famous by Voltaire was
(A) the philosophical treatise
(B) the satire
(C) the play
(D) the pamphlet
(E) the novel
7. Which of the following presented the most radical challenge to the traditional ruling regimes of eighteenth-century Europe?
(A) Locke’s notion that humans are born tabula rasa
(B) Hobbes notion that human nature requires a ruler with absolute power
(C) Beccaria’s notion that the goal of a legal system should be the rehabilitation and reintegration of the criminal to society
(D) the concept of religious toleration
(E) Rousseau’s notion that a lawful government must be continually responsible to the general will of the people
8. Which of the following is NOT part of Rousseau’s thought?
(A) Humans are born essentially good and virtuous but are easily corrupted by society.
(B) The early years of a child’s education should be spent developing the senses, sensibilities, and sentiments.
(C) “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.”
(D) All religion is based on “hope and fear.”
(E) The virtuous citizen should be willing to subordinate his own self-interest to the general good of the community.
• Answers and Explanations
1. C. Locke believed that men could and did overcome their passions in civil society; Hobbes disagreed, believing that the fears and passions of men were so strong that their natural state was war and only a ruler with the power of life and death over his subjects could guarantee peace. Choices A and B are incorrect because both argued that men were created equal and tended to follow their own interest. Choice D is incorrect because both believed that a government’s power came from the people. Choice E is incorrect because both believed that men were often ruled by their passions; they disagreed about whether those passions could be overcome.
2. D. Locke argued that the legitimate aim of government was the protection of individual liberty; that liberty was, for Locke, encapsulated in an individual’s right to dispense with the fruits of his labor (property) freely. Choice A is incorrect because the notion that a government must be able to put the fear of death into its subjects belonged to Hobbes. Choice B is incorrect because the notion that a government has an obligation to follow and enact the general will of the people belonged to Rousseau. Choice E is incorrect because Locke, though part of a movement that instituted a constitutional monarchy in England, argued in the Second Treatise of Government that any form (monarchy, oligarchy, or democracy) of government could be legitimate, provided it ensured and protected the fundamental rights of its subject.
3. A. Universities in the eighteenth century were traditional institutions, mostly affiliated with the Church. Accordingly, very few philosophes held university posts. Choices B—E are incorrect because they all accurately describe the philosophes.
4. C. Adam Smith argued that human self-interest produces natural laws that govern economic behavior and, therefore, the government should refrain from legislation that tries to produce results that run counter to those laws. Choice A is incorrect because protectionist tariffs, taxes levied on foreign goods to protect the sales of domestic goods, are an example of the kind of law that Smith argued would be either futile or harmful. Choice B is incorrect because the notion of Laissez-faire applies only to economic behavior, it does not argue that everyone has a right to do anything they want. Choice D is incorrect because the “invisible hand” referred to the natural laws that Smith believed regulated the economy, not the government. Choice E is incorrect because Laissez-faire was not popular with or instituted by enlightened despots.
5. D. Most philosophes were deists who believed that a rational God created the world and the laws by which it was governed, but took no further active role in the universe. Choices A—C are incorrect because, for the philosophes, Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism all failed the test of reason because they were based on received knowledge taken on faith. Choice E is incorrect because most philosophes were not, however, atheists, who deny the existence of God, as they believed that a rational world governed by natural laws required a rational creator.
6. B. Voltaire is best known for his satire, as exemplified by both Letters Concerning the English Nation (1733) and Candide (1759). Choice A is incorrect because Voltaire wrote no philosophical treatises. Choices C—E are incorrect because they are not the style for which Voltaire is best known.
7. E. Rousseau’s notion that a lawful government must be continually responsible to the general will of the people explicitly challenged the right of the privileged classes to rule, a radical and dangerous idea in the eighteenth century. Choice A is incorrect because, although Locke’s notion that humans are born tabula rasa, or like a blank slate, challenged the traditional Christian view of humans as depraved, it did not have the direct political implications of Rousseau’s “general will.” Choice B is incorrect because Hobbes’s notion that human nature required a ruler with absolute power was a conservative one, and most compatible with the ideology of the ruling regimes in the eighteenth century. Choice C is incorrect because Beccaria’s notion that the goal of a legal system should be the rehabilitation and reintegration of the criminal to society was reformist in nature, while Rousseau was revolutionary. Choice D is incorrect because the concept of religious toleration was sometimes absorbed into the ideology of ruling regimes in the eighteenth century.
8. D. The proposition that all religion was based on “hope and fear” was articulated by Hume not Rousseau. Choices A, B, C, and E are all positions articulated by Rousseau.