THE ENLIGHTENMENT:

Definition
 The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, was a movement that focused
on different approaches to society and the world. It was centered around the idea that
reason is the primary source of authority and legitimacy, and emphasized humanism,
individualism, and skepticism. Eventually, it focused on government, equality, and other
societal issues that needed to be fixed. The Enlightenment was marked by an emphasis
on The Scientific Method and Reductionism, along with increased questioning of
religious authority. These ideas had not been shared before because of the heavy
influence of the church.

Origin
 Some date the beginning of the Enlightenment to the publication of René Descartes'
Discourse on the Method in 1637, featuring his famous dictum, Cogito, ergo sum ("I
think, therefore I am").

 Others cite the publication of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687) as the
culmination of the Scientific Revolution and the beginning of the Enlightenment.

 European historians traditionally date its beginning with the death of Louis XIV of France
in 1715 and its end with the 1789 outbreak of the French Revolution.

 Many historians now date the end of the Enlightenment as the start of the 19th century,
with the latest proposed year being the death of Immanuel Kant in 1804.

 Historians place the Enlightenment in Europe (with a strong emphasis on France) during
the late 17th and the 18th centuries, or, more comprehensively, between the Glorious
Revolution in 1688 and the French Revolution of 1789.

 There is no definitive start, but historians agree that the Enlightenment began in the
late 17th-century and continued throughout the early 19th-century. The start was
around the end of the Renaissance, so new ways of thinking and the rebirth of old ideas
were not new, but the focus shifted from art and literature to scientific and worldly
ideas. Generally, the movement is thought to have lasted from 1685 till 1815.

Causes
  The focus on humanism during the Renaissance: humanism was one of the central
themes of the Renaissance that carried over into the Enlightenment Era. Humanism is a
belief system that focuses on human actions and human nature. Those who study
humanism seek to understand human needs and interactions and believe humans are
innately good. They seek rational ways of solving human problems without spiritual
intervention; because of this, humanism results in efforts toward equality and social
justice.

 The Protestant Reformation: Martin Luther’s actions in the Protestant Reformation

challenged the Catholic Church’s hold on power by translating the Bible into common
languages and encouraging people to read it for themselves instead of having priests
translate it for them.

 The Scientific Revolution: Isaac Newton and other scientists used observation and
reason to explain the true nature of the world which often proved the Catholic Church’s
claims wrong.

 Abuse of power by absolute monarchs: many absolute monarchs consolidated and

maintained their power by punishing those who opposed them and questioned their
right to rule. Louis XIV of France and Peter the Great of Russia were examples of
absolute monarchs.

Main Ideals

 Reason: valuing reason over faith was another hallmark of the Enlightenment. Attacking
superstitious beliefs and basing philosophical opinions on rational ideals was the basis of
the writings of the great Enlightenment thinkers.

 Skepticism: doubt about an established fact or belief. Enlightenment thinkers

questioned religious dogmas and commonly held beliefs about the nature of political
power. Political power in Europe had traditionally been thought to derive from the
divine right of kings. In other words, rulers ruled because God willed it to be that way.
[Radical skepticism: the philosophical position that knowledge is most likely impossible.
Radical skeptics hold that doubt exists as to the veracity of every belief and that
certainty is therefore never justified.]

[Cartesian skepticism: a form of methodological skepticism associated with the writings

and methodology of René Descartes, who sought to doubt the truth of all beliefs in
order to determine which he could be certain were true. Methodological skepticism is
distinguished from philosophical skepticism in that methodological skepticism is an
approach that subjects all knowledge claims to scrutiny with the goal of sorting out true
from false claims, whereas philosophical skepticism is an approach that questions the
possibility of certain knowledge.]
 Rationalism: the idea that humans are capable of using their faculty of reason to gain
knowledge. This was a sharp turn away from the prevailing idea that people needed to
rely on scripture or church authorities for knowledge.

 Empiricism: A theory that states that knowledge comes only, or primarily, from sensory
experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along
with rationalism and skepticism, it emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,
especially sensory experience, in the formation of ideas over the notion of innate ideas
or traditions.
[Although rationalism and empiricism are traditionally seen as opposing each other, the
distinction between rationalists and empiricists was drawn at a later period, and would
not have been recognized by philosophers involved in Enlightenment debates.
Furthermore, the distinction between the two philosophies is not as clear-cut as is
sometimes suggested. For example, Descartes and John Locke, one of the most
important Enlightenment thinkers, have similar views about the nature of human ideas.
Immanuel Kant also attempted to combine the principles of empiricism and rationalism.
He concluded that both reason and experience are necessary for human knowledge.]

 Individualism: developing one’s own talents to the highest degree and living life for
one's own sake rather than for the sake of the state or the church.

 Religious tolerance.

 Separation of church and state: a philosophical concept for defining political distance in
the relationship between religious organizations and the state. Conceptually, the term
refers to the creation of a secular state and to disestablishing the formal relationship
between the church and the state. Although the concept is older, the exact phrase
"separation of church and state" is derived from "wall of separation between church and
state", a term coined by Thomas Jefferson. The concept was promoted by Enlightenment
philosophers such as John Locke.

 Secularism & Deism: In the 17th century, Orthodox Christianity was rejected, and the
word Deism was coined. Deism is the belief the existence of God, specifically in a creator
who does not intervene in the universe after creating it, solely based on rational thought
without any reliance on revealed religions or religious authority. It emphasizes the
concept of natural theology (that is, God's existence is revealed through nature). Deism
remains a natural religion and the idea was to stop making any specific claim about God
that relies on supernatural occurrences. It became one of the dominant religions in the
18th century and was adopted by many.
 Liberalism: the belief in human rights and freedom. During the enlightenment age,
liberalism became a distinct movement which made it popular among western scholars.
The main idea of this concept was to completely vanish absolute kingship, traditional
conservatism, representative democracy, and hereditary privilege norms.

 Natural law & natural rights: natural law is a philosophy that certain rights or values are
inherent by virtue of human nature, and can be universally understood through human
reason. Historically, it refers to the use of reason to analyze both social and personal
human nature in order to deduce binding rules of moral behavior. The law of nature, like
nature itself, is universal. According to the theory of law called jusnaturalism, all people
have inherent rights, conferred not by act of legislation but by "God, nature, or reason."
Natural rights are those that are not dependent on the laws, customs, or beliefs of any
particular culture or government, and are therefore universal and inalienable (i.e., rights
that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws). They are usually defined in
opposition to legal rights, or those bestowed onto a person by a given legal system. The
most famous natural right formulation comes from John Locke, who argued that the
natural rights include perfect equality and freedom, and the right to preserve life and
property.

 Republicanism: The earlier belief was that the nation would be ruled by the government
which will be selected by hereditary right. To remove this concept from the nation,
Republicanism came into existence. It stuck to its motto that the nation will support a
democratic rule and the determination of the states’ highest official will be done by a
general election only. This political ideology became a general topic of research during
the mid-twentieth century.

 Progressivism: the belief that through their powers of reason and observation, humans
can make unlimited, linear progress over time; this belief was especially important as a
response to the carnage and upheaval of the English Civil Wars in the 17th century.

 Cosmopolitanism: reflected Enlightenment thinkers’ view of themselves as actively

engaged citizens of the world as opposed to provincial and close-minded individuals. In
all, Enlightenment thinkers endeavored to be ruled by reason, not prejudice.

 Reductionism: a term that refers to several related but distinct philosophical positions
regarding the connections between phenomena, or theories, “reducing” one to another,
usually considered “simpler” or more “basic.”

 Fraternity: In philosophy, fraternity or brotherhood is a kind of ethical relationship

between people, which is based on love and solidarity.
Phases
There was no single, unified Enlightenment. Instead, it is possible to speak of the French
Enlightenment, the Scottish Enlightenment and the English, German, Swiss or American
Enlightenment. Individual Enlightenment thinkers often had very different approaches. Locke
differed from David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau from Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson from
Frederick the Great. Their differences and disagreements, though, emerged out of the common
Enlightenment themes of rational questioning and belief in progress through dialogue.

 The Early Enlightenment: 1685-1730:

 The Enlightenment’s important 17th-century precursors included the Englishmen Francis

Bacon and Thomas Hobbes, the Frenchman René Descartes, and the key natural
philosophers of the Scientific Revolution, including Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, and
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
 Its roots are usually traced to 1680s England, where in the span of three years Isaac
Newton published his Principia Mathematica (1686) and John Locke his Essay
Concerning Human Understanding (1689)—two works that provided the scientific,
mathematical, and philosophical toolkit for the Enlightenment’s major advances.

 Locke argued that human nature was mutable, and that knowledge was gained through
accumulated experience rather than by accessing some sort of outside truth. Newton’s
calculus and optical theories provided the powerful Enlightenment metaphors for
precisely measured change and illumination.

 The High Enlightenment: 1730-1780:

 Centered on the dialogues and publications of the French “philosophes” (Voltaire,

Rousseau, Montesquieu, Buffon, and Denis Diderot), the High Enlightenment might
best be summed up by one historian’s summary of Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary:
“a chaos of clear ideas.”

 Foremost among these was the notion that everything in the universe could be
rationally demystified and cataloged. The signature publication of the period was
Diderot’s Encyclopédie (1751-77), which brought together leading authors to produce
an ambitious compilation of human knowledge.

 It was also a time of religious (and anti-religious) innovation, as Christians sought to

reposition their faith along rational lines and deists and materialists argued that the
universe seemed to determine its own course without God’s intervention.

 Locke, along with French philosopher Pierre Bayle, began to champion the idea of the
separation of Church and State.
  Coffeehouses, newspapers, and literary salons emerged as new venues for ideas to
circulate.

 The Late Enlightenment and Beyond: 1780-1815:

 The French Revolution of 1789 was the culmination of the High Enlightenment vision of
throwing out the old authorities to remake society along rational lines, but it devolved
into bloody terror that showed the limits of its own ideas and led, a decade later, to the
rise of Napoleon.

 Still, its goal of egalitarianism attracted the admiration of the early feminist Mary
Wollstonecraft (mother of “Frankenstein” author Mary Shelley) and inspired both the
Haitian war of independence and the radical racial inclusivism of Paraguay’s first post-
independence government.

Lines of Thought

 The Moderate Enlightenment:

 Characterized by:
 Commitment to dualism.
 Deism.
 Constitutional monarchism.
 A morality based on sentiment and tradition.
 Seeking a compromise between reform and traditional forms of power and state.
 Abstaining from revolution and instead believing progress to be based on
providence.

 Leading Figures:
 Immanuel Kant.
 Voltaire.

[Surely, Locke, Smith and Hume fit into the Moderate category,
but their specific arguments and views are quite complex].

 The Radical Enlightenment:

 Characterized by:
 Commitment to a materialist and revolutionary worldview that
encouraged an enjoyment of living and promoted the right to live with
dignity and in freedom.
 Taking inspiration from the Western tradition of freethinking.
 Taking the analysis of the passions as the best guide for the
understanding of human affairs.
 Using skepticism as a philosophical method.
  Insistence on reason.
 Monism.
 Determinism.
 Secularism.
 Universalism.
 Commitment to democracy and revolutionary reform of political
institutions.

 Leading Figures:
 Diderot.
 D’Holbach.
 Epicurus.
 Lucretius.
 Spinoza.
 Bayle.
These two contrary Enlightenment traditions had very little to do with one another, with the
more radical current having impeded the success of the more moderate path.

The revolutionary events of the 18th Century in America, France and the Netherlands were
preceded by the ideas of equality, democracy, and reason as the basis of a universal morality,
proposed by the most radical of the Enlightenment thinkers.

Although beloved Enlightenment figures, such as Kant, Rousseau and Locke are often
forgiven their peccadilloes on race, imperialism and gender, their views on rights, freedom,
the scope of reason and Enlightenment are taken as “radical for their time”; however, their
views are still comparatively conservative, and moderate given the radical ideas on offer.

Leading Figures

1. Francis Bacon (1561–1626) – English Philosopher:

Biographer Loren Eisley described Bacon's compelling desire to invent a new scientific method,
stating that Bacon, "more fully than any man of his time, entertained the idea of the universe as a
problem to be solved, examined, meditated upon, rather than as an eternally fixed stage upon which
man walked."

 Changed much of the outlook on science.

 He is most famous for his philosophy of science. While much of his predecessors saw
understanding God as the only way to understand nature, Bacon argued that one cannot
understand God, but can understand creation through observation, and then utilizing
inductive reasoning to interpret the observations. Bacon also argued that controlled scientific
experimentation is essential for understanding nature.
 o [ Aristotle’s deductive reasoning: a basic form of reasoning. It starts out with a general
statement, or hypothesis, and examines the possibilities to reach a specific, logical
conclusion. Deductive conclusions are reliable provided the premises are true. The
argument, "All bald men are grandfathers. Harold is bald. Therefore, Harold is a
grandfather," is valid logically, but it is untrue because the original premise is false.]

"We go from the general — the theory — to the specific — the observations,"

o [ Bacon’s inductive reasoning: extracts a likely (but not certain) premise from specific
and limited observations. There is data, and then conclusions are drawn from the data;
for an example: "Penguins are birds. Penguins can't fly. Therefore, all birds can't fly”. In
other words, the reliability of a conclusion made with inductive logic depends on the
completeness of the observations.]

"In inductive inference, we go from the specific to the general. We make many
observations, discern a pattern, make a generalization, and infer an explanation or a
theory,"

 Famous quotes:
 “Knowledge is power.”
 “A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth
men's minds about to religion.”
 “Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.”

2. Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) – Italian Astronomer:

 Known as: The Founder of Modern Physics / The Father of Modern Science.

 Made pioneering observations of nature with long-lasting implications for the fields of physics,
astronomy, cosmology, mathematics, and philosophy.

 Invented an improved telescope that let him observe and describe the moons of Jupiter, the
rings of Saturn, the phases of Venus, sunspots, and the rugged lunar surface.

 His advocacy of a heliocentric universe, also known as the Copernican theory, brought him
before religious authorities more than once as his theory opposed the Aristotelian view of the
world, then the leading scientific authority and the only one sanctioned by the Roman Catholic
Church. He was declared a heretic, forced to recant and placed under house arrest for the rest
of his life.
[ The churchmen published Galileo’s recantation throughout Europe to demonstrate their
power to make men recant. It was an enormous humiliation and Galileo was left a broken
man, almost mentally deranged by the months of pressure.
 His recantation: “I Galileo Galilei, being in my seventieth year having before my eyes the Holy
Gospel, which I touch with my hands, abjure [renounce], curse and detest the error and heresy
of the movement of the Earth.”]

 His inventions, from compasses and balances to improved telescopes and microscopes,
revolutionized astronomy, and biology. His penchant for thoughtful and inventive
experimentation pushed the scientific method toward its modern form.

 Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire used tales of his trial (often in simplified and exaggerated
form) to portray Galileo as a martyr for objectivity. Recent scholarship suggests Galileo’s actual
trial and punishment were as much a matter of courtly intrigue and philosophical minutiae as
of inherent tension between religion and science.

 Famous quotes:
 “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense,
reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
 “We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within
themselves.”
 “In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble
reasoning of a single individual.”
 “It vexes me when they would constrain science by the authority of the Scriptures, and
yet do not consider themselves bound to answer reason and experiment.”
 “Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.”
 “All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover
them.”
 “And yet it moves.”
[During his trial for suspicion of heresy, Galileo chose his words carefully. It was only
after the trial, angered by his conviction no doubt, that he was said to have muttered
to the inquisitors, “Eppur si muove” (“And yet it moves”), as if to say that they may
have won this battle, but in the end, truth would win out.]

3. René Descartes (1596–1650) – French Philosopher:

 Known as: The Father of Modern Philosophy.

 Connected the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra into analytic geometry.

 Is largely seen as responsible for the increased attention given to epistemology in the 17th
century.
[Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with
knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other
major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.]
 Laid the foundation for 17th-century continental rationalism. The rise of early modern
rationalism—as a highly systematic school of philosophy in its own right for the first time in
history—exerted an immense and profound influence on modern Western thought in general,
with the birth of two influential rationalistic philosophical systems of Descartes (Cartesianism)
and Spinoza (Spinozism). It was the 17th-century arch-rationalists like Descartes, Spinoza, and
Leibniz who have given the "Age of Reason" its name and place in history.
[Rationalism was later advocated by Spinoza and Leibniz, and opposed by the empiricist
school of thought consisting of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume.]

 In his Discourse on the Method, he attempts to arrive at a fundamental set of principles that
one can know as true without any doubt. To achieve this, he employs a method called
methodological skepticism or Cartesian doubt: he rejects any ideas that can be doubted and
then re-establishes them in order to acquire a firm foundation for genuine knowledge.
Therefore, Descartes felt the need to question all the given ‘facts’ of life, starting with his own
existence. This is expressed in the Latin phrase "Cogito, ergo sum" (English: "I think,
therefore I am"). Descartes concluded, if he doubted, then something or someone must be
doing the doubting; therefore, the very fact that he doubted proved his existence. "The
simple meaning of the phrase is that if one is skeptical of existence, that is in and of itself
proof that he does exist."

 Descartes, influenced by the automatons on display throughout the city of Paris, began to
investigate the connection between the mind and body, and how the two interact. Descartes'
Cartesian dualism (or mind–body dualism), his theory about the separation between the
mind and the body, is his signature doctrine and went on to influence subsequent Western
philosophies.
[Descartes' dualism of mind and matter implied a concept of human beings. A human was a
composite entity of mind and body. Descartes gave priority to the mind and argued that the
mind could exist without the body, but the body could not exist without the mind; but he did
argue that mind and body are closely joined.]

 Descartes also argued the theory of innate knowledge and that all humans were born with
knowledge through the higher power of God. It was this theory of innate knowledge that was
later combated by the empiricist philosopher John Locke through his theory of Tabula Rasa.

 Famous quotes:
 “The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent never to trust wholly those
who have deceived us even once.”
 “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life
you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”
 “The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a
single doubt.”
 “I am indeed amazed when I consider how weak my mind is and how prone to error.”
 “Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.”
 “A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.”
  “The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest
virtues.”

4. Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) – Dutch Philosopher:

 One of the foremost and seminal thinkers of the Enlightenment, modern biblical criticism,
and 17th-century Rationalism, including modern conceptions of the self and the universe.
He came to be considered "one of the most important philosophers—and certainly the
most radical—of the early modern period".

 He was frequently called an "atheist" by contemporaries, although nowhere in his work

does Spinoza argue against the existence of God.

 Spinoza's philosophy is largely contained in two books: the Theologico-Political Treatise,

and the Ethics, which opposed Descartes's philosophy of mind–body dualism and earned
Spinoza recognition as one of Western philosophy's most important thinkers.

 Spinoza's philosophy has been associated with that of Leibniz and René Descartes as part
of the rationalist school of thought, which includes the assumption that ideas correspond
to reality perfectly. The writings of René Descartes have been described as "Spinoza's
starting point".

 Spinoza's metaphysics consists of one thing, substance, and its modifications (modes).
Early in Ethics, Spinoza argues that there is only one substance, which is absolutely
infinite, self-caused, and eternal. He calls this substance "God", or "Nature". In fact, he
takes these two terms to be synonymous. For Spinoza the whole of the natural universe is
made of one substance, God, or, what's the same, Nature, and its modifications (modes).
[Metaphysics: the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality,
including the first principles of: being or existence, identity and change, space and time,
cause and effect, necessity, and possibility.]

 Famous quotes:
 “The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding,
because to understand is to be free.”
 “If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.”
 “Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is
contrary to reason is absurd.”
 “God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things.”
 “I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of
established religion.”

5. Isaac Newton (1642–1727) – English Mathematician:

  Developed the principles of modern physics, including the laws of motion and is credited
as one of the great minds of the 17th-century Scientific Revolution.

 His most acclaimed work, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical

Principles of Natural Philosophy), has been called the single most influential book on
physics.

 Was knighted by Queen Anne of England, making him Sir Isaac Newton.

 Made discoveries in optics, motion, and mathematics. He also theorized that white light
was a composite of all colors of the spectrum, and that light was composed of particles.

 Along with mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Newton is credited for
developing essential theories of calculus.

 His first major public scientific achievement was designing and constructing a reflecting
telescope. However, he is mostly celebrated for his laws of motion and theory of gravity.

 Famous quotes:
 “In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God's
existence.”
 “Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the
right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This
did not happen by chance.”
 “Genius is patience.”
 “Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.”
 “Plato is my friend; Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.”

6. Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) – French Philosopher:

 Known as: the Philosopher of Rotterdam.

 Best known for his encyclopedic work The Historical and Critical Dictionary, a work which
was widely influential on eighteenth-century figures such as Voltaire and Thomas
Jefferson.

 Famous for his explicit defenses of religious faith against the attacks of reason, for his
attacks on specious theological doctrines, and for his formulation of the doctrine of the
erring conscience as a basis for religious toleration.
o [Bayle’s argument for religious toleration based on his doctrine of the erring
conscience, as developed in the General Critique, the New Letters, and the
Philosophical Commentary, assumes that we have a duty and a right to act
according to the lights of conscience. This is a less controversial claim when the
beliefs of conscience are accurate; however, Bayle’s doctrine of the erring
 conscience entails that even when the beliefs of conscience are in error, the
same duties and rights of conscience are obtained. Bayle does place some
conditions on the erring conscience’s acquiring these duties and rights; only
when the erring conscience is “in good faith” – that is, when the error is sincere –
does the erring conscience obtain the relevant rights and duties. Bayle places the
good faith errors of the sincere lay person on the same footing as the good faith
errors of the rigorous intellectual – and, most significantly, on the same ground
as orthodoxy. This allows Bayle to affirm a kind of moral equivalence between
the accurate conscience and the erring one: whatever rights and duties accrue
to an accurate conscience also accrue to the erring conscience.]

o [Bayle’s second argument for religious toleration based on the principle of the
natural light that forbids the commission of crimes. Bayle’s moral principle
against committing crimes supports his defense of the doctrine of the erring
conscience: if the accurate conscience did indeed have the right to coerce, it
would only be a right considered from an abstract point of view. Since the only
justification available to conscience is the force of its persuasion, then if the true
religion were ordered by God to persecute heretics, heretics would also have the
right to persecute the true religion. This scene of rampant persecution is the
epitome of moral breakdown, and Bayle thinks that no such situation can be
justified with an appeal to Scripture – or to conscience. Religious coercion is not
only morally villainous, but it violates the very heart of all religions – and most
importantly for Bayle’s readers, it violates the heart of Christianity. Therefore,
no reading of Scripture can be true that justifies the commission of moral
crimes.]

 Bayle is traditionally described as a skeptic, though the nature and extent of his
skepticism remains hotly debated. In keeping with his skepticism, he is committed to the
thorough examination of arguments for and against the position under examination. This
entails making the best arguments possible on both sides, as well as raising the strongest
possible objections to both sides. As a result, in many cases, it is difficult to determine
just what Bayle’s position is. Commentators refer to this phenomenon as the “Bayle
enigma,” and it affects virtually every area of Bayle’s thought, undermining the legitimacy
of his defenses of religious faith and calling into question the sincerity of his attacks on
theology.

 Famous quotes:
 “It is thus tolerance that is the source of peace, and intolerance that is the source
of disorder and squabbling.”
 “I know too much to be a sceptic and too little to be a dogmatist.”
 “Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the
human race.”
 “There is no less invention in aptly applying a thought found in a book, than in
being the first author of the thought.”
  “It is pure illusion to think that an opinion that passes down from century to
century, from generation to generation, may not be entirely false.”

7. George Berkeley (1685–1753) – Anglo-Irish Philosopher:

 Known as: Bishop Berkeley.

 He was one of the three most famous British Empiricists. (The other two are John Locke
and David Hume.)

 Berkeley is best known for his early works on vision and metaphysics. His empirical theory
of vision challenged the then-standard account of distance vision, an account which
requires tacit geometrical calculations. His alternative account focuses on visual and
tactual objects. Berkeley argues that the visual perception of distance is explained by the
correlation of ideas of sight and touch. This associative approach does away with appeals
to geometrical calculation.

 His primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism"

(later referred to as "subjective idealism, or empirical idealism " by others).
[Subjective idealism is a form of philosophical monism that holds that only minds and
mental contents exist. Therefore, it denies the existence of material substance and
instead contends that familiar objects like tables and chairs are ideas perceived by the
mind and, as a result, cannot exist without being perceived. Subjective idealism rejects
dualism, materialism, and neutral monism (an umbrella term for a class of metaphysical
theories in the philosophy of mind. These theories reject the dichotomy of mind and
matter, believing the fundamental nature of reality to be neither mental nor physical; in
other words, it is "neutral".)]

 Famous quotes:
 “All the choir of heaven and furniture of earth - in a word, all those bodies which
compose the frame of the world - have not any subsistence without a mind.”
 “A mind at liberty to reflect on its own observations, if it produce nothing useful
to the world, seldom fails of entertainment to itself.”
 “The same principles which at first view lead to skepticism, pursued to a certain
point, bring men back to common sense.”
 “Others indeed may talk, and write, and fight about liberty, and make an outward
pretence to it; but the free-thinker alone is truly free.”
 “Truth is the cry of all, but the game of few.”
 “That thing of hell and eternal punishment is the most absurd, as well as the
most disagreeable thought that ever entered into the head of mortal man.”

8. Voltaire (1694–1778) – French Writer:

 Famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of
freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and separation of church and state.

 In his criticism of the French society and existing social structures, Voltaire hardly spared
anyone. He perceived the French bourgeoisie to be too small and ineffective, the
aristocracy to be parasitic and corrupt, the commoners as ignorant and superstitious, and
the church as a static and oppressive force.

 Voltaire distrusted democracy, which he saw as propagating the idiocy of the masses. He
long thought only an enlightened monarch could bring about change, and that it was in
the king’s rational interest to improve the education and welfare of his subjects.

 Voltaire’s deist beliefs, reiterated throughout his life, came to appear increasingly
outmoded and defensive as he grew older and as he became more and more exercised by
the spread of atheism.

 In terms of the history of ideas, Voltaire’s single most important achievement was to have
helped in the 1730s to introduce the thought of Newton and Locke to France (and so to
the rest of the Continent).

 Voltaire’s failure to produce an original philosophy was, in a sense, counterbalanced by

his deliberate cultivation of a philosophy of action; his ‘common sense’ crusade against
superstition and prejudice and in favour of religious toleration was his single greatest
contribution to the progress of Enlightenment. ‘Rousseau writes for writing’s sake’, he
declared in a letter of 1767, ‘I write to act.’

 ‘The age of Voltaire’ has become synonymous with ‘the Enlightenment’, but although
Voltaire’s eminence as a philosophe is self-evident, the precise originality of his thought
and writings is less easily defined.

 Voltaire believed above all in the efficacy of reason. He believed social progress could be
achieved through reason and that no authority—religious or political or otherwise—
should be immune to challenge by reason. He emphasized in his work the importance of
tolerance, especially religious tolerance.

 Famous quotes:
 “Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.”
 “Common sense is not so common.”
 “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
 “The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.”
 “I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord make my
enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it.”
 “The secret of being a bore... is to tell everything.”
  “To hold a pen is to be at war.”
 “It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are
wrong.”
 “No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.”
 “Illusion is the first of all pleasures.”
 “Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or
earthquakes.”
 “The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional
assassination.”
 “What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of
frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law
of nature.”
 “Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.”
 “It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in
large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”
 “It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the
rest of mankind.”
 “Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before
destroying them.”
 “The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we
can enjoy life and have no fear from death.”
 “Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to
conceal their thoughts.”
 “Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing; a
man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson.”
 Falsely attributed to Voltaire:
o “I don’t agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right
to say it.” ~ Evelyn Beatrice Hall.
o “If you want to know who rules over you, just look for who you are not
allowed to criticize.” ~ Kevin Alfred Strom.

9. Baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755) – French Philosopher:

 Mostly known for his The Spirit of the Laws, a treatise on political theory that was first
published anonymously, and covered many topics, including the law, social life, and the
study of anthropology.

 The first main theory proposed in the treatise is his classification of governments.
Abandoning the classical divisions of his predecessors into monarchy, aristocracy, and
democracy, Montesquieu produced his own analysis and assigned to each form of
government an animating principle: the republic, based on virtue; the monarchy, based
on honor; and despotism, based on fear. His definitions show that this classification
rests not on the location of political power but on the government’s manner of
conducting policy; it involves a historical and not a narrow descriptive approach.
  The second of his most-noted arguments, the theory of the separation of powers, is a
model for the governance of a state. Under this model, the state is divided into branches,
each with separate and independent powers and areas of responsibility so that the
powers of one branch are not in conflict with the powers associated with the other
branches. The typical division into three branches of government, sometimes called the
trias politica model, includes a legislative, an executive, and a judiciary. It can be
contrasted with the fusion of powers in parliamentary and semi-presidential systems
where there can be overlap in membership and functions between different branches,
especially the executive and legislative. This theory heavily inspired the Declaration of
the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and the Constitution of the United States.

 He also believed that countries should limit the number of their militaries because the
stronger the army, the more prone the country will be to go to war.

 Famous quotes:
 “There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of
the law and in the name of justice.”
 “To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.”
 “When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in
the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions
may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to
execute them in a tyrannical manner.”
 “Power ought to serve as a check to power.”
 “Religious wars are not caused by the fact that there is more than one religion,
but by the spirit of intolerance... the spread of which can only be regarded as the
total eclipse of human reason.”
 “The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare
as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.”
 “In the infancy of societies, the chiefs of state shape its institutions; later the
institutions shape the chiefs of state.”
 “We should weep for men at their birth, not at their death.”
 “If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I
would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a
Frenchman... because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.”

10. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) – English philosopher:

 Considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. He also contributed

to a diverse array of other fields, including history, jurisprudence, geometry, theology, and
ethics, as well as philosophy in general.
[Political philosophy or political theory is the philosophical study of government,
addressing questions about the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and
institutions and the relationships between them.]
 Defended materialism, the view that only material things are real.

 Hobbes presented his political philosophy in different forms for different audiences. De
Cive states his theory in what he regarded as its most scientific form. It was a Latin work
for an audience of Continental savants, a person of learning; especially: one with detailed
knowledge in some specialized field, who were interested in the “new” science—that is,
the sort of science that did not appeal to the authority of the ancients but approached
various problems with fresh principles of explanation.

 In De Cive, Hobbes rejected one of the most famous theses of Aristotle's politics, namely
that human beings are naturally suited to life in a polis, and do not fully realize their
natures until they exercise the role of citizen. Hobbes turns Aristotle’s claim on its head:
human beings, he insists, are by nature unsuited to political life. They naturally denigrate
and compete with each other, are very easily swayed by the rhetoric of ambitious
persons, and think much more highly of themselves than of other people. There is no
natural self-restraint, even when human beings are moderate in their appetites, for a
ruthless and bloodthirsty few can make even the moderate feel forced to take violent
preemptive action in order to avoid losing everything. The self-restraint even of the
moderate, then, easily turns into aggression. In other words, no human being is above
aggression and the anarchy (chaos) that goes with it. War comes more naturally to
human beings than political order.
[Polis: ancient Greek city-state. Ideally, the polis was a corporation of citizens who all
participated in its government, religious cults, defense, and economic welfare and who
obeyed its sacred and customary laws. The citizens actually governed in varying degrees,
depending upon the form of government—e.g., tyranny, oligarchy, aristocracy, or
democracy. Usually the government consisted of an assembly of citizens, a council, and
magistrates. Since many poleis had different ranks of citizenship, there were longstanding
struggles for political equality with first-class citizens. Each polis also contained
substantial numbers of noncitizens (women, minors, resident aliens, and slaves).]

 Therefore, in Leviathan, he expounds an influential formulation of social contract theory.

The main practical conclusion of Hobbes's political theory is that state or society cannot
be secure unless at the disposal of an absolute sovereign (the leviathan). From this
follows the view that no individual can hold rights of property against the sovereign, and
that the sovereign may therefore take the goods of its subjects without their consent.
This particular view owes its significance to it being first developed in the 1630s when
Charles I had sought to raise revenues without the consent of Parliament, and therefore
of his subjects. Much of the book is occupied with demonstrating the necessity of a
strong central authority to avoid the evil of discord and civil war.
[Leviathan: a mythological, whale-like sea monster that devoured whole ships.]
  Hobbes postulates what life would be like without government, a condition which he calls
the state of nature (the hypothetical way of life that existed before people organized
themselves into societies). In that state, each person would have a right, or license, to
everything in the world. This, Hobbes argues, would lead to a "war of all against all".

 In such states, people fear death and lack both the things necessary to commodious
living, and the hope of being able to obtain them. So, in order to avoid it, people accede
to a social contract and establish a civil society. According to Hobbes, society is a
population and a sovereign authority, to whom all individuals in that society cede some
right for the sake of protection. Power exercised by this authority cannot be resisted,
because the protector's sovereign power derives from individuals' surrendering their
own sovereign power for protection. The individuals are thereby the authors of all
decisions made by the sovereign. There is no doctrine of separation of powers in
Hobbes's discussion. According to Hobbes, the sovereign must control civil, military,
judicial and ecclesiastical powers, even the words.

 Hobbes also warned against the church meddling with the king’s government. He feared
religion could become a source of civil war. Thus, he advised that the church become a
department of the king’s government, which would closely control all religious affairs. In
any conflict between divine and royal law, Hobbes wrote, the individual should obey the
king or choose death.

 Famous quotes:
 “During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe,
they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against
every man.”
 “The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no
longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them.”
 “A man's conscience and his judgment is the same thing; and as the judgment, so
also the conscience, may be erroneous.”
 “Such truth, as opposeth no man's profit, nor pleasure, is to all men welcome.”
 “They that approve a private opinion, call it opinion; but they that dislike it,
heresy; and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion.”

11. John Locke (1632–1704) – English Philosopher:

 Known as: The Father of Liberalism & The Founder of British Empiricism.
[Liberalism: a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty,
consent of the governed, political equality and equality before the law.]

 In his most important work, the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke set out
to offer an analysis of the human mind and its acquisition of knowledge. He offered an
empirical theory according to which we acquire ideas through our experience of the
world. He postulated that, at birth, the mind was a blank slate, or tabula rasa. Contrary
 to Cartesian philosophy based on pre-existing concepts, he maintained that we are born
without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience
derived from sense perception.

 In Second Treatise of Government, Locke wrote that all individuals are equal in the
sense that they are born with certain "inalienable" natural rights. That is, rights that are
God-given and can never be taken or even given away. Among these fundamental
natural rights, Locke said, are "life, liberty, and property." Thomas Jefferson used his
theory in writing the Declaration of Independence substituting “property” by the
phrase, "pursuit of happiness".

 In Two Treatises of Government, he generally agreed with Hobbes about the brutality of
the state of nature, which required a social contract to assure peace, but disagreed with
him on the idea of the social contract theory. According to Locke, the natural rights of
individuals limited the power of the king. The king did not hold absolute power, as
Hobbes had said, but acted only to enforce and protect the natural rights of the people.
If a sovereign violated these rights, the social contract was broken, and the people had
the right to revolt and establish a new government. Hence, Locke also advocated
separation of church and state and believed that revolution is not only a right but an
obligation in some circumstances. Therefore, Unlike Hobbes, Locke’s social contract was
an agreement between the people and the sovereign not just an agreement among
the people themselves.

 Although Locke spoke out for freedom of thought, speech, and religion, he believed
property to be the most important natural right. He declared that owners may do
whatever they want with their property as long as they do not invade the rights of
others. Government, he said, was mainly necessary to promote the “public good,” that is
to protect property and encourage commerce and little else. “Govern lightly,” Locke said.
He favored a representative government such as the English Parliament, which had a
hereditary House of Lords and an elected House of Commons. But he wanted
representatives to be only men of property and business. Consequently, only adult male
property owners should have the right to vote. Locke was reluctant to allow the
propertyless masses of people to participate in government because he believed that
they were unfit. His definition of property was foundational for both Adam Smith’s
capitalism and Karl Marx’s socialism.

 Writing his Letters Concerning Toleration (1689–1692) in the aftermath of the European
wars of religion, Locke formulated a classic reasoning for religious tolerance, in which
three arguments are central:
o earthly judges, the state in particular, and human beings generally, cannot
dependably evaluate the truth-claims of competing religious standpoints;
o even if they could, enforcing a single 'true religion' would not have the desired
effect, because belief cannot be compelled by violence;
 o coercing religious uniformity would lead to more social disorder than allowing
diversity.

 While Locke’s views on toleration were very progressive for the time it is important to
recognize that Locke did place some severe limits on toleration. He did not think that we
should tolerate the intolerant, those who would seek to forcibly impose their religious
views on others. Similarly, any religious group who posed a threat to political stability
or public safety should not be tolerated. Importantly, Locke included Roman Catholics
in this group. On his view, Catholics had a fundamental allegiance to the Pope, a foreign
prince who did not recognize the sovereignty of English law. This made Catholics a threat
to civil government and peace. Finally, Locke also believed that atheists should not be
tolerated. Because they did not believe they would be rewarded or punished for their
actions in the afterlife, Locke did not think they could be trusted to behave morally or
maintain their contractual obligations.

 Locke's views on slavery were multifaceted and complex. Although he wrote against
slavery in general, Locke was an investor and beneficiary of the slave trading Royal Africa
Company. In addition, while secretary to the Earl of Shaftesbury, Locke participated in
drafting the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, which established a quasi-feudal
aristocracy and gave Carolinian planters absolute power over their enslaved chattel
property; the constitutions pledged that "every freeman of Carolina shall have absolute
power and authority over his negro slaves”. Locke's positions on slavery have been
described as hypocritical, laying the foundation for the Founding Fathers to hold
similarly contradictory thoughts regarding freedom and slavery.

 In his Thoughts Concerning Education, Locke argued for a broadened syllabus and better
treatment of students—ideas that were an enormous influence on Jean-Jacques
Rousseau’s novel Emile. Locke also supported child labor.

 In his Essay on the Poor Law, he turns to the education of the poor; he laments that "the
children of labouring people are an ordinary burden to the parish, and are usually
maintained in idleness, so that their labour also is generally lost to the public till they are
12 or 14 years old". He suggests, therefore, that "working schools" be set up in each
parish in England for poor children so that they will be "from infancy inured to work". He
goes on to outline the economics of these schools, arguing not only that they will be
profitable for the parish, but also that they will instill a good work ethic in the children.

 Lockean philosophy would lay bare the workings of men’s minds and lead to important
reforms in law and government. Voltaire played an instrumental role in shaping this
legacy for Locke and worked hard to publicize Locke’s views on reason, toleration, and
limited government.

 Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and
the self, figuring prominently in the work of later philosophers such as Jean-Jacques
 Rousseau, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. Locke was the first to define the self
through a continuity of consciousness.

 Locke also came to be seen as an inspiration for the Deist movement.

 Famous quotes:
 “All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another
in his life, health, liberty or possessions.”
 “No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.”
 “Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but
himself.”
 “Where there is no property there is no injustice.”
 “The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge
freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no
law, there is no freedom.”
 “New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other
reason but because they are not already common.”

12. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) – Swiss Philosopher:

 His central doctrine in politics is that a state can be legitimate only if it is guided by the
general will of its members. This idea finds its most detailed treatment in The Social
Contract, where he sets out to answer what he takes to be the fundamental question of
politics, the reconciliation of the freedom of the individual with the authority of the state.
This reconciliation is necessary because human society has evolved to a point where
individuals can no longer supply their needs through their own unaided efforts, but
rather must depend on the co-operation of others.
[General will: the collective will of the citizen body taken as a whole.]

 Discourse on the Origins of Inequality involves the emergence of endemic conflict among
the now-interdependent individuals and the argument that the Hobbesian insecurity of
this condition would lead all to consent to the establishment of state authority and law. In
the Second Discourse, this establishment amounts to the reinforcement of unequal and
exploitative social relations that are now backed by law and state power. In an echo of
Locke and an anticipation of Marx, Rousseau argues that this state would, in effect, be a
class state, guided by the common interest of the rich and propertied and imposing
unfreedom and subordination on the poor and weak. The propertyless consent to such
an establishment because their immediate fear of a Hobbesian state of war leads them to
fail to attend to the ways in which the new state will systematically disadvantage them.

 The Social Contract aims to set out an alternative to this dystopia, an alternative in
which, Rousseau claims, each person will enjoy the protection of the common force
whilst remaining as free as they were in the state of nature. The key to this
reconciliation is the idea of the general will. The general will is the source of law and is
 willed by each and every citizen. In obeying the law each citizen is thus subject to his or
her own will, and consequently, according to Rousseau, remains free.

 At the center of Rousseau’s view in The Social Contract is his rejection of the Hobbesian
idea that a people’s legislative will can be vested in some group or individual that then
acts with their authority but rules over them. Instead, he takes the view that to hand over
one’s general right of ruling oneself to another person or body constitutes a form of
slavery, and that to recognize such an authority would amount to an abdication of moral
agency. This hostility to the representation of sovereignty also extends to the election of
representatives to sovereign assemblies, even where those representatives are subject to
periodic re-election. Even in that case, the assembly would be legislating on a range of
topics on which citizens have not deliberated. Laws passed by such assemblies would
therefore bind citizens in terms that they have not themselves agreed upon. Not only
does the representation of sovereignty constitute, for Rousseau, a surrender of moral
agency, the widespread desire to be represented in the business of self-rule is a symptom
of moral decline and the loss of virtue. In short, he believed that civilization corrupted
people’s natural goodness.

 One of the key distinctions in The Social Contract is between sovereign and government.
The sovereign, composed of the people as a whole, promulgates laws as an expression of
its general will. The government is a more limited body that administers the state within
the bounds set by the laws, and which issues decrees applying the laws in particular
cases. In effect, the institution of the sovereign may be inconsistent with a representative
model, where the executive power of the government can be understood as requiring it.
He favors some form of elective aristocracy: in other words, he supports the idea that the
day-to-day administration should be in the hands of a subset of the population, elected
by them according to merit.

 Although Rousseau rejects Hobbes’s view of the sovereign as representing or acting in the
person of the subject, he has a similar view of what sovereignty is and its relation to the
rights of the individual. He rejects the idea that individuals associated together in a
political community retain some natural rights over themselves and their property.
Rather, such rights as individuals have over themselves, land, and external objects, are a
matter of sovereign competence and decision. Individual rights must be specified by the
sovereign in ways that are compatible with the interests of all in a just polity, and
Rousseau rejects the idea that such rights could be insisted on as a check on the
sovereign’s power.

 Rousseau's sentimental novel Julie, or the New Heloise was important to the
development of Pre-Romanticism and Romanticism in fiction. His Emile, or On Education
is an educational treatise on the place of the individual in society. Rousseau's
autobiographical writings—the posthumously published Confessions, which initiated the
modern autobiography, and the unfinished Reveries of the Solitary Walker—exemplified
the late 18th-century "Age of Sensibility", and featured an increased focus on
 subjectivity and introspection that later characterized modern writing. His treatises had
also inspired the leaders of the French Revolution.

 Famous quotes:
 “Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.”
 “As long as several men assembled together consider themselves as a single body,
they have only one will which is directed towards their common preservation and
general well-being.”
 “It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and
united for specific action, and a minority can.”
 “No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.”
 “The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of
members of parliament.”
 “The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born,
and carries itself the causes of its destruction.”
 “Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.”
 “Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.”
 “Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for
knowledge ceases.”
 “Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well.”

13. David Hume (1711–1776) – Scottish Philosopher:

 Best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, skepticism,

and naturalism.
[Metaphysical naturalism (also called philosophical naturalism) is a philosophical worldview
which holds that there is nothing, but natural elements, principles, and relations of the kind
studied by the natural sciences. Methodological naturalism is a philosophical basis for science,
for which metaphysical naturalism provides only one possible ontological foundation. More
specifically, metaphysical naturalism rejects the supernatural concepts and explanations that are
part of many religions.]

 He argued against the existence of innate ideas, positing that all human knowledge derives
solely from experience. This places him with Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and
George Berkeley as an empiricist.

  In A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume strove to create a naturalistic science of man that
examined the psychological basis of human nature. The treatise begins with the introduction:
"'Tis evident, that all the sciences have a relation, more or less, to human nature.... Even
Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion, are in some measure dependent on
the science of Man." The science of man, as Hume explains, is the "only solid foundation for
 the other sciences" and that the method for this science requires both experience and
observation as the foundations of a logical argument.
[Natural philosophy: the philosophical study of physics, that is, nature and the physical universe.
It was dominant before the development of modern science.]

 Until recently, Hume was seen as a forerunner of logical positivism, a form of anti-
metaphysical empiricism.
[Logical positivism/logical empiricism/neopositivism: a movement whose central thesis was the
verification principle (also known as the verifiability criterion of meaning). This theory of
knowledge asserted that only statements verifiable through direct observation or logical proof
are meaningful in terms of conveying truth value, information or factual content.]

 Drawing heavily on John Locke’s empiricism, the opening sections of both the Treatise and An
Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals discuss the origins of mental perceptions.

 Hume begins by dividing all mental perceptions between ideas (thoughts) and impressions
(sensations and feelings), and then makes two central claims about the relation between them.

First, advancing what is commonly called Hume’s copy thesis, he argues that all ideas are
ultimately copied from impressions. That is, for any idea we select, we can trace the component
parts of that idea to some external sensation or internal feeling.

 Second, advancing what we may call Hume’s liveliness thesis, he argues that ideas and
impressions differ only in terms of liveliness. For example, my impression of a tree is simply
more vivid than my idea of that tree. Most modern philosophers held that ideas reside in our
spiritual minds, whereas impressions originate in our physical bodies. So, when Hume blurs the
distinction between ideas and impressions, he is ultimately denying the spiritual nature of
ideas and instead grounding them in our physical nature. In short, all of our mental operations
—including our most rational ideas—are physical in nature.
 Hume goes on to explain that there are several mental faculties that are responsible for
producing our various ideas. He initially divides ideas between those produced by the memory,
and those produced by the imagination. The memory is a faculty that conjures up ideas based
on experiences as they happened. For example, the memory I have of my drive to the store is a
comparatively accurate copy of my previous sense impressions of that experience. The
imagination, by contrast, is a faculty that breaks apart and combines ideas, thus forming new
ones. “As our imagination takes our most basic ideas and leads us to form new ones, it is
directed by three principles of association, namely, resemblance, contiguity, and cause and
effect.”
o [The principle of resemblance: the tendency of ideas to become associated if the
objects they represent resemble one another. For example, someone looking at an
illustration of a flower can conceive an idea of the physical flower because the idea of
the illustrated object is associated with the physical object's idea.]

o [The principle of contiguity: the tendency of ideas to become associated if the objects
they represent are near to each other in time or space, such as when the thought of a
crayon in a box leads one to think of the crayon contiguous to it.]

o [The principle of cause and effect: the tendency of ideas to become associated if the
objects they represent are causally related, which explains how remembering a broken
window can make someone think of a ball that had caused the window to shatter.

Hume elaborates more, explaining that, when somebody observes that one
object or event consistently produces the same object or event, that results in
"an expectation that a particular event (a ‘cause') will be followed by another
event (an 'effect') previously and constantly associated with it". Hume calls this
principle custom, or habit, saying that "custom...renders our experience useful
to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those
which have appeared in the past".

However, even though custom can serve as a guide in life, it still only represents
an expectation. Therefore, inductive reasoning and the cause-and-effect
principle cannot be justified rationally In other words: experience cannot
establish a necessary connection between cause and effect because we can
imagine without contradiction a case where the cause does not produce its
usual effect…the reason why we mistakenly infer that there is something in
the cause that necessarily produces its effect is because our past experiences
have habituated us to think in this way.

Continuing this idea, Hume argues that "only in the pure realm of ideas, logic,
and mathematics, not contingent on the direct sense awareness of reality, [can]
causation safely…be applied—all other sciences are reduced to probability". He
uses this skepticism to reject metaphysics and many theological views on the
 basis that they are not grounded in fact and observations, and are therefore
beyond the reach of human understanding.]

 The more complex ideas of the imagination are further divided into two categories. Some
imaginative ideas represent flights of the fancy, such as the idea of a golden mountain; however,
other imaginative ideas represent solid reasoning, such as predicting the trajectory of a thrown
ball. The fanciful ideas are derived from the faculty of the fancy, and are the source of
fantasies, superstitions, and bad philosophy. By contrast, sound ideas are derived from the
faculty of the understanding—or reason—and are of two types: (1) involving relations of ideas;
or (2) involving matters of fact. A relation of ideas (or relation between ideas) is a mathematical
relation that is “discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what
is anywhere existent in the universe,” such as the mathematical statement “the square of the
hypotenuse is equal to the square of the two sides”. By contrast, a matter of fact, for Hume, is
any object or circumstance which has physical existence, such as “the sun will rise tomorrow”.

 Hume uses “Hume’s Fork”, this split between relations of ideas and matters of fact, as a radical
tool for distinguishing between well-founded ideas of the understanding, and unfounded ideas
of the fancy.

 An opponent of philosophical rationalists, Hume held that passions rather than reason govern
human behavior.

 Hume was also a sentimentalist who held that ethics are based on emotion or sentiment rather
than abstract moral principle.

 Hume also put forward the is–ought problem, later known as Hume's Law, denying the
possibility of logically deriving what ought to be from what is. He states that in every system of
morality that he has read, the author begins by stating facts about the world as it is but always
ends up suddenly referring to what ought to be the case. Hume demands that a reason should
be given for inferring what ought to be the case, from what is the case. This is because it
"seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others."

 Hume denied that humans have an actual conception of the self, favoring the bundle theory of
personal identity. In this theory, "the mind itself, far from being an independent power, is simply
'a bundle of perceptions' without unity or cohesive quality". The self is nothing but a bundle of
experiences/sensations linked by the relations of causation and resemblance; or, more
accurately, the empirically warranted idea of the self is just the idea of such a bundle.

 Hume's compatibilist theory of free will takes causal determinism as fully compatible with

human freedom.
o [Compatibilism: the belief that free will and determinism are mutually compatible and
that it is possible to believe in both without being logically inconsistent.]
 o [Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by
previously existing causes. Determinism is often contrasted with free will, although some
philosophers claim that the two are compatible.]

 His philosophy of religion, including his rejection of miracles and the argument from design for
God's existence, were especially controversial for their time.
[Teleological Argument/Argument from Design: an argument for the existence of God or, more
generally, that complex functionality in the natural world which looks designed is evidence of an
intelligent creator. P.S. The argument was propounded by medieval Christian thinkers, especially
St. Thomas Aquinas, and was developed in great detail in the 17th and 18th centuries by writers
such as Samuel Clarke and William Paley.]

 Hume left a legacy that affected utilitarianism, logical positivism, the philosophy of science, and

many other fields and thinkers. Immanuel Kant credited Hume as the inspiration who had
awakened him from his "dogmatic slumbers."
[Utilitarianism/Normative Ethics: the study of ethical behavior that investigates the questions
that arise regarding how one ought to act, in a moral sense. Their theories prescribe actions that
maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals.]

 Famous quotes:
 "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions."
 “It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.”
 “Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.”
 “Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived.”
 “Human Nature is the only science of man; and yet has been hitherto the most
neglected.”
 “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.”
 “The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason.”
 “To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to perceive.”
 “Everything in the world is purchased by labor.”
 “Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only
ridiculous.”
 “The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day
cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.”
 “To be a philosophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential to being
a sound, believing Christian.”
 “He is happy whom circumstances suit his temper; but he Is more excellent who suits his
temper to any circumstance.”
 “The law always limits every power it gives.”
 “It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the
scratching of my finger.”
 “Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the
few.”
 “Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a man.”
  “I have written on all sorts of subjects... yet I have no enemies; except indeed all the
Whigs, all the Tories, and all the Christians.”

14. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) – German Philosopher:

 He was the central figure in modern philosophy as he synthesized early modern

rationalism and empiricism.

 He was a pioneer in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics,

and other fields.

 In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant introduces the most important element of his mature
metaphysics and epistemology: his doctrine of transcendental idealism, which
emphasizes a distinction between what we can experience (the natural, observable
world) and (“supersensible” objects such as God and the soul) which cannot be
experienced. Kant argued that we can only have knowledge of things we can experience.

 The most significant aspect of this distinction is that while the empirical world exists in
space and time, things in themselves are neither spatial nor temporal. Further, since
traditional metaphysics deals with things in themselves, answers to the questions of
traditional metaphysics (for example, regarding God or free will) can never be answered
by human minds.

 In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant summarizes his philosophical concerns in the
following three questions:
o What can I know?
[We can know the natural, observable world, but we cannot, however, have
answers to many of the deepest questions of metaphysics. Thus, even though we
cannot, strictly know that we are free, we can – and for practical purposes, must
– think of ourselves as free. In Kant's own words, "I had to deny knowledge in
order to make room for faith”.  Rational Faith]
o What should I do?
[We should act rationally, in accordance with a universal moral law.]
o What may I hope?
[We may hope that our souls are immortal and that there really is a God who
designed the world in accordance with principles of justice.]

 Kant’s ethics are organized around the notion of a “categorical imperative,” which is a
universal ethical principle stating that one should always respect the humanity in
others, and that one should only act in accordance with rules that could hold for
everyone. Kant argued that the moral law is a truth of reason, and hence that all rational
creatures are bound by the same moral law.
  In brief, Kant argues that the mind itself necessarily makes a constitutive contribution to
knowledge, that this contribution is transcendental rather than psychological, and that
to act autonomously is to act according to rational moral principles.

15. Denis Diderot (1713–1784) – French Philosopher:

 In his youth, Diderot was originally a follower of Voltaire and deism, but gradually moved
away from this line of thought towards materialism and atheism.

 He opposed mysticism and occultism, which were highly prevalent in France at the time
he wrote, and believed religious truth claims must fall under the domain of reason, not
mystical experience or esoteric secrets.
o [Mysticism: mostly known as becoming one with God or the Absolute, but may
refer to any kind of ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a
religious or spiritual meaning. It may also refer to the attainment of insight in
ultimate or hidden truths, and to human transformation supported by various
practices and experiences.]
o [Occultism: a category of esoteric supernatural beliefs and practices which
generally fall outside the scope of religion and science, encompassing
phenomena involving otherworldly agency, such as magic and mysticism and
their varied spells.]

 Best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the Encyclopédie
(1751) along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. It was the first encyclopedia to include
contributions from many named contributors and the first to describe the mechanical
arts.
o [Artes mechanicae (mechanical arts): a medieval concept of ordered practices or
skills, often juxtaposed to the traditional seven liberal arts (). Also called "servile"
and "vulgar", from antiquity they had been deemed unbecoming for a free man,
as ministering to baser needs.]
o [The liberal arts:
 vestiaria (tailoring, weaving)
 agricultura (agriculture)
 architectura (architecture, masonry)
 militia and venatoria (warfare and hunting, military education, "martial
arts")
 mercatura (trade)
 coquinaria (cooking)
 metallaria (blacksmithing, metallurgy)]
 Its secular tone, which included articles skeptical about Biblical miracles, angered both
religious and government authorities; it was banned by the Catholic Church and later on,
the French government banned it as well, although this ban was not strictly enforced.

 In conceiving the Encyclopédie, Diderot had thought of the work as a fight on behalf of
posterity and had expressed confidence that posterity would be grateful for his effort.

 Many of its initial contributors left the project as a result of its controversies and some
were even jailed. D'Alembert left in 1759, making Diderot the sole editor. Diderot also
became the main contributor, writing around 7,000 articles. He continued working on
the project until 1765. He was increasingly despondent about the Encyclopédie by the
end of his involvement in it and felt that the entire project might have been a waste.
Nevertheless, the Encyclopédie is considered one of the forerunners of the French
Revolution.

 In Philosophical Thoughts (Pensées philosophiques), Diderot argued for a reconciliation

of reason with feeling so as to establish harmony. According to Diderot, without feeling
there is a detrimental effect on virtue, and no possibility of creating sublime work.
However, since feeling without discipline can be destructive, reason is necessary to
control feeling.

 At the time Diderot wrote this book he was a deist. Hence there is a defense of deism in
this book, and some arguments against atheism. The book also contains criticism of
Christianity.

 In 1747, Diderot wrote The Skeptic's Walk (Promenade du sceptique) in which a deist, an
atheist, and a pantheist have a dialogue on the nature of divinity. The deist gives the
argument from design. The atheist says that the universe is better explained by physics,
chemistry, matter, and motion. The pantheist says that the cosmic unity of mind and
matter, which are co-eternal and comprise the universe, is God.
[Pantheism: the philosophical religious belief that reality, the universe and the cosmos
are identical to divinity and a supreme being or entity, pointing to the universe as being
an immanent creator deity who is still expanding and creating, which has existed since
the beginning of time, or that all things compose an all-encompassing, immanent god or
goddess and regards the universe as a manifestation of a deity. This includes all
astronomical objects being viewed as part of a sole deity. The worship of all gods of
every religion is another definition but it is more precisely termed Omnism. Pantheist
belief does not recognize a distinct personal god, anthropomorphic (the attribution of
human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an
innate tendency of human psychology.) or otherwise, but instead characterizes a broad
range of doctrines differing in forms of relationships between reality and divinity.]

 This work remained unpublished until 1830. Accounts differ as to why. It was either
because the local police, warned by the priests of another attack on Christianity, seized
 the manuscript, or because the authorities forced Diderot to give an undertaking that he
would not publish this work.

 Diderot wrote The Indiscreet Jewels (Les bijoux indiscrets), a novel about the magical
ring of a Sultan which induces any woman's "discreet jewels" to confess their sexual
experiences when the ring is pointed at them. Besides the bawdiness, there are several
digressions into philosophy, music, and literature in the book. In one such philosophical
digression, the Sultan has a dream in which he sees a child named "Experiment" growing
bigger and stronger till it demolishes an ancient temple named "Hypothesis".

 On the unity of nature, Diderot wrote, "Without the idea of the whole, philosophy is no
more," and "Everything changes; everything passes; nothing remains but the whole."

 Famous quotes:
 "Posterity is for the philosopher what the 'other world' is for the man of
religion."
 “There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge... observation of
nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection
combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.”
 “The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a
great many philosophers.”
 “Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last
priest.”
 “Only passions, great passions can elevate the soul to great things.”
 “Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.”
 “It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not
believe in God is not important at all.”
 “If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.”
 “Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring
up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs.”
 “There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest
change needed is a change of my viewpoint.”

16. Adam Smith (1723–1790) – Scottish Economist and Philosopher:

 Known as: The Father of Economics / The Father of Capitalism.

 He was a pioneer in the thinking of political economy.

[Political economy: the study of how economic systems (e.g. markets and national
economies) and political systems (e.g. law, institutions, government) are linked.]

 His religious views are a matter of debate; he is mostly suspected of being a deist, or an
atheist, while some regard him as a Christian in some sense.
 In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith critically examines the moral thinking of his
time, and suggests that conscience arises from dynamic and interactive social
relationships through which people seek "mutual sympathy of sentiments."

 The work sought to describe the natural principles that govern morality and the ways in
which human beings come to know them. Smith proposes a theory of sympathy, in which
the act of observing others and seeing the judgments they form of both others and
oneself makes people aware of themselves and how others perceive their behavior. The
feedback we receive from perceiving (or imagining) others' judgment creates an
incentive to achieve "mutual sympathy of sentiments" with them and leads people to
develop habits, and then principles, of behavior, which come to constitute one's
conscience.

 Some scholars such as Bernard Mandeville and Thomas Hobbes argued that moral virtue
derives from personal benefit, that humans are essentially selfish, that all people are in
competition with one another, that bad behavior has positive social impact, and that
virtue has no positive economic benefit and is therefore not to be encouraged. Smith, on
the other hand, argued that experience suggests otherwise, saying;

However selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some
principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render
their happiness necessary to him, though they derive nothing from it except the
pleasure of seeing it.

 People derive pleasure from seeing the happiness of others because, by design, others
concern us. Thus, Smith outlines the central themes of his moral philosophy: human
beings are social, we care about others and their circumstances bring us pleasure or
pain. It is only through our senses, through “seeing,” that we acquire knowledge of
their sentiments.

 Smith’s first sentence associates egoism with supposition or presumption, but scientific
“principles” of human activity are associated with evidence: Newtonianism and
empiricism in action.

 Smith also introduced the concept of the impartial spectator. This concept entails that
when examining one’s actions and judging them, one must divide himself into two
persons: the judge, and the person being judged of. The judge is a spectator who places
himself in the position of the person being judged, while the second is the agent who is
the true character of the real person. Smith elaborates that as the cause is never the
same as the effect, similarly, the judge and the judged of are impossible to be the same
person.

 Smith argues that Self-command, “is not only itself a great virtue, but from it all the other
virtues seem to derive their principle lustre”. This should not be surprising since, for
 Smith, it is only through self-command that agents can modulate their sentiments to the
pitch required either by the community or the impartial spectator.

 According to Smith, humans have a natural love for society and can develop neither moral
nor aesthetic standards in isolation. Individuals have a natural desire not only be to be
loved, but to be worthy of love: “He desires not only praise, but praiseworthiness,… he
dreads not only blame, but blame-worthiness”.

 This speaks first to the power of the impartial spectator who is a guide to worth when
no spectators are around. It also speaks to Smith’s conception of duty; it sets a standard
of right action independent of what communities set forth. Individuals “derive no
satisfaction” from unworthy praise.

 Smith’s most influential work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations (WN), was published four months before the signing of the American Declaration
of Independence.

 The text is divided into five “books”. The first books outline the importance of the
division of labor and of self-interest. The second discusses the role of stock and capital.
The third provides an historical account of the rise of wealth from primitive times up
until commercial society. The fourth discusses the economic growth that derives from
the interaction between urban and rural sectors of a commercial society. The fifth and
final book presents the role of the sovereign in a market economy, emphasizing the
nature and limits of governmental powers and the means by which political institutions
are to be paid for.

 The dominant economic theory of Smith’s time was mercantilism. It held that the wealth
of a nation was to be assessed by the amount of money and goods within its borders at
any given time. Smith calls this “stock.” Smith opposed this, and shifted the definition of
national wealth to a different standard: labor.
[Mercantilism: a form of economic nationalism that sought to increase the prosperity and
power of a nation through restrictive trade practices. Its goal was to increase the supply
of a state's gold and silver with exports rather than to deplete it through imports. It also
sought to support domestic employment.]

 The more one labors, the more one earns. This supplies individuals and the community
with their necessities, and with enough money. Free trade, Smith argues, rather than
diminishing the wealth of the nation, increases it because it provides more occasion for
labor and therefore more occasion to create more wealth. Limited trade keeps the
amount of wealth within the borders relatively constant, but the more trade a country
engages in, the wider the market becomes and the more potential there is for additional
labor and, in turn, additional wealth.
 This point leads Smith to divide stock into two parts: that which is used for immediate
consumption—the assets that allow a person to acquire necessities—and that which is
used to earn additional revenue. This latter sum he calls “capital”, and the term
“capitalism” (which, again, Smith does not use) is derived from its use in a commercial
system: capital is specifically earmarked for reinvestment and is therefore a major
economic engine.

 Smith also argues for the division of labor to illustrate the efficiency of workers working
on complementary specific and narrow tasks. The increase in efficiency brings with it a
clarion call for the importance of specialization in the market. The more focused a worker
is on a particular task the more likely they are to create innovation.

 Smith is also concerned specifically with the distinction between necessities and
conveniences. He believes that a commercial system betters the lives for the worst off in
society; all individuals should have the necessities needed to live reasonably well. He is
less concerned with “conveniences” and “luxuries;” he does not argue for an
economically egalitarian (equalitarian) system. Instead, he argues for a commercial
system that increases both the general wealth and the particular wealth of the poorest
members.

 Smith goes on to elaborate the role of self-interest in economic life. A free market
harnesses personal desires for the betterment not of individuals but of the community.
He offers the following example:

In the first fire-engines, a boy was constantly employed to open and shut
alternately the communication between the boiler and the cylinder, according as
the piston either ascended or descended. One of those boys, who loved to play
with his companions, observed that, by tying a string from the handle of the
valve which opened this communication, to another part of the machine, the
valve would open and shut without his assistance, and leave him at liberty to
divert himself with his play-fellows. One of the greatest improvements that has
been made upon this machine, since it was first invented, was in this manner
the discovery of a boy who wanted to save his own labour.

 Echoing but tempering Mandeville’s claim about private vices becoming public benefits,
Smith illustrates that personal needs are complementary and not mutually exclusive.
Human beings, by nature, have a “propensity to … exchange one thing for another”. This
tendency, which Smith suggests may be one of the “original principles in human nature,”
is common to all people and drives commercial society forward. He went on to write:
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we
expect our dinner, bucxt from their regard to their own interest. We address
ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of
our own necessities but of their advantages.
 Philosophically, this is a tectonic shift in moral prescription. Dominant Christian beliefs
had assumed that any self-interested action was sinful and shameful; the ideal person
was entirely focused on the needs of others. Smith’s commercial society assumes
something different. It accepts that the person who focuses on his or her own needs
actually contributes to the public good and that, as a result, such self-interest should be
cultivated.

 This led scholars to come up with the idea of the “Adam Smith Problem,” which suggests
that Smith’s two books are incompatible as Smith’s work on ethics, which supposedly
assumed altruistic human motivation, contradicts his political economy, which allegedly
assumed egoism.

 Smith also illustrated that the laissez faire theory is the ideal form of government for
commercial advancement and the pursuit of self-interest. He is arguing for a system, as
he calls it, of “natural liberty,” one in which the market largely governs itself as is free
from excessive state intervention.

 As he explains, there are only three proper roles for the sovereign: to protect a society
from invasion by outside forces, to enforce justice and protect citizens from one another,
and thirdly, the maintenance of works that are too expensive for individuals to erect
and maintain, or what are called “natural monopolies”.

 Famous Quotes:
 “Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.”
 “To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and
exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature.”
 “Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the
regulation of conscience.”
 “I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the
public good.”
 “As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the
landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a
rent even for its natural produce.”
 “The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations.”
 “No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of
the members are poor and miserable.”
 “With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in
the parade of riches.”
 “Labour was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all
things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world
was originally purchased.”
  “Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the
lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice:
all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.”
 “On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of
Ambiguity.”
 “The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so,
generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and detail, is the one
that must rule all observation.”
 “Poor David Hume is dying fast, but with more real cheerfulness and good humor
and with more real resignation to the necessary course of things, than any
whining Christian ever dyed with pretended resignation to the will of God.”

Enlightened Absolutism

 Enlightened absolutism, also called enlightened despotism, refers to the conduct and
policies of European absolute monarchs during the 18th and early 19th centuries who were
influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment, espousing them to enhance their power.

 An enlightened absolutist is a non-democratic or authoritarian leader who exercises their

political power based upon the principles of the Enlightenment. Enlightened monarchs
distinguished themselves from ordinary rulers by claiming to rule for their subjects' well-
being.

Enlightened Monarchs

 Frederick the Great of Prussia:

 Befriended French philosopher Voltaire and became a lover of French thought and
philosophy, in general.

 Believed in modernizing the Prussian state by improving the lives of his subjects.

 Became a symbol of the Enlightened Absolutist movement.

 During his reign as monarch, he tried to create a sophisticated state bureaucracy that was
capable of managing the people’s he governed over.

 Implemented a number of religious policies that encouraged tolerance and acceptance of

religious minorities.
  Allowed for the freedom of the press, encouraged the arts, and favored scientific and
philosophical endeavors.

 Reformed the justice system and abolished torture.

 Famous Quotes:
 “He who defends everything defends nothing.”
 “If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one of them would remain in the
army.”
 “A crown is merely a hat that lets the rain in.”
 “A king is the first servant and first magistrate of the state.”
 “My people and I have come to an agreement which satisfied us both. They are
to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.”
 “Diplomacy without arms is like a concert without a score.”
 “The greatest and noblest pleasure which we have in this world is to discover
new truths, and the next is to shake off old prejudices.”
 “What is the good of experience if you do not reflect?”

 Catherine the Great of Russia:

 Called “the Great” because she ushered in an era of prosperity for the Russian Empire.

 Even though she believed whole-heartedly in Enlightened Absolutism, she had a difficult
time implementing it in terms of policy.

 Made it a priority issue to modernize the cities that bordered the rest of Western Europe,
even creating new ones to compete with them.

 She treated religion indifferently, using church lands to help fund the state.

 Attempted to implement new legal rights to the serf class, even though many landowners
refused to comply.

 Helped to propel the Russian Enlightenment by encouraging music, painting, and

architecture.

 Created the first state-funded higher education institution for women in all of Europe.

 She was also somewhat indifferent to the plight of the serf class, which resulted in a
variety of rebellions throughout her rule.
[Serfs: unfree peasants.]

 Incorporated many ideas of Enlightenment philosophers, especially Montesquieu, in her

Nakaz, which was intended to revise Russian law.
 [Nakaz: a statement of legal principles written by Catherine II of Russia, and permeated
with the ideas of the French Enlightenment. It was compiled as a guide for the All-Russian
Legislative Commission convened in 1767 for the purpose of replacing the mid-17th-
century Muscovite code of laws with a modern law code. Catherine believed that to
strengthen law and institutions was above all else to strengthen the monarchy.]

 Famous quotes:
 “Power without a nation's confidence is nothing.”
 “I shall be an autocrat: that's my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that's
his.”
 “It is better to inspire a reform than to enforce it.”
 “I may be kindly, I am ordinarily gentle, but in my line of business I am obliged to
will terribly what I will at all.”
 “I sincerely want peace, not because I lack resources for war, but because I hate
bloodshed.”
 “If Russians knew how to read, they would write me off.”
 “I am one of the people who love the why of things.”
 “The laws ought to be so framed as to secure the safety of every citizen as much
as possible...Political liberty does not consist in the notion that a man may do
whatever he pleases; liberty is the right to do whatsoever the laws allow. The
equality of the citizens consists in that they should all be subject to the same
laws.”
 “The usage of torture is contrary to all the dictates of nature and reason; even
mankind itself cries out against it, and demands loudly the total abolition of it.”
 “No man ought to be looked upon as guilty, before he has received his judicial
sentence; nor can the laws deprive him of their protection, before it is proved
that he has forfeited all Right to it.”
 Joseph II of Austria:

 Believed rather wholeheartedly in the ideals of the Enlightenment but had a hard time
implementing those thoughts into practice and policy.

 He gave minority religions, such as Protestants, Greek Orthodox and Jews, the ability to
live and worship more freely.

 Joseph's reforms included:

 abolishing serfdom
[the peasants were still more concerned with the taxes that the empire
demanded than with their new freedoms.]
 ending press censorship
 limiting the power of the Catholic Church.

 He ultimately wanted to make his subjects happy, but only according to his own ideas and
beliefs. He attempted to do this by:
  restructuring much of the state bureaucracies,
 abolishing most brutal punishments for breaking the law,
 making basic education a compulsory requirement for all boys and girls.

 His main aim was to make the empire more efficient and financially secure. Believing that
he was doing what was right and necessary, Joseph did not bother to smooth the way
with nobles or clergy who felt threatened by his changes.

 To counter Prussia's strength, Joseph forged an alliance with Catherine II of Russia, which
brought the empire into a conflict in Turkey.

 Famous quotes:
 “Let my epitaph be, "Here lies Joseph, who failed in everything he undertook."
 “I do not need your consent for doing good.”
 “The idea of being able to do good and render one's subjects happy is
undoubtedly the finest and the only flattering aspect of power..”

Significant Results

 Inspired the American Revolution and the French Revolution alike.

 Transformed Europe to a new era of progress in science, art, and challenging the Orthodox
tradition.
 Introduced political modernization to the West.
 Prompted the fight for the rights of women, and education of children.
 Emphasized the rights of common men instead of the monarchies.
 Inspired the countermovement of Romanticism.