AP® European History review sheet from Aim for Five (aimforfive.com/euro/units/4/4-3)
Unit 4 · Topic 4.3
4.3 The Enlightenment
The Enlightenment was an 18th-century movement that used reason to criticize and improve government, religion, economics and society. Thinkers called philosophes argued for natural rights, government by consent, religious toleration, separation of powers and free markets, though most did not extend equal rights to women.
Key terms
- philosophes
- natural rights
- social contract
- separation of powers
- deism
- Adam Smith
What the Enlightenment was
Enlightenment thinkers believed that reason, the same tool that had explained nature, could find natural laws for society and make life better. They valued progress, education, toleration and freedom of thought, and they distrusted tradition and authority that couldn't justify itself. In 1784 the German philosopher Immanuel Kant summed it up as having the courage to use your own understanding.
The philosophes were writers and critics, many of them French, who wrote for a broad reading public. Censors often banned their books, so many were printed in the Dutch Republic or Switzerland and smuggled in.
Political thinkers
Locke also argued that the mind at birth is a blank slate shaped by experience, so better environments and education could make better people. Hobbes, writing earlier, used a social contract to defend strong rule; Locke used it to limit government.
| Thinker | Key work | Main idea |
|---|---|---|
| John Locke | Two Treatises of Government (1689) | People have natural rights to life, liberty and property; government exists by consent to protect them and may be overthrown if it fails |
| Montesquieu | The Spirit of the Laws (1748) | Separation of powers into legislative, executive and judicial branches, with checks to prevent tyranny |
| Voltaire | Candide (1759), Treatise on Tolerance (1763) | Religious toleration, freedom of expression; attacked Church intolerance |
| Jean-Jacques Rousseau | The Social Contract (1762) | Legitimate government follows the general will, the common good of the whole people |
| Cesare Beccaria | On Crimes and Punishments (1764) | Opposed torture and cruel punishment; punishment should deter, not take revenge |
Religion and knowledge
Deism held that God created the universe like a watchmaker and then let it run by natural laws, without miracles or interference. Many philosophes were deists. David Hume pushed skepticism, doubting claims that couldn't be shown by experience, including miracles. A few, like Baron d'Holbach, were openly atheist. Across these camps, more people came to treat religion as a private matter of conscience rather than something the state should enforce.
Denis Diderot and Jean d'Alembert edited the Encyclopédie (1751–1772), a huge reference work in many volumes that collected practical and scientific knowledge and slipped in criticism of the Church and government.
Economics
French thinkers called physiocrats, such as François Quesnay and Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, argued that land was the source of wealth and that governments should leave the economy alone, a policy called laissez-faire. Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (1776) argued that when individuals pursue their own interest in free markets, an invisible hand of competition benefits society. He criticized mercantilist tariffs and monopolies and praised the division of labor.
Women and the Enlightenment
Most philosophes still saw women as made for the home. In Emile (1762), Rousseau said girls should be educated mainly to please and serve men. Mary Wollstonecraft replied in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), arguing that women are rational beings who deserve the same education as men. The Marquis de Condorcet, a philosophe, went further in 1790, arguing that women should have the same political rights as men. Women also shaped the Enlightenment as hosts of salons (see 4.5).
Worked examples
Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.
- Example 1
Linking an idea to its source
Short-answer practice: Explain one way the Scientific Revolution influenced Enlightenment thinkers.
Show the solutionHide the solution
- Step 1: Name the specific scientific development.
- Step 2: Name the Enlightenment thinker or idea it shaped.
- Step 3: Explain the connection.
Answer: Model answer: Newton's Principia (1687) showed that the universe follows a few natural laws discoverable by reason. Enlightenment thinkers like Montesquieu applied the same approach to society, studying governments comparatively to find general principles, such as separation of powers, that would protect liberty.
Common mistakes
- Calling all philosophes democrats. Voltaire, for example, hoped enlightened monarchs would carry out reform.
- Confusing Hobbes and Locke. Both used the social contract, but Hobbes backed strong sovereign power and Locke backed limited government and a right to resist.
- Calling deists atheists. Deists believed in a creator God who doesn't intervene.
On the exam
- Match thinkers to ideas quickly; multiple-choice questions often quote or paraphrase a philosophe.
- Show how ideas led to change: Locke to the Glorious Revolution and later revolutions, Smith to free-market policies, Beccaria to legal reform.
Connected topics
Videos
Check yourself
5 questions on 4.3 The Enlightenment. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.
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.
Again, there is no liberty, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers. . . . There would be an end of every thing, were the same man, or the same body whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise those three powers . . . .
Source: Montesquieu, French nobleman and judge, The Spirit of the Laws, 1748, from a chapter on the constitution of England. Translated by Thomas Nugent, revised edition of 1758.
The passage would most likely have been used to criticize which of the following?
Take a view of the Royal Exchange in London, a place more venerable than many courts of justice, where the representatives of all nations meet for the benefit of mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian transact together, as though they all professed the same religion, and give the name of infidel to none but bankrupts. There the Presbyterian confides in the Anabaptist, and the Churchman depends on the Quaker's word.
If one religion only were allowed in England, the Government would very possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two, the people would cut one another's throats; but as there are such a multitude, they all live happy and in peace.
Source: Voltaire, French writer who lived in England from 1726 to 1728, Letters Concerning the English Nation, published in English in 1733 (translated by John Lockman) and in French in 1734, when it was banned and burned in Paris.
Voltaire's main argument in the passage is that
Voltaire most likely praised English religious life in order to
He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. . . . [B]y directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain; and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. . . . By pursuing his own interest, he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.
The statesman, who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever . . . .
Source: Adam Smith, Scottish professor of moral philosophy, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776.
Smith's argument most directly challenged which economic practice of his time?
Smith's ideas are most closely associated with which principle?
0 of 5 answered