The Enlightenment

• Reading Guide

Readings: Set One

• John Locke

• Montesquieu

• Rousseau (Social Contract)

• Voltaire

Readings Set Two

• Rousseau (Emile)

• Wollstonecraft

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The Enlightenment Reading Guide

Part 1:  The Enlightenment in Europe (pp. 171-174)

1. Review of Main Ideas and Why it Matters Now on p. 171.

2. What is the link between the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment?

3. Hobbes and Locke provide two contrasting views about the nature of human beings and the ultimate purpose of government.  Explain the contrast.

4. Describe Locke's ideas about natural rights and the right to revolution.

5. Note the "Changing Idea" about government on p. 172 and the "Five Key Ideas" of the philosophes.

6. What important ideas are associated with Voltaire and Montesquieu?  How do the ideas of Rousseau contrast with other Enlightenment thinkers?

Part 2: The Enlightenment (pp. 174-181)

1. How are Beccaria's ideas very much in tune with Enlightenment thinking?

2. Explain Mary Wollstonecraft's ideas.  Are they in line with other thinkers of the Enlightenment?

3. The impact of Enlightenment ideas: Note chart on p. 174; note impact on future political events; note mpact on beliefs and trends in the modern period

4. Describe the impact of salons.

5. Who was Diderot and how did he help spread Enlightenment ideas?

6. What was the impact of the Enlightenment in the arts?

• Neoclassical style

• Literary trends--the novel.

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Readings FIRST SET

John Locke    Two Treatises on Government (1690)

Man being born with perfect freedom and an enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature has by nature a power not only to preserve his life, liberty, and property against the injuries and attempts of other men, but has also the right to judge and punish offenses against the law that other men might commit…

Man being by nature free, equal and independent, no one can have his life, liberty, or property taken away or be subjected to the political power of another without his own consent.  This is done by agree with other men to join and unite into a community or government in order to live comfortably, safely, and peacefully amongst each other…

Because man gives up his ‘state of nature” and enters into society for the good of all, the government he has consented to must guarantee him the following: First—That those who govern will do so by established laws not to vary according to rich man or poor man. Second—That these laws should be designed for no other purpose than the good of the people.

The [government] acts against the trust reposed in them when they endeavor to invade the property of the subject and to make themselves…arbitrary disposers of the lives, liberties, or fortunes of the people…[If the government violates] the lives, liberties or estates of the people…they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands…

Questions:

1. What are the fundamental or “natural” rights of the individual?
2. A government it not legitimate unless the individual does what?
3. What does the individual sacrifice to live in a community?
4. In exchange for this sacrifice, what must government guarantee?
5. If government violates the trust of the people, what power do the people have?

Montesquieu The Spirit of the Laws (1748)

In every government there are three sorts of power; the legislative; the executive... by the third, it punishes criminals, or determines the disputes that arise between individuals. The latter we shall call the judiciary power.

The political liberty of the subject is a tranquillity of mind, arising from the opinion each person has of his safety. In order to have this liberty, the government must be so constituted that no man be afraid of` another.

When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of officials, 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. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for the judge would then be the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with all the violence of an oppressor.

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 that of enacting laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and that of judging the crimes or differences of individuals.

  Questions:

1. According to Montesquieu, what is “political liberty” for each citizen?
2. What is the ultimate purpose of a “separation of powers” within a government and why is it necessary for the preservation of political liberty?

 Rousseau   The Social Contract  (1763)

  Man was born free, but everywhere he is in chains...

  The social contract's terms, when they are well understood, can be reduced to a single stipulation: the individual member allies himself totally to the whole community together with all his rights. This is first because conditions will be the same for everyone when each individual gives himself totally, and secondly, because no one will be tempted to make that condition of shared equality worse for other men....Once this multitude is united this way into a body, an offense against one of its members is an offense against the body politic...A will is general or it is not: it is that of the whole body of the people or only of one faction.

What then is government? It is an intermediary body established between the people and the sovereign to keep them in touch with each other. It is charged with executing the laws and maintaining both civil and political liberty.... The only will dominating government ... should be the general will... The government's power is only the public power [given] to it.

Questions: 

1. What ideas do Rousseau and Locke share? 
2. Is there an emphasis is this short passage that was missing from the selection from Two Treatises on Government?

Voltaire  A Treatise on Toleration  (1763)

Each day reason penetrates further into France, into the shops of merchants as well as the mansions of lords. We must cultivate the fruits of this reason, especially since it is impossible to check its advance.

If the masters of errors... ordered us today to believe that the seed must die in order to germinate; that the world is immovable on its foundations, that it does not orbit around the sun; that the tides are not a natural effect of gravitation; that the rainbow is not formed by the refraction and the reflection of rays of light, and so on, and they based their ordinances on passages poorly understood from the Holy Bible, how would educated men regard these men? Would the term "beasts" seem too strong? And if these wise masters used force and persecution to enforce their insolent stupidity, would the term "wild beasts" seem too extreme?

But of all these superstitions, is not the most dangerous that of hating your neighbor for his opinion? The fewer dogmas, the fewer disputes; the fewer disputes, the fewer miseries...

Religion was instituted to make us happy in this life and in the other. What must we do to be happy in the life to come? Be just. What must we do in order to be happy in this life, as far as the misery of our nature permits? Be tolerant.

It does not require great art, or magnificently trained eloquence, to prove that Christians should tolerate each other. I, however, am going further: I say that we should regard all men as our brothers. What? The Turk my brother? The Chinaman my brother? The Jew? The Siam? Yes, without doubt; are we not all children of the same father and creatures of the same God?

Questions:

1. Who do you think are the “masters of errors” referred to in paragraph two?

2. What Enlightenment attitudes are evident in this brief passage?

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 Readings SECOND SET:

Directions. Contrast the views of Rousseau and Wollstonecraft on the nature of women and the purpose of education for women.

Jean Jacques Rousseau Emile (1762)

  There is no parity between the two sexes... The male is male only at certain moments. The female is female her whole life or at least during her whole youth. Everything constantly recalls her sex to her and, to fulfill its functions well, she needs a constitution that corresponds to it. She needs care during her pregnancy, she needs rest at the time of childbirth, she needs a soft and sedentary life to suckle her children, she needs patience and gentleness, a zeal and an affection that nothing can rebuff in order to raise her children. She serves as the link between them and their father, she alone makes him love them and gives him the confidence to call them his own. How much tenderness and care is required to maintain the union of the whole family! And, finally, all this must come not from virtues but from tastes, or else the human species would soon be extinguished.

Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)

  Men complain, and with reason, of the follies and caprices of our sex. . . . Behold, I should answer, the natural effect of ignorance! Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and . . . propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, everything else is needless, for, at least, twenty years of their lives... .

Though moralists have agreed that the tenor of life seems to prove that man is prepared by various circumstances for a future state, they constantly concur in advising woman only to provide for the present. Gentleness, docility, and a spaniei-like affection are, on this ground, consistently recommended as the cardinal virtues of the sex; and. . . one writer has declared that it is masculine for a woman to be melancholy. She was created to be the toy of man, his rattle, and it must jingle in his ears whenever. . . he chooses to be amused.

How many women thus waste life away. . . who might have practiced as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stood erect, supported by their own industry, instead of hanging their heads. . .. How much more respectable is the woman who earns her own bread by fulfilling her duty than the most accomplished beauty! Yet the few employments open to women are menial. . . .

Women have seldom sufficient serious employment to silence their feelings; a round of little cares, or vain pursuits frittering away all strength of mind and organs, they become naturally only objects of sense. In short, the whole tenor of female education (the education of society) tends to render the best disposed romantic and inconstant; and the remainder vain and mean. . . .

With respect to virtue, to use the word in a comprehensive sense, I have seen most in low life. Many poor women maintain their children by the sweat of their brow, and keep together families that the vices of the fathers would have scattered abroad; but gentlewomen are too indolent to be actively virtuous, and are softened rather than refined by civilization.

I will venture to assert that till women are more rationally education, the progress of human virtue and improvement in knowledge must receive continual checks…

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