Lesson Plan on:

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Lesson Plan on The Age of
Enlightenment Reason (1715-1800)
Locke Voltaire Rousseau

Prepared by Mr. Bierschbach
Jefferson Hobbes Diderot Mozart
Franklin Bach
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1651
Enlightenment or Age of Reason
Hobbes writes Leviathan
1690
Lockes Second Treatise of Government
Terms to define ? Natural laws (tabla rasa) ?
Social contract ? Philosophe ?
Laissez-faire ? Free market
1748
Montesquieu writes The Spirit of the Laws
1759
1762
Voltaires Candide
Rousseau writes The Social Contract
People to meet ? Franklin ?
Delacroix ? Hobbes ? Locke ? Rousseau
? Montesquieu ? Jefferson ? Voltaire ?
Delacroix ? Diderot ? Bach ?
Mozart ? Catherine the Great
1751-1789
Denis Diderot distributes his Encyclopedia
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Diderot Encyclopedia

• Voltaire
• Candide

Hobbes Leviathan
Baroque Rococo
Philosophers Writers

• Montesquieu
• Spirit of the Law

Arts
Enlightenment France, England America
Locke Rousseau Social Contract
Music Bach Mozart
Franklin Poor Richard's Almanac
Writers, Diplomats, Inventors
Jefferson Declaration of Independence
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What caused the age of enlightenment ?
Enlightenment grew out of the scientific
revolution of the 1500s and 1600s.
Scientific successes created great confidence
in the power of reason. If people could
use reason to find laws that governed the
physical world (physical sciences), why not
use reason to discover natural laws --- or
laws that govern human nature. Why not
use reason to change human society? Through
reason, insisted enlightenment thinkers,
they could solve every social, political,
and economic problem.
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Thinker Major Ideas Quotation
Connection to US
Social concept but NOT absolute monarchy.
Hobbes People are driven by
selfishness greed. To avoid chaos,
a brutish life, people
enter a social
contract --- giving up their
freedom to a govt that will
ensure order. Such
a powerful govt
absolute monarchy must be
strong able to suppress
rebellion.

People are naturally cruel, greedy,
selfish. Life in a state of nature would be,
solitary, poor, nasty, brutish short.
Publication Leviathan
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Thinker Major Ideas Quotation
Connection to US
Men being by nature all free, equal,
independent, no one can be put out of
this estate subjected to the political
power of another with-out his own consent.
Ideas influenced authors of the
Declaration of Independence. .
Locke People have a natural right to
life, liberty,
property. Rulers have a
responsibility to protect those
rights. People have
the right to change a
govt that fails to do so.
Publication Treaties of Govt
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Thinker Major Ideas Quotation
Connection to US
Montes- quieu
The powers of govt should be separated
into executive, legislative, judicial
branches, to prevent any one group from
gaining too much power.
In order to have liberty, it is necessary
that govt be set up so that one man
need not be afraid of another.
His ideas about separation of powers
greatly influenced the Framers of the U.S.
Constitution.
Publications Persian Letters Spirit of
the Laws
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Thinker Major Ideas Quotation
Connection to US
Rousseau People are basically
good but become
corrupted by society.
In an ideal society,
people would
make the laws would
obey them willingly.
Only the general will can direct
the energies of the state in a manner
appropriate to the end for which it was
founded --- i.e., the common good.
Rousseau has been hailed as the champion of
democracy for his idea that political
authority lies with the people. -- Also,
pushed social contract.
Publications Social Contract Emile
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Three views of the Social Contract
(Hobbes, Locke Rousseau)
Social Contract Theory Beginning in the
1600s, Europeans challenged the rule of
sovereigns who ruled by divine right. They
were often supported by the writings of
philosophers (philosophes), who believed that
the origin of the state was in a social
contract.
Thomas Hobbes Nasty, brutish
short.
Thomas Hobbes in England was one of the
first to theorize how the social contract
came about. He wrote that in a state of
nature, no government existed. Without an
authority to protect one person from
another, life was cruel, brutish, and
short. Hobbes wrote his ideas in a work
entitled Leviathan. Hobbes argued that
people were naturally cruel, greedy,
selfish. If not strictly controlled, they
would fight, rob, and oppress one another.
To escape this, people entered a social
contract, an agreement by which they gave
up the state of nature for an organized
society. Hobbes believed that only a
powerful government could ensure an orderly
society. Such a govt was an absolute
monarchy, which could impose order and
compel obedience. Not surprisingly, Hobbes
supported the Stuart kings in their
struggle against parliament. ---- Was this
an enlightened view ?
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ENLIGHTENMENT THINKERS --- HOBBES
The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes also
stressed governmental power. In his political
treatise Leviathan (1651), the English
philosopher Thomas Hobbes compares the state,
with its innumerable competing members, to the
largest of natural organisms the whale, or
leviathan. By this analogy Hobbes argued that
the state, like the whale, requires a single
controlling intelligence to direct its
motion. His major work, Leviathan, argued
that the sovereign's power should be
unlimited, because the state originated in
a so-called social contract, whereby
individuals accept a common superior power
to protect themselves from their own
brutish instincts and to make possible the
satisfaction of certain human desires.
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Two views of the Social
Contract

• John Locke
• John Locke took the social contract a
  step further.
• John Locke had a more optimistic view of
  human nature. People were basically
  reasonable and moral, he said. Further,
  they had natural rights. Or rights that
• belonged to all humans from birth. These
  included the right to life, liberty,
  property.

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Two views of the Social
Contract
John Locke In Two
Treatises of Government, Locke argued that
people formed governments to protect their
natural rights. The best kind of
government, he said, had limited power and
was accepted by all citizens. Thus,
unlike Hobbes, Locke rejected absolute
monarchy. In 1688, the British Parliament
forced King James II to flee invited
William Mary of Orange to rule. Locke
defended Parliaments overthrow of the King.
Locke, then, formed a radical idea. A
government, he said, has an obligation to
those it governs. If a government fails
its obligations or violates peoples natural
rights, the people have a right to
overthrow the government. This right to
revolution would echo through Europe, in
Britains North American colonies, and around
the world in the centuries that followed.

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Three views of the Social Contract
(Hobbes, Locke Rousseau)
Jean- Jacques Rousseau

• In 1762, Rousseau set forth his ideas
  about government in The Social Contract.
• It begins, Man is born free and
  everywhere he is in chains. The chains are
  those of society, which controls the way
  people behave.
• Rousseau extended the concept of rights to
  encompass all the people and not the narrow
  propertied class of citizens included by
  Locke.
• In Rousseau's state, political authority
  reflects the "general will" or will of the
  majority. The majority should always work
  for the common good. Moreover, Rousseau
  felt that the individual should be
  subordinate to the community.

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Three views of the Social Contract
(Hobbes, Locke Rousseau)
Rousseau also had ideas that extended
beyond government the politics of the
times. For example, Rousseau believed that
people in their natural state were
basically good. This natural innocence, he
felt was corrupted by the evils of
society, especially the unequal distribution
of property. This view was later adopted
by many reformers and revolutionaries. In
literature the arts, writers described the
American Indians as noble savages.
Indians were seen as uncorrupted by the
evils of civilization.
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ENLIGHTENMENT THINKERS --- MONTESQUIEU In the
1700s, France saw a flowering of
enlightenment thought. The 18th-century French
political theorist Baron Montesquieu studied
the governments of Europe, from Italy to
England. He read all he could about
ancient and medieval Europe and even
learned about Chinese and Native American
cultures. His sharp criticism of absolute
monarchy opened the doors for later debate.
In 1721, he published Persian Letters, a satire
on French institutions. Supposedly written by
Persian travelers in Europe and their friends,
the book was a comment on French society,
politics, and religion. Montesquieu argued in
his study, The Spirit of the Laws (1748), that
the best way to provide a check against
the abuse of power by monarchs was through
intermediary bodies that the monarch could
not abolish, such as the church, guilds, and
professional associations.
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• ENLIGHTENMENT THINKERS --- MONTESQUIEU
• The dispersion of power to these institutions
  outside of government would make it more
  difficult for the government to abuse its
  authority. Montesquieu, along with many
  theorists before him, assumed that balance
• could succeed only in a society with a
  relatively small
• and homogeneous population. James Madison
  argued
• that the larger the society, and the more
  diverse the interests of its inhabitants,
  the more likely each faction was to block
  and thwart the interests of other factions
  seeking control. This would prevent the
  formation of a permanent majority that could
  oppress minority groups
• or interests. Madisons understanding was
  central to the writing of the Constitution
  of the United States, which incorporated a
  separation of powers and many checks and
  balances.

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The World of the Philosophes Voltaire
In France, a group of Enlightenment
thinkers applied the methods of science to
better understand and improve society.
These thinkers were called philosophes,
which means lovers of wisdom. Arguably,
the most famous philosophe was
Francois-Marie Arouet, who took the name
Voltaire. Voltaire used biting or satirical
wit as a weapon to expose the abuses of
the day. He targeted corrupt officials and
idle aristocrats.
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The World of the Philosophes Voltaire
Voltaires most famous work was a book
entitled, Candide. Candide, the hero of the
humorous novel travels across Europe, the
Americas, even the Middle East in
search of, the best of all possible
worlds. Candide ended with the phrase, We
must cultivate our garden. According to
Voltaire, lasting happiness is, essentially,
derived from hard work --- or cultivating
ones garden, (metaphorically speaking).
Voltaires outspoken attacks offended the
government the Catholic church. He was
imprisoned and forced into exile He saw his
books censured burned, but he continued to
defend freedom of speech. One of his
famous quotations was, I do not agree
with a word that you say, but I will
defend to the death your right to say it.

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The World of the Philosophes Denis
Diderot
Denis Diderot, another French philosophe,
published a 28-volume encyclopedia --- it
took him 25 years. As editor, Diderot did
more than just gather articles on human
knowledge. His purpose was, to change the
general way of thinking by explaining the
new thinking on government, philosophy, and
religion. Diderots Encyclopedia included
articles by leading thinkers of the day,
including Montesquieu Voltaire.
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The World of the Philosophes Denis
Diderot
In their Encyclopedia articles, the
philosophes denounced slavery, praised
freedom of expression, urged education for
all. They attacked divine right theory and
traditional religions. The French
government argued that the Encyclopedia was
an attack on public morals, while the
Pope threatened to excommunicate Catholics
who bought or read the volumes. Despite
the opposition 20,000 copies were printed
between 1751 1789.
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Ben Franklin --- An American Philosophe
Enlightenment ideas influenced many American
colonists, among them Benjamin Franklin, a
writer scientist. He was known in Europe
as an American philosophe. Among his many
practical inventions were the bifocal
glasses electricity. His most famous
publication was Poor Richards Almanac.
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Ben Franklin --- An American Philosophe
A compilation of practical information,
anecdotes, maxims, and proverbs by Benjamin
Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac appeared
annually between 1732 and 1757. Franklin
founded and owned the almanac and did much of
the writing before 1748. He sold it in 1757,
and it continued under an altered title until
1796. The almanac contained such maxims as
"God helps those who help themselves" and "A
penny saved is two pence clear, " but not all
its maxims preached temperance, frugality, and
independence. "There's more old drunks than old
doctors," for example, implies quite the
opposite. Selections from the almanac are
available in various modern editions.
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Thomas Jefferson Inventor, diplomat, writer
Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of
Independence, a document that clearly
reflects the ideas of John Locke, in lines
such as these We hold these truths to
be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable rights,
that among these are life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness. That top secure
these rights, governments are instituted
among men, deriving their just powers from
the consent of the governed.
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Probably the greatest genius in Western musical
history, Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria,
Jan. 27, 1756. He began composing minuets at
the age of 5 and symphonies at 9. When he was
6, he and his older sister, Maria Anna, embarked
on a series of concert tours to Europe's courts
and major cities. Both children played the
keyboard, but Wolfgang became a violin virtuoso
as well. Mozart's greatest success was The
Marriage of Figaro (1786), composed for the
Vienna Opera. The great piano concertos and the
string quartets dedicated to his "dear friend"
Josef Haydn were also composed during this period.
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart's fame began to wane after Figaro. The
nobility and court grew increasingly nervous
about his revolutionary ideas as exemplified in
Figaro. He sank into debt. His greatest
operatic success after Figaro was Don Giovanni
(1787). In 1791, Mozart was commissioned to
write a requiem (unfinished). He was, at the
time, quite ill. He had never known very good
health and imagined that the work was for
himself, which it proved to be. His death, on
Dec. 5, 1791, which gave rise to false rumors of
poisoning, is thought to have resulted from
kidney failure. After a cheap funeral at Saint
Stephen's Cathedral, he was buried in an
unmarked grave at the cemetery of Saint Marx, a
Viennese suburb. Mozart perfected the grand forms
of symphony, opera, string quartet, and concerto
that marked the classical period in music.
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

• Seranade in G Eine KleineNachtmusik or (A
  little night Music)
• Symphony 40 in G Minor
• The Marriage of Figaro

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Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 -1750)

• Johann Sebastian Bach was one of the greatest
  composers in Western musical history. He
  created masterpieces of choral and instrumental
  music --- both sacred and secular. A devout
  German Lutheran, Bach wrote more than 1,000
  compositions, including works in virtually
  every musical form and genre.

The art of the fugue 1, 2, 11 The
Brandenburg Concerto 3 4
Comptons
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Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 -1750)

• During his lifetime he enjoyed greater renown
• as an organist than as a composer, and although
• such later composers as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• and Ludwig van Beethoven held his work in great
  esteem, it
• was not until nearly a century after his death
  that the
• broader musical public came to appreciate the
  level of
• craftsmanship his works embody. Bach's music is
  now
• regarded as the high point of the baroque music
  era,
• which lasted from 1600 to 1750 --- the year of
  his death.

The art of the fugue 1, 2, 11 The
Brandenburg Concerto 3 4
Comptons
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Salons/Baroque/Rococo
Salons
Baroque
Marie-Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin (1699-1777) French
hostess whose salon in the Hôtel de
Rambouillet was an international meeting
place of artists and men of letters from
1749 to 1777. Madame Geoffrin's salon was
also a center for the Encyclopédistes, whose
vast project she subsidized.
In the age of Louis XIV, courtly art
architecture were either in classical style,
in the Greek and Roman tradition or in
the grand, complex style known as baroque.
Baroque paintings were huge, colorful,
full of excitement. They glorified historical
battles or the lives of saints.
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Salons/Baroque/Rococo
Rococo
By the mid-1700s, architects and designers
developed the rococo style. Unlike the
heavy splendor of the baroque, rococo art
was personal, refined, elegant, and
charming. Fragonard (below) Watteau
(right) are two of the most renowned
rococo artists.
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Enlightened Despots
Some monarchs did accept Enlightenment
ideas. They became enlightened despots, or
absolute rulers who used their powers to
bring about political and social change.
Frederick the Great As
King of Prussia from 1740 to 1786,
Frederick II (the Great) exerted extremely
tight control over his subjects. Still,
he saw himself as the first servant of
the state, with a duty to work for the
common good. Frederick admired Voltaire
and lured him to Berlin to develop a
Prussian academy of science. When the king
was not busy fighting wars, he had swamps
drained forced peasants to grow new crops
such as potatoes. He tolerated religious
differences, welcoming victims of religious
persecution.
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Enlightened Despots --- Catherine the Great
Catherine II of Russia read the works of
the philosophes and exchanged letters with
Voltaire and Diderot. She praised Voltaire
as someone who had, fought the united
enemies of humankind superstition,
fanaticism, ignorance, trickery. Catherine,
who became empress in 1762, experimented
with Enlightenment ideas. Early in her
reign, she made limited reforms in law and
government. She granted nobles a charter
of rights and spoke out against serfdom.
Still, like Frederick the Great, Catherine
did not intend to give up any power. When
a serf revolt broke out, she ruthlessly
suppressed it. She also allied herself
with the Russian nobles who opposed change.
In the end, Catherines contribution to
Russia was not reform but an expanded
empire.
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Catherine the Great became Czarina in 1762
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Maria Theresa her son Joseph II Marie
Antoinette was Maria Theresas daughter
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• Joseph II
• The most radical enlightenment despot was
  the Hapsburg emperor Joseph II, son of
  Maria Theresa. An eager student of the
  Enlightenment, Joseph traveled in disguise
  among his subjects to learn of their
  problems. His efforts to improve their
  lives won him the nickname the peasant
  emperor. Maria Theresa had begun to
  modernize Austrias government. Joseph
  continued her reforms. He chose talented
  middle-class officials rather than nobles to
  head departments imposed a range of
  political legal reforms. Despite
  opposition, he granted toleration to
  Protestants and Jews in his Catholic
  empire. He ended censorship and attempted
  to bring the Catholic Church under royal
  control. He sold the property of many
  monasteries convents, which he saw as
  unproductive and used the proceeds to build
  hospitals. Joseph even abolished serfdom.
  Like many
• of his reforms, this measure was canceled
  after his death.

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Enlightened Despots Joseph II (Continued ---
More details)

• Joseph II, b. (1741-1790), became emperor and
  co-regent of the Hapsburg monarchy with his
  mother, Maria Theresa, after the death of his
  father, Francis I, in 1765. He tried
  unsuccessfully to reform and unify the Austrian
  Hapsburg domains. When his mother died in
  1780, he inherited the crowns of Bohemia and
  Hungary. Ruling by himself from then on,
  Joseph pursued a policy of centralization
  and reform designed to enhance the power of
  his state and the welfare of his subjects.

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Enlightened Despots Joseph II (Continued ---
More details)

• Driven by a passion for reason and order,
  Joseph was intolerant of opposition. He
  created a secret police and employed military
  force to implement the thousands of laws
  and edicts that flooded out of the Vienna
  court. With his curious blend of
  humanitarian ideals and autocratic methods,
  Joseph II exemplified all of the
  characteristics usually associated with
  18th-century enlightened despotism.

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Enlightened Despots Joseph II (Continued ---
More details)

• Joseph's reform program included the
  abolition of serfdom, freedom of the press,
  the elimination of torture and the death
  penalty, and an attempt to establish equality
  before the law. He tried to ease the
  fiscal burdens of the lower classes by
  introducing a single tax based on land.
  He granted official toleration to
  Protestants and Jews and dissolved the
  monasteries of contemplative Catholic orders,
  earmarking their revenues for the support of
  hospitals. In his relentless efforts to
  unify the administrative structure of his
  monarchy, Joseph sought to diminish the
  influence of provincial diets (legislatures)
  as well as the special privileges of the
  aristocracy. He decreed the use of German
  for governmental business throughout his
  domains, including his distant possessions in
  Italy and the Austrian Netherlands.

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Enlightened Despots
Joseph II (Continued) Fourteen years before
the French Revolution, Joseph warned his sister
Marie Antoinette, queen of France "The
revolution, if you fail to avert it, will be an
atrocious one." His own actions, however,
provoked widespread discontent among the
peoples he ruled. At the time of his death
he faced mounting unrest in his Austrian and
Bohemian lands and open revolt in Hungary
and the Low Countries. Joseph's reforms met with
resistance in many quarters, and before his death
in Vienna on February 20, 1790, he was forced to
rescind many of them. While some of his
reforms survived, many were revoked by his
brother and successor, Leopold II.
Maria Antoinette
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Laissez-faire (Capitalism)
The Wealth of Nations (1776) In his famous
treatise, The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
argued that private competition free from
regulation produces and distributes wealth better
than government-regulated markets. Since 1776,
when Smith produced his work, his argument has
been used to justify capitalism and discourage
government intervention in trade and exchange.
Smith believed that private businesses seeking
their own interests organize the economy most
efficiently, as if by an invisible hand.
Adam Smith
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Thinker Major Ideas Quotation
Connection to US
Hobbes
Publi- cation
Thinker Major Ideas Quotation
Connection to US
Locke
Publi- cation
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Thinker Major Ideas Quotation
Connection to US
Montes- quieu
Publi- cations
Thinker Major Ideas Quotation
Connection to US
Rousseau
Publi- cations
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Enlightenment France, England America