The Enlightenment

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

• Account for the causes and consequences of Enlightenment thought on European society between 1648 and 1815 (LO C; Skill 5.B; KC-2.3.I, KC-2.3.I.A, KC-2.3.I.B, KC-2.3.I.C).
• Account for the influence of Enlightenment thought on European intellectual life between 1648 and 1815 (LO D; KC-2.3.II.A, KC-2.3.III.A, KC-2.3.III.B, KC-2.3.IV.A, KC-2.3.IV.B).
• Account for KC-2.3.I.B: how Locke and Rousseau developed new political theories built on natural rights and the social contract, and the differences between their accounts of legitimate government.
• Account for KC-2.3.III.B: how Adam Smith and other economic theorists challenged mercantilism with new theories supporting free trade and free markets.
• Account for KC-2.3.IV.A and KC-2.3.IV.B: how Voltaire, Diderot, Hume, and Holbach developed deism, skepticism, and atheism as new approaches to religion, and how religion came to be treated more as a matter of private conscience than of public concern.

The eighteenth-century Enlightenment was a connected international intellectual movement that applied the methods and assumptions of the Scientific Revolution (Topic 4.2) to human society. KC-2.3.I captures the central method: Enlightenment thought, drawing on empiricism, skepticism, human reason, rationalism, and classical sources, challenged the prevailing assumptions about social order, government, and the role of faith. KC-2.3.I.A captures the program: Voltaire, Denis Diderot, and other intellectuals applied the principles of the Scientific Revolution to society and human institutions. The eighteenth-century Enlightenment was concentrated in France, Scotland, England, the Netherlands, the German states, and northern Italy, but it had readers and correspondents across all of Europe and (later) the European colonial world.

KC-2.3.I.B captures the political side: Locke and Rousseau developed new political models built on natural rights and the social contract. John Locke's 1689 Two Treatises of Government argued that legitimate political authority rests on the consent of the governed, that government's purpose is to protect natural rights to life, liberty, and property, and that subjects retain a right of revolution when government violates the trust the people have placed in it. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's 1762 Du Contrat Social (The Social Contract) argued that legitimate government rests on the “general will” of the political community and that legitimate sovereignty cannot be transferred or alienated. Montesquieu's 1748 De l'Esprit des Lois (The Spirit of the Laws) added the doctrine of separation of powers among legislative, executive, and judicial branches, which influenced subsequent American (1787) and French (1789-1791) constitutional design.

KC-2.3.III.A captures the broader political implication: political theories such as John Locke's described society as composed of self-interested individuals and traced the state to the consent of the governed rather than to divine right or tradition. The classical doctrine of divine-right absolutism (Bossuet, Topic 3.7) was the principal target of these theories. The Enlightenment political project was substantially constitutionalist: it favored representative or limited government, the rule of law, and the protection of individual rights against arbitrary state power. KC-2.3.III.B captures the economic side: Adam Smith and other economic thinkers challenged mercantilism with new theories supporting free trade and free markets. Adam Smith's 1776 An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was the founding statement of classical political economy: the division of labor under free markets produces the greatest national wealth, and traditional mercantilist policies (tariffs, monopolies, navigation acts) reduce wealth by interfering with the natural division of labor. The French Physiocrats (Francois Quesnay, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot) developed parallel pro-market economic theories.

KC-2.3.IV.A captures the religious side: Voltaire, Diderot, and other intellectuals developed deism, skepticism, and atheism as new approaches to religion. Deism — the doctrine that God created the natural world and its laws but does not intervene in subsequent human affairs — was the most widely held Enlightenment religious position; figures such as Voltaire, the American founders Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, and the early Diderot held deist positions. Religious skepticism was elaborated by David Hume in his 1748 Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and 1779 Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, which raised systematic doubts about the reliability of miracle reports and the design argument for God's existence. Atheism was held by Baron d'Holbach in his 1770 System of Nature and (probably) by the late Diderot. Voltaire's 1763 Treatise on Toleration made the practical case for religious toleration. KC-2.3.IV.B captures the resulting cultural change: religion came to be treated more as a matter of private conscience than of public concern across the Enlightenment century.

KC-2.3.II.A captures the institutional infrastructure that disseminated these ideas: salons and other institutions investigated and circulated Enlightenment culture. The principal institutions of the eighteenth-century European public sphere included the Parisian salons (literary gatherings hosted by aristocratic women such as Madame Geoffrin, Madame du Deffand, and Madame Necker), London coffeehouses (the Grecian, Lloyd's), lending libraries, Masonic lodges, learned academies (the French Academy of Sciences, the English Royal Society), and the new periodical press (the Spectator, the Tatler, German Aufklarung journals). The most ambitious single product was Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopedie (1751-1772, 28 volumes, 71,818 articles, more than 140 contributors), which compiled and disseminated Enlightenment knowledge to a wide European reading public. Together these institutions allowed Enlightenment ideas to reach beyond the small academic and aristocratic circles where they originated.

KC-2.3.I.C captures an important qualification: even as the Enlightenment and the French Revolution proclaimed equality, intellectuals such as Rousseau argued for excluding women from political life. Rousseau's Emile (1762) recommended a substantially different education for boys and girls and (in the “Sophie” section) defended a domestic role for women. The French Revolution's 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (Unit 5) extended political rights to men only. Yet the Enlightenment also produced women's responses: Mary Wollstonecraft's 1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman argued that women were rational creatures entitled to the same rational education and political rights as men; the French aristocrat Marquis de Condorcet argued for women's political participation in his 1790 On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship. The Enlightenment thus contained both the inegalitarian Rousseauian position and its egalitarian Wollstonecraftian critique.

Topic 4.3 should be read as the central intellectual chapter of Unit 4. The Scientific Revolution (Topic 4.2) provided the methodological foundation; the Enlightenment built new theories of politics, economics, religion, and (sometimes) gender on top of it. Topic 4.4 covers parallel demographic and social change. Topic 4.5 covers the cultural and artistic side. Topic 4.6 covers the political application through enlightened absolutism. Skill 5.B asks students to make connections among these developments — to see the eighteenth-century Enlightenment as a single connected international movement with multiple distinct strands.

Four sources spanning the Enlightenment's principal strands: Locke on consent and revolution, Voltaire on religious toleration, Rousseau on the general will, and Adam Smith on the division of labor.

1. (Causation) Account for KC-2.3.I.B: how did Locke's Two Treatises and Rousseau's Social Contract develop new political models built on natural rights and the social contract? What specific differences between Locke's and Rousseau's accounts produce different political conclusions?
2. (Causation, Skill 5.B) Account for the connection between the Scientific Revolution (Topic 4.2) and the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. How did the methodological framework of observation, experimentation, and mathematical analysis transfer from natural philosophy to social and political theory?
3. (Causation) Account for KC-2.3.IV.A: how did Voltaire, Diderot, Hume, and Holbach develop deism, skepticism, and atheism as new approaches to religion? What specific challenges did each pose to traditional Christian theology?
4. (Causation) Account for KC-2.3.III.B: how did Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations challenge mercantilism with new theories supporting free trade and free markets? What did Smith claim about the relationship between self-interest and broad social benefit?
5. (Causation) Account for KC-2.3.I.C: how did intellectuals such as Rousseau argue for excluding women from political life despite the Enlightenment's egalitarian commitments? What specific responses did Mary Wollstonecraft and the Marquis de Condorcet offer?

Draft alignment — pending educator review. AP European History codes correspond to the official College Board Course and Exam Description (Effective Fall 2023, V.1). Statements below are paraphrased in the CountryReports voice; refer to the College Board's published CED for verbatim wording.