The Enlightenment
Introduced| English | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Enlightenment/enˈlaɪtənmənt/ | An intellectual movement in early modern Europe that emphasised reason, inquiry and criticism of inherited authority. |
| empiricist/emˈpɪrɪsɪst/ | Emphasising observation and experience as sources of knowledge. |
| natural rights/ˈnætʃərəl raɪts/ | Rights understood as belonging to people by virtue of being human, rather than being granted by a government. |
| social contract/ˈsəʊʃl ˈkɒntrækt/ | The idea that political authority rests on an agreement among people about government, obligations and rights. |
| suffrage/ˈsʌfrɪdʒ/ | The right to vote in political elections. |
A method before it was a politics
- Enlightenment 启蒙运动 philosophies applied new ways of understanding and empiricist 经验主义的 approaches to both the natural world and human relationships.
- Empiricist means claims are tested against observation rather than accepted from authority.
- Applying that method to human relationships is the step that turns a way of studying nature into a way of questioning a government.
The step that turned a way of studying nature into a way of questioning government was applying empiricism to...
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The CED names both the natural world and human relationships.
Three new political ideas
- Philosophers developed new political ideas about the individual, natural rights 天赋权利 and the social contract 社会契约.
- Natural rights belong to a person before any government exists, so a government cannot be their source.
- The social contract makes government an agreement rather than an inheritance — and an agreement can be judged.
Idea, reason, movement- the middle column is where the marks are
Select all the new political ideas the CED names.
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Mercantilism is an economic policy from unit 4.
Religion in public life, re-examined
- Enlightenment philosophies reexamined the role that religion played in public life and emphasised the importance of reason.
- Reexamined is the CED's careful word — not abolished, and not universally opposed.
- The rise and diffusion of Enlightenment thought that questioned established traditions in all areas of life often preceded revolutions and rebellions against existing governments.
Trace an Enlightenment idea to a movement
'Enlightenment ideas led to revolution' is the claim; the reason in between is the explanation.
The CED says Enlightenment philosophy abolished religion's public role.
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Its word is reexamined — and it credits religious ideals in reform movements.
The CED credits religious ideals alongside Enlightenment ideas. Reform movements — abolition especially — drew on both, and an answer that presents rights expansion as purely secular reasoning has dropped half of the CED's own clause.
Select all the rights expansions the CED names.
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Healthcare belongs to the twentieth century, in unit 9.
Reform, not only revolution
- Enlightenment ideas and religious ideals influenced various reform movements.
- These reform movements contributed to the expansion of rights, as seen in expanded suffrage 选举权, the abolition of slavery, and the end of serfdom.
- Note and religious ideals: the CED credits religious motivation alongside Enlightenment reasoning, especially in abolition.
Match each text or event to its author or organiser.
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Each applies the existing principle of natural rights consistently.
And a challenge to gender hierarchy
- Demands for women's suffrage and an emergent feminism challenged political and gender hierarchies.
- The CED names *Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman *, *Olympe de Gouges's Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen *, and the Seneca Falls Conference (1848) organised by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott.
- Each takes the language of natural rights and asks why it stops where it does — the method turned on its own users.
Olympe de Gouges writes a declaration of women's rights modelled sentence by sentence on the French declaration of men's rights. She is not introducing a new principle — she is applying the existing one consistently, and the document's force comes from how little she had to change.
Enlightenment philosophies applied empiricist approaches to the natural world and human relationships, developing ideas about the individual, natural rights and the social contract, and reexamined religion's role in public life. Its diffusion often preceded revolutions. *Enlightenment ideas and religious ideals * drove reform — expanded suffrage, abolition, the end of serfdom — and an emergent feminism challenged gender hierarchies.
Write from Montesquieu's separated powers
- An Enlightenment writer argued about how a government should be organised.
- He did not want one person to hold every kind of power.
What did Montesquieu propose?
Dividing power was meant to stop arbitrary rule.
What did Montesquieu want to separate?
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Executive, legislative, and judicial power should check each other.