Social and Political Consequences of the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution
Overview
Statewide Dual Credit Modern World History: Unit 6, Lesson 4
A discussion of the Enlightenment and its impact on political and social thought, including the American and French Revolutions. The text also explores the Enlightenment's influence on the abolitionist movement and women's rights. Includes excerpts from Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, Part 4: Law (Civil and Ecclesiastical).
The intellectual resources unleashed by the Scientific Revolution brought a similar transformation in social and political beliefs. For centuries, Western theologians and scholars had taught that human nature, mired in original sin, needed strong governments and laws to keep it in check. God ordained feudal hierarchies by determining what social classes humans were born into. Individuals should not seek to change the natural social order and instead concentrate on leading virtuous lives to gain salvation after death.
The Crusades, Renaissance, Columbian Exchange and Scientific Revolution challenged early modern beliefs. In the 1600s, Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler argued that the universe operated by specific, predictable laws. A century later, John Locke, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755), François-Marie d’Arouet (Voltaire) and Jean Jacques Rousseau similarly insisted that human beings were created with an innate ability to reason and use education and science to improve society by overcoming the ignorance and superstition of past centuries. John Locke’s arguments that humans possessed natural rights to life, liberty and property, and constructed governments to protect such rights, proved a tremendous inspiration to America’s founding generation. Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws (1748) postulated that mixed governments, which provided political representation to different social classes and divided power between different branches, represented more efficient regimes than traditional monarchies.
In contrast, the French philosopher Voltaire argued that although humans had natural rights and rationality, most were incapable of governing themselves. The best form of government was, therefore, one run by a benevolent despot. Voltaire also wrote extensively about the separation of church and state, particularly in his "Philisophical Dictionary". Perhaps the most expansive thinker of the Enlightenment, Rousseau argued that governments derived legitimacy not from divine right or tradition but the consent of the governed. When humans agreed to live together in organized communities, they created a social contract. Rulers whose dictates went against what the majority in a society wished could therefore be overthrown and replaced by a government more responsive to the needs of the people.
Enlightenment ideas quickly spread throughout the salons, university classrooms, pulpits and town squares of Europe. The theories of Locke, Montesquieu and Rousseau helped inspire the generation of American revolutionaries such as Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), who authored the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison (1751-1836) and Alexander Hamilton (1755 or 1757-1804), who contributed to the creation of the U.S. Constitution. Enlightenment ideas also played a role in the outbreak of the Haitian and French Revolutions. Ironically, although an absolute despot, Napoleon (1769-1821) helped to spread the Enlightenment-inspired ideals of fraternity, equality and liberty throughout his conquest of large swaths of western and eastern Europe.
Spotlight On | THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
By the convening of the Second Continental Congress in May 1775, hostilities had already commenced between Patriot and British forces. On June 11, 1776, Congress created a committee of five including John Adams (1735-1826), Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Thomas Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston (1746-1813) and Roger Sherman (1721-1793) to draft a formal declaration of independence. As one of the younger and most erudite member of the committee, Jefferson authored the initial document. Drawing from the Enlightenment thought of John Locke, Baron de Montesquieu and Jean Jacques Rousseau, Jefferson argued that all people had natural rights, that the purpose of government was to protect these rights, and that governments that usurped the rights of their citizens could be legitimately overthrown. The document then went on to blame British King George III and his government for restricting trade stationing British troops in American cities, suspending elected colonial governments, declaring martial law, supporting the Atlantic slave trade, and setting Native Americans against colonial settlers. Adopted by delegates from all thirteen colonies, the Declaration of Independence was read aloud from pulpits and in town squares across the newly created United States.
Enlightenment ideals also helped to create more progressive, egalitarian societies throughout Europe and the Americas. Many Enlightenment thinkers like Thomas Paine (1737-1809) and Thomas Jefferson became deists. Although they believed that God had created the universe and the natural laws that governed
it, deists maintained that humans could use their reason to promote good in the world around them. Methodist theologians of the mid-1700s, like John Wesley (1703- 1791) and George Whitefield (1714-1770), began to urge their congregations to cultivate personal relationships with God and pursue virtuous lives through their efforts. New denominations like Baptists promoted adult baptism and that all people, regardless of social class, were equals in God’s eyes. The notions of natural rights inspired numerous movements including the right to vote, the rights of women, and groups opposed to slavery. In the 1780s, British abolitionists like William Wilberforce (1759-1833) invoked natural rights to argue against slavery within the British Empire and the international slave trade. His efforts culminated in the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in 1807 and slavery in the British Empire in 1833. Mary Wollstonecraft’s (1759- 1797) A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) asserted that women and men enjoyed natural rights. On a more general level, Enlightenment beliefs that humans could use rationality and education to improve society led to the growth of universities, lending libraries, affordable primary and secondary schools, museums, hospitals and asylums.
Spotlight On | MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
Born in 1759 to a wealthy farming family, Mary Wollstonecraft became a successful governess and social companion. Inspired by Enlightenment thought and frustrated by the lack of professional options for women in traditional British society, Wollstonecraft published her seminal work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Stricture on Political and Moral Subjects, in 1792. Throughout her work, Wollstonecraft argued that women played a vital role in the health of the nation and as the educators of young children, women should be allowed to pursue educations so as to be able to raise future generations of British subjects. Furthermore, wives should be treated as companions of husbands rather than merely spouses. Wollstonecraft’s daughter Mary Shelley (1797-1851) would become famous in her own right as the author of the novel Frankenstein. Generations of women’s rights advocates would cite A Vindication of the Rights of Woman as inspiration for their causes.
Primary Source | Enlightenment Ideals
Excerpt from Voltaire (1764), “Philosophical Dictionary: Law (Civil and Ecclesiastical) ”
No law made by the Church should ever have the least force unless expressly sanctioned by the government. It was owing to this precaution that Athens and Rome escaped all religious quarrels.
Such religious quarrels are the trait of barbarous nations or such as have become barbarous.
The civil magistrate alone may permit or prohibit labor on religious festivals, since it is not the function of the priest to forbid men to cultivate their fields.
Everything relating to marriage should depend entirely upon the civil magistrate. The priests should confine themselves to the august function of blessing the union.
Lending money at interest should be regulated entirely by the civil law, since trade is governed by civil law.
All ecclesiastics should be subject in every case to the government, since they are subjects of the state.
Never should the ridiculous and shameful custom be maintained of paying to a foreign priest the first year’s revenue of land given to a priest by his fellow-citizens.
No priest can deprive a citizen of the least of his rights on the ground that the citizen is a sinner, since the priest—himself a sinner—should pray for other sinners, not judge them.
Officials, laborers, and priests all alike pay the taxes of the state, since they all alike belong to the state.
There should be but one standard of weights and measures and one system of law.
Let the punishment of criminals be upheld. A man when hanged is good for nothing: a man condemned to hard labor continues to serve his country and furnish a living lesson.
Every law should be clear, uniform, and precise. To interpret law is almost always to corrupt it.
Nothing should be regarded as infamous except vice.
The taxes should never be otherwise than proportional to the resources of him who pays.
From The Philosophical Dictionary Part 4, Law (Civil and Ecclesiastical) https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/fleming-the-works-of-voltaire-vol-vi-philosophical-dictionary-part-4