Topic 5.1 The Enlightenment

In the late eighteenth century many people changed their mind about what made authority legitimate. Rather than basing political authority on divine right, some advocated new ideas about how the right to rule was bestowed. Many Enlightenment thinkers wanted broader participation in government and leaders who were more responsive to their people. This led to rebellions and independence movements against existing governments and the formation of new nations around the world. No longer content to be subjects of a king, new forms of group identity were formed around concepts such as culture, religion, shared history and race. Colonized people developed identities separate from the European societies from which they emerged.

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The rise and diffusion of Enlightenment thought that questioned established traditions in all areas of life often preceded the revolutions and rebellions against existing governments.

A. During

the previous era (1450-1750) Europeans grew more willing to challenge established authorities on matters of culture, science and religion. Borrowing the methods of science, the new ways of understanding the world began with one's direct observations or experience, organizing the data of that experience, and only then evaluating political and social life. In a movement known as the Enlightenment, European intellectuals applied these methods to human relationships around them. They did not hesitate to question assumptions about government and society that had gone unquestioned for centuries. Dismissing all inherited beliefs about social class and religion, they began from direct experience and asked why things had to be the way they were.

Since the middle ages, religion formed the basis of most every aspect of life in Europe. The Church sanctioned a hierarchical class system, supported the divine right of kings, and claimed to be the supreme authority on all knowledge claims. It did so by claiming to be the custodians of divine revelations which formed the basis of all that was true and were taken without question. During the Enlightenment, thinkers doubted the church's claim to possess a source of divinely revealed absolute truth. They instead emphasized the capacity of human reason and experience to arrive at knowledge. They despised all dogma--the belief in propositions given by authorities which are not open to be challenged or examined for one's self--and waged war against intolerance. In this regard, the most prominent figure is the French philosopher Voltaire. After wars of religion and the intolerance Catholics and Protestants demonstrated toward each other, Voltaire sought to destroy dogma and struggle against the power of the Catholic Church in European society.

The most profound influence of the Enlightenment was in political thought. New and radical ideas emanated from philosophers that challenged accepted notions of power. The English philosopher John Locke believed that all knowledge arises through experience, a belief that implies that experience rather than birth makes individuals who they are, thus calling into question the basis for the class system of Europe. He went on to argue that every individual has inalienable

Rousseau

rights--rights that cannot be taken away without a grievous violation of natural law. For Locke, the most fundamental inalienable rights were life, liberty, and the right to own property. The French philosopher Rousseau argued that the relationship between a government and its people was similar to a contract. This assumes that both parties are on equal footing and either side could violate the contract. Another English philosopher named Thomas Hobbes said that the only legitimate role of a government was to protect people from each other and anything beyond that was oppressive. The French philosopher Montesquieu also argued for a limited government. He believed the best way to limit the power of a government was to divide its most fundamental powers--the power to make laws, execute laws, and interpret laws in specific instances-- into three distinct and separate locations of the government. This had a strong influence on the American system of dividing government into legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government with checks and balances between them. The net effect of all these philosophers was to deny the legitimacy of a government with absolute power supported by religion rather than the general will of the people. The philosophers of the Enlightenment used the same assumptions about knowledge as the Scientific Revolution but used the methods to change how life was lived.

The philosophies of the Enlightenment influenced several important political documents that were used to challenged traditional forms of political authority and call for radical changes in society and independence from political regimes.

• The Declaration of Independence
  

  The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 is a fundamental document of the French Revolution and in the history of human rights
  Written by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence set forth a justification for the independence of Britain's colonies in North America by claiming the actions of the English government violated the inalienable rights of the colonists as British subjects. It evoked John Locke's ideas of the contractual relation between a government and its people and made the case that King George III had overstepped his legitimate political power thus giving the colonists the right to separate from England. See the text of the Declaration of Independence HERE
  
  

• The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen The Declaration of the Rights of Man was a product of the French Revolution. It was drafted by Lafayette, who was instrumental in the American Independence movement. This document proclaims the rights of all humans, regardless of social status. It effectively tore down the rights and privileges of the feudal class system and claimed that its concept of social equality and liberty were true of all people at all times and in all places. As an abstract declaration of rights for all people it claimed universal and abstract liberty and was a permanent gain of the French Revolution. See the text of the Declaration of the Rights of Man HERE.
  
  

• Letter From Jamaica This is another document motivated by the political ideas of the Enlightenment. Written by Simon Bolivar in 1815, it justifies Spanish America's independence from Spain. The document outlines the grievance the colonies have against Spain and speculate about the future of Latin America. Bolivar repeats his conviction that unity, rather than a US style confederation, is necessary for the states of northern South America. See English translation of the text HERE.
  
  

All of these Enlightenment-inspired documents imply a radically different arrangement of society than what was practiced at the time. For most of human history, varying levels of rights and privileges were assigned to groups in a society rather than to individuals. Such groups were differentiated hierarchically by caste, race, religion, ownership of land, or some other criteria, and laws were different for each of them; inequality between groups was taken as a given. Enlightenment thought explicitly contradicted these assumptions. Lifting group designations completely, at least in theory, society was viewed as a collection of individuals who deserved to be treated in a uniform fashion. This new concept of individuality and universal rights initiated struggles to bring equality to women, dissolve feudal class systems, emancipate slaves, and expand suffrage to a wider range of people. But social reform was not without challenges. The mulattoes in Haiti who claimed equality with the creoles did not think for a moment that those same rights belonged to slaves; landowning planters fought the emancipation of serfs and other groups of coerced laborers; and in Europe Pope Pious IX referred to universal suffrage as a "horrible plague which affected human society."