Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)
Saw that the population was rising faster than the food supply, thought Europe was heading towards starvation
Social Contract
A voluntary agreement among individuals to secure their rights and welfare by creating a government and abiding by its rules.
This allowed police officers to arrest any woman they suspected to be a prostitute. They were then permitted to give that woman an examination to prevent the spread of STDs. This is state-sponsered sexual assault.
Coffee Houses
Grew with the increased demand for leisure during the consumer revolution and helped spread enlightenment ideas
Most famous French philosopher. Produced many works that criticized social and religious institutions of France. Supported religious tolerance, natural rights, but didn’t believe in democracy, only enlightened absolutism
Philosophes
Popes response to galieleo
Despite him being a devote catholic, the pope ruled him a heretic and placed him under house arrest. But his books were published after his death
Salon
private drawing rooms where wealthy Parisian women would have intellectual discussions with aristocrats
Urbanization
Thanks to new technologies, fewer people were required for farming, leading many to move to the cities.
Denis Diderot
Collaborated with other enlightened thinkers to edit and publish an encyclopedia that contained a rational explanation for everything.
Affirmed Copernicus’ findings and through complex math of his own, found that plants orbit in ellipses, not perfect circles
John Locke
The enlightenment
Enlightenment thinkers applied new methods of reasoning to politics, and human institutions
Charter of towns 1792
Catherine the great extended civl liberties to Russian Jews
Paracelsus
Rejected the humoral theory and claimed that chemical imbalances caused disease, meaning chemical remedies could be used to cure people.
Diderot defined it as someone who knows about god, but actively rejects his existence
Natural rights
The idea that human beings, just by virtue of being human, possess rights like life liberty and property
Further overturned Galen’s theory by proving how the circulatory system works
Inductive reasoning
Using specific observations to create general principles
Reading Revolution
The transition in Europe from a society where literacy consisted of patriarchal and communal reading of religious texts to a society where literacy was commonplace and reading material was broad and diverse. Books also became less religious. So religious censorship increased
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
Attacked mercantilist economics. Promoted laissez-faire, free-market economy, and supply-and-demand economics.
Consumer Revolution
Middle and upper classes had more income, rise in demand for goods increased. People began wanting larger homes and more privacy and new venues for leisure
A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)
Argued that women and men were equal, and anything women seemed inferior at, it was only because they had been denied education and opportunities by men
Deism
Voltaire argued that there was a god, but god didn’t intervene in human affairs.
Enlightenment views of religion
Overall, religion was increasingly viewed as a matter of private, rather than public concern. Structures of society grew increasingly secular.
During the scientific Revolution, the scientific method was invented, which emphasizes observations and experimentation
Challenged the geocentric model of the universe through mathematics and put forward the heliocentric model, where everything orbits the sun.
Neoclassicism
Using general principles to determine specific consitions
Francis Bacon
Developed inductive reasoning
