Enlightened Absolutism
a system in which rulers tried to govern by Enlightenment principles while maintaining their full royal powers. Rulers only acted enlightened when it benefitted them.
Nicolaus Copernicus
Challenged the geocentric model of the universe through mathematics and put forward the heliocentric model, where everything orbits the sun.
A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)
Inductive reasoning
Using specific observations to create general principles
Geocentric model of the universe
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.
Urbanization
Thanks to new technologies, fewer people were required for farming, leading many to move to the cities.
Catherine the great extended civl liberties to Russian Jews
Using general principles to determine specific consitions
Social Contract
A voluntary agreement among individuals to secure their rights and welfare by creating a government and abiding by its rules.
Philosophes
French thinkers
Thomas Hobbes
The body is made up of 4 substances: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and flem? Imbalance of these 4 lead to disease. This is where blood letting came from
Developed inductive reasoning
John Locke
Overall, religion was increasingly viewed as a matter of private, rather than public concern. Structures of society grew increasingly secular.
Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)
Saw that the population was rising faster than the food supply, thought Europe was heading towards starvation
The enlightenment
Enlightenment thinkers applied new methods of reasoning to politics, and human institutions
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
A French man who believed that Human beings are naturally good & free & can rely on their instincts. Government should exist to protect common good, and be a democracy. Similar ideas to John Locke. Idea of the social contract
Enlightened absolutists monarchs
Frederick the great of Prussia: tried to help the people. Increased freedoms of press and speech to weaken the nobility and strengthen his power.
William Harvey
Further overturned Galen’s theory by proving how the circulatory system works
Mary Wollstonecraft
English writer and early feminist who denied male supremacy and advocated equal education for women
Popes response to galieleo
Neoclassicism
Galileo Galilei
Built a telescope and observed that other planets and moons, existed, and weren’t just balls of light
private drawing rooms where wealthy Parisian women would have intellectual discussions with aristocrats
Rising birth rates, improving medical technology, vaccines, and bubonic plague went away
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
Natural rights
The idea that human beings, just by virtue of being human, possess rights like life liberty and property
Paracelsus
Rejected the humoral theory and claimed that chemical imbalances caused disease, meaning chemical remedies could be used to cure people.
