1. AMERICAN AND FRENCH
REVOLUTION

2. THE ENLIGHTENMENT
• The enlightenment was an intellectual
movement from the 1700s, in which
people began to focus their attention to
nature and the perceived rules that
applied to it.
• For the thinkers of the enlightenment
every event has a cause and an effect.
• For them, man was a part of the natural
world, and great importance was given to
the idea of ‘natural laws’.

3. • These natural laws referred not only to
what we commonly call nature (the
outdoors, animals, plants, minerals), but
also to human behavior itself.
• As humans are seen as a part of the
natural world, all of their social creations
(economics, ideas, government, rules, etc)
have a ‘nature’ in itself.

4. • The enlightened believed that objects in
nature were governed by laws, which
could be understood and predicted by
men.
• The discoveries of, for examples,
Newton’s laws of physics, gave impulse to
the desire of finding rules and systems in
all aspects of nature.

5. Newton’s laws
• First Law: The velocity of a
body remains constant
unless the body is acted
upon by an external force.
• Second law: Force=Mass X
acceleration
• Third law: The mutual
forces of action and
reaction between two
bodies are equal, opposite
and collinear.

6. • This idea of ‘rules of nature’ gives birth to
modern natural sciences.
• For many of the enlightened scientists,
God had created the world and made
rules for it.
• Living in harmony and achieving progress
was seen as a byproduct of understanding
these laws.

7. RATIONALISM
• Is an idea of the enlightenment.
• It states that truth can only be achieved
through reason.
• That is why we call the age of the
enlightenment as the ‘Age of Reason’.
• Even for those more inclined toward
religion, science and reason became the
ways to understand God’s plan, and thus
be closer to him.

8. • This time also saw a
more tolerant view of
religious ideas, including
a more tolerant (if not
favored or encouraged)
take on atheism.
• Great thinkers, like
Baruch Spinoza,
forwarded the idea of
intellectual tolerance.

9. • The thinkers of the enlightenment were called
the ‘philosophes’.
• This is the French word for philosopher.
• They were philosophers, but also scientists,
social critics, mathematicians, etc.
• The philosophes used the printing press
effectively, keeping touch with each other and
publishing books, notably, the encyclopedia.

10. • The Encyclopedia, the
most important and
popular work of its time,
edited by Denis Diderot
and Jean D’alembert,
became a ‘handbook’ of
the enlightenment.
• This book was a
compendium of the
scientific, social and
political knowledge of its
time, but it also criticized
the church, government,
slave trade, torture, taxes
and war.

11. • French authorities frowned upon this type
of critical thinking (as did most of the
western rulers) and Diderot and other
philosophes were incarcerated.
• The ‘damage’ was done, though, and
people all through Europe (and eventually
the new continent) read and soaked in the
ideas of the enlightenment.

12. Montesquieu
• Wrote on his idea of perfect
government, in which power
is equally divided among
three branches:
– Legislative (which makes laws)
– Executive (which administers
laws)
– Judicial (which interprets and
applies the law)

13. Voltaire
• Voltaire was the
pseudonym of French
writer Francois-Marie
Arouet.
• He was sternly critical
of superstitious beliefs,
and of society and its
rules in general.

14. Rousseau
• Wrote on how a
government must be
chosen by its people.
• He wrote that people
are naturally good,
but corrupted by their
environment,
education and laws.