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11 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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PIERRE BAYLE
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(1647-1706) He was one of a number of intellectuals who believed that the new rational principles of textual criticism should be applied to the Bible as well as secular documents. In his most famous work, the Historical and Critical Dictionary, Bayle demonstrated the results of his own efforts with a famous article on the Israelite King David. Undermining the traditional picture of heroic David, he portrayed the king as a sensual, treacherous, cruel, and basically evil man.
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PHILOSOPHE
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The intellectuals of the Enlightenment were known by the French term philosophes, although not all of them were French and few were actually philosophers. They were literary people, professors, journalists, statesmen, economists, political scientists, and above all, social reformers.
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MONTESQUIEU
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Charles de Secondat the baron of Montesquieu (1689-1755), came from the French nobility. He received a classical education and studied law. He also wrote Persian Letters and The Spirit of the Laws.
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SEPARATION OF POWERS
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It was a doctrine enunciated by Montesquieu in the 18th century that separate executive, legislative, and judicial powers serve to limit and control each other.
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VOLTAIRE
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(1694-1773) Son of a prosperous middle-class family from Paris, Voltaire received a classical education in Jesuit schools. Although he studied law, he wished to be a writer and achieved his first success as a playwright. By his mid-twenties, he had been hailed as the successor to Racine for his tragedy (whose name I can’t spell or type) and his epic Henriade on his favorite king, Henry IV. His wit made him a darling of the Parisian intellectuals but also involved him in a quarrel with a dissolute nobleman that forced him to flee France and live in England for almost two years. Well received in English literary and social circles, the young playwright was much impressed with England. He wrote Philosophic Letter on the English and took part in the Calas Affairs.
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DEISM
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It is defined as belief in God as the creator of the universe who, after setting it in motion, ceased to have any direct involvement in it and allowed it to run according to its own natural laws.
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DIDEROT
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(1713-1784) He was the son of a skilled craftsman from eastern France and became a freelance writer so that he could study many subjects and read in many languages. One of his favorite topics was Christianity, which he condemned as fanatical and unreasonable. AS he grew older, his literary attacks on Christianity grew more and more vicious. His most famous contribution to the Enlightenment was the twenty-eighth-volume, Encyclopedia, or Classified Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Trades, that he edited and called the “greatest work of his life.” Its purpose, according to Diderot, was to “change the general way of thinking.”
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DAVID HUME
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(1711-1776) He was an important figure in the history of philosophy and has also been called “a pioneering social scientist.” In his Treatise on Human Nature, which he subtitled “An Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects,” he argued that observation and reflection, grounded in “systemized common sense,: made conceivable a “science of man.” Careful examination of the experiences that constituted human life would lead to the knowledge of human nature that would make this science possible.
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PHYSIOCRATS
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The Physiocrats and Adam Smith have been viewed as founders of the modern discipline of economics. The leader of the Physiocrats was Francois Quesnay (1694-1774), a highly successful French court physician. Quesnay and the Physiocrats claimed they would discover the natural economic laws that governed human society. Their first principle was that land constituted the only source of wealth and that wealth itself could be increased only by agriculture because all other economic activities were unproductive and sterile.
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ROUSSEAU
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(1712-1778) He was born in Geneva and spent his youth wandering about France and Italy holding various jobs. He went back to school for a while to study music and the classics. Eventually, he made his way to Paris, where he was introduced into the circles of the philosophes. He never really liked the social life of the cities, however, and frequently withdrew into long periods of solitude. His political beliefs were resented in two major works. In his Discourse of the Origins of the Inequality of Mankind, he began with humans in their primitive condition where they were happy. There were no laws, no judges, and all people were equal.
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MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
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She is viewed as the founder of European feminism
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