Enlightenment Political Thought
The age of Enlightenment marked the end of
one era and the beginning of a new one. New political and philosophical thought
began attacking age-old forms of rule such as Absolutism. These new ideas and
this new way of thinking eventually lead to a series of revolutions in Europe
and the American colonies. People who had been oppressed for hundreds of years
by Absolutist monarchs could take no more and wanted the liberties to which they
believed they were entitled. These people were enlightened through the printed
word by the philosophes to a new way of thinking and an idea that all men have
certain unalienable rights.
The
Enlightenment cleared the path for new ways of thinking about society and social
classes, which in turn influenced government and in several instances led to
revolution, which produced new forms of government. The most influential
thinkers of Political Reform in Europe were the Philosophes. The heaviest area
of discontentment was in France. The philosophes were disturbed at the
corruption and luxurious tastes of the King and his court, the aristocratic
bureaucracy, the debt that was incurred because of wars and the influence the
church was having on the balance of power. Though the philosophes wanted to see
a change in their government, they were quite divided as to the proper solution.
They stood their ground on many issues including religion, the law, economics,
society, government, and the rights of man in general. The
philosophes made it clear, particularly in France, that people were tired of
Absolutism, they were frightened of the King’s large army, they were tired
of heavy taxation, and the inability to practice their respective faiths.
Simply, people were tired of living in their oppressed
environment.
There were several major
societal changes and key innovations taking place at the same time as the
Enlightenment, the most influencing change was the development of a print
culture. Print shops were springing up throughout Europe with the heightened
use of the printing press. They became productive centers for the book trade
and publishing of newspapers, which spread the ideas of the Enlightenment to the
lower classes, thus, increasing literacy. Now that publishing costs for books
and pamphlets was much less expensive than before, the common person could
afford to purchase them. Because of this, many secular works were published.
“Toward the end of the seventeenth century, half the books published in
Paris were religious; by the 1780s, only about 10 percent
were.”
Some great political
writers, philosophes, surfaced at this time. One of the more notable writers
was Voltaire. In his writing, he was very aware of the problems with the French
government. He highly revered the British form of government and wanted France
to adopt some of the ideas that England had already been using. In his
Letters on England, Voltaire expresses his admiration for their form of
government. He states, “England is the only nation on Earth which has
succeeded in controlling the power of kings by resisting them, which by effort
after effort has at last established this wise system of government in which the
prince, all powerful for doing good, has his hands tied for doing evil, in which
the aristocrats are great without arrogance and vassals, and in which the people
share in the government without confusion.” This system of government, is
more or less what Voltaire wanted for France. He felt that a constitutional
monarchy involving participation of the people was what would solve the bitter
conflict. Voltaire also felt that the reason the revolutions in France were not
previously successful was due to the fact that none of their civil wars had a
moderate freedom as the objective and in the end, the revolutionaries were,
themselves, divided over what form of government was best. More or less,
Voltaire’s opinion states that England has had its own troubles with civil
war and still does not have a completely perfect government, but it is still
better than the Absolute rule of France. France’s approach to revolution
is distorted because they have no goal with their civil wars and they are not
unified. Lastly, he feels that they have been too quick in the past in killing
good kings.
Another prominent
political thinker of the time was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His writings focused
on his concern for people’s morals and goals in the society in which they
live. He sought to find the answer to the question of what exactly a good life
consists of and he analyzed the structure of society. Rousseu, however, did
write on a broad range of other topics. His most prominent works include:
Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, Discourse on the Origin of
Inequality, Discourse on Political Economy, and perhaps his most
famous work, On the Social Contract. In his Social Contract, he
discusses topics such as the rights of man, including the first forms of
government, rights of the strongest, slavery, sovereignty, and the civil state
as well as other topics. He begins by saying, “Man is born free, and
everywhere he is in chains.” He does not pity those who are in chains,
however, and more or less takes the opinion that man puts himself in that
position. He says, “If there are slaves by nature, it is because there
have been slaves against nature. Force has produced the first slaves; their
cowardice has perpetuated them.” Rousseau believes that if enslaved men
really wanted to be free then they would find a way to gain that freedom,
otherwise they are cowards. He believes people have to want to lead a better
life, because if they do not strive to be better, then they deserve their place
in life. In reference to the community as a whole, Rousseau believed that each
person could obtain personal freedom and be a loyal citizen to that community,
each person’s freedom being defined as obedience to law. In his opinion,
the law was created by the will of the people of that
community.
Charles Louis de Secondat,
Baron de Montesquieu, was another great political thinker of the time. He wrote
Spirit of the Laws, which many consider the single most influential
political work of the entire period. Montesquieu, like Voltaire, held a high
regard for the British constitution as a means of regulating power of
government. In the Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu discusses ideas
concerning limiting the power of governments and dividing power among several
factions. He also states that the type of government a country has is dependent
on many factors including the country’s size, population, social and
religious customs, economy, traditions, and climate.
In his ideas about customs
influencing the government, Montesquieu states, “At the time when the
manners of the Romans were pure, they had no particular law against the
embezzlement of the public money.” Also, “The laws, which gave the
right of tutelage to the mother, were most attentive to the preservation of the
infant’s person; those, which granted it to the next heir, were most
attentive to the preservation of the state. When the manners of a people are
corrupted, it is much better to give the tutelage to the mother.” Thus,
by these examples, Montesquieu feels that if the government is adapted to the
customs of the people that corruption can be more easily
avoided.
Montesquieu also has some
interesting ideas about economy and trade. He says, “Commerce is a cure
for the most destructive prejudices; for it is almost a general rule, that
wherever we find agreeable manners, there commerce flourishes; and that wherever
there is commerce, there we meet with agreeable manners.” And speaking of
trade, he says, “Peace is the natural effect of trade. Two nations who
traffic with each other become reciprocally dependent; for if one has an
interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling; and thus their union
is founded on their mutual necessities.” He feels that a country cannot
flourish without the presence of trade relations with other
countries.
Maybe most interesting, is
Montesquieu’s idea that a country’s climate influences how that
country is or should be governed. In short, man has different temperaments
depending on the temperature of the air. He is more vigorous in cold weather
and more relaxed in warm weather. If a climate is cold and the people are
distempered, it is better to have a government where there is no single person
or monarch in which to lay blame. In warmer climates where the temperament of
the people causes them to drop projects without cause, and creates more of a
misery among the people, Montesquieu states, tyranny is easily instigated, which
is “always slow and feeble in its beginning, as in the end it is active
and lively; which at first only stretches out a hand to assist, and exerts
afterward a multitude of arms to
oppress.”
The way in which modern
day society is set up, especially in the United States stems from the
Philosophes’ ideas about society and law and government. Even modern day
economies reflect ideas that came about during the age of Enlightenment. The
Enlightenment was a revolution in political thought. The Philosophes had many
new, and even now, seemingly radical ideas about how man should be governed and
what rights man is entitled to by their government. Though Voltaire, Rousseau,
and Montesquieu were some of the more outspoken and well-known philosophes,
there were many others who wrote very different views, but they all had the same
intention of changing the Absolutist State. The people of Europe could only
take so much, especially the French Inevitably, the form of rule had to change
one way or another. Revolutions, one after the other, led by people of several
classes occurred throughout Europe throughout the mid-eighteenth century and
leading all the way into the early twentieth century and finally coming to a
head with the World Wars. Though in some instances it took many years to occur,
the ideas of the Enlightenment could not be stopped from spreading across Europe
and the entire world.
Posted: Sat
- August 28, 2004 at 10:55 AM