— The Enlightenment is an effort at using some of the notions developed through the Scientific Revolution to the study of man and society.
— Much of it is political in nature, and aims at proposing and devising a better system of government and social organization, the merits of which have to be proven rationally and scientifically.
— The English Revolution plays an important role in the process, especially by inspiring some thinkers in their political theories. Locke is a typical example, as he develops his model of government as a system of representation with the right to rebel. He is also an early psychologist, who comes up with the notion of the ‘blank slate’ (tabula rasa) to describe the mind of a child on which learning and experiences are inscribed/recorded with time.
— The French Enlightenment is much more active, if only because of the political situation created by the continuation of the absolutist monarchy. French political thought will therefore be more radical.
— Montesquieu and his Spirits of the Laws is a claim to prove that there are laws, like in nature, that should be obeyed and respected for a proper functioning of society. He also advocates the separation of powers as a means to counter arbitrary/despotic/absolutist rule.
— Voltaire is much more concerned with individual liberties and with a systematic opposition to established religion. His sarcastic attitude and profound commitment to freedom make him one of the most complex figures of the time. His contempt for the masses, however, makes it easier for him to envisage enlightened despotism as a political option.
— The ‘philosophers,’ as they call themselves are really social scientists with a political agenda. They have a claim to power, as expressed in the article “Philosopher’ of the famous Encyclopédie, where they dream of a world where kings would be philosophers, and philosophers, kings.
— Rousseau is one of the most extreme thinkers of the time, who differs from most of the Enlightenment philosophers by his emotional investment in a novel form of government, a democratic compact as described in his Social Contract. He goes beyond the usual respect for individual interest, and talks on the contrary of a superior collectivity that can and should impose its sovereign will on each citizen. He is already laying the ground of democratic theory, but also of nationalism, which will develop as the most powerful ideology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
