Enlightenment

Activity 1: Getting to know the Philosophers

Students will read about French Enlightenment thinkers from Choices Reading Excerpt.  And respond to the following questions and complete the chart. 

Enlightenment: Thinkers and thoughts of the French Enlightenment

1.     What were the goals of the Enlightenment? 

2.     Complete the following chart according to the information presented in the reading.

Activity 2: Getting to know the Philosophies 

Students can work individually or in groups to read and understand the following passages from Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu. 

Enlightenment Thinkers

“Common sense is not so common.” —From Philosophical Dictionary by Voltaire 

Voltaire

A Treatise on Toleration, 1763

 It does not require great art, or magnificently trained eloquence, to prove that Christians should tolerate each other. I, however, am going further: I say that we should regard all men as our brothers. What? The Turk my brother? The Chinaman my brother? The Jew? The Siam? Yes, without doubt; are we not all children of the same father and creatures of the same God?

1. What is Voltaire advocating in A Treatise on Toleration? Underline in the text and explain your selection below.

2. Do you think we as a world are any closer to his vision today than we were 500 years ago?  Why or why not?

Philosophical Dictionary, 1764

The most detestable example of fanaticism was that of the burghers of Paris who on St. Bartholomew’s Night [1572] went about assassinating the butchering all their fellow citizens who did not go to mass, throwing them out of windows, cutting them in pieces.

Once fanaticism has corrupted a mind, the malady is almost incurable . . .

The only remedy for this epidemic malady is the philosophical spirit, which, spread gradually, at last tames men’s habits and prevents the disease from starting; for once the disease has made any progress, one must flee and wait for the air to clear itself.

Laws and religion are not strong enough against the spiritual pest; religion, far from being healthy food for infected brains, turns to poison in them . . .

 1. What seems to be Voltaire’s opinion of religion? Underline the supporting text and provide your explanation below. 

2. How do you think this idea was received in France in 1764?

Jean Jacques Rousseau

The Social Contract, 1754

The social contract's terms, when they are well understood, can be reduced to a single stipulation: the individual member alienates himself totally to the whole community together with all his rights. This is first because conditions will be the same for everyone when each individual gives himself totally, and secondly, because no one will be tempted to make that condition of shared equality worse for other men....

Once this multitude is united this way into a body, an offense against one of its members is an offense against the body politic. It would be even less possible to injure the body without its members feeling it. Duty and interest thus equally require the two contracting parties to aid each other mutually. The individual people should be motivated from their double roles as individuals and members of the body, to combine all the advantages which mutual aid offers them....

1. According to Rousseau, when individuals agree to the social contract, what happens to their rights? Underline the supporting text above and provide your explanation below.

2. What is the motivation of the people when they submit to the social contract?  

Double Underline the supporting text above and provide your explanation below.

 3. Do you believe this type of setting will benefit people overall?

Montesquieu

The Spirit of the Laws, 1748

Democratic and aristocratic states are not in their own nature free. Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments; and even in these it is not always found. It is there only when there is no abuse of power. But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go . . .

To prevent this abuse, it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power…

In every government there are three sorts of power; the legislative; the executive, in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive, in regard to things that depend on the civil law.

The political liberty of the subject is a tranquility of mind, arising from the opinion each person has of his safety. In order to have this liberty, it is requisite the government be so constituted as one man need not be afraid of` another.

When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.

Again, there is no liberty, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for the judge would then be the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with all the violence of an oppressor.

1. How does Montesquieu believe government should be divided?  

2. Why does he believe this is necessary?  

3.  How is this different than previous ideas?  

Activity 3: Enlightenment ideas about/response to Slavery 

Students will analyze different responses to slavery by Enlightenment thinkers in France and offer their analysis. 

Enlightenment Views on Slavery

Directions: Determine each author’s perspective on slavery. Does the author support or oppose slavery? For what reasons does the author support or oppose slavery?

Snippet 1a -- Louis de Jaucourt, "The Slave," Encyclopedia, 1755 (The Encyclopedia was a famous Enlightenment text)

“Everything concurs to let humans enjoy dignity, which is natural. Everything tells us that we cannot take away from a person that natural dignity which is liberty.”

Masters who acquired new slaves were obligated by law to have them instructed in the Catholic faith. this motivated Louis XIII to authorize this horrid commerce in human flesh.

Snippet 2 -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The New Heloise, 1761

(Rousseau was one of the leading intellectual figures of the Enlightenment)

“I have seen those vast unfortunate lands that seem only destined to be inhabited by slaves. I have averted my eyes from that sordid sight with loathing, horror and pity; and seeing one fourth of my fellow humans changed into beasts for the service of others, I have grieved to be a human.”

Snippet 3 -- Denis Diderot, "Natural Liberty," Encyclopedia, 1765

(This excerpt is also taken from the Encyclopedia – see #1)

“Why did the Christian powers not consider that their religion, independent of natural law, was fundamentally opposed to Black slavery? The answer is that those nations needed slaves for their colonies, their plantations, and their mines.”

Snippet 4 -- Voltaire, Essay on Morals and Customs, 1756

“One hundred thousand slaves, Black or mulatto, work in sugar mills, indigo and cocoa plantations, sacrificing their lives to gratify our newly acquired appetites for sugar, cocoa, coffee, and tobacco---things unknown to our ancestors.

 Snippet 4 -- Abbé Guillaume Raynal, Essay on the Administration of Saint Domingue, 1781 (Raynal was a French Enlightenment priest and historian who collaborated with Diderot (see #3) on a history of the European colonies in the Americas)

White people are incapable of working in the field under the hot sun in Saint Dominque; thus to make the best of this precious soil, it has been necessary to find a particular species of laborers. Saint Domingue is a milder climate for the slaves than the hot climate from which they have been transplanted.

Snippet 5 -- Count Mirabeau, Speech to the National Assembly, July 1789 (Mirabeau was a moderate reformer in the early French Revolutionary government who favored a the establishment of a constitutional monarchy)

I demand to know how the twenty White people here from the colonies can be said to represent the people of color from whom they have received no authority. I demand to know by what right the 23,000 White voters have refused their fellow citizens the right to name representatives and have arrogated to themselves the right to choose representatives for those whom they have excluded.

Snippet 6 -- A delegate from Bordeaux (France), Speech to the National Assembly, March 1790

 “The abolition of slavery and the slave trade would mean the loss of our colonies; the loss of the colonies would strike a mortal blow to commerce, and the ruin of commerce would result in stagnation for the merchant marine, agriculture, and the arts. Five million French citizens exist only by the trade they bring. The colonies bring in an annual income of more than 200 million livres.”

Snippet 7 -- A delegate of the Owners of Property in the French Colonies of America Residing in Bordeaux, Speech to the National Assembly, date unknown (1790?)

End our fears by declaring that your proclamation on the Rights of Man does not extend to the Black people and their descendants. We have not enslaved them, but we discovered them in the hardest and cruelest slavery, and transplanted them to French colonies, under a kind of humane government, where, indeed, they work, but they live without fear for tomorrow.

Snippet 8 -- Maximilien Robespierre, Speech to the National Assembly, May 1791

(Robespierre was one of the most radical leaders of the French Revolution)

 I am here to defend the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Let the colonies perish if the planters, with their threats, try to force us to legislate in their private interest! I declare in the name of the Assembly, in the name of those members of the Assembly who do not want to destroy the Constitution, I declare in the name of the entire nation, which wishes to be free, that we will not sacrifice to the colonial deputies. I say that any other course, whatever it might be, is preferable.

 Snippet 9 -- Antoine Barnave, Report by the National Assembly's Committee on the Colonies, 1790

We have reached this level of prosperity thanks to our colonies. If someday they must gain independence, we must make sure to postpone that day so that we will be able to lose them without an economic shock and without a disturbance to our political existence.

Snippet 10 -- Henri Christophe, Manifesto, 1814

(Christophe, a former slave, fought with L’Ouverture in the Haitian Revolution; in this excerpt he recollects events in Haiti following France’s capture of L’Ouverture)

At the same time, notice was given to arrest all suspected persons throughout the island.  All those who had shown brave and enlightened souls, when we claimed for ourselves the rights of men, were the first to be seized . . . At first they [the French] desired to sell them into strange colonies; but, as this plan, did not succeed, they resolved to transport them to France, where overpowering labor, the galleys, chains, and prisons, were awaiting them.