The Enlightenment: Ideas and Impact on Society
The Enlightenment: A Change of Mind
The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement that developed in Europe during the eighteenth century. Enlightenment thinkers based their ideas on three principles:
- Reason: They believed it was possible to analyze society by applying reason, which would lead to the continuous progress of mankind.
- Natural Rights: The human being was the center of their theory. They defended that people have inherent natural rights.
- Tolerance: They argued that tolerance should be the basis of human society.
The Enlightenment was a reformist movement that criticized the society of its time.
Criticism of the Old Regime
Enlightenment thinkers opposed the estate system. They believed that society was a system based on tradition, where the most important factor was family position. They defended a system of social and legal equality. They thought that the privileges of certain social groups (nobility, clergy, guilds) were an obstacle to economic growth, which is why these groups and institutions were highly criticized by the Enlightenment. Enlightenment ideas spread largely in Europe due to the publication in France of the Encyclopedia, directed by D’Alembert and Diderot.
Enlightened Despotism
The monarchs of the eighteenth century were influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment. We call the political system born from the application of Enlightenment ideas by absolute monarchies “Enlightened Despotism”.
Influenced by the Enlightenment, the kings of the eighteenth century carried out reforms in their kingdoms to improve the lives of the population. They spread education and improved water and food supplies. The kings wished to advance the process of concentrating power.
Enlightened despotism found support in physiocracy, the economic theory announced by Quesnay. For the Physiocrats, the wealth of an economy depended on agriculture. For a strong and powerful nation, it was necessary to achieve full agricultural production.
Political Revolutionary Liberalism
When the bourgeoisie realized that the absolute kings were not going to radically change political, economic, and social issues, they saw the need to achieve power to make profound changes and do away with the Old Regime.
The process of conquest of power by the bourgeoisie is called a bourgeois revolution, for example, the French Revolution (1789).
Liberalism was the revolutionary thinking that supported the bourgeois revolutions. Montesquieu and Rousseau drew on British liberal thought, extracting two essential concepts: the separation of powers and national sovereignty.
- The concept of the separation of powers was prepared by Montesquieu. He defended the existence of three powers: legislative, executive, and judicial.
- The concept of national sovereignty, expounded by Rousseau, stated that power corresponds to the nation, that is, to all citizens. The citizens establish a pact with the state, which is reflected in a document: the Constitution.
Economic Liberalism
Economic liberalism is the economic doctrine that is linked to the freedom of the bourgeois revolutions. This principle had two consequences:
- Anyone who wanted to and had adequate means should be able to open a business and make their own decisions.
- The state should not intervene in the economy.
Adam Smith defended that the economy adjusts automatically, through free competition, in what he called the “invisible hand” of the market. Likewise, through the law of supply and demand, the economy would be organized by itself, without the state needing to control it.