The Enlightenment
The Essential Primary Sources
Table of Contents
The Enlightenment
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Abstract
The Enlightenment was an eighteenth-century European and American movement to base thought on reason rather than on received authority, particularly religious authority. This was a revolutionary development in Western thought. It drew hope from the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century that major issues could be settled through reason. The scientific project, which to many eighteenth-century minds had culminated in Newtonian physics, exemplified what human reason could accomplish.
Contents
- The Enlightenment
- Kant and the Redemption of Enlightenment
- Rousseau and Radicalization
- From Locke to Jefferson
- English Bill of Rights
- John Locke: Second Treatise on Civil Government
- John Locke: An Essay on Human Understanding
- Charles de Montesquieu: The Spirit of Laws
- Voltaire: Candide
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Social Contract
- Voltaire: Philosophical Dictionary
- Catherine II of Russia: The Grand Instructions to the Commissioners
- Denis Diderot: Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville
- American Declaration of Independence
- Immanuel Kant: “What Is Enlightenment?”
- Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
- Jeremy Bentham: An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
- Marquis de Condorcet: Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind
- Thomas Malthus: An Essay on the Principle of Population
- David Ricardo: On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation