What is egalitarianism?
- The belief that all people are equal
- People are of equal worth & should be equal before the law
What did John Locke believe?
- Government must establish order in a society
- Supporter of democracy
- A man is born free with certain rights given to him by god
- Society must protect rights & provide security
- Laws must reflect the will of the people
- People have the right to life, liberty, and property
What was the enlightenment?
- Encouraged nationalistic thinking (loyalty to one’s country not king, or church)
- Children should become patriotic adults
- Attacked outdated gov’t attitudes and role of the church
- Demand reforms to abolish privileged groups
- Want a constitution
- Government controlled by the will of the people
- Egalitarianism
What were the middle ages?
- Medieval era (5th-15th century)
- Feudal system (rigid hierarchy)
What was the English Civil War?
- 1642-1651
- A series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians (“Roundheads”) and Royalists (“Cavaliers”) over, principally, the manner of England’s governance
What is absolutism?
- Sovereignty is embodied in the person of the ruler
- Responsible to god alone
- Respect fundamental laws of land though they claimed to rule by divine right
What did Thomas Hobbs believe?
- Government must establish order in a society
- Supporter of absolute monarchs
- Believed citizens must give up freedoms to ensure peace and order
What is the Divine Right of Kings?
A political and religious doctrine of royal and political legitimacy. It asserts that a monarch is subject to no earthly authority, deriving the right to rule directly from the will of God.
What did Jean-Jacques Rousseau believe?
- Direct Democracy (citizens should make laws directly, not through representatives)
- Social contract (citizens must agree to the direction of the general will, human nature is primitive, cooperation is key, gov’t must protect everyone, those who disagree must be forced to obey)
What did Montesquieu believe in?
- Believed that English government preserved the liberty of the people by the separation of power among three branches of government: the legislature, executive, and judiciary
- Thought that the power of each branch of government should be carefully defined to provide a system of checks and balances
- Influenced the men that later wrote the constitution (U.S.A)
Who was Thomas Jefferson?
- An American patriot and founding father from Virginia who drafted the Declaration of Independence
- Familiar with the ideas of Newton, Locke, and the French philosophies
- Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
- Government arose from an agreement between the ruler and the rules
What was the Boston Tea Party?
- 1773
- Bostonians annoyed with tax
- Dumped shipment of tea from Britain into Harbour as an act of defiance
- Britain viewed this as an act of rebellion
What is a social contract (Rousseau)?
- Citizens must agree to the direction of the general will
- Human nature is primitive (without law / morality)
- Cooperation is the key to the construction of society
- Government must protect everyone
- Those who disagree with the general will must be forced to obey
What is revolution?
A sudden extreme change occurring in any area of endeavour
- Political, intellectual, moral
What is collective consciousness?
May be shared by a group or nation when its members collectively share similar values, beliefs, and internalized feelings based on their shared experiences. A collective consciousness can develop when the people of a nation focus on their identity as a group rather than on their identities as individuals.
What did Voltaire believe?
- Freedom of speech and thought
- Strong monarch
- Monarch should be well educated and government
- Monarch must protect human rights
- Best ruler is an “enlightened monarch”
Who was King George III?
- Felt cabinet and Parliament under the Whigs had taken too much power from the king
- Supervised the government and appointed ministers
- Rallied a group within the Parliament to support his policies
- Some of his policies angered the American colonists, declared independence in 1776
- Lost support at home and Parliament reasserted its power
- Forced King to accept a new cabinet that would make peace with the U.S.
- Parliament passed a reform bill that limited the king’s right to appoint officials
What is a constitution?
- A set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed
- End of English Civil War caused the creation of a constitution
What is an encyclopedia?
- Ideas moved quickly through Europe and N.A. and the encyclopedia was published
- Many philosophers contributed and topics included religion, philosophy, art, literature, and government
- The Roman Catholic Church and French Government banned the book
- Demand for the encyclopedia grew
- Some monarchs embraced the ideas of the Enlightenment (Austria, Prussia, Russia)
Who was Diderot?
A French philosopher who supervised the publication of a huge encyclopedia that summarized human knowledge of that time
What was the Treaty of Paris?
- After Britain’s debt grew and needed to be paid off
- Britain began to tax people living in its colonies
- Americans unwilling to pay taxes (stamp, sugar, tea) without representation in the British Parliament
