AP European History

## Learning Outcomes

- Understand how Enlightenment thinkers applied reason to politics, religion, and society
- Identify how the Scientific Revolution helped shape Enlightenment thought
- Explain how reason challenged absolutism, church authority, and inherited privilege
- Distinguish between deism, atheism, secularism, and religious toleration
- Recall major thinkers including Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot
- Describe how salons, print culture, and the public sphere spread Enlightenment ideas
- Use this topic in AP European History causation, comparison, and continuity/change arguments

## AP European History Syllabus

For the AP European History, you are expected to understand how Enlightenment thought emphasized reason and challenged traditional authority, with a focus on the following syllabus points:

- Know that Enlightenment thought stressed **empiricism**, **skepticism**, **human reason**, **rationalism**, and classical sources of knowledge
- Explain how Enlightenment thinkers challenged prevailing ideas about social order, government, and faith
- Understand the link between the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, especially the search for natural laws
- Identify how Locke challenged divine-right monarchy through natural rights and consent of the governed
- Explain Montesquieu’s argument for separation of powers and Voltaire’s criticism of intolerance and clerical privilege
- Understand Rousseau’s idea of popular sovereignty and the general will
- Identify Diderot’s _Encyclopédie_ as a major vehicle for spreading critical and secular knowledge
- Explain the role of salons, coffeehouses, print culture, and the public sphere in spreading Enlightenment ideas

## Test Your Knowledge

_Attempt these questions before reading this article. If you find some difficult or cannot remember the answers, look more closely at that area during your revision._

1. How did Enlightenment thinkers use reason differently from medieval thinkers?
2. What was the connection between the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment political thought?
3. How did Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau challenge different forms of traditional authority?
4. What is the difference between deism and atheism?
5. Why were salons and print culture important to the spread of Enlightenment ideas?

## Introduction

The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement of the **17th and 18th centuries** in which European thinkers argued that human beings could use reason, observation, and criticism to improve society. For AP European History, the key issue is not just that people had new ideas, but that they began testing old claims instead of accepting them because of tradition, church teaching, or inherited custom.

This topic sits in **Period 2, c. 1648 to c. 1815**, and connects strongly to AP themes such as **objective knowledge and subjective visions** and **states and other institutions of power**. A strong AP answer will show that Enlightenment thinkers did not all agree with one another. What united them was a habit of questioning authority and asking whether politics, religion, and society could be understood by reason in the same way scientists studied nature.

> **Key Term: Enlightenment**
> An intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries that applied reason and critical inquiry to human society, government, and religion.

### From the Scientific Revolution to the Enlightenment

The Enlightenment did not appear out of nowhere. Its roots lay in the Scientific Revolution. Thinkers such as **Copernicus**, **Galileo**, **Newton**, **Bacon**, and **Descartes** had already shown that accepted truths about nature could be challenged. If the old model of the universe could be wrong, then older ideas about kings, churches, and society might also be wrong.

The crucial shift was this: during the Scientific Revolution, thinkers searched for laws governing the physical world. During the Enlightenment, thinkers searched for laws governing human behavior and institutions. Newton’s universe seemed orderly and governed by discoverable rules. Enlightenment thinkers borrowed that confidence. They asked whether society also had **natural laws**.

> **Key Term: empiricism**
> The belief that knowledge comes from observation, experience, and evidence.
>
> **Key Term: rationalism**
> The belief that reason and logical thought are reliable paths to knowledge.
>
> **Key Term: skepticism**
> A habit of questioning accepted beliefs and refusing to accept claims without examination.

This helps explain the College Board wording that Enlightenment thought emphasized empiricism, skepticism, reason, rationalism, and classical knowledge. These are not random terms. Together, they describe a method: observe, question, reason, compare, and then judge.

The movement also had deeper background causes. Renaissance humanism had revived classical texts. The Reformation had shown Europeans that church authority could be challenged. Print culture had created a larger reading public. These earlier changes did not automatically produce the Enlightenment, but they made it easier for new ideas to circulate and harder for old authorities to silence all dissent.

A common student mistake is to treat the Enlightenment as anti-religious from the start. That is too simple. Many Enlightenment thinkers believed in God. What they challenged was not always religion itself, but **revealed religion**, miracles, clerical privilege, and forced uniformity.

> **Test Tip:** In an LEQ or DBQ, do not start with “The Enlightenment rejected religion.” A stronger claim is that Enlightenment thinkers used reason to question church authority, religious intolerance, and claims based only on revelation or tradition.

### How reason challenged government, society, and faith

Reason challenged traditional thought in three main areas: government, social hierarchy, and religion.

First, reason challenged **absolutism**. Under traditional divine-right monarchy, kings ruled because God supposedly chose them. Enlightenment writers asked a different question: what makes government legitimate? Their answer often shifted authority away from birth and toward law, consent, or utility.

> **Key Term: natural law**
> The idea that there are universal principles, discoverable by reason, that should govern human society.

**John Locke** was central here. In his political thought, people were born with natural rights to **life, liberty, and property**. Governments existed because people entered a social contract to protect those rights. If a ruler violated them, the people had a right to resist. This was a direct challenge to divine-right monarchy because it made government conditional rather than sacred.

> **Key Term: natural rights**
> Rights people possess by nature, especially life, liberty, and property.

**Montesquieu** challenged concentrated power. In _The Spirit of the Laws_ (**1748**), he argued for a **separation of powers**. He believed liberty was safer when legislative, executive, and judicial authority were not held by one ruler or one body. Even if he misunderstood the British system, his theory became highly influential because it offered a reasoned answer to absolutism: power should check power.

> **Key Term: separation of powers**
> The division of government authority into separate branches to prevent the concentration of power.

Second, reason challenged inherited privilege. Enlightenment thinkers increasingly asked why nobles should enjoy status simply by birth. Rousseau later took this much further than Montesquieu or Voltaire. In _The Social Contract_ (**1762**), he argued that sovereignty rested with the people and should reflect the **general will**. This did not mean modern liberal democracy in a simple sense. Rousseau was less focused on protecting private individuality than on creating a morally unified political community. But he still challenged hereditary privilege by locating ultimate authority in the people rather than in kings.

> **Key Term: social contract**
> The theory that government exists by agreement of the governed rather than by divine right alone.

Third, reason challenged traditional Christianity in public life. This did not always mean atheism. For many thinkers, **deism** was the key alternative.

> **Key Term: deism**
> The belief that God created the universe but does not continually intervene in it, and that God is best understood through reason and natural law.

Deists believed that a rational creator had made a rational universe. Therefore, one did not need miracles, priestly mediation, or elaborate church authority to understand God. This view reduced the role of revelation and increased the importance of reason. It also supported **secularism**, because if public life could be guided by rational laws, then politics and education did not need to be controlled by churches.

> **Key Term: secularism**
> The principle that public life and knowledge should be less dependent on religious authority.

**Voltaire** is the best example of this challenge. He admired England’s relative toleration and freedom of print. He criticized superstition, fanaticism, censorship, and clerical abuse. He was not simply an atheist attacking belief. He was a deist who argued that organized religion too often supported cruelty. His response to the **Jean Calas** case showed this clearly: he used a real miscarriage of justice to attack religious intolerance.

A final area of reasoned reform was law and punishment. **Cesare Beccaria**, in _On Crimes and Punishment_ (**1764**), argued against torture and the death penalty. His logic was classic Enlightenment thinking: punishment should be rational, proportionate, and designed to protect society rather than satisfy cruelty.

> **Test Tip:** When comparing thinkers, organize by target of criticism. Locke challenged divine-right monarchy, Montesquieu challenged concentrated power, Voltaire challenged intolerance and clerical authority, Rousseau challenged hereditary privilege, and Beccaria challenged arbitrary justice.

### Thinkers, texts, and the spread of Enlightenment ideas

For AP Euro, knowing the big names matters, but knowing how they fit together matters more.

**Locke** linked empiricism to politics. His _Essay Concerning Human Understanding_ argued that the mind began as a **tabula rasa**, a blank slate. That mattered politically because if humans were shaped by experience, then education and environment mattered more than inherited status. It also weakened older ideas such as original sin as a complete guide to human nature.

**Voltaire** attacked intolerance and censorship.  
**Montesquieu** examined political systems comparatively.  
**Rousseau** pushed Enlightenment thought toward popular sovereignty and emotional authenticity.  
**Diderot** organized knowledge.

> **Key Term: philosophes**
> The writers and thinkers of the Enlightenment, especially in France, who used reason to criticize existing institutions and beliefs.

Diderot’s _Encyclopédie_, first published in **1751**, mattered because it was more than a reference work. It represented the belief that knowledge could be collected, organized, and shared outside old monopolies of church and state. It included practical information as well as philosophy, which itself challenged hierarchy by treating crafts and useful knowledge as worthy of attention.

> **Key Term: Encyclopédie**
> A major Enlightenment reference work edited by Denis Diderot that spread secular, critical, and practical knowledge.

The spread of Enlightenment thought depended on where ideas moved. This is where the **public sphere** matters.

> **Key Term: public sphere**
> Spaces and institutions outside direct church or court control where educated people debated ideas, including salons, coffeehouses, print culture, and learned societies.

In **salons**, often hosted by wealthy women, thinkers discussed philosophy, politics, science, and literature. These gatherings did not create democracy, but they did normalize criticism and argument. Coffeehouses, pamphlets, newspapers, and learned societies helped extend the same process. The **Republic of Letters** linked writers across borders, especially through French.

> **Key Term: salons**
> Informal gatherings, often hosted by elite women, where writers and thinkers discussed Enlightenment ideas.

Women played a major part in spreading ideas, even though many male philosophes denied them equal political rights. This contradiction is important. The Enlightenment spoke the language of universal reason, yet often stopped short of applying it fully to women. **Mary Wollstonecraft**, in _A Vindication of the Rights of Woman_ (**1792**), exposed that inconsistency by arguing that if women were rational beings, they deserved education and rights too.

This shows a wider AP point: the Enlightenment was reformist, but not always fully democratic or fully egalitarian. Students often overstate it. Many philosophes wanted monarchy limited or improved, not abolished. Some supported toleration but not mass political participation. That makes the movement more historically accurate and more interesting.

A useful final distinction is between Enlightenment thought and **enlightened absolutism**. The former was an intellectual critique. The latter was a political borrowing by rulers such as **Frederick the Great**, **Joseph II**, and **Catherine the Great**, who adopted selective reforms while keeping absolute power. That means a ruler could use Enlightenment language without accepting popular sovereignty.

## Key Point Checklist

_This article has covered the following key knowledge points:_

- The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries that applied reason to politics, religion, and society
- Enlightenment thought emphasized empiricism, skepticism, rationalism, and human reason
- The Scientific Revolution provided a model for discovering universal laws, which Enlightenment thinkers applied to human life
- Locke challenged divine-right monarchy through natural rights, consent of the governed, and the right of resistance
- Montesquieu argued that liberty was safer under separation of powers
- Voltaire criticized religious intolerance, clerical privilege, and censorship while supporting toleration
- Rousseau argued that sovereignty rested with the people and the general will
- Deism challenged traditional Christianity by stressing a creator knowable through reason and natural law
- Diderot’s _Encyclopédie_ spread critical and secular knowledge beyond older institutions
- Salons, coffeehouses, print culture, and the public sphere helped spread Enlightenment ideas
- Enlightenment thinkers did not all support full democracy or full equality
- Women helped circulate Enlightenment ideas, and Wollstonecraft challenged the movement’s limits on women’s rights

## Key Terms and Concepts

- Enlightenment
- empiricism
- rationalism
- skepticism
- natural law
- natural rights
- separation of powers
- social contract
- deism
- secularism
- philosophes
- Encyclopédie
- public sphere
- salons


The Enlightenment - Reason challenged traditional thought