AP World History Unit 5 - Lesson 5.1

The Enlightenment

An Age of New Ideas

• Intellectuals during the 17th and 8th century began to emphasize reason over tradition and individualism over community values.
• Enlightenment did not bash traditional religion but made it less persuasive for political and social affairs.
• The Age of Isms: Schools of ideologies rose as they taught socialism and liberalism to society.
• Nationalism: Idea that emphasizes the unification or pride for a group with social, ethnic, historical, or lingual ties.
• Revolutionary ideas brought revolts and the desire to create states for a unified group, breaking apart European imperial empire.

New Ideas and Their Roots

• Empiricism: Belief that true knowledge comes from experiences and observations rather than established principles.
• Social Contract: idea started by John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, people give their natural rights to governments in exchange for protection, law, and order. Although only Locke believed the people had a right to revolt.
• Tabula Rasa: Influential idea from John Locke, proposed that people were born as a clean slate and ready to absorb knowledge. This argued traditional ideas that ancestry decided fate.
• Philosophes: 18th century group of writers and thinkers new ways to look at political, social, and economic theories. Ex: Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Adam Smith.
• Laissez Faire system: Proposed that governments should leave economic activities alone and allow a free market where businesses and consumers could thrive with free choice.
• Capitalism: Economic system where industries and factories are owned by private owners for profit.
• Deism: Belief that a divinity simply set natural laws in motion and does not intervene.

Age of New Ideas Continues

• As industrialization and urbanization increased, argument rose over who is to blame for the social ills that came with and whether government help is needed.
• Conservatism: Belief in traditional institutions, favoring reliance on practical experience over ideological thinking.
• Socialism: A system of public or direct worker ownership over production of goods/needs (community ownership.
• Classical Liberalism: Belief in natural rights constitutional government, laissez faire economy, and reducing money spent on churches and armies.
• Feminism fought for the increase in women rights such as voting, education, and participation in professional society.
  • Seneca Falls Convention was the first womens right convention in America.
• Abolitionism: Movement to end the Atlantic slave trade and free enslaved people.
  • In most parts of the Americas, slavery was abolished within 30 years of the end of the Atlantic slave trade system.
• As industrialized economies increased, serfdom decreased and gradually was abolished from European countries.
• Zionism: The belief of Jews that wanted to reestablish an independent homeland where their ancestors had lived in the middle east.
• Anti-Semitism: Hatred towards the Jewish people.
• Zionists faced difficulties in their mission as Muslim nations were already established in the middle east, but they did found Israel.