French+Revolution+and+Enlightenment+Ideals

Masha Kremliovsky


 * Prompt:** To what extent and in what ways was the French Revolution during the period 1789 through the Reign of Terror (1794) an attempt to create a government based on Enlightenment ideals?


 * Thesis:** Enlightenment values streamed from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the French Revolution during the period 1789 through the Reign of Terror in 1794, which could be seen through religious, government, and social reforms.

__Enlightenment Ideals__ __Fre____nch Revolution 1789-1794__
 * Outline:**
 * Rousseau's //Discourse on the Origin of Equality// - government is an evil necessity, direct demoncracy
 * Smith's policy of //laissez-faire// (to let alone) - supply and demand = natural economic forces
 * d'Holbach's //System of Nature// - humans were machines, God unnecessary for moral life (requires only reason)
 * Wollstonecraft's //Vindication of the Rights of Women// - women have reason, therefore entitled to same rights as men
 * reason, natural law, hope, progress; Kant's "Dare to Know!" - use own intelligence
 * Locke's //Essay Concerning Human Understanding// - //tabula rasa// (a blank mind); evil is a product of environment
 * Montesquieu's //Spirit of the Laws// - natural laws governing social relationships; separation of powers, checks and balances
 * Voltaire's //Arouet// - religious toleration, freedom of thought; "Crush the infamous thing" - religious fanaticism, intolerance, and superstition; //Candide// - humor to attack religious intolerance
 * Deism - built upon Newtonian world-machine, God had no direct involvement with world he created
 * Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (natural rights)
 * Parlement of Paris's (consisted of nobles of the robe) - advocated voting by order (separation of powers)
 * Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (Wollstonecraft)
 * Sieyes - "Third estate is everything, has been nothing thus far in political order, demands to become something"
 * National Assembly - separation of third estate from first and second estates; Tennis Court Oath
 * dechristianization: adoption of new republican calendar on October 5, 1793 - ended Christian calendar influence
 * calendar - 5-6 days left over at end of year to celebrate the revolutionary values - virtue, intelligence, labor, opinion, rewards; later abandoned
 * Notre Dame - November 1793, designated a Temple of Reason
 * National Convention began an anti-Robespierre coalition - feared they were not safe while he was free to act