Social Sciences and History / Unit 4 SSH 0318 short lesson, about 20 seconds
The Enlightenment's Program
Captions available
The idea
Convenient dates: sixteen eighty-eight to seventeen eighty-nine. Reason was applied to science, morality and society. Philosophes held that progress was limitless, citizens should be equal before the law, and rational laws should serve the public interest.
In practice
The Encyclopedia from seventeen fifty-one, twenty-eight volumes.
Where people slip
Censorship, salons and an underground press carried the ideas. Most philosophes wanted a better monarchy, not a republic.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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