What Is the Enlightenment?
Causes of the Enlightenment
Enlightenment Thinkers
Government Ideas
Impacts of the Enlightenment
100

A period in the 1600s–1700s when people began using reason and science to question government and society.

What is the Enlightenment?

100

his religious movement challenged the authority of the Catholic Church and encouraged people to think independently.

What is the Reformation?

100

This philosopher believed people had natural rights including life, liberty, and property.

Who is John Locke?

100

Rights that all humans are born with and cannot be taken away.

What are natural rights?

100

Enlightenment ideas inspired major revolutions in America and this European country in 1789.

What is France?

200

The Enlightenment emphasized this way of thinking instead of relying only on tradition or authority.

What is reason (logic)?

200

his invention helped spread new Enlightenment ideas quickly across Europe.

What is the printing press?

200

This philosopher argued that government should be based on a social contract between rulers and the people.

Who is Jean-Jacques Rousseau?

200

The agreement in which people give up some freedoms in exchange for government protection.

What is the social contract?

200

Some Enlightenment thinkers argued against this system of forced labor based on race.

What is slavery?

300

Enlightenment thinkers believed people had these basic rights that governments must protect.

What are natural rights?

300

This movement used observation and experimentation to understand the natural world and influenced Enlightenment thinking.

What is the Scientific Revolution?

300

This Enlightenment thinker believed government power should be divided into different branches.

Who is Montesquieu?

300

This system divides government into branches to prevent any one branch from becoming too powerful.

What is separation of powers?

300

Enlightenment ideas encouraged rulers to adopt reforms; rulers who did this were known as this.

What are enlightened despots?

400

This idea says government power should come from the people it governs.

What is popular sovereignty?

400

The success of scientists like Isaac Newton encouraged Enlightenment thinkers to apply scientific thinking to this area.

What is government or society?

400

This writer strongly supported freedom of speech and religion and criticized the French government.

Who is Voltaire?

400

This principle ensures each branch of government can limit the power of the others.

What are checks and balances?

400

Enlightenment thinking helped promote the idea that women should have greater rights and access to this.

What is education?

500

Enlightenment thinkers believed societies could improve through this idea of progress and rational thinking.

What is the belief in human progress?

500

The questioning of traditional authority in religion, science, and politics helped lead to this intellectual movement.

What is the Enlightenment?

500

This female Enlightenment thinker argued that women should receive the same education as men.

Who is Mary Wollstonecraft?

500

Enlightenment ideas often challenged this traditional form of government where kings ruled with absolute power.

What is absolute monarchy?

500

Enlightenment ideas influenced documents such as the United States Constitution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

What are Enlightenment political ideas?

M
e
n
u