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Château de la Brède, Montesquieu's birthplace. Montesquieu was born at the Château de la Brède in southwest France, 25 kilometres (16 mi) south of Bordeaux. [4] His father, Jacques de Secondat (1654–1713), was a soldier with a long noble ancestry, including descent from Richard de la Pole, Yorkist claimant to the English crown.
Montesquieu's treatise, already widely disseminated, had an enormous influence on the work of many others, most notably: Catherine the Great, who produced Nakaz (Instruction); the Founding Fathers of the United States Constitution; and Alexis de Tocqueville, who applied Montesquieu's methods to a study of American society, in Democracy in America.
The philosophes considered themselves part of a grand "republic of letters" that transcended national political boundaries. In 1784, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant summed up the program of the Enlightenment in two Latin words: sapere aude, "dare to know", meaning, have the courage to think for yourself. The philosophes used reason to ...
The Enlightenment was marked by an increasing awareness of the relationship between the mind and the everyday media of the world, [14] and by an emphasis on the scientific method and reductionism, along with increased questioning of religious dogma — an attitude captured by Kant's essay Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?, where ...
Montesquieu makes use of the concept of the state of nature in his The Spirit of the Laws, first printed in 1748. Montesquieu states the thought process behind early human beings before the formation of society. He says that human beings would have the faculty of knowing and would first think to preserve their life in the state.
French Enlightenment philosopher Montesquieu has been credited as one of the chief proponents of the doux commerce theory.. Doux commerce (lit.sweet commerce) is a concept originating from the Age of Enlightenment stating that commerce tends to civilize people, making them less likely to resort to violent or irrational behaviors.
The advantage of giving a standard definition of 'Deism' is to distinguish it from Christianity on the one hand and atheism on the other hand. Robert Corfe argues since deism is not organized as a church, and because it teaches self-reliance and to question authority through its intrinsic characteristics, it has little inclination to move toward the status of a highly organized body.
Rationalist humanism, or rational humanism or rationalistic humanism, [1] is one of the strands of Age of Enlightenment. [2] It had its roots in Renaissance humanism, as a response to Middle Age religious integralism and obscurantism. [1] Rationalist humanism tradition includes Tocqueville and Montesquieu, and in the 19th century, Élie Halévy ...