HST560A: AP World History | Unit 6 | Lesson 11: Enlightenment Salon 1
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Enlightenment Salon
Preparing for the Enlightenment Salon
You and other students will participate in a simulated Enlightenment salon. As a participant, you will play the part of a famous historical figure who engaged in conversation in the parlor of a prominent hostess, Madame Geoffrin. Besides reviewing and enhancing the materials presented in this unit about the Enlightenment, the salon will cultivate your skills in critical analysis, strategic thinking, public speaking, research, and listening.
Before the salon, review or conduct research on the individuals listed in the Character Roles section. You should make an index card with information about the person on one side and the person’s name on the other. Use these cards to review the characters before the salon. During the salon, you can use the cards to guess participants’ identities.
To prepare for the salon, read the background material on the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, including the importance of salons and the role of women in the Enlightenment.
Character Roles
Your teacher will assign you a character role, and you will participate in the salon as that character. Some figures represented in the salon may have died before 1755, but all of them, based on their own convictions, would have formed an opinion on the topics under discussion.
1. Denis Diderot, encyclopedist
2. Voltaire, writer
3. Mary Wollstonecraft, feminist
4. Frederick the Great of Prussia, ruler
5. Maria Theresa of Austria, ruler
6. Catherine the Great of Russia, ruler
7. Montesquieu, political thinker
8. John Wesley, religious reformer
9. John Locke, political thinker
10. Thomas Hobbes, political thinker
11. Joseph II of Austria, ruler
12. Baron d’Holbach, scientist
13. Edward Gibbon, historian
14. Adam Smith, economist
15. Edmund Burke, political philosopher
16. Margaret Cavendish, writer
17. Alexander Pope, poet
18. Pierre Bayle, spokesman
HST560A: AP World History | Unit 6 | Lesson 11: Enlightenment Salon 1
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19. Baruch Spinoza, philosopher
20. Marquis de Condorcet, philosopher
21. David Hume, skeptic
22. Jeremy Bentham, philosopher
23. Napoleon Bonaparte, ruler
24. Thomas Paine, writer
25. Madame Geoffrin, hostess
Information About Character Role Research
Locate three credible sources on your historical character. Sources must include at least one primary source document, one book, and credible sources from the Internet. Follow the guidelines in the Chicago Manual of Style to document these sources. Your research should prepare you to discuss the following topics in an educated and knowledgeable manner:
• Human nature
• The ideal government
• Ideas on organized religion and the nature of God
• Ideas on justice
• Ideas on war
• Attitudes about education
• Human capacity to use reason for progress and improvement
• Famous quote along with student interpretations
• Famous works
Background Information on the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment
The Scientific Revolution wasn’t just about new ideas in science. It was about new ways of thinking about the world. The new world view that developed during the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment shaped the modern mind, with its emphasis on reason and progress. As a result of this period, people no longer accepted ideas on faith alone—everything was put through a rigorous analysis called the scientific method. The method was applied to all aspects of society, including the social sciences, which emerged during this period.
Those thinkers associated with the Scientific Revolution had a great deal of confidence in human progress. They believed the human mind could produce ideas and inventions that would improve the world. Reason could triumph in any situation. However, these thinkers were limited to the middle class and aristocracy. The Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment were not movements that, at least initially, impacted the majority of Europeans. This majority resented these changing ideas and felt threatened by such a drastically new world view.
A major part of this new scientific world view was an emphasis on secularism, which had grown during the Renaissance. Intellectuals stressed worldly explanations and insisted all things could be explained rationally and without recourse to religious views or the authority of the Bible. These ideas brought the intellectuals of the Scientific Revolution into increasing conflict with the church—perhaps most famously exemplified by Galileo’s conflict with the Catholic Church.
HST560A: AP World History | Unit 6 | Lesson 11: Enlightenment Salon 1
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On the heels of the Scientific Revolution came the Enlightenment, an intellectual and cultural movement that reached its height in 1750 in France, particularly in Paris. The Enlightenment built upon the skepticism that spread throughout the Scientific Revolution. As a result of the Age of Exploration, people had traveled all over the globe and some began to question long-held beliefs about the superiority certain races, religions, ideas, and philosophies. Skeptics insisted that nothing can be known without a doubt and that all knowledge must be questioned. As such, Enlightenment thinkers often found themselves conflicting with the religious intolerance of the church. They maintained that so much death and destruction had come from centuries of religious warfare, and they criticized the blind faith that many people displayed towards religious ideologies.
The Enlightenment was propelled by influential writers and thinkers who engaged in all of the pressing topics of the era. One of the most influential political thinkers of the seventeenth century was British philosopher John Locke (1632–1704). In 1790, he published the Two Treatises of Government, which presented new ideas about how people learn from experience and form ideas based on nurturing and education. These ideas challenged a well-accepted belief that people were born with certain ideas and characteristics. Instead, Locke insisted people were born as tabula rasa, or blank slates, upon which the world impressed various ideas and beliefs through experience and education.
Enlightenment thinkers were known as philosophes. Although the word is French for philosophers, the philosophes were rarely strictly philosophers. They were the most engaged and influential thinkers and writers of their era, and they spread enlightenment ideas throughout Europe. It was the philosophes who attended the salons, which were the gathering place of the Enlightenment. Philosophes engaged in lively debates about God, human nature, cause and effect, good and evil, and the meaning of life. They often used novels or plays filled with satire to convey their controversial ideas because direct attacks would have been banned or led to severe punishments.
Salons played an important role in Enlightenment society. Although the first salons took place in the seventeenth century, they came to flourish in the eighteenth century, particularly in Paris. Other European cities followed suit. Salons brought together the most influential and elite members of society: writers, philosophes, artists, visiting dignitaries, nobility, upper bourgeoisie, and government officials. They met in the beautiful drawing rooms (salons) of wealthy women’s homes and engaged in vibrant discussions about the most pressing topics of the day as written about by the philosophes. Salons provided an opportunity for the philosophes to promote their works and debate important topics. Salons became a place to escape the censorship prevalent in French society. As such, salons spread the ideas of the Enlightenment: deism, faith in reason and progress, economic and political liberty, education, social welfare, and justice.
Although prominent women—such as Marie-Thérèse Geoffrin (1699–1777), Julie de Lespinasse (1733–1776), and Claudine de Tencin (1689–1749)—hosted the salons, the reputation of the meetings depended on the guest list—that is, on its male attendees. However, a philosophe could boost his reputation by being associated with one of the most fashionable salons. The hosts introduced their guests to other prominent attendees, including visiting foreigners, and promoted their works. Salonnière Madame de Tencin helped promote Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws. Salons reached their peak from the mid-eighteenth century until the French Revolution; only a few salons survived and continued after the revolution.
By hosting salons, women were able to participate in lively debates and influence society’s most prominent figures. Madame Geoffrin’s salon was one of the most famous and long lasting of the Enlightenment period. After losing both her parents at a young age, Geoffrin married a wealthy businessman 33 years her elder. When Geoffrin finished raising her children, she established the twice-weekly salon—an artistic salon on Mondays and a literary salon on Wednesdays, at which Montesquieu, Fontanelle, Diderot, and Voltaire were regular guests. Her salon began around 1750 and continued for 25 years. Geoffrin’s popular salon also hosted prominent foreign visitors, including David Hume from England and the future king of Poland Stanislas Poniatowski. When her
HST560A: AP World History | Unit 6 | Lesson 11: Enlightenment Salon 1
©2011 K12 Inc. All rights reserved. Copying or distributing without K12’s written permission is prohibited.
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husband died, Geoffrin used a substantial amount of her large inheritance to finance the work of the encyclopedists. Besides participating in the salons, Geoffrin also exchanged letters with the enlightened despot Catherine the Great of Russia and the king of Sweden. Although many philosophes attacked organized religion, Geoffrin was a practicing Christian who would not allow such talk in her home. Prominent salonnières passed their hosting skills on to a younger generation of women who could keep the vibrant intellectual gatherings thriving. One such young woman was Julie de Lespinasse, who hosted a salon in her home every evening for 12 years.
Although Paris was the center of the Enlightenment thanks to the successful salons, enlightenment ideas spread throughout Europe and beyond. The ideas also spread from the wealthy upperclass to a growing middleclass, who were drawn to the enlightenment ideas of equality and opportunity. Enlightenment ideas also spread through various monarchies headed by enlightened despots. Some of these rulers enjoyed close relationships with the philosophes, who believed that influencing rulers was one of the best ways to create enlightened reforms. Russia’s Catherine the Great and Prussia’s Frederick the Great were two of the most influential enlightened despots.
Enlightenment ideas also spread beyond Europe and had very real consequences for the rest of the world. Enlightenment thought had a profound influence on the American Revolution. Fed up with a distant British monarch and constant attempts to control American commerce, the colonists rebelled and declared their independence in 1776 in a document based on Enlightenment ideals. Over a decade later, the U.S. Constitution of 1787 also epitomized the foundations of enlightenment thought as espoused by the philosophes: separation of powers (Montesquieu), freedom of speech and religion (Voltaire), a fair justice system (Beccaria), and power bestowed upon the people (Locke).
Women’s roles in the Enlightenment were mixed. Although wealthy women in the cities could influence and participate in Enlightenment discussion and government affairs in their salons, women’s participation in the business world had declined since the seventeenth century. Fewer women owned and operated businesses. Although women could gain access to a formal education, they were rarely permitted to study the same subjects as men. Even in education, women’s focus remained on the moral and domestic sphere, rather than matters of science and philosophy. Some of the philosophes argued for better education for women, but few argued for equal rights, which may not be surprising given that during the Enlightenment not all men enjoyed equal rights either.
As the Enlightenment came to a close—and incited by the French Revolution—one woman did make a strong case for equal rights, especially equal education. In England, writer Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) was outraged at some of the repressive policies toward women that she saw in the French Revolution. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s philosophy of separate spheres for women and men inspired these policies. Wollstonecraft offered her condemnation in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792. Wollstonecraft accused Rousseau and others of limiting women’s opportunities and confining them to a dull and uninspired role subservient to men. She argued that women ought to be given the same opportunities for education, because better educated women would lead to progress for society and improved lives for men as well. Women could also be more economically independent and valuable contributors to business and politics if they were given the chance. Wollstonecraft’s arguments extended to women the arguments the philosophes had been making for men over the last hundred years. She also launched the modern women’s movement and proved extremely influential to the next generation of female reformers.
