Homework - Use the source material listed below to answer the questions on the assignment sheet. These sources will be the focus of class discussion in the next class.
Reminder - The question for the unit essay is "Should political decision be made from the top down (traditional) or bottom up (liberal)? You should be starting to organize your ideas and evidence for answering this question. Your essay should:
- Be no more than three pages - size 11 font with 1 inch margins
- Have a clear thesis with the structure of the essay following the logic of the thesis
Biography - Montesquieu
Montesquieu was born in France in 1689 to a noble family at a time when there was great anger toward the king, Louis XIV, for his unsuccessful wars and high taxes. As a young man he moved to Paris to study law. However, he was not interested in working as a lawyer or a judge. Because of the wealth he inherited from his family, Montesquieu spent his time on travel to England, studying the history of ancient Rome and writing.
In 1748, after 17 years of reading, writing and revising, he published the book On the Spirit of the Laws, which was more than 1000 pages long. In the book, Montesquieu attempted to make a science of the government. His work reflected Enlightenment ideas so that people, using their minds, could understand the world around them. He believed that the king’s power was dangerous but thought that a strong aristocracy could balance that authority. He admired England because the strength of the nobles limited the control of the king. Montesquieu wanted to make sure that no part of the government grew too strong. The best way to preserve freedom, he said, was to divide authority so that the ability to make laws, to carry out laws, and to judge laws would be controlled by different parts of the government.
Biography - Adam Smith
Adam Smith was born in 1723 in Scotland. Smith studied at both Glasgow University and Oxford University and became professor at the University of Glasgow in 1752. Smith was a quiet and absent minded individual who enjoyed reading books in his own library. While he was often awkward in social situations, he was known as an interesting and lively teacher. In 1764, while traveling around Europe, he met many other Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire.
In 1776, after returning to Scotland, Smith published his book called "The Wealth of Nations". His book had a big effect on economic thinking. In the book, Smith explains why he doesn't like mercantilism, which was used by governments across Europe. In mercantilism, the government controls the economy so that it can collect lots of gold and silver. Smith did not see the gold and silver as wealth for the country. Instead, he thought a society's ability to produce things, like food and goods, was a better indicator of a society's wealth. A society that could produce more was wealthier than one that had lots of gold and silver.
Smith believed that wealth was created through the hard work of people. He believed in a “free market economy,” where individual people are free to make their own economic decisions and the government only plays a small role. Smith said that a free market economy would make a society wealthy because when people choose to work for their own benefit, and they do work that improves the lives of other people, which makes society richer. Smith said that the laws of economics worked as an “invisible hand” to guide individuals to make decisions that create the best economic outcome.
Smith summed up this idea in The Wealth of Nations when he wrote, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.” This means that the butchers, brewers and bakers are not making these decisions to be nice - they are doing it because it makes them the most money. But when everyone in society acts in their own self interest, it actually benefits society.
Source # 1 - Excerpt from What is the Enlightenment by Immanuel Kant (1784)
Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! [Dare to think!] "Have courage to use your own reason!"- that is the motto of enlightenment. Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a portion of mankind, after nature has long since discharged them from external direction (naturaliter maiorennes), nevertheless remains under lifelong tutelage, and why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians. It is so easy not to be of age. If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth, I need not trouble myself. I need not think, if I can only pay - others will easily undertake the irksome work for me. ... ... After the guardians have first made their domestic cattle dumb and have made sure that these placid creatures will not dare take a single step without the harness of the cart to which they are tethered, the guardians then show them the danger which threatens if they try to go alone. Actually, however, this danger is not so great, for by falling a few times they would finally learn to walk alone. But an example of this failure makes them timid and ordinarily frightens them away from all further trials. For any single individual to work himself out of the life under tutelage which has become almost his nature is very difficult. He has come to be fond of his state, and he is for the present really incapable of making use of his reason, for no one has ever let him try it out. . . . . For this enlightenment, however, nothing is required but freedom, and indeed the most harmless among all the things to which this term can properly be applied. It is the freedom to make public use of one's reason at every point. But I hear on all sides, "Do not argue!" The Officer says: "Do not argue but drill!" The tax collector: "Do not argue but pay!" The cleric: "Do not argue but believe!" .... Everywhere there is restriction on freedom. . . . If we are asked , "Do we now live in an enlightened age?" the answer is, "No ," but we do live in an age of enlightenment. As things now stand, much is lacking which prevents men from being, or easily becoming, capable of correctly using their own reason in religious matters with assurance and free from outside direction. But on the other hand, we have clear indications that the field has now been opened wherein men may freely deal with these things and that the obstacles to general enlightenment or the release from self-imposed tutelage are gradually being reduced. In this respect, this is the age of enlightenment, or the century of Frederick.
Source # 2 - Excerpt from The Spirit of Laws by Montesquieu
In every government there are three sorts of power; the legislative; the executive, in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive, in regard to things that depend on the civil law.
By virtue of the first, the prince or magistrate enacts temporary or perpetual laws, and amends or abrogates those that have been already enacted. By the second, he makes peace or war, sends or receives embassies; establishes the public security, and provides against invasions. By the third, he punishes criminals, or determines the disputes that arise between individuals. The latter we shall call the judiciary power, and the other simply the executive power of the state.
The political liberty of the subject is a tranquility of mind, arising from the opinion each person has of his safety. In order to have this liberty, it is requisite the government be so constituted as one man need not be afraid of` another.
When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may anse, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.
Again, there is no liberty, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for the judge would then be the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with all the violence of an oppressor.
There would be an end of every thing were the same man, or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people to exercise those three powers that of enacting laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and that of judging the crimes or differences of individuals.
Excerpt # 3 - Excerpt from Sketch for an Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (1794) by Condorcet, a French mathematician, philosopher and revolutionary.
Such observations upon what man has been and what he is today, will instruct us about the means we should employ to make certain and rapid the further progress that his nature allows him still to hope for.
Such is the aim of the work that I have undertaken, and its result will be to show by appeal to reason and fact that nature has set no term to the perfection of human faculties; that the perfectibility of man is truly indefinite; and that the progress of this perfectibility, from now onwards independent of any power that might wish to halt it, has no other limit than the duration of the globe upon which nature has cast us. This progress will doubtless vary in speed, but it will never be reversed as long as the earth occupies its present place in the system of the universe, and as long as the general laws of this system produce neither a general cataclysm nor such changes as will deprive the human race of its present faculties and its present resources.
