What Enlightenment principle contested the principle of the divine right of kings?
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At the turn of the seventeenth century, European monarchs began to consolidate power, undermining old feudal institutions, such as representative bodies and the nobility, in order to establish absolute rule. This radical centralization of government power required a philosophical foundation to justify it. Jacques Bossuet, a Catholic bishop who was Louis XIV’s court preacher, provided this foundation in Politics Derived from Sacred Scripture, in which he laid out the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings. Bossuet used Scripture to justify royal authority without checks and balances, claiming that God has placed kings on their throne and it is the responsibility of the people to obey divinely appointed authorities without question. Rebellion against the king is rebellion against God. Show
James I of England (and VI of Scotland) was an advocate of the Divine Right of Kings and published some of his own texts about the subject, which he shared with his son, Charles I. According to James, while a king could not be limited in his authority by the people, a king would be called upon to account for his actions at the Last Judgment. With this in mind, Christian kings were expected to conduct themselves with the fear of God, acting as “God’s lieutenants” on earth. Louis XIV of France was another advocate of the Divine Right of Kings. His decision to rescind the Edict of Nantes, which had granted limited toleration to French Protestants, was partly an attempt to fulfill his obligations as a divine right monarch. He did not want to hear from Jesus, “Louis, why did you allow your people to practice a false religion?”
A great deal of the evidence that Locke used was from the Bible, arguing that people had the right to form governments by virtue of their common descent from Adam. Thomas Paine, in an effort to encourage American colonists to sever ties with the British monarchy, referenced anti-monarchy passages from the Bible in Common Sense.
Both Locke and Paine used ideas from Enlightenment philosophy in order to argue against divine right monarchy. Enlightenment philosophers valued rational thinking and did not place the same weight on sacred texts, such as the Bible, as a foundation for arguments. Of course, both still used the Bible in their works – Locke because he was a Christian writing in the seventeenth century, and Paine because he knew that references to the Bible would be seen as credible by his audience. In Western Europe, divine right absolutism did not survive the Enlightenment era. In England and Scotland, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 obliged the monarch to share power with Parliament. The French Revolution saw the abolition of the French monarchy, although it returned in various forms in the nineteenth century. In Central and Eastern Europe, “enlightened absolutists” continued to wield absolute power but attempted to do so according to Enlightened ideals. The French Revolution, like the American Revolution before it, was in large part inspired by the Enlightenment. Sometimes referred to as the ‘Age of Reason’, the Enlightenment was an intellectual movement that challenged old ways of thinking and inspired revolutionary ideas. The Enlightenment
began in western Europe in the mid-1600s and continued until the late 18th century. It was driven by scepticism about traditional ideas and beliefs, intellectual curiosity and a desire for social, political and technical progress. Enlightenment thinkers and writers challenged existing knowledge and assumptions, seeking new information and a better understanding of humanity and the natural world. Most Enlightenment thinkers were empiricists: they expected their new theories or
discoveries to meet certain standards of proof and verifiability before they could be accepted as fact. To achieve this, they developed a new system of thinking and investigation, the origins of what we now call the ‘scientific method’. Before the Enlightenment, knowledge was largely derived from religious teachings, supposition and the writings of ancient forebears. During and after the Enlightenment, knowledge was produced by scientific processes, logic and reasoning. Today, most people know the Enlightenment primarily for its scientific thinkers and their wonderful inventions and discoveries. In Italy, Galileo Galilei (1654-1742) developed an improved type of telescope that brought advances in astronomy. In the American colonies, Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) conducted a series of experiments involving electricity, battery power and lightning, the most famous
involving Franklin flying a kite in the middle of an electrical storm. In Britain, men like Isaac Newton (1642-1727) made significant contributions to the fields of mathematics and physics. The most memorable of these was Newton’s theory of gravity which, according to legend, was inspired by a falling apple. Other notables of the scientific Enlightenment included Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Edmond Halley, William Herschel, Robert Hooke and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. While
they operated in different fields, these men sought scientific explanations to natural phenomena, where previously information had come from religion, folklore and blind theorising. The Enlightenment was not just concerned with the physical sciences. While scientists were exploring and questioning
the natural world, others questioned the nature of humanity and human society. They gave particular attention to the nature of government and political power. Previously, rulers had legitimised their power and authority through the doctrine of ‘divine right’. They claimed that political power was a divine responsibility, a gift given to rulers by God. In Europe, the Catholic church supported the notion of divine right by including it in church doctrine. Because
the power of kings and emperors came from God, it was beyond challenge. To engage in rebellion or disloyalty against one’s king was to disobey the will of God. The French king Louis XIV (1638-1715), great-grandfather of the doomed Louis XVI, was a significant exponent of this belief. A devoutly religious leader, Louis worked to expand and strengthen the doctrine of divine right in France. God and the ‘social contract’Enlightenment thinkers began to question and challenge these archaic political beliefs. Today, we know these figures as the philosophes. The philosophes were not revolutionaries or radical democrats. They had no wish to destroy the authority of kings and governments or to dismantle or level social hierarchies. Nevertheless, they did not believe that political power emanated from God. In their view, the role of governments was to guard the nation, protect the people and secure their individual rights. English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was in favour of a strong government and absolutist monarchy. This type of government, Hobbes believed, was necessary to protect its citizens. Another Englishman, John Locke (1632-1704), argued that every individual was born with three inherent rights (life, liberty and property). These views about the relationship between government power and individual rights formed the theory of a ‘social contract’. In France, the best-known exponent of this theory was Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78). The Enlightenment in FranceThe European Enlightenment differed from country to country and was often shaped by local conditions and grievances. In France, the Enlightenment began to take shape in the early 1700s, reaching its peak by the middle of the century. French philosophes included Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Guillaume-Thomas Raynal, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu[/caption]>Baron de Montesquieu and François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire). Politically, most of these philosophes were concerned with two issues: how to understand and improve government and how to create a society based on reason, logic and merit. English modelsSome philosophes looked for ideas abroad, particularly in England. Montesquieu’s conception of the ‘separation of powers’, for example, was largely derived from the British political system. Voltaire spent three years in voluntary exile in England and later praised its democratic processes, its rule of law, its freedoms of religion and speech and its lack of arbitrary arrests and imprisonment. All this stood in striking contrast to France, where royal power was often used to silence or punish critics, dissidents and free thinkers. The deistsVoltaire aside, most Enlightenment avoided attacks or sustained criticism of religion. Most philosophes were Christian deists, not atheists. They maintained a belief in God but considered God a more benign figure than the vengeful, interventionist figure of the Old Testament. The analogy favoured by some deists was God as a ‘cosmic watchmaker’, an all-powerful deity who had constructed the universe but left it to run according to natural laws. This reimagining of God, along with other tenets of the Enlightenment, was criticised by the Catholic church. Theological opposition to the Enlightenment was hardly surprising. For centuries, the church had served as Europe’s largest repository of wisdom and knowledge. The political Enlightenment challenged the church’s stranglehold over knowledge, information and education. It also threatened the privileges and protections it enjoyed from the state. A surge in thinking and debateThe Enlightenment had a profound effect on the ideology of the French Revolution. Most notable philosophes were dead long before the 1780s – and some of their writings pre-dated the revolution by decades (Diderot’s first Encyclopedie was published in 1752, Voltaire’s Letters on England in 1734, Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws in 1748). None of these Enlightenment texts predicted or suggested a revolution in France. Despite this, the Enlightenment created an ideological context for revolution. Its political questions triggered a wave of discussion and debate, some of it organised and formalised in France’s salons and circles. This upsurge of political ideas created an environment where questioning and criticising the old order was not just possible, it was expected. Importantly, the political philosophy of the Enlightenment stripped away much of the magic and mystique of the Ancien Régime. The Bourbon kings were no longer seen as representatives of God; they were simply men. France’s social hierarchies and inequalities were stripped of their ideological defences. According to the ideas of the Enlightenment, the ordinary people were born not only with rights but the right to expect better government. It was on this platform of ideas that the French Revolution was constructed.
1. The Enlightenment was a long period of intellectual curiosity, scientific investigation and political debate. It began in western Europe in the mid 17th century and continued until the end of the 18th century. 2. The Enlightenment was marked by a refusal to accept old knowledge, ideas and suppositions. Enlightenment writers and thinkers preferred to use logic, reason, experimentation and observation to reach conclusions. 3. The political Enlightenment examined the nature of human society, government and power. It also questioned the relationship between the state and individuals, who were assumed to be born with natural rights. 4. In France, the Enlightenment emerged in the early 1700s and was driven by writers and intellectuals called philosophes. Among their number were men like Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire. 5. The philosophes of the French Enlightenment were mostly dead by the late 1700s so did not play a direct role in the revolution. Their ideas and writings lived on, however, stimulating discussion, sparking curiosity and creating an environment where revolutionary ideas could emerge and flourish. Citation information Which Enlightenment thinker questioned the divine right of kings?The anti-absolutist philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) wrote his First Treatise of Civil Government (1689) in order to refute such arguments. The doctrine of divine right can be dangerous for both church and state.
How did the Enlightenment challenge divine right?Answer and Explanation: The Enlightenment stressed reason and progress over faith and tradition. Additionally, Enlightenment philosophers maintained the the right to rule should be derived from the consent of the governed, not from a supernatural entity.
Who opposed the divine right theory of monarch?John Locke was inspired by the humanistic and enlightened viewpoint that all humans are equal. So he refuted the doctrine of the divine and absolute right of the monarch in his book 'Two Treatises of Government'.
What did Enlightenment philosophers believe about absolute monarchs and the divine right of kings?Enlightened absolutists held that royal power emanated not from divine right but from a social contract whereby a despot was entrusted with the power to govern through a social contract in lieu of any other governments.
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