About the European Enlightenment Quiz

Answer: Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant's essay from 1784 denounced all church and state paternalism and held that people should be given freedom to use their own intellect. According to him, laziness, habit and cowardice have prevented a fuller freedom of thought. Kant was from Koenigsberg (the capital of East Prussia at that time) and lived from 1724 to 1804.

He tried to embody the Enlightenment motto "sapere aude," a Latin phrase meaning "dare to know."

Answer: True

Edmund Burke and Edward Gibbon were two exceptions, since they both served in the Parliament of Britain. But most well-known Enlightenment thinkers did not serve in any government posts, including Voltaire, Baron d'Holbach, Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, and Baruch Spinoza.

Answer: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In his famous writing "The Social Contract," Rousseau theorized about the best possible way to forge a political community in the face of an urbanized, modern world. In this work published in 1762, he famously wrote: "Every law the people have not ratified in person is null and void - is, in fact, not a law." He argued against the divine right of monarchs and held that the people have sovereign rights. Like his native Geneva, he thought that small city-states were the best forms in which political freedom could flourish.

Answer: John Locke

Voltaire, Diderot and d'Holbach wrote much about liberating humanity from religious tyranny. They deplored the corruption of Christian churches and state churches. Voltaire satirized those who believed that God was the all-loving and all-powerful Creator who made Earth the best of all possible worlds. Voltaire, Diderot and d'Holbach also undermined the idea of biblical inerrancy and deplored the warring factions within Christianity. John Locke, on the other hand, was an Anglican and thought the essential tenets of Christianity were in accord with reason and experience.

Answer: Denis Diderot

Not all Enlightenment thinkers were hostile to religion or spirituality. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a kind of pantheism. Spinoza was also viewed God as part of the material world. The English polymath Joseph Priestley was an Unitarian preacher. The English philosopher John Locke argued that Christianity's main tenets were perfectly in accord with reason and experience. Diderot once said that geometry was the only thing he did not doubt.

He was very skeptical of theism. Hostility to the Church was particularly prominent among Enlightenment thinkers in Catholic countries.

Answer: True

Many leading Enlightenment books were officially prohibited by the Roman Catholic Church. Among such prohibited authors were David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Blaise Pascal, Denis Diderot, Voltaire, and Galileo. This famous index was first established in 1558 and authorized by the Council of Trent by the Catholic Church. It was abolished in 1966 by Pope Paul VI.

Answer: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Most Enlightenment thinkers were not from the common people. Rousseau was the son of a watchmaker; when he was fourteen he was apprenticed to an engraver near the city of Geneva, Switzerland. But most Enlightenment figures had more privileged backgrounds. Montesquieu was a baron. Condorcet was a marquis. Voltaire was a lawyer's son and grew very rich from the profits of his writings. Edward Gibbon, the English historian, succeeded his father in the Parliament of Britain. Baron d'Holbach, who was a German-born aristocrat, kept a lavish salon in Paris. Cesare Beccaria was an Italian marquis.

Answer: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Rousseau abandoned his own children to the care of a religious orphanage, and he was conservative regarding the proper role of women in society. The Enlightenment left an ambiguous legacy for women and not all Enlightenment thinkers supported equal rights for women.

But some women did consistently voice their rights. For example, Olympe de Gouges was a French playwright, feminist and abolitionist who consistently fought for women's rights. She was executed for her outspokenness during the Reign of Terror in the turbulent years of the French Revolution.

Answer: Cesare Beccaria

Beccaria's work "On Crimes and Punishments" (1764) went through six editions within eighteen months. Americans like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson praised this work as well as French luminaries like Voltaire. Some monarchs of this time, like Joseph II, did implement Beccaria's idea that the death penalty was useless and savage.

But judicial torture was still common in many countries in the age of the Enlightenment.

Answer: Joseph II

In the Austrian Empire, Joseph II abolished not only serfdom in 1781-82 which enraged the Austrian nobility but he also abolished the death penalty. During his reign, Joseph II issued about 6,000 personal edicts and promulgated thousands of new laws. Joseph II tried to forge a rationalized, centralized, and uniform government for his diverse lands, a hierarchy under himself as supreme autocrat.

He died sonless and was reputed to be an agnostic or atheist. Catherine the Great, though she read philosophers like Voltaire, never abolished serfdom.