AP®︎ European History: Topic 4.3 Flashcards

Late-17th- and 18th-century movement that applied reason, observation, and criticism to society and challenged inherited authority

International network of thinkers connected through correspondence, travel, translation, and print

The view that reliable knowledge begins with sensory experience and observation

Locke’s idea that the mind begins without innate ideas and is shaped by experience, education, and environment

The view that reason can discover coherent principles and determine whether beliefs are logically defensible

The method of doubting claims that lack sufficient evidence rather than accepting them on authority

Universal moral or political principles discoverable through reason rather than dependent on a ruler or church

Enlightenment public intellectuals who used reason and criticism to advocate social reform

Belief that education, open inquiry, and rational laws could reduce ignorance, cruelty, and arbitrary government

German thinker who defined enlightenment as humanity’s emergence from intellectual dependence through the courageous use of reason

French philosophe who used satire and history to promote civil liberties, toleration, free expression, and legal reform

French philosophe who directed the Encyclopédie and later explored materialist and atheistic explanations of nature

Diderot’s multivolume work that organized practical and intellectual knowledge while criticizing superstition, intolerance, and hierarchy

Rights possessed before government exists, conventionally summarized by Locke as life, liberty, and property

The theory that legitimate political authority arises from an agreement among individuals to establish government

A hypothetical condition before political government used to explain why individuals form a social contract

English thinker who defended natural rights, government by consent, limited power, and the right to replace rulers who violated their trust

The principle that legitimate political authority derives from the agreement of the people subject to it

French thinker who compared political systems and argued that divided governmental powers were necessary to preserve liberty

Division of legislative, executive, and judicial functions so that political power checks political power

Thinker who defended popular sovereignty and collective self-rule but excluded women from direct political citizenship

The principle that ultimate political authority belongs collectively to the people

Rousseau’s term for the common interest of the political community rather than the sum of private desires

Italian reformer who opposed torture and arbitrary punishment and advocated prompt, lawful, proportionate penalties designed to deter crime

French economists who sought natural economic laws, treated agriculture as the source of surplus, and opposed mercantilist restrictions

Physiocrat whose Tableau économique portrayed wealth circulating through an interconnected economy centered on agriculture

The principle that government should let economic activity operate with fewer detailed controls

Scottish economist who argued in The Wealth of Nations that labor, specialization, competition, and freer exchange created national wealth

Specialization of workers in separate tasks to increase efficiency and productivity

Smith’s metaphor for how individual choices within competitive markets can unintentionally promote broader economic benefits

Support for property, contracts, competition, free trade, and freer markets instead of extensive mercantilist direction

Belief in a creator known through reason and nature while questioning revelation, miracles, and clerical authority

Scottish empiricist who questioned miracles and religious certainty while emphasizing the limits of reason and the role of habit

The view that matter and natural processes can explain life and thought without supernatural intervention

Rejection of belief in a deity, an explicit but minority position among Enlightenment thinkers

Radical Enlightenment writer who defended materialism and atheism and attributed religion to ignorance and fear

The principle that civil rights and public order should not depend on enforced religious conformity

The growing treatment of religion as a matter of private conscience rather than the basis of public membership

Lutheran revival movement emphasizing personal conversion, heartfelt faith, Bible reading, discipline, and active Christian conduct

Social space in which private individuals discussed public affairs and formed judgments outside formal government institutions

Elite gatherings in private homes where guests discussed philosophy, literature, science, and politics

Women who hosted and directed salons, selected guests, and connected writers with patrons

Commercial meeting places where mostly male patrons read news and debated politics, trade, and ideas

Official or private learned societies that supported research, debate, and public essay competitions

Institutions that let readers borrow books and thereby broadened literate urban access to new ideas

Selective fraternal networks promoting moral improvement, voluntary association, and often religious toleration

Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, arguing that women’s apparent inferiority resulted from denied education, not nature

French thinker who argued that women’s capacity for reason made their exclusion from citizenship contrary to natural rights