The Enlightenment, Part I – Quiz

1. Identify three traditional authorities undermined by the Enlightenment.
2. Explain the key tenets of deism.
3. The Latin phrase ______________ means “blank slate” and was used by John Locke to describe the state of the human mind at birth.
4. ______________ argued that because causation could not be detected by the senses, it could not be fully known or understood by the human mind.
5. Hobbes, Rousseau, and Locke all used the phrase “______________” to describe an imaginary time before the institution of civil government existed.
6. Hobbes, Rousseau, and Locke all used the phrase “________________” to describe the imaginary act by which civil government was created.
7. Rousseau argued that human beings are naturally good, but that they are corrupted by their _____________, and that the State must be empowered to remedy this situation.
8. Identify the ways in which Hobbes’s and Rousseau’s discussions of civil government are similar.

Show answers

1. monarchy; aristocracy; classical texts; Christianity
2. God exists; He created the world; He is not active in the affairs of the world.
3. tabula rasa
4. David Hume
5. state of nature
6. social contract
7. environment or society
8. both are “rational speculations, ” and both ignore mediating institutions in society; both lead to absolutist conclusions