The Enlightenment's Challenge

The intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment posed fundamental challenges to the ideological foundations of absolute monarchy. While Enlightenment thinkers rarely advocated revolution, their criticism of arbitrary authority, religious intolerance, and inherited privilege undermined the assumptions on which traditional monarchy rested. The movement's French character—many leading philosophes were French, and Paris served as the Enlightenment's capital—made its impact particularly direct.

Voltaire's career exemplified the complex relationship between Enlightenment and monarchy. His early imprisonment in the Bastille for insulting the Regent demonstrated arbitrary power's reality. His English Letters praising British liberty and religious tolerance implicitly criticized French absolutism. Yet he corresponded with Frederick the Great and Catherine the Great, believing enlightened despotism could reform society. His campaign against religious persecution—"Écrasez l'infâme"—challenged the throne-altar alliance without attacking monarchy itself.

Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws (1748) provided more systematic criticism. His analysis of separation of powers, based on misunderstanding British practice, became a foundational text for constitutional thought. His praise of intermediary bodies—parlements, provincial estates, nobility—as checks on despotism gave theoretical justification to aristocratic resistance to royal power. His sociological approach, explaining institutions through climate and custom rather than divine will, relativized monarchy's claims to universal validity.

The Encyclopédie, edited by Diderot and d'Alembert, represented the Enlightenment's most ambitious project. This massive compendium of human knowledge, published despite official prohibition and Church condemnation, disseminated Enlightenment ideas throughout educated society. Articles on political topics, while cautiously written, promoted concepts of natural rights, government by consent, and religious tolerance incompatible with traditional absolutism. The 28,000 sets sold demonstrated an eager audience for new ideas.

Rousseau offered the most radical challenge. His Social Contract (1762) proclaimed popular sovereignty as government's only legitimate basis. His critique of civilization and inequality questioned the entire social order monarchy maintained. His emotional appeal to nature and sentiment resonated with readers tired of aristocratic artificiality. While Rousseau's immediate political impact was limited, his ideas provided revolutionary ideology when circumstances permitted their application.