Devoir de Philosophie

Encyclopedia of Philosophy: The Philosophes

Publié le 09/01/2010

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In the eighteenth century, social and political philosophy in France, as in Britain, was influenced by Locke. But whereas in England, under a constitutional monarchy, government was parliamentary if not democratic, and there was religious toleration for all except Catholics, in France the monarchy was absolute, and once Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685 only Catholicism was officially tolerated. However, in the reign of his grandson, Louis XV, a degree of freedom of thought was permitted, through indolence rather than policy, and a group of thinkers, the philosophes of the French Enlightenment, created a climate of thought hostile to the status quo in Church and State. Their manifesto was the Encyclopédie edited in the 1750s by Denis Diderot and Jean d'Alembert.

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