Trace direct connections between specific Enlightenment ideas and the language of real revolutionary documents, as a bridge to next year's study.
Ideas do not stay in books forever -- eventually, some of them move people to act. In 1776, the American colonies' Declaration of Independence stated that people are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" and that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed" -- language that traces directly back to John Locke's natural rights and consent-of-the-governed arguments from last week. When the United States Constitution was later written, it built in Montesquieu's separation of powers directly: a legislative branch to make laws, an executive branch to enforce them, and a judicial branch to judge them.
Just over a decade later, in 1789, the French Revolution broke out, driven partly by the same Enlightenment ideas -- its Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen echoed natural-rights language too, and revolutionaries adopted the motto "liberty, equality, fraternity." These two revolutions did not happen only because philosophers wrote persuasive books -- specific economic grievances, unfair taxation, and political crises mattered enormously too -- but the Enlightenment gave both movements a shared vocabulary and a set of justifying ideas to draw on. You will study both revolutions in much greater depth soon; this week is your preview of exactly how a printed idea from week 33 can become a founding document a few decades later.
Mastery looks like: They can trace at least two specific phrases or ideas from Locke or Montesquieu directly into the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution, while also naming a non-philosophical cause of these revolutions.
Common stumbles: Assuming Enlightenment ideas alone caused the revolutions, without recognizing the real economic and political grievances involved.