Title: Enlightenment - Conservapedia
Headings: Enlightenment
Enlightenment
Contents
Political impact
The Enlightened revolutions
Leaders
Enlightened despots
America
Science
Deism
Pietism
Ending
Counter-Enlightenment
See also
References
Further reading
Primary sources

Content: This vision of French republicanism dictated that the participation of all citizens in the government would create a “general will” which would dictate policy and law. Unfortunately, the French Revolution deteriorated after 1793 with the execution of King Louis XVI and the emergence of Maximilien Robespierre and other hardliners in the French Assembly. Rousseau's famous lines in his work state that "whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free." Robespierre took this quite literally to build a homogeneous state and restore order to the nation. There were many dissenters who only joined the revolutionary cause to lower taxes and were unhappy with radical social reform. Thus the Reign of Terror began and the French Republic deteriorated into arguably the world's first totalitarian regime. The ascension of Napoleon to power marked a restoration of order and a more conservative movement. Leaders
Intellectually the Enlightenment was identified with the French " philosophes " who aggressively spread the new gospel of reason. They were a brilliant collection of scientists, philosophers and writers including Voltaire, Montesquieu, Holbach, Condorcet, Denis Diderot, Buffon, Turgot and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in France.