The Social Contract and the Enlightened Absolutists

One philosophe of this time was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He wrote The Social Contract. In it, one point he argues is that there is no justification for slavery. For instance, since slavery often arises from prisoners of war, Rousseau points out war is between states not people. Because of this, in war people should not be able to take other people as prizes. Rousseau states it is society that is the origin of slavery. He goes on to argue that societal institutions are bad. However, he is pro-education. How could this be? 

Simple, he was against societal institutions because they came from the monarch and not from a contract between people. Rousseau's idea of a social contract was between people and not between people and the government. Because education could be a contract between people, he was in support of it. 

One other major idea of Rousseau was the idea of the general will versus the majority.  Rousseau supported the idea that the majority should not have the final say on matters but rather the general will should. This meant that whatever is best for the majority of people should be followed not what the majority of people want. He reasoned this because some people were not enlightened enough to make their own decisions. 

With all this Enlightenment actions happening in western Europe. It is easy to forget Eastern Europe. However, they participated in the enlightenment too. Furthermore, eastern Europe featured many "Enlightened Absolutists". Three of them were Frederick the Great, Catherine the Great and Maria Teresa.  

Catherine the Great was actually pretty great. She overthrew her husband to become empress of Russia and had three main goals as ruler. The first was to bring Western European culture to Russia. She was very successful. She brought western art and literature to Russia and improved education. She even supported Volaire and his Encyclopedia. She fully supported the Enlightenment in Russia. Her second goal was domestic reform. Here is where she struggled. Originally she was against serfdom and wanted to improve the legislative system. However, when Emelian Pugachev lead an uprising of serfs, Catherine swiftly defeated him and decided peasants were dangerous  and therefore gave nobles complete control over their serfs.

In her third goal, Catherine was extremely successful. This was territorial expansion. Her armies were  able to easily defeat the Turks and her expansion threatened to disturb the balance of powers in Europe. To make the disruption less, Catherine made a deal with Prussia and Austria to divide up Poland between the three of them.

Partition of Poland

The next enlightened absolutist was Frederick the Great. Like Catherine, he also supported the Enlightenment and its culture. Furthermore, he encouraged the Enlightenment to be spread to his subjects. Frederick improved Prussia's schools and allowed scholars to publish their ideas. He improved the legal system and soon Prussia's officials became famous for their honesty and handwork. However, this does not mean Frederick was pro-peasant. He never abolished serfdom and even extended the privileges of the nobility. Furthermore, he continued to allow the oppression of Jews in Prussia. One other thing, Frederick did was expand Prussia. In 1740, he invaded Maria Theresa's German providence of Silesia. This doubled the population of Prussia and made it more powerful than any other of the German states. 

The last enlightened absolutist in the post is Maria Theresa. After loosing Silesia to Russia she was determined to make her state stronger. She did this in three ways. First was she limiting the papacy's influence in Austria. Second, she reformed the administration. She strengthened the central bureaucracy, settled provincial differences, and fixed the taxing system which included taxing nobles without special treatment. Third, Maria Theresa worked to fix the agricultural population which meant reducing the power lords had over their nobles. Even though she did not have the title of great, she still was pretty good.