Article: Enlightened Despotism

ENLIGHTENED DESPOTISM

ENLIGHTENED DESPOTISM. One must first clarify the origins of the term: today "enlightened absolutism" is more commonly used. But in its original form, the term as coined by eighteenth-century French thinkers philosophers, philosophical popularizers, and social commentators, known collectively as philosophes described the kind of government they felt was necessary to break through the complex of laws, attitudes, and habits that maintained a society of unjust privilege, stunted economic growth, and perpetuated governmental inefficiency and waste. What they (and their fellows in other countries) desired was a despotisme é clair é . But this had ...

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