Part one of term paper
Marquis de Sade and the Enlightenment We are no guiltier in following the primitive impulses that govern us than is the Nile for her flood or the sea for her waves" - La Mettrie The eighteenth century embraced a secularized France in which the idea of utility, and not of salvation, were the principles by which one lived. Nature and reason in ...

Part two of term paper
... still looking to affirm her old values and moral codes. Many enlightened thinkers like Montesquieu argued for an emphasis on social, over individual welfare, and presented it as a solution left open by this vacuum. This concept eventually evolved to a redefinition of morality in general. Prior, morality and social laws were frigid and prone to the dictums of the Church. Now, they were accountable to general society, and not the individual's demands. Voltaire writes, " Virtue and vice, moral goo ...