Did the Enlightenment Cause the French Revolution?

When the French Revolution broke out in 1789, many observers, both supporters and enemies, blamed or credited the philosophes. Revolutionaries moved Voltaire's remains to the Panthéon in 1791 and Rousseau's in 1794, and Rousseau's ideas of popular sovereignty and the general will echoed through revolutionary debate.

Conservatives like Edmund Burke argued that abstract theories of rights had led to destruction. Historians have tested these claims. Daniel Mornet's Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (1933) found that Enlightenment ideas spread widely but cautioned against a simple cause and effect. Robert Darnton emphasized underground literature that eroded respect for the monarchy.

Roger Chartier argued in 1990 that the Revolution in a sense 'made' the Enlightenment, by selecting certain authors as its ancestors after the fact; most historians now see Enlightenment ideas as shaping the language and goals of the Revolution, while its outbreak depended on a fiscal crisis, poor harvests and political conflict.