Related content

• Absolute monarchy
• Absolutism (European history)
• Age of Enlightenment
• Authoritarianism
• Benevolent dictatorship
• Carlos III of Spain
• Catherine the Great
• Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
• Charles III of Spain
• Communist State
• Counterintelligence state
• Despotism
• Dictatorship
• Dictatorship of the Proletariat
• Enlightened absolutism
• Fascism
• Form of government
• Frederick the Great
• Frederick VI of Denmark
• God complex
• Governor of New South Wales
• Gustav III of Sweden
• Illiberal democracy
• Inverted totalitarianism
• Johann Friedrich Struensee
• Joseph II of Austria
• Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor
• Lachlan Macquarie
• Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor
• List of Neapolitan consorts
• Louis XVI of France
• Mafia state
• Mahmud II
• Maria Carolina of Austria
• Maria Theresa of Austria
• Military
• Military dictatorship
• Military junta
• Nakaz
• Napoleon
• Nazism
• Oligarchy
• Ottoman Emperor
• Philosopher king
• Police state
• Rationality
• Russian Empire
• Russian Enlightenment
• Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquess of Pombal
• Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, Marquis of Pombal
• Single-party state
• Special BookSources 0816613923
• Template Authoritarian types of rule
• Template talk Authoritarian types of rule
• Theocracy
• Third Positionism
• Totalitarian democracy
• Totalitarianism
• Tyrant
• Voltaire
• Wikipedia Citation needed
• Wilhelm Roscher

Enlightened absolutism

Enlightened absolutism (also called by later historians benevolent despotism or enlightened despotism) is a form of absolute monarchy or despotism in which rulers were influenced by the Enlightenment. Enlightened monarchs embraced the principles of the Enlightenment, especially its emphasis upon rationality, and applied them to their territories. They tended to allow religious toleration, freedom of speech and the press, and the right to hold private property. Most fostered the arts, sciences, and education.

The concept—invented by German historian Wilhelm Roscher in 1847 —remains controversial among scholars.

Enlightened absolutists held that royal power emerged not from divine right but from a social contract whereby the ruler had a duty to govern wisely.

The difference between an absolutist and an enlightened absolutist is based on a broad analysis of how far they embraced the Age of Enlightenment. For example, although Empress Catherine II of Russia entirely rejected the concept of the social contract, she took up many ideas of the Enlightenment, being a great patron of the arts in Imperial Russia and incorporating many ideas of enlightened philosophes, especially Montesquieu, in her Nakaz, which was meant to revise Russian law.