1. Thinkers of the Enlightenment Essay
Enlightenment The Enlightenment era was a new intellectual movement that stressed reason and thought and the power of individuals to solve
problems. Even though different philosophers approached their goal differently, they achieved it none the less. They all approached their goal
differently due to their different upbringings, their different backgrounds, and most importantly their different environments. A few among the many
enlightened thinkers were Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Baron Do Montesquieu, and Jean Jacques Rousseau. While some of their idea's are not used in
modern society, they were all instrumental to the modern society we live in today. More then anyone else Baron do Montesquieu helped shape this
country today. Baron...show more content...
Without him we might have strayed to an absolute dictatorship the likes of which was suggested by Thomas Hobbes. Enlightenment thinkers
challenged authority by speaking their mind to say the very least. They spoke their mind, instigated riots, and told people to change their own
government. The fact that they preached their mind alone without regard of consequence is enough evidence that they challenged authority. Although
many individuals were persecuted and intimidated into keeping quiet, they were not scarred by their respective governments and it is for that reason
that we enjoy the fruits of their labor. Had they not endeavored so, and had they trembled in the face of adversity, we might be living in a country
without any centralized government at all. Despite the fact that there were countless enlightenment thinkers, there are still many identifiable
similarities between various of them. For example Thomas Hobbes and Jean Jacques Rousseau both believed in the need for a social contract, and in
individualism. They both disagreed on how to go about these things. Thomas Hobbes described an absolute monarchy with limited rights. Jean Jacques
Rousseau on the other hand described an democracy with unalienable rights. These two thinkers are a perfect example who thought of different ideals,
practiced them in different ways, but nonetheless helped shape the world we live in today. Many people
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2. Essay On Enlightenment
The Enlightenment was a period of time when several ideas were spreading around Europe. And many of them made change to people's way of
thinking, some important ideas were: Natural Rights, the belief that people have the right to life, liberty, and to own property. The next one is the
Social Contract, the Social Contract was an unwritten agreement to follow the law of the country and in turn, get protection from the country. With the
introduction of the idea of Equal Rights, Enlightenment ideas were really starting to make sense. Some documents, such as the US Bill of Rights, The
Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the Haitian Constitution will prove the importance of Natural Rights. The US Bill of Rights had mentioned the
rights of the...show more content...
There was a document that told the reader of the fundamental rights that the citizen had that was called The Declaration of the Rights of Man, and that
is one of the holders of the meaning of natural rights. Article 2 says that, "[the] aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and
[unalienable] rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression", which means that the rights given to man, that
can't be taken away, are the rights to liberty, the right to own property, national protection, and resistance to tyranny. Sometime during 1801, the Haitian
Constitution was made, and this document took an extraordinary amount of Enlightenment ideals into consideration, as it says in Art V, "no other
distinctions exist than those of virtues and talents, nor any other superiority than that granted by the law in the exercise of a public charge. The law is
the same for all, whether it punishes or protects", and that's what it is. So, law is equal for everyone. So, with the evidence from three great documents
/sources, I can conclude that the idea of Natural Rights is the most important. To clarify, the US Bill of Rights, the Declaration of the Rights of Man,
and the Haitian Constitution of 1801, three essential building blocks of several important governments, emphasize the importance of natural rights.
And that's why the Enlightenment is still important, especially
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3. Impact Of The Enlightenment
The ideas of the Enlightenment movement in Europe to America has held lasting impacts on the United States throughout its history. Enlightenment
philosophy has been assimilated into American culture through the spread and attachment of ideas promoted by this movement. The U.S. founding
fathers, such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, paid close attention to these new ideas and concepts being shown through the Enlightenment to
use them as a representation of the new nation. Ideas and challenges change and are expressed through thinkers of this movement took shape in the
culture and minds of Americans politically, economically, and scientifically from the 18th century to the 20th century. "Aufklaerung" is German for the
word enlightenment. This is directly translated and defined as "clearing up". This explains the vision behind the Enlightenment movement. Before
these beliefs were carried to the United States, the movement was encouraged by the Protestant Reformation. They wanted others to question the
Catholic Church and question what they believe there life should be. The movement led to numerous books, essays, inventions, scientific discoveries,
laws, wars and revolutions. Originally the ideas behind the enlightenment was to question the traditional authority and to embrace the notion that
humanity could be improved through rational change. Although these are the traditional ideals, not all Enlightenment Thinkers agreed on all aspects.
Locke differed from hume,
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4. Essay on The Enlightenment
The Enlightenment Throughout Europe and the new American colonies in the 18th century there was a great movement in thought. This trend that
preceded the French Revolution is known as the Enlightenment. Revolutionary writers and thinkers thought that the past held only darkness and
ignorance, they began to question everything. Enlightened thought entered, or intruded, into all aspects of life in the 1700s. Governments were
drastically reformed, art and literature changed in scope, religion was threatened, the study of science spread, nature was seen in a new light, and
humanity evolved greatly. This new way of thinking was propelled by curiosity and observations of society and nature. The Enlightenment was a desire
for human...show more content...
Never the less, this time period sparked many important changes in thought. In countries such as France, where the Enlightenment thrived, the Catholic
Church felt very threatened by the philosophes and their new age thinking. Through the teachings of the Bible, religion has attempted to appease
people's natural curiosities. In Genesis 1:1–31, the Story of Creation is told to satisfy people's desire to know how they came to be. Throughout history,
the Church has explained tragedies such as the plague and miracles such as rain and harvests as divine intervention. When philosophes of the
Eighteenth Century began observing natural phenomena themselves and questioning long accepted ideas, the Church began to worry. A country built
around religion cannot survive if its subjects lose their faith. Prior to this era, people questioned nothing that was explained by their church. Farmers
accepted bad seasons because their minister told them that they were being punished. No one looked at nature as its own force. In fact, people feared
nature because God controlled it. People were inferior to God and the Church and had no confidence in free thought. During the Enlightenment, people
actually began looking to nature for answers; religion took a back seat. Through this revolution of thought and the study of nature, people for the first
time gained confidence in themselves
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5. Essay about European Enlightenment
Enlightenment
The enlightenment was the growth of thought of European thinkers in the 1600's. The spread of enlightenment was a result of the Scientific
Revolution during the 1500's and 1600's. It resulted as a need to use reason to distribute human laws. It also came about from a need to solve social,
political and economic problems.
Joseph Priestley and Antoine Lavoisier built the framework for modern chemistry during the enlightenment. Edward Jenner built a vaccine against
smallpox, a deadly disease. These sort of scientific successes prompted European thinkers to use reason to find laws to govern the physical world,
which they called natural laws. Natural laws are laws that govern human nature.
Two prominent "thinkers" during...show more content...
A social contract is an agreement by which they gave up the state of nature for an organized society.
John Locke had more optimistic views that Thomas Hobbes. Locke said people were basically reasonable and moral. They had certain rights, called
natural rights, which belonged to a person at birth. These rights were life, liberty and property. In his writings, Two treatises of government, he argued
that people form government to protect their own natural rights. He believed the best type of government is that of which had limited authority. Thus,
he rejected Absolute Monarchy. Locke then said that if the government fails its' obligations or violates people's rights, people should be able to
overthrow the government.
Baron de Montesquieu studied governments of Europe. He published the spirit of the laws. He felt that the separation of the powers of the
government was the best way to protect liberty. He felt that each branch of government should be able to serve as a checks and balances.
In france the enlightenment thinkers were called philosophes, meaning lovers of wisdom. The most famous of the philosophes was Voltaire. He battled
inequality and injustices, with his pen. He is famous for saying "My trade is saying what I think."
Another philosophe was Denis Diderot. He produced a 28 volume encyclopedia. This encyclopedia helped spread Enlightenment ideas throughout
Europe and across the Atlantic to the Americas.
The most controversial philosophe was Jean–Jacques
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6. Essay on The Enlightenment
The history of Western civilization cannot be neatly divided into precise linear sections. Instead, it must be viewed as a series of developing threads
that combine, interact, and, at various intervals, take pervasive shifts. The Enlightenment of the eighteenth century was one of these paradigm
historical shifts, challenging the traditional notions of authority by investing reason with the power to change the human condition for the better. This
ecumenical emphasis on reason and independent thought led to an explosion of change and development across science, philosophy, religion, and
politics. Later ideologies that would shape the socioeconomic landscape of the next two centuries were themselves shaped by the threads of
Enlightenment...show more content...
Anthropological optimism pervaded the philosophical debates, however, standing in stark contrast to the pious hierarchical philosophies of the Middle
Ages. As the Enlightenment ideals of reason and unfettered thinking were applied to the religious realm, they produced diverse effects. It does not
suffice merely to say that the time period was characterized by a universal decline in religion, for in addition to the anti–religious diatribes of those
such as Voltaire, there was a rise in several diverse religious schools of thought. Deism, which arose in the late seventeenth century in England, was a
popular product of the search for a rational and natural religion because of its denial of God's active involvement with the world after creation.
Although many started to call special revelation and the validity of scriptural claims into question, the rise of devotional movements such as Pietism
and Methodism exemplified the range of religious thought and practice during the Enlightenment. Religion was going through metamorphosis, not
annihilation. Politically and economically, the Enlightenment gave birth to as wide a range of ideologies as it did religiously. The philosophical
emphasis on the potential of man led to a spectacular amount of new thinking in the areas of liberty, natural rights, and the structure of government.
Although the particular course that political thought took during this time varied between nations,
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7. The Enlightenment Essay
Newton's publication of Principia Mathematica in 1677, as well as the Glorious Revolution, paved the way for the beginning of the Age of
Enlightenment. Promoting critical thinking about the world and about humankind, the Enlightenment based itself primarily on scientific questioning
and empirical analysis. Scientists and philosophers of the eighteenth century questioned the traditional ideas about the universe, society, and culture,
and rejected the Aristotelian worldview, skeptical because of its lack of verifiable evidence. Denouncing God as the creator of the universe inspired the
thinkers of the time to apply the newly founded scientific method in discovering the origin of all existence, leading to the scientific achievements of
Copernicus,...show more content...
The Enlightenment's secularized emphasis on rationality, rather than religion, fueled artists' renewed interests in classical antiquity, as the geometric
harmony of classical art and architecture seemed to embody Enlightenment ideals (Gardner 847). At the same time, the excavations of Pompeii and
Herculaneum in the mid–eighteenth century turned men's thoughts to Antiquity (Praeger 382). In 1764, Winkelmann wrote his well–known History of
Ancient Art, in which he contrasted the "noble simplicity and calm grandeur" of Ancient Greece with the "irresponsibility, extravagance, and
impertinent fire" of the Baroque period (Cumming 250). During the French Revolution, even Napoleon Bonaparte took advantage of the stylistic
potentialities inherent in the Classical Revival, and enhanced the effect to produce the so–called Empirical style (Praeger 382). Thus the Greek Revival
became by infiltration the style of the Court (Praeger 382). Architects of the Neoclassical period turned away from the theatricality and ostentation of
Baroque and Rococo design and instead embraced a more streamlined classicism by incorporating Romanesque themes into works, such as blank walls
except for a repeated garland motif near the top, columns, and domes. One could say that the
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8. Enlightenment Argument
The Enlightenment Period, otherwise known as the Age of Reason was a period in time when intelligent individuals believed if given the ability to
reason from God or nature, they would be able to unveil truths and find answers in any proposed question (Background Essay). The Enlightenment
period started in France where thinkers from Britain, France and throughout Europe questioned the eccentric traditional authority and took in the idea
that humanity could be improved through rational change. French philosopher Voltairewho appraised and promoted freedom of speech believed it
would lead to a stable society and was the best weapon against bad government. A new society should prioritize the Enlightenment ideas of freedom of
expression because there are different groups of people who struggle to gain full access to speak up because of reasons including poverty, racial
discrimination and cultural pressure. Although a strong case could be made that freedom of economics would be better to focus on, this argument is
unconvincing because the wealth would eventually be unevenly distributed, limiting freedom of the many unfortunate others with less luxury.
To begin with, all men are created equal and independent with their own natural inalienable [life, liberty, property] rights to have their opinions heard.
Their freedom to speak up would not only encourage social evolution, but would also lead to better ideas and promote a world with no
misunderstandings. Henry David Thoreau once
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