Enlightenment And Imperialism

The Enlightenment was a European intellectual movement of the late 17th and 18th centuries that emphasized the use of reason and individualism. It was mostly influenced by Descartes, Locke, and Newton. The idea of enlightened absolutism valued reason rather than faith. Enlightened monarchs had total control but embraced rationality. Being an enlightened ruler meant allowing religious tolerance, freedom of speech, and the right to hold private property. The so-called enlightened rulers of the 18th century included Catherine the Great, Joseph II, and Frederick the Great. Joseph II ruled with more enlightened ideas than the other too but he lacked to make a long lasting changes during his reign. But to what extent did these rulers actually rule with enlightened absolutism?

The Enlightenment began with the English philosopher John Locke. It was an era of spreading faith in reason, in reason, and in universal rights and laws (The Enlightenment in Europe). The ideas that were embodied by Enlightenment were life, liberty, and property. It also led to the idea of natural right. The Enlightenment influenced the way people finally realized that divine right wasn’t right and start to doubt it. Throughout time Enlightenment has influenced many important events in history.

In America, as the society aged, it was influenced by two cultural phenomena. One was based on intellectual while the other was religion. As the 1700s advanced, American treasure improved, the wealthy spend their money on books. They were exposed to new ideas coming from Europe. On the other hand, the Great Awakening appealed to the less wealthy because it was for people’s emotions. The religious movement came over from Europe. The Enlightenment focused on reasons, science, rationality, and progress. The Enlightenment believed God made all men equal and that governor is born by the people. The Great Awakening cut across social, economic, and educational lines. It encouraged people to question the moral and

Enlightenment was a time period that revolved around philosophy, science, and society, and is less focused on religion. Enlightenment includes a concept proposed by the philosopher John Locke that all humans, when they are born, are entitled to basic human rights. The Enlightenment also includes the thought that things in the universe are constant, leading away from such a strong reliance on God. The concept of Enlightenment inspired many proceeding declarations, including the USA’s declaration because it encouraged equality to all men.

The scientific revolution made a vast impact on everyday lives, it caused computers, phones, and other items to be invented. This revolution has caused many conflicts, and with these conflicts it had changed the way people lived and made many people question life. The revolution had made many benefits for people and there were also some people that were harmed during this time. The scientific revolution had many different actions that caused wonderful objects to be invented and allowed people to know more about the world. Different actions were done to create the scientific revolution similar to when the societies developed conflicts, such as when Copernicus made the solar system, how the conflicts changed the societies by the church going against people, the people who experience harmed such as Galileo, and the people who benefitted from the change such as other boys.

From the late 1500’s to the late 1700’s, the Enlightenment period occurred. Thinkers and philosophers across Europe created ideas that changed the way people thought. For example, John Locke thought of the idea that everyone had natural rights. These rights consisted of the right to life, liberty, and property. Voltaire had the idea that the power lies in the hands of the people and their elected government. Benjamin Franklin, who had a great influence on the new government in the Americas as he told the ideas of government structure that he thought was better. Without these three people and their thoughts, the world wouldn't be the way it is today.

The enlightenment was a time in which leaders and philosophers promoted ideas during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that influenced people's thoughts concerning politics, social justice, human progress and religion forever. As said by Philosopher Immanuel Kant, “Enlightenment is defined as the upset of the established order/the awakening of one’s mind/forsaking society’s imposed mindset and establishing one for yourself.” (Document 12) These scientists like Issac Newton and writers like John Locke were challenging the old ways and because of that people became socially aware. From there came advancements that would help us grow into the people that we are today.

The Enlightenment brought many new ideas to the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries and lead to changes in society. The people of this time started to question everything that was in their lives and they looked to the philosophers. Many scientists began to discover new things and they learned about how things really worked. The people started to focus more on secular ideas and not spiritual ideas. Mostly everyone started thinking about why they wanted and focusing more on making the world better. John Locke, Voltaire, Adam Smith, and Mary Wollstonecraft all said that society can be made better by giving the people free will.

The Enlightenment was a period of time that stressed the importance of reason and individual ideas. Many philosophers published works criticizing a country’s monarch or divulging the flaws they saw in a system within the government, such as the justice system. The Enlightenment also stressed the importance of education, and as a result of this, literacy rates experienced a major upward trend. Now able to read the philosopher’s works, a larger sum of people now were educated on the corruptions within their government. This caused a questioning of traditional practices, and people began to believe they could revise their government. These new ideas played as a catalyst to acts of resistance, or in a broader retrospect, the French Revolution.

A lot of things happened within Unit 1, let us start with Chapter 17. Chapter 17 is all about The Age of the Enlightenment. European politics, science, philosophy, and communications were definitely reoriented during the timeline of the 18th century as part of a movement referred to by its people as the Age of Reason, or more specifically the Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinkers in France, in Britain and throughout Europe questioned the traditional authority and took in the idea that humanity could be made better and better through rational change. Women also had a really big impact on the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment created plenty of essays, books, inventions, laws, scientific discoveries, wars, and revolutions. The French and American Revolutions were impacted by Enlightenment ideals and respectively from the beginning of its descent to the top of its influences. The Enlightenment ultimately made the pathway for the 19th-century Romanticism. Women also had a big role in the enlightenment.

I agree that the Enlightenment was force for positive change in society. The Enlightenment was one was the most important intellectual movements in History, as it dominated and influenced the way people thought in Europe in the late 17th and 18th centuries. We will look at how it ultimately influenced the American and French Revolution which is still strongly governed by these ideas and principles today.

The Enlightenment was a period during the 1600 and 1700s where authority, power, government and law was questioned by philosophers. The causes of the Enlightenment was the Thirty Years’ War, centuries of mistreatment at the hands of monarchies and the church, greater exploration of the world, and European thinkers’ interest in the world (scientific study). A large part of the Enlightenment was natural law, which was the belief that people should live their lives and organize their society on the basis of rules and precepts laid down by nature or God; the principles of the Enlightenment in the 1600s through the 1700s influenced the development of the USA by advocating religious and social freedom, freeing the people from oppression, and providing

“God, who has given the world to men in common, has also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life and convenience” (Locke, 35). The Scientific Revolution concentrated on understanding the physical world through astronomical and mathematical calculations, or testable knowledge. The Enlightenment focused more on “Spreading of faith in reason and in universal rights and laws” (Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, 535). While the Scientific Revolution preceded the Enlightenment, both time periods sought to limit and challenge the power of the Church, through the spread of science, reason and intellect, and political philosophies.

The Intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment occupies an important position in the growth of Western civilization. How it totally affected society, especially French society is a subject of debate, from the beginning of the Revolution to today. In fact, two schools of interpretation are involved.

1. There were basic social and economic changes that were happening. There were also political crises that broke down the state authority. Another factor was the effect of political ideas from the enlightenment on people. Originally, people during the enlightenment were very cautious about changing the way politics had been but it gave people confidence. People started to gain confidence and fight more for freedom. The last reason was the expenses from the war that European states had to pay off and focus on that, and different ideas could become more important.