Pros And Cons Of The Enlightenment

He denounced tyranny. He insisted that when government violates individual rights, people may legitimately rebel” (Powell 2). He believed that the government was created for the people and not just the monarchy and if the government fails it’s up to the people to ‘fix’ it. He influenced many people and philosophers, including Thomas Paine and Thomas

There were many philosophers in the 17th and 18th century that influenced and inspired the founders of our country. For instance, John Locke believed that life, liberty, and property should be our natural rights as humans and if the government could not secure these rights then the people could get rid of them. That idea impacted Thomas Jefferson when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. This was the perfect time to develop different theories and contradictions because this was right around the time of the printing press and protestant reformation where people started to question the catholic church. Other philosophers like Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau impacted founders like George Washington and James Madison who have positively affected this country in many different ways.

Prior to the Latin American countries gaining independence, the Creole elites expressed great displeasure with the crown and readily equated themselves with the American colonists before gaining independence from Britain. With this ideology, many Creole’s became enfranchised with Anglo-European culture and enlightenment, convinced that this culture would solve their perceived problems. The Latin American Creole’s believed in both Charles Darwin and Spencer, to show that the fittest survive through evolution and that those concepts apply to the society they lived in. Spencer reinforced the belief that science, industry and progress were interlinked, and with the evolution of society their nations would bloom.

Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense to convince the American people that they needed independence from England. In order to make it widespread and popular, the pamphlet had to be accessible, with language that everyone could understand. Of course, the language that was considered accessible in 1776 isn 't necessarily accessible in 2018. Enter Lin-Manuel Miranda (she says in parentheses). His musical, Hamilton, modernizes Common Sense 's wordy view on America: the country is on the brink of chaos because being England 's income creates pointless enemies for America.

Seldom, do groups remain together for centuries and as evident in the text, conflict is bound to happen. He appeals to logos by defining democracy when he states that governments derive their power from the consent of the governed. In a way, this defies the current situation in Great Britain and discusses the offenses Great Britain has committed. In, “…mankind are more disposed..,” he declares that humans prefer to suffer sufferable evils than to abolish those evils they are accustomed to. He expands his purpose by showing an example of human nature and that humans do not like the unknown, even if the unknown may be somewhat positive or beneficial.

Religion, democracy and mercantilism played major roles in the development of Colonial America. Religion affected development as it always does, checking those with extreme greed with the threat of hell and encouraging those with good intentions with the promise of heaven. Democracy played a major role in colonial America because in an age of people being fed up with the king democracy held increasing amounts of leverage in the government. While this was going on a strong sense of mercantilism fueled the budding country's economy. Religion, democracy, and mercantilism were the main factors that fueled the development of colonial America into the country we have today religion checked people with bad intentions and encouraged those with good purposes, democracy created a government run by the people for the people and mercantilism fueled the entire country.

Arendt discusses the American revolution and the difference of liberties and freedoms when she writes, “All these liberties, to which we might add our own claims to be free from want and fear, are of course essentially negative; they are the results of liberation but they are by no means the actual content of freedom, which…is participation in public affairs” (Arendt 22). She argues that participation is public affairs is the epitome of freedom. Individuals must partake in politics in order to be free. Arendt sees happiness as a state of rest

This enormous massacre of people went against Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, all of which the national assembly declared were every man 's right. Much of the killing can be blamed on Robespierre and King Louis XVI. Although it was mostly a failure, some achievements can be seen through the Revolution. The French Revolution helped the French people become a more equal and socialist state. This showed Europe that the French were capable of revolting and they were not afraid to stand up for what they believed.

Following the account of how man should seek “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” (The Declaration of Independence) the writer lets the people know that everyone has the right to overthrow a government if the human rights are unfair and unjust. And

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.

The Anti-Federalists that opposed the constitution believed that the constitution would give too much power to the government. The Anti-Federalists argued that a powerful government would become tyrannical like the British monarchy that they worked so hard to escape from. This led them to create The Bill of Rights. Today’s government has similar problems. Nowadays some politicians believe that The Bill of Rights is a living document that can be changed or manipulated to “better fit” the era that we live in.

In my opinion, the progressive reformers were motivated by their aspiration to do something regarding the discrimination that existed between businesses and the laborers. They sought social justice; they wanted civic engagement. There was an enormous push against corruption and big corporate monopolies that came out of the industrialization movement and then the other side of the progressive movement was the attempt to make government more scientifically sound. All of these activists saw European countries using new economic theories, political science and realized that America was falling behind. They wanted the U.S. to be up to date on the latest medicine, education and science.

The Enlightenment Philosophers were brilliant people who did things that changed the world. The Enlightenment is a story about four philosophers who each had a different story and background. Their main idea was to say what needed to change and happen because of what they believed in. The Philosophers main idea is that they all believe in individual rights and they want to make things right about what they believe was right. John Locke talks about how the state of nature and government worked during his time.

Imagine a time where your actions, decisions, and thoughts were controlled by a government, and those ideas were strictly enforced. This was what it was like before the Enlightenment Era, and when this happened, it changed the world forever. The Enlightenment Era was a time period where many different types of people came together to challenge ideas from the time, and think of new ideas that would change the world. There are many people that created new and revolutionary ideas, but the ideas of Wollstonecraft, Locke, Smith, and Voltaire share a common overall idea: freedom and equality. The main ideas of Wollstonecraft, Locke, Smith, and Voltaire are similar because they talk about how every individual should have freedom in society, and that everyone is equal.

The late 17th and 18th century was an important period filled with important people known as the Philosophers, this time is known as the Enlightenment or Age of Reason. These people came up with ideas used to make a perfect society and help West Europe become a better place to live. Mary Wollstonecraft, John Locke, Voltaire, and Adam Smith, all shared the same concept that every person should formulate and accomplish their own choices when it comes to Government, Economics, Social Rights, and Religion. Mary Wollstonecraft supported and strongly believed in the thought of equality. Wollstonecraft once wrote, “Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in.”