Pros And Cons Of The Enlightenment

He favored representative government and a rule of law. 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. Therefore, if an individual was failing in life, blame

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.

The American revolution was successful because it had the plan to reform government. It was driven by the idea of a new form of government rather than meeting the needs of the poor. 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.

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.

That is one thing that Thomas Jefferson was giving to the people a chance of prosperity and hope. Because for so long they were beaten down and oppressed. 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.