Rousseau's Three Ideologies: The Age Of The Enlightenment

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.

Firstly, in the beginning the government was able to control everyone, but after the Enlightenment, people started to question things. Because of this, the Enlightenment encouraged people to challenge the authority, and think upon reasoning/logic. The word/phrase "common sense" was an Enlightenment idea, which inspired a man named Thomas Paine, during the Rev War. The Declaration of Independence was based on Enlightenment ideas, which were presented by John Locke. The Enlightenment supported ideals including: liberty, democracy, individualism, religious tolerance, and

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 ideas of the Enlightenment shaped the revolutions of the late seventeen hundreds in numerous ways. Because of the Enlightenment, people began to question their surrounding, leading to the separation of religion and the monarchy. This was vital because it lessened the strength of the monarchy. The Enlightenment allowed people to see that they had certain rights that they were given at birth, and that no one, not even the monarchy, could take these rights away. These basic rights are the foundations of most standing constitutions to date.

In Europe, during the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason, many philosophers gathered together to discuss their different but similar ideas to help shape the world we live in today. In the late 17th and 18th century, four enlightenment philosophers named John Locke, Voltaire, Adam Smith, and Mary Wollstonecraft focused on the same main idea. They believed in individual rights and presented their arguments through religion, government, economics, and equality for women.

Enlightenment was a concept that inspired a new way of thinking of the people. In the newly formed United States of America, enlightenment shaped the way the new government was run. Scientific reasoning was applied to politics, religion, and science. Enlightenment saved music, art, and literature programs in colleges. Enlightenment in Europe led to drastically altered views on philosophy, politics, and communications. While enlightenment was the same revolution in thinking around the world, the ideas it brought were not always the same. For example, French enlightenment had different approaches to thinking than American enlightenment. Because of this, the two countries new governments were run on different ideologies.

The Age of Enlightenment was a European movement which emphasizing reasoning and individualism in preference to tradition. Different factors had a part to play in starting or even propelling ‘the Age of Enlightenment’, including the rule of the Church and State which experienced a power struggle among them, in addition to the Western discovery of latest societies with noticeably exclusive cultural traditions and norms. Many intellectuals felt unhappy with the fixed social styles amongst their very own collectives, and angry at their governments' refusal to provide non-public rights.

The Enlightenment, also known as the “Age of Reason,” occurred in the eighteenth century and was a period in which ideas concerning God, nature, reason and humanity were combined, and these ideas instigated revolutionary developments in art, philosophy, and politics. The Enlightenment was crucial in determining aspects in terms of politics, government, and religion. Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Charles Montesquieu influenced the Founding Fathers and their ideas were found in the Declaration of Independence.

According to our studies, the Enlightenment was a movement that prioritized the human capacity for reason as the highest form of human attainment (Lecture Insert Cite). The Enlightenment originally began in Europe and found it 's way to the colonies. Before the Enlightenment, people had always believed that the social class in which they were born into would be the one in which they would die. People would follow their leader 's words without daring to question them and believed that when they died they would either face eternal salvation or eternal damnation. There was no room for thought. They were told what to think and do and they did not dare question it. That is until in the 1500 's, a European scientist named Copernicus began questioning the foundational beliefs everyone had previously been lead to believe by their leaders. This led to a change in what the people believed. Thus, by the 1600 's, educated people were postulating whether natural laws governed society and the universe (lecture cite). Essentially, the Enlightenment challenged the role of religion and divine right. This assisted Colonial America is seeing that it was possible to challenge the King and divine right. The movement ended up taking a scientific approach to the world and human nature as it challenged the role of God. It allowed people to see that

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.

“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 age of reason and enlightenment was a period where people were trapped and confined to one way of life, one way of living or job. An example of this is in a fascist society where you bow down to one person and one person only. John Locke, Mary Wollenstone, Voltaire, Adam Smith were all philosophers in the Age of Enlightenment. John Locke wrote in 1690 The Second Treatise on Civil Government this showed what his opinion on government is. Voltaire’s Letters Concerning The English Nation says that if many religions in a government that allows it. The people will be at peace and not concerned with each other. The philosophers during the enlightenment period who were looking for one thing the natural laws of philosophy, human thinking. Just like Isaac Newton found what gravity is. They strived to find how the human mind thought of the world and politics. The ideas that the philosopher said in their documents are; economic rights, religious

In this essay, I will read Candide in the light of Enlightenment philosophy and also with reference to Kant's answer to the question “What is Enlightenment?” Although Candide (1759) and the short essay by Kant “What is Enlightenment?” were written during different decades of eighteenth century but both of them reflect the age of Enlightenment in their works. This essay is divided into two parts: Part I discusses about the age of the Enlightenment and Kant's essay on Enlightenment, Part II discusses Candide in the context of Part I where Voltaire’s views against optimism and his character Candide's journey towards the Enlightenment are discussed.

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant is considered to be a central figure of contemporary philosophy. Kant argued that fundamental concepts, structure human experience and that reason is the foundation of morality. In Kant’s 1784 essay “What is Enlightenment” he briefly outlined his opinions on what Enlightenment is, the difficulties to enlightenment and how individuals attain enlightenment.

I agree with you. The rejection and its ideals were inevitable. In the French Revolution, the sans-culottes were the radical militants of the lower classes, typically urban laborers. Their support came from domestic crises, such as shortages of bread and political injustices. The Romantic movement impeded the progress toward a more egalitarian society because romanticism was all about feelings and it backlash against reasoning, Enlightenment was all about science and reason. The Enlightenment emphasized rational thought, logical deduction and scientific methodology, which seemed cold and soulless to many grounded in earlier traditions, resulting in a reaction that turned back to emotional themes of nature, human intuitiveness, and