Enlightenment: Developments In Philosophy

Usually, when someone hears the word enlightenment they would think as its a lamp or a light bulb, unlike smart people who actually ask and think and someone will answer them back “the thing you are doing now was the cause of age of reason” so To what extent were the ideas of the enlightenment philosophies ‘revolutionary’? What caused that period of time to arise? The most important question right now is, what was enlightenment?

Enlightenment also is known as “the age of reason”. It was an intellectual movement that started from the late 17th to the beginning of the 18th and emerged after the idea of renaissance humanism. Historian professors disagree on precisely when the Enlightenment began, though most of them agree that the Enlightenment’s origins are tied to the Scientific Revolution in the 1600s, according to the. The Enlightenment culminated in the French Revolution (1789-1799) and was followed by the Romantic period. Lately, people questioned why are things the way they are, since it reached its peak in France in the mid 17s and took place there. Some consider Issac newton’s Principia Mathematica as the first major enlightenment work.

According to document ‘A’, enlightenment is where humans use the immaturity method. It means to use someone else’s intelligence with no guidance and was caused because of a lack of determination and courage. Thus can you believe to what extent these ideas were revolutionary that it ended up changing the way people think, and caused the change of both the old and the modern age?

At that time there were five concepts that formed their core of belief: reason, happiness, liberty, nature, and progress. a young french man called “Denis Diderot”, who appeared in that age was the one who made an encyclopedia of 17 volumes explaining all the human knowledge. And it was hard to get a pass to these encyclopedias, and if someone had access to that information then he has the ability to question things.

Additionally to the reason for the enlightenment rise is because people don’t know who or what to believe anymore, and that created a religious war, fanaticism, and carnages everywhere. most of the unbelievers asked why is there an absolute monarchy and one ruler over the huge numbered citizens, that was when the king thought himself of a chosen by god so he had the right to apply rules and enforce them to the citizens. Thus, as a result, the enlightenment idea diminished the authority of the monarchy and the Church and paved the way to progress in political revolutions and develop them. Additionally, to that, they also helped give rise to deism, which is the belief that God exists but does not interact supernaturally with the universe.

Those questions that have been asked and believed about which god or prophet to worship, and the pros and cons that reached to affect our nowadays. as you can see around you, that time caused the world to a huge religious war that never ends, but that period of time also made us what we are right now, without thinking there wouldn’t be scientists, philosophers, or even teachers. Additionally, our system of rule was inspired by that age precisely. their system in the US is democratic, power devived fairly just like what some philosophies proposed.

Speaking of philosophies pr as they call it in France ‘philosophes’, here are our five enlightened thinkers who emerged during ‘the century of philosophy’ with ideas that changed the society and the way the power was distributed among them and us in the modern world.

Tomas Hobbes an English philosopher who preferred absolute monarchy as it was mentioned in document ‘B’ and that it was the only correct form of government thus wrote leviathan and explained that humans are two things: selfish, and evil, for people to fight for power and that they only needed one ruler over all of them. In contrast, John Locke did not like Hobbes’s idea. It was also mentioned in the piece used from his book ‘second treatise on government’ in document ‘C’, Locke stated that people were born with natural rights: life, liberty, and the right to property, and the government had to protect those rights.

However, Montesquieu didn’t like Locke’s idea because what if the government turned against those rights, thus he offered to separate the power just as written on document ‘F’. Although he mentioned that the power separated should be equal because of the division of the power was unfair since it was divided into three branches the first branch make up the law or amend them, the second branch is in charge of protecting the country and they have the right to decide whether there will be a civil war or peace even the high ruler cant interfere in this decision, and the last branch is in charge of enforcing the law. Another gentleman mentioned in document ‘E’ was named Jean-Jacques Rousseau. the document showed the proposal of his idea that was a combination of his and Locke’s thoughts and agreed that people were born with general will and added the idea where the government signs a contract with the citizens to protect them and their rights and if they turn against them they can overthrow them and get a new government.

Last but not least, Voltaire a french thinker also thought of separating the power and separating the government from the church to bring tolerance. In his book, he wrote as mentioned in document ‘D’ that tolerance was displayed in all and every religion, although Christians never worked with it, on the contrary, they would start civil wars and bring carnages everywhere and fantasize between religions and that was because of intolerance that started the enlightenment.

As a conclusion to add to my last words, I will answer the question “what was enlightenment?”. Enlightenment is a period of time where philosophies and people started to think and ask why are things the way they are, and they were precisely talking about the way power is distributed, and whether they should step up for it or not, and some very known heroes wrote books and criticized the government and the best part is when they enlightened ideas to a better society and ways for others. The age of reason wasn’t any other period of time that came after the renaissance or the scientific or agricultural revolution, it was a religious war that opened doors to other countries and reached America and other parts of the world. Until now this age is still remembered because the ideas that the unique philosophies gave are still used now in political events and to solve cases. That age was the so-called “age thinkers”. Usually, when someone hears the word enlightenment they would think as its a lamp or a light bulb, unlike smart people who actually ask and think and someone will answer them back “the thing you are doing now was the cause of age of reason” so To what extent were the ideas of the enlightenment philosophies ‘revolutionary’? What caused that period of time to arise? The most important question right now is, what was enlightenment?