The Enlightenment Essay -- History Historical French Essays

The understandingThroughout Europe and the new American colonies in the eighteenth century there was a great movement in thought. This purport that preceded the French Revolution is known as the Enlightenment. Revolutionary writers and thinkers thought that the by held only darkness and ignorance, they began to question everything. Enlightened thought entered, or intruded, into totally aspects of life in the 1700s. Governments were drastically reformed, art and literature changed in scope, religious dogma was threatened, the study of science spread, nature was seen in a new light, and benevolence evolved greatly. This new way of thinking was propelled by curiosity and observations of society and nature. The Enlightenment was a desire for human affairs to be guided by rationality rather thanby faith, superstition, or revelation a belief in the power of human reason to changesociety and exempt the individual from the restraints of custom or arbitrary authorityall plump for up by a world view increasingly validate by science rather than by religionor tradition. 1Several individuals have been credited and blamed for leading and contributing to the Enlightenment. These thinkers non only changed their views, but also spread revolutionary ideas to others. These philosophes, Evangelists of science, felt that it was their avocation to open peoples eyes to new thought. They used every media available to them including word of honor of mouth, pamphlets, letters, journals and books. Philosophes were tired of people accepting anything they were told, consequently a large foeman of the Enlightenment Era was the Church. Knowledge gained through observation of nature lento replaced blindly accepted religious explanations. The Enlightenment wa... ...am, they could harness it with the steam engine. Thus, emerged the industrial Revolution, which would never have been possible had humans not owned the fellowship gained from the Enlightenment. Literature Cited1. Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment (New York, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge ,1995), 3.2. Donald Kagan, Steven Ozment and Frank M. Turner, The Western Heritage, number Brief Edition, Volume II Since 1648 (Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice Hall, 1996), 397.3. Outram, 58.4. Kagan, 401.5. Britannica Online, The Enlightenment, WYSIWYG//176/http//www.britannica.com/ article/5/0,5716,108605+8+106072,00.html, 21.6. Roy Porter, The Enlightenment, (London, The MacMillan Press Ltd., 1990), 3.7. Kagan, 403.8. Outram, 62.9. Jonathon Weiner, Time, Love, Memory (New York, Vintage Books, 1999), 5.