Encyclopedie Observation

During the eighteenth century, an age of enlightenment fell upon the people of Europe. Across the continent, knowledge and discovery spread like wildfire. During this era, an overwhelming majority of middle-class citizens became literate, partaking in various forms of high culture previously reserved exclusively to the aristocracy. At the same time, while the age of Enlightenment produced prominent theorists, thinkers, and intellectual works, it also made the common man more aware of intellectuality. With access to literature rich in revolutionary thought, the middle-class assumed an understanding of natural law that encompassed freedom, social equality, and the value of mankind. However, while

People of this time wanted to find out the truth they didn’t want to live in a world of past secrets and lies. These people did not care what they were going to hear as long as it was the truth and nothing but the truth. A man named Immanuel Kant, a philosopher during this time, encouraged people to be open minded, to not hide from the truth, and be able to think for oneself. He and others used the power of reason in their life. Sort of like how I said power of reason the Enlightenment was also called the Age of Reasoning. Since these people were getting into science and reasoning there had been many new tools and ways of believing. Deist of this time believed in “natural laws”. Thus meaning that God put us on earth planned everything out, but no longer interacted with us. Think of it this way, God put us on earth with a plan and set a clock that goes with us, but he can never touch it again. The Enlightenment started to leave the colonist speculating their traditional religions they are used to this starts what is known as the Great Awakening.

The Age of Enlightenment saw many great changes in Western Europe. It was an age of reason and philosophes. During this age, changes the likes of which had not been seen since ancient times took place. Such change affected evert pore of Western European society. Many might argue that the Enlightenment really did not bring any real change, however, there exists and overwhelming amount of facts which prove, without question, that the spirit of the Enlightenment was one of change-specifically change which went against the previous teachings of the Catholic Church. Such change is apparent in the ideas, questions, and philosophies of the time, in the study of science, and throughout the monarchial system.

brought these new ideas and changes to light. Enlightenment’s main goal was to seek out

The scientific revolution and the enlightenment began to alter the everyday life of people in France. Navigation became a huge part of many people’s lives. Men began to study the sky’s more to figure out where they were on the sea’s (Turner 482). The study of the sky led some to make hypotheses about the universe. During this time there was a rebirth of the quest for knowledge. Universities grew during this time; it became more popular to know how to read and write. And the middle class society began to grow and grow. At this point in time monarchies have more power than ever before, they rule everything, including the churches and the military (Davis 55). Louis XIV build Versailles in hopes of creating the richest and most powerful nation in the world. Nobles are invited to

France stood as the center for the Enlightenment because it was in a constant dichotomy between “the desire to censor dissident ideas and the desire to appear open to modernity and progress” (Hunt, 4098). Parliament hindered the monarchy’s reform efforts by using their own words of Enlightenment influence against them. This was a paradox that showed how the Enlightenment affected all levels of French life, but was applied to achieve different results. While the American Revolution and the resulting new republic was regarded as a successful application of the Enlightenment, the unstable, failed attempts at change and reformation in France led to early signs of revolution as revolts “in the name of liberty” from 1787-1789.

The French Revolution was a period of far-reaching social and political change in France that lasted from 1789 to 1799. Before the revolution there was a period of time called the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was a philosophical movement in which followers considered that human reason brought a move from theory to practice and criticism to reforming education, household administration, social reactions and politics. Voltaire, a French philosopher and contributor to the Age of Enlightenment, expressed these ideas utilizing his intelligence, wit and style to mark his name as one of France’s greatest writers. The Enlightenment influenced the French Revolution to a great extent by introducing new ideas that encouraged questioning of authority and religion, advancing people’s outlook on commodities, and forcing citizens to compare their need with the Republic’s needs. This further brought an uprising of people wanting more such as equality and civil rights. In the process to do so there were 250,000 casualties in the Reign of Terror followed the Thermidorian Reaction which implemented an oligarchy government called the Directory. Royalist riots prompted the Coup d’etat of Fructidor which brought Napoleon into Directory which he later overthrows and creates an Authoritarian Republic.

In 1731 Benjamin Franklin along with the members of philosophical organization known as the Junto, decided to write “Articles of Agreement” and to create a library. At this time the vast majority of Americans were illiterate. They did not have access to books that would help the improve their reading skills as there were no public libraries at the time. This was a problem for the Junto group as men of average prosperity also could not afford books. While they members of Junto were educated and interested in a variety of areas none of them had more than a couple of books. In fact, the only people who have a substantial collection of books are the extremely wealthy and the clergy.

The French Revolution of 1789 was inarguably a significant turning point in the history of Europe. However, there have been historical debates over the major contributing factor that had caused the French Revolution. Many historians have argued that the French Revolution was sparked by the emerging new age ideas of Enlightenment in the 18th century, which encouraged people to think logically and critically about their society. Many notable writers such as Diderot and Voltaire began to publicly criticise the social structure and the governance of France. (Darlington et al., 2004, p.25) But other historians argue that ideas affected the way people saw

America’s Revolution gave birth to real applications of Enlightenment ideals, and in doing so spurred movements of independence and democracy around the world during the same time period and into the future. “Three major events of the American Revolution had great influence on Europe: Signing the Declaration of Independence, Implementing the ideas of Enlightenment, Forming the U.S constitution” (ADD SOURCE). In the years following the American Revolution, France fell into their own revolution, which Thomas Jefferson said “[The French Revolution] has been awakened by our [American] revolution” (Strayer 784). On the dawning of the French Revolution, a Paris newspaper announced that the United States was “the hope and model of the human race” (Dunn). Because the French were our allies in our revolution against Britain, many of their leaders had a very intimate experience with our ideals of freedom and political representation. They brought back the ideas they heard and witnessed and used them to shape their own revolution against King Louis XVI, and they were the most important parts of the revolution the French people built. “The French

For my book review, I have read and evaluated Sylvia Neely’s history book entitled A Concise History of the French Revolution published in 2007 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Neely’s purpose is to gives an overview of the French revolution with the most important events, the most prominent people and the essential terms. We can see that the author proved her thesis by explaining the background causes of the revolution such as the ancient regime with Louis XVI. Also she described all important events in chronological orders which made it easier for the reader to understand. Neely’s book is at the same time an history book, but also an kind of encyclopedia because she included all essentials terms which were use during that time period, such as “dérogeance”, which means the loss of nobility.

It covered about a century and a half in Europe. It began with the publication of Sir Francis Bacon’s book, Novum Organum, and ended with Immanuel Kant’s publication, Critique of Pure Reason. “This age advocated reason as a means of establishing a strong system of aesthetics, ethics, government and religion.” (Age of Enlightenment) The thinkers of the Enlightenment argued that religion would free mankind from superstition and religious authorities, who brought death and suffering in the form of wars. Encyclopedias supported the cause of the Enlightenment, they wanted to educate people and made knowledge available. The Age of the Enlightenment is thought to have ended with the French Revolution. Immanuel Kant said “the motto for the Enlightenment was Sapere Aude!” ( Age of Enlightenment).Which means “dare to know”. This motto ended up criticizing the confidence of The Enlightenment on the power of reason. The legacy that the Enlightenment left behind is said to be the consequence of the world we live in today, because of our general decline in church attendance, the expansion of our secular world, and the liberalism of our political and economic situations. The intellectual people of the Enlightenment refer to themselves as strong leaders who would lead the world into a period of doubtful tradition and tyranny which ended in the Bloody battle of the Thirty Years War

The Enlightenment was time for science to take center stage in Europe. Through science new discoveries were found and inventions were made. Science was now being applied to ever and anything that scientists could think of. For the first time in history, religion was being pushed to the side. Since science was taking over religion teachings were becoming questioned when it came to ways of thinking. The Enlightenment also introduced a new wave of influential thinking. Denis Diderot was one of the influential thinkers to come out of the Enlightenment. In his book D’Alembert’s Dream he directly questions the Bible shows that he was radical when it came to his ideas. By expressing his views

“Encyclopedia. This word means the interrelation of all knowledge; it is made up of the Greek prefix en, in, and the nouns kyklos, circle, and paideia, instruction, science, knowledge.” In today’s world the simple word of encyclopedia doesn’t elicit any strong feelings or produce an order for censoring by the government, correct? However, when it was first published in 1751 the Encyclopedia did just that. It was a radical multi-volume body of work that provoked a range of emotions to include being described by some as enlightenment and by others as threatening. This revolutionary and voluminous text was written and edited by Denis Diderot and numerous other collaborators over many years. With this work, these individuals were challenging the status quo of the state and the Church during that time period. Amid so much controversy and continued opposition, Diderot wrote an article in 1755 aptly named “Encyclopedia” to expand upon the goals of the enormous project. Its objective best explained by Diderot as, “All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone’s feelings.”

This way of studying the enlightenment was criticised initially because it is hard to understand the progress of enlightenment without any social or geographical context of how the path was paved for great thinkers of the eighteenth century. Darnton suggested that perhaps new methodologies, that would position the enlightenment into different geographical and economic perspectives as well as consider how it was transmitted through media in eighteenth century France, needed to be developed and practiced. This suggests that perhaps the way that historians such as Peter Gay studied the enlightenment was far too simplistic and placed more importance on the writings of the great thinkers than on the actual progress of the enlightenment during that time period. Although this shows that some enlightenment historians ignored the social, geographical and economic context of the enlightenment, it does not necessarily mean that they ignored History. This essay agrees with Marwick in the sense that History should be defined as the bodies of knowledge produced about history and should not be confused with the past. These enlightenment historians focused specifically on History by looking at just the writings of philosophes such as Voltaire and Kant, and rather Neglected The Past by not looking at social perspectives and