Period of Enlightenment

Without using reason in our everyday lives, society will collapse and turn into nothing but chaos. During the Enlightenment, a time when reason was beginning to be applied to the people’s thoughts, there were many great thinkers, but there were three in particular that attempted to change society’s unreasonable thinking. Voltaire, John Locke, and Mary Wollstonecraft all believed in freedom of choice; however, they believed in different branches of freedom of choice such as religion, government, and women’s education.

The Enlightenment period was an extremely impactful revolution which caused changes in societies around the world. It began in 1651, people across the country took a stand against their unfair rights. In order to have a peaceful society, everyone must be treated with equality which can only occur if there is a fair government system in place. If people have to fight and kill to have their natural rights granted, something has to be done about it. The enlightenment period encouraged the people to share their ideas when before they felt they had no say. When the people come together to fight for something they believe in many good and bad outcomes can take place. This time period led to many changes that have drastic effects on history. As people joined multiple documents were created showing the impact of this time period. A couple of these influential documents was the English Bill of Rights, U.S constitution, and the Haitian Constitution.

The Age of Enlightenment, a movement during the 17th and 18th century started from the Europeans, later moving into American colonies. The point of this movement was for the society to reform on a new base such as emphasizing reason and individualism over tradition. Enlightenment thinkers, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Beccaria, Locke, and Voltaire helped launched this project amongst Europeans. John Locke, for example, criticized absolute monarchy and favored self-government. Voltaire also believed that people should be able to speak their minds without the fear they may be punished. Through these philosophy influence, this eventually leads to European rulers ruling with a sense of equality, democratic governance, and abolition.

The Enlightenment was a period in the eighteenth century where change in philosophy and cultural life took place in Europe. The movement started in France, and spread to Great Britain, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Germany at more or less around the same time, the ideas starting with the most renowned thinkers and philosophers of the time and eventually being shared with the common people. The Enlightenment was a way of thinking that focused on the betterment of humanity by using logic and reason rather than irrationality and superstition. It was a way of thinking that showed skepticism in the face of religion, challenged the inequality between the kings and their people, and tried to establish a sound system of ethics. The ideas behind the

The Filipino people had helped the US fight the Spanish-American War in hope to gain independence in return. However, instead of gaining independence the Philippines was annexed to the United States on December 10, 1898. When the Filipino’s had found they were going to be ruled over once again they were very unhappy, after all they had helped the US. When Aguinaldo had found out that the Philippines were going to be controlled by the US, he had declared war on the United States.

The shadowed subject called the Age of Enlightenment has been brought up on many occasions about how it impacted ideas in the Declaration of Independance. The Age of Enlightenment was a historical era in which ideas came from four different philosophers during that time. The four philosophers strongly impacted the ideas put into the Declaration of Independance. Although the Age of Enlightenment begun in the 1600’s, and the Declaration of Independance in the 1700’s, they are both strongly alike in forms of citizens rights. There is many similarities that the philosophers portrayed between the Age of Enlightenment and the Declaration of Independance.

The acquisition of Philippines by the United States is the topic that is going to be focused upon throughout this paper. The historical context of this topic deserves to analyzed with reference to both the primary and secondary readings assigned. The highlighted issue takes place after the treaty of Paris was signed between the United States and Spain which liberated Spain’s remaining colonies. Towards the end of the 19th century, Americans were influenced by the ideology of imperialism. They believed that advanced industrialized nations like the United States, Great Britain and France needed to acquire colonies in order to provide raw materials to feed their industrial economies. Extensive markets were wanted in order to sell finished products to those colonial masses.

Chapters VI and VIII: The Scientific View of the World and the Age of Enlightenment

They “rose in revolt against American rule, as they had rebelled several times against the Spanish” (Zinn 297). They were right to do so, as the war only ended very poorly for their country and consequently “the death rate was enormous from battle casualties and from disease” (Zinn 297). On the contrary, both the Spanish-American war and the Philippine-American war had great economical advantage for the United States and demonstrated to the world how powerful their country was becoming, as some power-hungry citizens and the government wanted their country to appear. Nonetheless, there were those growing upset with the virtually unnecessary wars, and “…’patience, industry, and moderation’ preached to blacks, the ‘patriotism’ preached to whites, did not fully sink in. In the first years of the twentieth century, despite all the demonstrated power of the state, large numbers of blacks, whites, men, women became impatient, immoderate, unpatriotic” (Zinn 301) which would led to some growing unfaithful with the American

During the Age of Enlightenment there were many philosophers that thought differently when it came to humans and their actions. This all started back in the 17th and 18th century in Europe. One day all the thinkers came together to talk about their different ideas at an enlightenment party. Philosophers with different backgrounds and ideologies were able to unite and discussed the world and mankind. Although all of them had different beliefs, there was one idea that everyone had in common.The main idea shared by these enlightenment thinkers was that individual freedom could improve different aspects of society. John Locke believed individual freedom could improve freedom in government, Voltaire believed individual freedom

10. '95: Compare and contrast the attitudes of Martin Luther and John Calvin toward political authority and social order.

Americans in the Enlightenment period strongly connected themselves with the classical age in terms of how they approached their art. The Enlightenment period lasted for about 150 years, from approximately 1700 -1850. Throughout this time period many artists took inspiration from the classical age which occurred in ancient Greece and Rome hundreds of years before. We can see examples of this in buildings like The White house and Monticello in America, and Kedleston Hall in England. These three buildings, though located in very different parts of the world, all have a number of aestheticly similar attributes.

The 18th century is referred to as the ‘Age of Enlightenment’. The trends in thought and letters from Europe to the American colonies brought a new light and attention upon mankind. This new movement described a time in Western philosophy and cultural life in which reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority. ‘To understand the natural world and humankinds place in it solely on the basis of reason and without turning to religious belief was the goal of the wide-ranging intellectual movement’ (Hackett). At the heart o this age, a conflict began between religion and the inquiring mind that wanted to know and understand through reason based on evidence and proof rather than belief on faith alone.

Each time period in history has had their own characteristics, key figures, and impact impact on the world. While each period is equally important to how we progressed from the past, the enlightenment period, from the 1700s to the 1800s, has contributed immensely to how everyday people go about their days. Without even realizing it, people have been molded by the enlightenment period, allowing themselves to face new ideas with an open mind . The grand designs of this period were empiricism, rationalism, and natural law, each still essential to the 21st century. Empiricism, the theory that all knowledge is gained through experience and that we are all born with a clean slate (tabula rasa in latin), has a large following. An example of

 1942: Occupied by the Japanese  1945: Liberated by American and Filipino forces  1946: Attained independency and founded a democracy