The Age Of Enlightenment

Even though he shares some of the same ideas as the three men, Adam Smith’s ideas are most similar to John Locke. Both Locke and Smith believed people can be trusted and let people do their own things, without having the government interfere. This concept is called by Adam Smith, laissez faire. Smith thought that this would help protect society, administer justice, and provide public works. Even though Smith’s philosophies were the same on government as Locke, his views on economy were a lot like Marx’s. Both Smith and Marx believed that the economy had a major role in government and that it is important to industrialize. He believed that people should seek out wherever the demand for goods and services are to have an effective economy. Also, Adam Smith’s concept on a particular leader keeping everything going and orderly was a lot like Thomas Hobbes idea. They both believed that there needs to be someone watching out for the people just in a case of emergency, when foreigners attack. Even though Smith did not have the same exact views as Locke, Marx or Hobbes, Smith’s ideas were along the lines of these

Smith advocated for free trade for a country. A country should export more than it imports. This stimulates the growth of the economy. Adam Smith was an optimist who sought the best for his country.

The Enlightenment was a time of change in Europe. There were many new ideas, and various influential thinkers that inspired new invention and also inspired revolutions. All of these thinkers had different views on people and government and different views of people and how they act. Many of these authoritative individuals thoughts still influence us even today. Many of their ideas are used in government and also as guidelines for people to live their lives by.

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.

Among economists, it is said Adam Smith is one of the main contributors to modern free market economics. His thoughts attacked mercantilism which was the prevalent form of government at the time. His works provided systematic rationales in the subjects of capitalism, free markets, and limited government intervention. His most popular books changed history because without them, many of these thoughts and ideas would not be so prevalent. Smith is regarded and cited as the father of modern economics. With this said, not all of Smith’s ideas were in agreement with laissez-faire. Although Adam Smith pioneered many ideas on modern free market economics, Smith cannot be depicted as a defender of laissez-faire because of his ideas on

According to Smith, the fierce competition in the market economy can subdue some negativity of self-interest. Market economy is full of competition and every individual with self-interest would have to put their greed in check in order to compete. For example, if there are two stores that sell the exact same items but one store’s prices are higher than the other, consumers will opt to buy the item at the lesser price store. If you are the owner of the higher price store, it is within your own self- interest that you reduce the prices or be out of a business. Even if you are the only store in town and your quality of services or goods is terrible, there will be other individual with their own self-interest to most likely compete against you. As you can see because of the competition in the market you can’t let your own self-interest get out of hand, if you do you’ll end up with

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.

Smith, however, was of the opinion that Mercantile System was deeply flawed. Firstly, as given in the Fourth Book (3) of the Wealth of Nations, he argued that the real wealth of a nation was “not in the unconsumable riches of money, but in the consumable goods annually reproduced by the labour of the society”. (4) Secondly, the balance of trade, as observed by him, often did little to enhance the wealth of a nation and instead served to create violent national animosity instead. He instead put forth the idea of a balance of annual production and consumption, which if it were unfavourable would have caused a decay of the wealth of a nation. Thirdly, Prof. Smith was a strong critic of the idea of colonialism; stating that, “To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first sight, appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers, but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers. Such statesmen, and such statesmen only, are capable of fancying that they will find some advantage in employing the blood and treasure of their fellow-citizens, to found and maintain such an empire.”(5) The implication being that the idea of colonialism was of an extremely oppressive nature, beneficial only to the colonial

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

One of the things I did understand though is his idea that the key cause of the wealth of nations is the division of labor and in order to gain wealth or become wealthy, you must be productive. Being wealthy is not about the money. According to Adam Smith, money is the universal commodity which means that it is a universal, useful or valuable thing. Smith uses the example of a pin-factory to show the benefits of the division of labor. Each worker can specialize their own trade to make the making of a pin much faster. Smith gave the example of how to make a pin by giving worker number one the task of drawing out the wire, worker two straightens it, worker three cuts it, worker four points it and worker five makes the head. Dividing the labor up among multiple individuals allows production to constantly flow instead of having one man do all five of those jobs even though he is not specialized in those five tasks. I also agree with this idea of dividing up labor to increase production. If you have one man doing multiple jobs but he is only trained in one of those jobs, production will be much slower than when you hire multiple workers to do their own specialization. He also uses the invisible hand example. The invisible hand is an invisible or hidden “force” that gets people to use their own interests, without their knowledge, to profit society. As these people compete with each other by

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

The ideals of the Enlightenment are the basis of our democracies and universities in the 21st century: belief in reason, science, skepticism, secularism, and equality. In fact, no other era compares with the Age of Enlightenment. Classical Antiquity is inspiring, but a world away from our modern societies. The Middle Ages was more reasonable than its reputation, but still medieval. The Renaissance was glorious, but largely because of its result: the Enlightenment. The Romantic era was a reaction to the Age of Reason – but the ideals of today’s modern states are seldom expressed in terms of romanticism and emotion. Immanuel Kant’s argument in the essay ‘Perpetual Peace’ (1795) that ‘the human race’ should work for ‘a cosmopolitan constitution’ can be seen as a precursor for the United Nations.

The Enlightenment happened during the 1700s when Europeans scientist and philosophers begin to question about everything and began to understand the world based on reason and at this time stood out several people like Galileo Galilei, Nicholas Copernicus, Issac Newton, Adam Smith and many others. They made great discoveries that changed the world and the form of government.

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 Age of Enlightenment was an intellectual and scientific movement which is characterized by its rational and scientific approach to religious, social, political, and economic issues. Enlightenment ideals challenged the way people were taught to think and let them express their criticism of the church, the monarchy or whatever system they saw as unjust. The impact of the enlightenment movement was first seen in 18th century Europe and soon spread to different parts of the world. People who believed in these ideals were called enlightenment thinkers. Enlightenment thinkers were a voice for the masses who felt they were being manipulated by people holding all the power. It also helped the masses realize that they did not need the church or monarchy, and enlightenment thinkers were able to assemble a following to stop people of power taking advantage of those who were not quite as powerful. Enlightenment thinkers gave an outlet to the common citizen who were seeing injustices in their government system.