preview

The Enlightenment : The Rise Of The Enlightenment Era

Good Essays

“Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity”(Kant 1). The Enlightenment Era was a period of logic, rationalism, and science revolution. Nature played a large part in the Enlightenment meaning balance in the world and tranquility. Among many other philosophers, Descartes, John Locke and Isaac Newton were the major influences in the rise of the Enlightenment movement. Jean Jacques Rousseau played his part in the political standpoint by writing, The Social Contract, which expressed his belief on the wealthy controlling everything. Economics took a change after the Physiocrats and Adam Smith set in the ideology of an self trade system around Europe and the Americas. The religion of the Enlightenment soon became Deism, a religion that opposed the Catholic church and what they have done. Individuality and the rights of a person’s humanity were greatly valued during this era. With creating the famous encyclopedia, Denis Diderot unleashed an intellectual movement of factual discovery from around the world. The Enlightenment brought the mindset that, “Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature: beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything”(Bacon 1). Nature, reason, optimism, and progress are the basis of the Enlightenment era. During this era, men started to think before acting or assuming life’s qualities. There was a sense of hope for

Get Access