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What Are The Three Characteristics Of The Enlightenment?

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The Enlightenment was a movement brought on by the disenchantment of the Europeans with the church’s explanations of the world combined with the increased exposure to exotic beliefs and cultures from lands all the way from the Americas to China and it possessed three major characteristics. The three characteristics of the enlightenment are rationalism, the discoverability of the laws of human society, and the never ending improvement of human civilization. The three characteristics of the Enlightenment are best represented through the three figures of John Locke, Baruch Spinoza, and Benjamin Franklin. John Locke. Spinoza’s Ethics shows the ability of the natural laws to be applied to human society to create a theory on the workings of the laws of human society and supported the belief that mankind will rise with the discovery of more laws. The theories of Locke helped to influence many scholars long after him, both enlightenment and otherwise. The theories ranged from politics to economics, both showing how rational thought can be applied to fields that normally they wouldn’t be connected with. Benjamin Franklin created multiple inventions that were usable by everyday people from the oven to the lightning rod. All three had a worldshaking …show more content…

Spinoza created his work by applying natural laws to society. In Ethics, Spinoza expresses that humans need to try to find reason in order to be truly content, which is very much in line with the enlightenment ideal of rationalism. Spinoza was also very much of the enlightenment belief that mankind will grow as more natural laws are discovered, always advancing onward. If Spinoza were living today and was asked why we still have problems, like world hunger and such, if everything can be solved by mankind, he would respond that it is because we are just not trying to solve those

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