The Enlightenment 35.1 Introduction In the last chapter, you learned about the Scientific Revolution. HIs most famous book was "Leviathan", where he stated that humans were naturally greedy, angry, and criminal humans. The French philosophers of the Enlightenment Era didn't play an active role in the events of the revolution, but their ideas inspired the revolutionary movement. The Enlightenment thinkers also discussed other ideas that are the founding principles of any democracy—the idea of the importance of the individual who can reason for himself, the idea of equality under the law, and the idea of natural rights. The new outlook put great trust in reason as the key to human progress. The word Enlightenment refers to a change in outlook among many educated Europeans that began during the 1600s. According to Hobbes, all societies needed a form of authorities to control these people and prevent them from going crazy basically.

Thomas Hobbes was a seventeenth-century English thinker, who believed in a very powerful government. The Age of Enlightenment period of the Modern era of philosophy corresponds roughly to the 18th Century. The Enlightenment was the root of many of the ideas of the American Revolution. It was a movement that focused mostly on freedom of speech, equality, freedom of press, and religious tolerance. The Enlightenment era saw a general turn away from the dominance of the church and the supernatural, with a reduction in belief in the occult, literal interpretations of the Bible and the emergence of a largely secular public culture, and a secular “intelligentsia” able to challenge the previously dominant clergy. Through a combination of philosophy, politics and communications, the Enlightenment prompted societal reform.

The Enlightenment thinkers also discussed other ideas that are the founding principles of any democracy—the idea of the importance of the individual who can reason for himself, the idea of equality under the law, and the idea of natural rights. The Age of Enlightenment was preceded by and closely associated with the scientific revolution. The Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries era was followed by that of a reaction, Romanticism, a turn back to the emotional instead of the rational, and a counter-Enlightenment. Mary Wollstonecraft, one of few female thinkers of the time, was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women’s rights. For example, the ancient Greeks believed that stars and planets roamed the sky as they followed the gods. In this chapter, you will explore the Enlightenment. Sir Isaac Newton demonstrated that another, natural force kept the planets in orbit. While the philosophy of the Enlightenment was dominated by men, the question of women’s rights appeared as one of the most controversial ideas.

During the Enlightenment, philosophers challenged the previously held beliefs in superstition, God and the absolute authority to a monarch. Voltaire’s failure to produce an original philosophy was, in a sense, counterbalanced by his deliberate cultivation of a philosophy of action; his ‘common sense’ crusade against superstition and prejudice and in favour of religious toleration was his single greatest contribution to the progress of Enlightenment. Earlier philosophers whose work influenced the Enlightenment included Bacon and Descartes.

For a while, in the nineteenth century, it was common for the Enlightenment to be attacked as the liberal work of utopian fantasists, with critics pointing out there were plenty of good … The American Revolution was the time period where America tried to gain its independence from England. The Enlightenment influenced the American Revolution by proposing thoughts and ideas that questioned traditional leadership and led to a new constitution. The Enlightenment period was from 1685 to 1815. Contents.