The Enlightenment :: European Europe History

The EnlightenmentThe Enlightenment is a name given by historians to an intellectual movement that was predominant in the Western world during the eighteenth century. Strongly influenced by the rise of modern comprehension and by the issue of the long religious conflict that followed the Reformation, the look aters of the Enlightenment (called philosophes in France) were committed to blasphemous views based on reason or clement understanding only, which they hoped would fork up a basis for beneficial changes affecting every area of life history and thought.The more extreme and radical philosophes-Denis Diderot, Claude Adrien Helvetius, Baron dHolbach, the Marquis de Condorcet, and Julien Offroy de La Mettrie (1709-51)--advocated a philosophical rationalism deriving its methods from science and natural philosophy that would tack religion as the means of knowing nature and destiny of populace these men were materialists, pantheists, or atheists. Other learn thinkers, such as c apital of South Dakota Bayle, Voltaire, David Hume, Jean Le Rond Dalembert, and Immanuel Kant, opposed fanaticism, but were either agnostic or left room for some kind of religious faith.All of the philosophes byword themselves as continuing the work of the great 17th century pioneers-Francis Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Leibnitz, Isaac Newton, and potty Locke-who had developed fruitful methods of rational and empirical inquiry and had demonstrated the orifice of a world remade by the application of knowledge for human benefit. The philosophes believed that science could reveal nature as it truly is and show how it could be controlled and manipulated. This precept provided an incentive to extend scientific methods into every field of inquiry, thus position the groundwork for the development of the modern social sciences.The enlightened understanding of human nature was one that emphasized the right to self-expression and human fulfillment, the right to think freely and express one s views publicly without censorship or fear of repression. Voltaire prize the freedom he found in England and fostered the spread of English ideas on the Continent. He and his followers opposed the intolerance of the established Christian churches of their day, as well as the European governments that controlled and suppressed dissenting opinions. For example, the social affection which Pangloss caught from Paquette was traced to a very learned Franciscan and later to a Jesuit. Also, Candide reminisces that his displeasure for Cunegonde first developed at a Mass. More conservative enlightened thinkers, concerned primarily with efficiency and administrative order, favored the enlightened dictatorship of such monarchs as Emperor Joseph II, Frederick II of Prussia, and Catherine II of Russia.