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Rationalism: A Common Notion During The Enlightenment

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3. The Enlightenment, 299-317 A common notion during the Enlightenment was the idea of “opposition to authority” (Gaarder, 1994). They held that notion because many of the philosophers from this time visited England which was more broadminded when in comparison to their original place of origin, France. Many of these philosophers felt that it was important to question all truths and find answers to every question. Rationalism was also a core idea of the Enlightenment. The philosophers of the Enlightenment believed that the new natural sciences were subject to reason. This reason eventually led to them to focus on morals, religion, and ethics, which led these philosophers to inform the masses of reason and knowledge. During this time, attention was focused on acquiring knowledge which led to schools and encyclopedias being made. Some enlightenment philosophers criticized civilization and proposed that humans go back to nature because it was believed that non-civilized individuals are …show more content…

Albert goes on to say “that life is one big lottery” (Gaarder, 1994, p.416) and that winning numbers are apparent. To actually win the lottery takes a really long time. Albert makes the comparison to the selection of a species. Every species has many different combinations of numbers which creates a struggle for existence, but only one could win by having the winning numbers. This process takes a long time to occur, but when a species gets selected, it’s like winning the lottery. Only the best species have survived in what Albert called the “great lottery of life” (Gaarder, 1994). I found this example to be very interesting because I have never really thought of Natural Selection as a lottery. It makes more sense that way because Natural Selection is like that. It does take a one in million chance to be a winner of the lottery or to get

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Introduction: After the prolonged and disparaging Thirty Years War, philosophers took up a new notion of life and how, what and why things are the way they are in the world. Many also took into effect believing in scientific reasoning’s over biblical outlooks, looking for logical answers to all the many mysteries of the world and the afterlife. Enlightenment philosophers also constructed ways in which they thought people should act. For example, philosopher Voltaire explained his reasons for how “people should be citizens of the world” (Voltaire, “Patrie, in the philosophers dictionary”, 1752). THESIS:

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The Age of Reason In Europe, during the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason, many philosophers gathered together to discuss their different but similar ideas to help shape the world we live in today. In the late 17th and 18th century, four enlightenment philosophers named John Locke, Voltaire, Adam Smith, and Mary Wollstonecraft focused on the same main idea. They believed in individual rights and presented their arguments through religion, government, economics, and equality for women.

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The Enlightenment, also known as the “Age of Reason,” occurred in the eighteenth century and was a period in which ideas concerning God, nature, reason and humanity were combined, and these ideas instigated revolutionary developments in art, philosophy, and politics. The Enlightenment was crucial in determining aspects in terms of politics, government, and religion. Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Charles Montesquieu influenced the Founding Fathers and their ideas were found in the Declaration of Independence. The most important influence that shaped the founding of the United States came from John Locke, an Englishmen who redefined the nature of government.

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Hutchinson said, as quietly as she could. “I tell you it wasn’t fair. “ (para. 61 ) However, everyone else goes along with the lottery as though blind and oblivious to it’s fatal result that would prove to be the end of one of their own lives. All along, utilitarianism appears to be the key driving force behind this lottery.

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Philosopher John Harris, proposed the experiment of the survival lottery. The survival lottery basically says that if two people (Y and Z) are facing death and could be saved by killing one other person (A) and using their organs for transplant, then we should go ahead and kill A to save the lives of the ones who need the organ transplants. The argument he is making is based strictly on the grounds that the number of lives saved would greatly outway the number of lives that were taken from individuals. Some basic assumptions would need to be made as well. First off, each life would have to be assumed to be of equal value, two lives saved are more valuable than the killing of a single life, the two lives would have to be cured and of a better

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The Enlightenment was a period of time that stressed the importance of reason and individual ideas. Many philosophers published works criticizing a country’s monarch or divulging the flaws they saw in a system within the government, such as the justice system. The Enlightenment also stressed the importance of education, and as a result of this, literacy rates experienced a major upward trend. Now able to read the philosopher’s works, a larger sum of people now were educated on the corruptions within their government. This caused a questioning of traditional practices, and people began to believe they could revise their government.

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Enlightenment was a time of embracing logic and reasoning whilst rejecting untested beliefs and superstition. This time period occurred from the year 1694 until 1795. During this time writers used their medium of the written word to express their beliefs based on logic while denouncing old-world ideologies . During Enlightenment human nature was often put under scrutiny as thinkers strived to find what qualities resulted in the best possible human. In this piece of writing, the reader will be able to see the opinions of human nature held by three great thinkers from this time period: Voltaire, Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe.

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The Enlightenment went against the political views, and morals of the Age of Absolutism. The Enlightenment challenged the views of the Age of Absolutism because it questioned the traditional authority established during this period by taking away the idea of single power, that had benefited the monarchs and the wealthy, and introducing the new idea of ruling for the good of the people instead. During the Age of Absolutism, rulers believed in the idea of single power, but during the Enlightenment, people started to challenge this idea and introduced a new form of government free of tyranny. Document 1, a primary source written by Machiavelli in the 15th century, states, “Men have less hesitation in offending a man who is loved than one who is feared . . .

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• During the Enlightenment there was a Scientific Revolution • The enlightenment was also called the Age of Reason • The chaos of the Reformation and wars of religion had shaken a belief system that had been accepted by society in the Middle Ages • People began looking for natural law, the conditions that govern human behavior • Thinkers began to believe that the problems of society could be solved through reasoning • One of the first philosophers to search for the natural laws of government was England’s Thomas Hobbes. • He believed that people by nature were bad and needed strong government • He believed that people could avoid the nature of being bad by entering into a social contract • This was an agreement to give up individual freedom to live in an organized society

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The Age of Enlightenment still remains influential to our now modern world. Many of the ideas presented throughout this era have added significant insight to further understanding knowledge—challenging the importance of rational thought and sense perception throughout our everyday lives. However, there is a discernible emphasis of these enlightened ideas found in our higher educational systems. Rationalism, for example, is present throughout all modern colleges and universities.

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The Enlightenment gave people power to make the changes they wanted for independence and politics using intellect and reason, their natural right. The norm of a society that is modelled today became reason over

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