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How Did Immanuel Kant Contribute To The Enlightenment

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Considered one of the world’s greatest philosophers, Immanuel Kant revolutionize thinking of his time and sparked the end of the Enlightenment and into modern thought. His influence is so great, philosophy is divided into pre-Kantian and post-Kantian schools of thought. Outside of philosophy, Kant's essays on the meaning of Enlightenment have been hugely influential in for many years and brought his name to the World. Kant was born in Konigsberg, then the capital of Prussia, but now a Russian exclave and it was renamed Kaliningrad at the end of World War II when the city was occupied by Soviet forces. Even by the standards of his own time, Kant was extremely unworldly, he never travelled more than 100 miles from his hometown, and almost his …show more content…

Kant studied literature, philosophy and natural science at the University of Konigsberg. He did not complete his degree, however, and there is speculation that he was forced out of the university because of his sympathy with Leibniz's thought. After three years working as a private tutor he was able to return to the university and complete his degree and commence work as a lecturer. Kant's career progressed slowly. He wrote prolifically, initially in Latin, then in his native German, but his work did not receive wide distribution (not least because in one case his publisher went bankrupt). He also found his progress was slowed by the demands of teaching and the necessity of earning a living. He was finally given a salaried position in 1770 and he was able to devote himself more fully to philosophy. It still took him another decade, however, too complete and finally publish Critique of Pure Reason, the work which established him as one of the greatest philosophers of all time. Kant himself described the work as producing the philosophical equivalent of the so-called Copernican Revolution because it reversed the usual assumption that the apprehension of empirical sense-data necessarily precedes the production of the concepts we assign to them. After his First Critique,

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Born in 1706 as the eighth of 17 children to a Massachusetts soap and candlestick maker, the chances Benjamin Franklin would go on to become a gentleman, scholar, scientist, statesman, musician, author, publisher and all-around general genius were astronomically low, yet he did just that. Franklin wrote in the Age of Enlightenment, an intellectual revolution in the 18th century. The ideals of the enlightenment are still thought of today, as they are a part of the United States’ Declaration of Independence and Constitution. When one remembers Benjamin Franklin very few people are aware of the fact that he worked as a printer until the age of 42. As a printer he had access to substantial amounts of literature.

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“The most perfect education, in my opinion,is…to enable the individual to attain such habits of virtue as well render [her] independent” (Doc D). The Enlightenment was a time period from the early 17th century to the late 18th century. There were many philosophers who contributed to making The Enlightenment. John Locke was a man who wanted freedom of government during 1690 (17th century) in England. He wanted this because he believed everyone was born with natural rights and the government should respect them and whoever didn’t, the people would have the right to impeach them.

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How did the declaration of independence get influenced by ideas during the Enlightenment? The declaration of independence could not have been done without John Locke. The Enlightenment period was a time where people questioned their rights and this led to philosophers questioning their government and their rights as a person. John Locke was one of the most famous philosophers during the Enlightenment period and believed in an idea known as “state of nature” which meant everyone was born with life, liberty, and property. John Locke wrote a book called “The Second Treatise of Government” in which he talks about natural rights and mentions, “Men agree to enter into society to preserve (keep) their natural rights to life.”

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In 1765 the American Revolution begin. How did we get here? The enlightenment, so what is the enlightenment. The enlightenment was a philosophical movement, where great ideas came that influenced many revolutions later on. The important major philosophers were Thomas Hobbes, he believed people were selfish and needed a strong government was needed for example a monarchy.

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Rachel’s views herself in “Eleven,” is that she’s growing up and she doesn’t know how to handle it. There are many reasons and evidence, to back up why I feel this way. “How do you think Rachel views herself?” When I saw the question, I thought about when Rachel said, “And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t.” (Cisneros 99)

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During a time period called the Enlightenment, America underwent major philosophical changes. New ideas from several different brilliant people spread across the newly discovered land causing people’s way of thinking to alter. This time meant transformation for America. John Locke, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison all executed their ideas successfully which makes them some of the most vital people in the Enlightenment of America. The Enlightenment was a theoretical movement which brought forth an abundance of new ideas in America.

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In conclusion, the Enlightenment was vital to the American Revolution and the creation of American Government. The Enlightenment beliefs that influenced the American Revolution were natural rights, the social contract, and the right to overthrow the government if the social contract was violated. The Enlightenment beliefs that aided to the creation of the American government were separation of powers, checks and balances, and limited government. As stated before, without the Enlightenment there would not have been a revolution, resulting in no American Government. The Enlightenment’s influence on the creation of America is irrefutable.

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The philosophy of Enlightenment has been most famously summarised in Immanuel Kant's essay, “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” Kant's answer in 1784 to the question what is Enlightenment? Is that it is a “human being's emergence from his self-incurred tutelage” which is the inability to use one's own understanding without direction from another.” The immaturity is self-incurred when it is caused not by lack of mental capacity but by the lack of resolution. Kant urges each of us to refuse to remain under tutelage of others. In Kant's opinion, we must think and decide for ourselves.

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He synthesized early modern rationalism and empiricism, set the terms for much of nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy, and continues to exercise a significant influence today in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, and other fields. The fundamental idea of Kant 's “critical philosophy” — especially in his three Critiques: the Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790) — is human autonomy. He argues that the human understanding is the source of the general laws of nature that structure all our experience; and that human reason gives itself the moral law, which is our basis for belief in God, freedom, and immortality. Therefore, scientific knowledge, morality, and religious belief are mutually consistent and secure because they all rest on the same foundation of human autonomy, which is also the final end of nature according to the teleological worldview of reflecting judgment that Kant introduces to unify the theoretical and practical parts of his philosophical

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The Enlightenment was a period during the 1600 and 1700s where authority, power, government and law was questioned by philosophers. The causes of the Enlightenment was the Thirty Years’ War, centuries of mistreatment at the hands of monarchies and the church, greater exploration of the world, and European thinkers’ interest in the world (scientific study). A large part of the Enlightenment was natural law, which was the belief that people should live their lives and organize their society on the basis of rules and precepts laid down by nature or God; the principles of the Enlightenment in the 1600s through the 1700s influenced the development of the USA by advocating religious and social freedom, freeing the people from oppression, and providing

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