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How Did The Enlightenment Change Man's Understanding Of Society

570 Words3 Pages

The Enlightenment changed man’s understanding of society, what started as men just questioning the world around them led to ideas that would shape countries, discredit the church, and introduce a free market. All in all, the human thought process change from “everything came from God” to “now, try to reason that”. Politically, the Enlightenment gave way to the idea of enlightened despotism, introduced by Voltaire. It described a rational form of absolutism, where the ruler was there to keep peace, provide protection. and not undermine the peace or the people. In order to maintain a balance between the government and the people, John Locke came up with the idea of the social contract, it calls for the people to give up some their right to allow for the government to keep order and protect them. Locke also stated that there were three basic rights for humans, life, liberty, and property, none of them were to be given up in the social contract.These ideas influenced major people such as Catherine II of Russia, Louis XVI of France, and Frederick the Great of Prussia and caused them to structure …show more content…

Because of that, most work done during this time period undermined the church and weakened it. People use to reason that the fish were in the stream because God put them there and that is it. Now people questioned everything nature, society, space, and even the church. In order to spread the idea, this state of mind, Diderot pulled together the great works of this time period into what is the Encyclopedia. This included most or all of the work of the scientific revolution and the enlightenment all in one place and available for purchase. With these ideas spreading people saw that if laws can be found in nature, laws could be found in society too. For example, tabula rasa, which stated that humans were born blank and that all knowledge comes from

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