Impacts Of The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment began during the 18th century, coinciding with the scientific revolution. Influenced by new discoveries, many philosophers brought their ideas to the public through the use of pamphlets, newspapers, and essays. Encyclopedias were being mass produced and also becoming popular, allowing vast amounts of knowledge to reach even those of lower classes. Many Enlightenment philosophers were the liberals of their day. There was a large focus on reason, skepticism, and individualism. The majority of Enlightenment philosophers rejected supernatural events as superstition and instead focused on Deism. The Deist movement is the belief that God exists but does not interfere with day-to-day life, instead preferring to let the universe proceed

The corrupt and institutionalized church was no longer seen as the law of the land, science was deemed more factual. This new unbiased viewpoint allowed others to objectively see the world around them, and create their own opinions about reality, instead of being told by the church. Although many of the Enlightenment philosophers were from the upper class, they were still able to sympathize with those of the lower classes. Equality and basic human rights were essential to the Enlightenment period; no matter what a person’s social standing was. Voltaire, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were three prominent Enlightenment philosophers that each had huge impacts on the sociopolitical issues of the era (Age of Enlightenment). Born in Paris, Voltaire was the youngest of five children. His father had persisted Voltaire to become a lawyer, but instead, he spent most of his time

Locke was born in England and attended Oxford university, where he studied medicine (Andrews). Being a prime influence of Voltaire, Locke was also a liberal. He too sought to educate the masses on the intellect of the human mind. Locke’s key idea was that no one person is born evil, but as a blank slate, free of opinion. Instead of knowledge being learned, Lock proclaimed that it was gained through the different experiences an individual has during the course of their life. Locke speculated that man was innately good, unlike Thomas Hobbes, who believed people were selfish. Everyone was entitled to “life, liberty, and estate” under Locke’s philosophy (Connolly). The State of Nature, a time before political structures and a lack of law, was not consumed by anarchy and chaos, as thought by Hobbes, but with freedom. Locke declared that this raw environment allowed people to do whatever they see fit to achieve happiness. There is still a sense of morality amongst these people, and through this, there would form a natural government (Duignan). A government that has the one purpose of maintaining order, this is the foundation of the social contract theory. A government exists to provide security and protection to its people, and the people in return follow the laws and regulations it enforces. Separation of powers was also another key point in Locke’s philosophy, and he believed that as a solidified group, the people of a