The Enlightenment: Baron D Holbach

The Enlightenment was a period of time in which there was a rising movement of political and intellectual thought. During the Enlightenment, thinkers encouraged the abandonment of church ideologies and pushed towards the political ideologies that emphasized science, rationalism, and individualism. All thinkers of the Enlightenment rejected teachings from the church and brought up a rise in modern ideas and political ideologies. The idea of “reason” took on many different forms, as it fully progressed throughout the Enlightenment. At first people thought that reason can only make an individual smarter, but later on in the Enlightenment, there were beliefs that reason could bring society together and lead the world to peace. Religious ideas

Baron D'Holbach ( born December 1723, and died in 1789),wrote many attacks on religious power, as he saw it to be useless and distracting . In fact, he even published a book, Le Christianisme dévoilé, which was his close examination and inspection of Christianity. Le Christianisme dévoilé, is French for Christianity Unveiled. Hence the name, this document In his other document ,Good Sense, he describes religion as “a mere castle in the air, theology is but the ignorance of natural causes reduced to a system; a long tissue of fallacies and contradictions. We find, in all the religions of the earth a God of armies, a jealous God, an avenging God, a destroying God, a God who is pleased with carnage and whom his worshippers consider it as a duty to serve to his taste.” (Perry, Peden, Von Laue 67) Holbach was an atheist that regarded the idea of God as a result of “superstition” and “fear”. D’Holbach actively announced that the focal point of all of mankind’s distress and sorrow is from religion and that these are the biggest and most important two hinges of all religion. Holbach’s solution to this is forming a society that has individuals that want to learn from others and not just one

In Immanuel Kant’s long and bulky document, What is Enlightenment?, he says “ Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity, Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another….Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one's intelligence without being guided by another.” (Perry, Peden, Von Laue 55) To be succinct, Immanuel Kant believes that this “immaturity” is holding society back and makes us too dependent on other people's opinions. Kant goes on to say that a society was only given freedom, to become enlightened. In all his documents, Kant explains why freedom is such a powerful tool for society to use. Once everyone has their own freedom, there will be an explosion of thoughts that would send the world to a whole different degree of thinking. To move forward from the immaturity that holds us back, Immanuel Kant encourages society to find a blend of their own liberty and idealism. Kant says that “All that is required for this enlightenment is freedom; and particularly the least harmful of all that may be called freedom” (Perry, Peden, Von Laue 56). The only thing Kant sees the Enlightenment and more importantly the world needs is freedom, so people can formulate their own ideas and not be confined to just one way of thinking, like