The Ideas of the Enlightenment Some ideas are so important that they can change people’s beliefs in government and religion, and even change lives later on years from now. The Enlightenment was made up of many ideas which influenced how societies worked and they still apply today. It was a movement in the 1700s when new perspectives and ideas of government and religion were made, changing people’s beliefs and view on society. The most important ideas of the Enlightenment were political rights, freedom of religion, economic freedom, and gender equality. The first important idea of the Enlightenment was political freedom. “(W)e must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, …show more content…
“In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous where [skills] do not result from the exercise of [her] own reason.”(Mary Wollstonecraft, 1792). This explains how absurd it is to call someone’s skills great when it is not their decision to do it. The importance of this is that many women during this time period were not educated so all they can do is work for the men, with not a lot of freedom in their decisions. “Women must be allowed to found them virtue on knowledge, which is scarcely possible unless they be educated by the same pursuits as men.” An alternative saying is that the only way for women to gain knowledge is to learn the same education as men. This is very important because in other to achieve gender equality, men must support the women in their education. Gender equality was a tough obstacle to break through, and without the help of so many influential women, we wouldn’t have equal gender rights today. With all this in mind, even though the Enlightenment was made of many ideas and beliefs, the most significant ones of the many were political rights, freedom of religion, economic freedom, and equality of all genders. This movement will likely result in a feud between the philosophes and those who disagree with the Enlightenment(including government). However, the ideas will go through and be adapted into society. It will slowly start to spread to other countries. We are still developing these ideas, but we’re almost the the end of our