Why Is The American Enlightenment Important In The 1600's?

In the 1700’s, economic life and social life in America began to expand which gave people the time and urge to partake in intellectual and cultural quest. This allowed Americans to participate in a huge transition that affected a large portion of the Western part of America. They were moving toward the Enlightenment period and away from medieval. “This was important for American history because Enlightenment ideals played a substantial role in the American Revolution and in the development of the American political system that was to come” (Shultz, 2014, p. 69).
The American Enlightenment began because of the European Enlightenment. The European Enlightenment was a movement to prioritize the human capacity. Copernicus began to question the fundamental beliefs from the 1500’s, which was the belief of spiritual and secular rulers, humans incapacity for social change and that a person’s time on earth is a temporary journey that leads to eternal salvation or eternal damnation. By the 1600’s educated people began to question that natural laws not divine laws were the laws that governed society.

Locke believed that one’s character was defined by their environment more so than it was by than their divine decree. Rousseau believed that people had natural rights to life, liberty and property. “The key Enlightenment economist was Adam Smith, who postulated a natural balance in the economy determined by laws of supply and demand” (Shultz, 2014, p. 69). These thinkers led people to believe that it was possible for progress, that they had a right to reject authority if their rights were denied and that they had a stake in their own life. “The Enlightenment was a fundamental transformation in the way people in the Western world thought about themselves and the societies in which they lived” (Shultz, 2014, p.