Dbq on the EnlightenmentEssay Preview: Dbq on the EnlightenmentReport this essayThe Enlightenment,also called the Age of Reason, began in the late 17th and 18th century. European writers and thinkers were now beginning to believe that nothing was beyond the reach of their minds, and believed people and governments were able to solve every problem they encountered. This was a period in Europe and America when mankind was emerging from centuries of ignorance into a new age of enlightenment by reasoning in politics, religion, and human conditions.
Political philosopher John Locke came to the conclusion that, “political power is that power, which every man having in the state of nature, has given up into the hands of society” (Doc. 1), which he believed should guarantee that this power should be used for only good, and to preserve their property. There shouldn’t be any other use of this power, according to John, other than to serve and protect societies members. This, in turn, meant that this power in no way could be absolute, or overpowering. Just as John Locke, Thomas Paine also believed in the preservation of the natural rights. These rights included liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression (Doc. 5). The opinion of Frederick the Great, who was the monarch of Prussia, was that politics and religion were not matters to mix (Doc. 11). Reasoning in religion was an important aspect of this enlightenment period, and affects how we see religion today.
The doctrine of government over individuals was also considered an important part of the Enlightenment. A group of English thinkers, including Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, wrote in the 1830s, “the law is established for all men. But the man who is no law is no authority” (Encyclopedia Britannica, 4). This statement was important because “the principle of government consists of equality between the man and the authority and the law is not a law, but a principle.” The “law is established for all men.”
In 1848, Joseph Farber, in what was the first major work on government, suggested that the state be the highest form of government. (He came of a Jewish family in England. There have been many debates about his position, though he is perhaps best known for his anti-Semitic writings, which were published in the American edition of the American Philosophical Quarterly. Farber was an anti-American, while his British counterpart, John Locke, was a free laborist (Encyclopedia Britannica, 19). John Locke, perhaps inspired, by the writings of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, was one of the founders of the political party, the Common Man Party (Encyclopedia Britannica, 24).[1]
Today we learn that there were many important problems with this view of government and that government was the primary form of government over the entire human species. The British monarch, William IV, declared that “the whole of mankind is as stupid, as ignorant, as unjust … as impious and cruel as impious men.” Elizabeth I, who succeeded King Henry I, declared that “government has no right to be called a law of nature, or a law of nature or anything like it, except in cases of emergency, and in cases of emergencies to which it is provided by nature, or to which it is necessary.” As such, the most recent Enlightenment reform legislation, and the new American social contract, was written through a coalition of the major states. These proposed political constitutions sought to preserve civil government, but they failed. The majority of these constitutions had no legal power but were designed to give government power. The American founders saw the state and the people as inseparable, and argued that the new government was intended to ensure that such constitutional rights were available to everybody and that the state was the law of nature.
The American Founding Fathers believed that they could establish an American social contract by building a state system for economic, political and economic life. They also viewed governmental power as the root of liberty. The Founders did not want to create a system of government with a centralized government, but they also saw that governmental power should be reserved to the states, not to the people. The Founders also believed that if society provided a government and no power to the people or to the king or king’s court, there was no need for a central government or a federal government (Encyclopedia Britannica, 9). The Founders also believed that the government should not be instituted only by the elected members of the community or the government’s representatives (Encyclopedia Britannica, 12). Since there were only a few people elected on a voluntary basis as members of the legislature of the United States, they believed there must be a governmental plan for the citizens to take part in.
While there was no general plan for how this would be done, certain ideas persisted, some of which were thought to be the most important. The Founding Fathers were concerned about two major problems: First, that the state would become what was called a social contract; and second, that the state would become a
French philosophe, Voltaire, was known to be a man that spoke his mind quite candidly. He believed that, in terms of religion, since all of mankind was created under the same Creator, that we should be tolerant of one another and treat each other with respect and see others as our own brothers and sisters (Doc. 2). The belief that religion had been corrupted by politics, was a belief that Thomas Paine held. He also was a strong believer that all men are created equal, just as Voltaire was (Doc. 10). This belief helped people see another side of religion, instead of just focusing on throwing their religion in other’s face, they were starting to be more tolerant toward others and their beliefs. A man named Galileo, was a big contributor in the separation of science and religion. He advocated that God gave mankind the knowledge and ability to reason so we would be able to discover his creation ourself. He did not believe that the bible was explicitly written as a scientific marnt to base all of our theories on the world about (Doc. 9). This belief of his helped science because most church officials didn’t like people questioning the bible or what it said, but him explaining that he wasn’t contradicting anything, rather exploring God’s world, would have earned him more tolerance. Religion during the Enlightenment period was a big factor in the way humans were now treating other humans, as people were now preaching tolerance for one another, respect for humanity grew, but for some, human conditions were at an all time low.
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