The Enlightenment and the Role of the Philosophers

The Enlightenment is a name given by historians to an judgement movement that was predominant in the Western world during the eighteenth century. strongly influenced by the rise of modern science and by the aftermath of the desire unearthly conflict that followed the Reformation, the calculateers of the Enlightenment (called philosophes in France) were committed to secular views establish on reason or tender-hearted understanding only, which they hoped would hand over a pedestal for beneficial changes affecting all(prenominal) stadium of life and thought. The much extreme and radical philosophes--Denis Diderot, Claude Adrien Helvetius, Baron dHolbach, the Marquis de Condorcet, and Julien Offroy de La Mettrie (1709-51)--advocated a philosophical rationalism deriving its methods from science and natural philosophical system that would replace religion as the means of knowing scan and destiny of humanity; these men were materialists, pantheists, or atheists. Other e nlighten thinkers, much(prenominal) as Pierre Bayle, Voltaire, David Hume, Jean Le Rond Dalembert, and Immanuel Kant, opposed fanaticism, notwithstanding were either sceptic or left room for nearly kind of religious faith.

All of the philosophes saw themselves as continue the work of the great seventeenth century pioneers--Francis Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Leibnitz, Isaac Newton, and John Locke--who had positive fruitful methods of rational and empirical research and had demonstrated the surmise of a world remade by the application of friendship for human benefit. The philosophes believed that science could reveal record as it unfeignedly is and certify h! ow it could be controlled and manipulated. This belief provided an incentive to extend scientific methods into every force field of inquiry, thus laying the groundwork for the learning of the modern social sciences. The enlightened understanding of human nature was one that emphasized the proper(a) to self- expression and human fulfillment, the right to think freely and express ones views publicly without censorship or business organisation of... If you want to get a sufficient essay, order it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com

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