The Enlightment - Essay Example

ENLIGHTENMENT Introduction Generally, the Enlightenment meant an embrace of more humanist and rational ideals, reflected in various forms of government and philosophy, as well as religion, which was inextricably linked to these other factors. At the same time, there was a decrease in absolutism, in terms of looking at God as well as monarchs. “The anti-philosophes also focused their ire on imagined republican inclinations of the philosophes. Underpinning all this was a vision of the philosophes attacking God while the anti-philosophes protected throne and altar.

” (Censer, 2002). The current research looks at ideals of nature and human potential, absolutism and forms of government, as they are related to Enlightenment models, which were a challenge to the Old Regime. Later ideal government structures of the Enlightenment were more about the people than the divine monarch. “Supposed innate qualities, such as goodness or original sin, had no reality. In a darker vein, Thomas Hobbes portrayed man as moved solely by considerations of his own pleasure and pain.

” (Enlightenment, 2008). There were light and dark sides to this decrease in absolutism. EnlightenmentThe Enlightenment represented a shift in the form of nature from being totally based on the idea of absolutism of divinity to a paradigm shift from the Old Regime. What many Enlightenment thinkers did was to refine the whole concept of nature-as-absolute, and change it in a way that represented less absolutism. A paradigm shift occurs when the accepted notions about a given subject or theory (absolutism in this case) become disfavored, in the favor of a new way of doing things or a new notion of the way in which things are done.

This creates tension as supporters of the old paradigm are often polemical against the new paradigm during the process of change or paradigm shift. In terms of humanity’s successful attempts to control nature, and both of these things are seen as being positive by the various Enlightenment philosophies. The Enlightenment seems to also reserve a lot of praise for those things which are not found in nature, but rather which represent culture and art. This is a reflection of what the Old Regime may have been experiencing in terms of an agenda to install Enlightenment ideals of science, rationality and reason being paramount in terms of their opposition to nature and emotion which may be more spontaneous.

ConclusionThe idea of the fall of absolutes shows in Enlightenment ideals in many ways, particularly in the appreciation of reason over emotion and the attention to providing all of the empirical details possible. Even though it may look non empirical and subjective from our time, this was a major step forward in conducting a study according to principles of reason and logic, which were central features to the Enlightenment. Basically there are two main tenets of Enlightenment ideals that show up the most in terms of human potential.

These are first of all, tenets of appreciation for neo classicism which are a key feature of the Enlightenment, and the focus on science and logic and empiricism instead of emotion and feeling. Human potential was also somewhat discriminatory about European supremacy during this time. This supposition is borne out by the cherished Enlightenment ideals mentioned above, which were more empirical than absolute. There were also issues of the absolutism of tradition, which was being challenged during this time.

REFERENCEBentley, Jerry H. and Herbert F. Ziegler (2003). Traditions and Encounters. New York: McGraw Hill.Censer, J. (2002) Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity. Journal of Social History.The Enlightenment (2008). http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/297474/Italy/27711/Reform-and-Enlightenment-in-the-18th-century