Colonial American In The Eighteenth Century 1701 - 1770.

The Enlightenment is a name given by historians to an

intellectual ride that was predominant in the Western world during

the 18th speed of light. strongly influenced by the rise of modern cognizance

and by the aftermath of the persistent religious conflict that followed

the Reformation, the thinkers of the Enlightenment (called philosophers

in France) were committed to secular views establish on reason or human

understanding only, which they hoped would provide a tooshie for

beneficial changes affecting every area of life and thought.

The more thoroughgoing and radical philosophers--Denis Diderot, Claude

Adrien Helvetius, Baron dHolbach, the Marquis de Condorcet, and

Julien Offroy de La Mettrie (1709-51)--advocated a philosophical

rationalism filiation its methods from science and natural philosophy

that would replace religion as the representation of knowing reputation and destiny

of humanity; these men were materialists, pantheists, or

atheists.

Other enlightened thinkers, such(prenominal) as Pierre Bayle, Voltaire, David

Hume, Jean Le Rond Dalembert, and Immanuel Kant, opposed fanaticism,

but were either agnostic or left room for some pleasing of religious

faith.

All of the philosophers

saw themselves as continuing the work of

the great 17th century pioneers--Francis Bacon, Galileo, Descartes,

Leibnitz, Isaac Newton, and John Locke--who had developed fruitful

methods of rational and empirical inquiry and had demo the

possibility of a world remade by the application of knowledge for

human benefit. The philosophers believed that science could reveal

nature as it truly is and show how it could be controlled and

manipulated. This belief provided an inducing to extend scientific

methods into every field of inquiry, thus laying the metrical foot for

the development of the modern social sciences.

The enlightened understanding of

human nature was one that

emphasized the right to self-_ runion and human fulfillment, the

right to think freely and express ones views publicly without

censorship or fear of repression.

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