Enlightenment

From Conservapedia

The Enlightenment was a philosophical movement in the 1700s characterized by rationalism, or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification". Advances in science had led to principles and laws that were knowable and unchanging as described within a naturalistic framework. This idea of knowledge that could be observed apart from a direct explanation dealing with God led to a change in philosophical ideals, where man could shape and determine his own destiny including areas outside of science such as social and political realities. In a sense mans' view of his own ability to bring about change and a trust in himself to determine what that change needed to be crystalized in the thought process of the times among the philosphical elite.

Writers during the Enlightenment assumed that science, beginning in the late 1600s with Isaac Newton, could be duplicated in other fields through a systematic and logical approach. Some of the "enlightened" authors of the period even criticized Christianity as they adopted God in a deist form that allowed for removing His influence in everyday affairs, and thus the course of the human development was left to human ingenuity. While much of the population of the times remained Christian, the ideas of enlightenment philosophy creating a greater freedom took root in England, France, and the American colonies. Enlightenment thought combined with Christian values provided the intellectual foundations of the American Revolution in which much of Jefferson's Declaration of Independence borrowed human rights of expression put forth by John Locke.

According to researcher Rodney Stark, "The 'Enlightenment' [was] conceived initially as a propaganda ploy by militant atheists and humanists who attempted to claim credit for the rise of science [through promulgating] the falsehood that science required the defeat of religion.'^[1] It should be pointed out that the scientific discoveries that made the philosophical precepts of the Enlightenment possible were made by men who were themselves ardent Christians and they would not have subscribed to the later view of divorcing science from God.

The American Revolution did not satisfy many of the Enlightenment thinkers such as Jefferson, who then saw in the French Revolution the same kindred spirit that would embrace freedom. The results of the French Revolution and its reign of terror was not adopted in the spirit of the new Americas, and when French and England went to war, America remained neutral even though France helped the United States win its independence from Great Britain.

There is no formal time period for when the Enlightenment ended just as there is no specific time for when it began. The reality of the French Revolution is often seen as an ending point when the ideals meeting a reality of Europe torn by decades of war dampened much of the glitter. While the Enlightenment spirit was interwoven into the successful creation of the United States, the difficulties in Europe showed that the ideas alone were not the answer that was being sought.

See also

• Greek Philosophy
• Platonism
• Hellenistic

References