The French Revolution And The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment formed off of another movement known as the Scientific Revolution in the seventeenth century. The Scientific Revolution brought about new scientific discoveries especially in Astronomy changing the preconceptions of how the cosmos affect the natural world. These dramatic discoveries made people question the existing political and social orders. The Enlightenment challenged the traditional hierarchical ideals such as a king’s divine right to rule, the privileges of nobility, and the political power of religion. It also inspired the ideals of individual determination, freedom and equality, and the basic principles of human reason and natural rights.

The Enlightenment was a movement which focused on logic and individualism instead of tradition lasting between the 17th and 18th centuries. Ideas from Enlightenment influenced the uprising within the American colonies, France, and Latin America throughout the 1700’s. Thomas Hobbes thought the best government should have single ruler. John Locke thought that people should rule themselves instead of kings. One of the main ideas is that people should be governed by reason, not by tradition.

Between the 17th and 18th century, Enlightenment ideas that originated from France spread to other parts of Europe. Prior to the Enlightenment, absolute monarchs ruled most of Europe. Over time, citizens began to question the monarch’s power with ideas from philosophes such as Voltaire and John Locke. The philosophers concluded that society’s problems could be solved using a method of logic and reason. Also known as the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment inspired societal change and evolution. Through the use of logic and reason, enlightened despots of the 18th century were influenced by the social, political, and economic aspects of the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in which humanity valued reason over tradition. The Enlightenment had reformed society by implementing reason and scientific thought. During the eighteenth century, European rulers had taken the beliefs of philosophes and had used their knowledge to influence their decisions. Overall, the Enlightenment philosophy influenced Rulers and their power significantly.

France in Middle Ages era was ruled by the arbitrary monarch. Besides the king, the clergy and the nobility, which were the officials of the church and the group of aristocrats respectively, had supreme power than the society. In the way it ran, there were many problems in the social and economic section, such as poverty and taxation issues. Thus, French Revolution is one of the turning points of French public life. It is popular with the slogan “liberty, equality and fraternity” that brought French to be a new revolutionary country. While many people are still arguing whether French Revolution is the main effect of the Enlightenment ideas emergence or social economic disruption, I will argue that this revolution was an ultimate outcome of the social and economics disarray by looking at the details of foreign and internal aspects.

The Enlightenment, which reached its peak in the mid 17-1800’s was influenced by the scientific revolutions of previous centuries and emphasized reason and logic, stressing the understanding of the universe based on scientific laws as well as the power of the individual and their ability to question traditional ideas and

The Enlightenment of the 18th century evolved due to the many changes brought about by the Scientific Revolution. With all of the new scientific discoveries, new thought processes were developed. The scientists of the Scientific Revolution brought about revolutionary change. These scientists inspired the philosophes of the Enlightenment to challenge the ways of the "Old Regime" and question the ideas of the church. Philosophers such as Francois Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Locke published their controversial ideas and these ideas along with some important political action, helped to mold a new type of society. The new society was one that tolerated different religious beliefs. "The minds of men, abandoning the old disciplines

The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, encouraged the power of reason to change society and advance people's knowledge. The Enlightenment was a period in the mid sixteenth and the early eighteenth century when a group of philosophers, scientists and thinkers supported new ideas based solely on the concept of reason. During this period of time, there was a decline of both the power of the churches and the absolute monarchies. The ideas of the Enlightenment influenced both the American and the French Revolution. During the Enlightenment, traditional views were challenged by Enlightenment philosophers which ultimately led to both the American and the French Revolution.

The Enlightenment happened during the 1700s when Europeans scientist and philosophers begin to question about everything and began to understand the world based on reason and at this time stood out several people like Galileo Galilei, Nicholas Copernicus, Issac Newton, Adam Smith and many others. They made great discoveries that changed the world and the form of government.

Not only did enlightened ideas impact the French government, but they also impacted the people of France. The people of France turned to the enlightened ideas for guidance and ended up using them in the Revolution. One of the many enlightened ideas was that of equal and civil rights. The more freedom the people gained, the more freedom they wanted. This lead them to the extreme: killing their monarch in hopes of a republic. The people did this for the freedom and rights that enlightened philosophers told them they deserved. It was said in the Proclamation of the Convention to the

“Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains” (Rousseau 1). These words of the 18th Century philosophe Jean Jacques Rousseau perfectly describe the sweeping turmoil in Pre-revolution France. Freedom as pertaining to underlying societal structures such as social codes, political establishments, and religious institutions was believed by Enlightenment thinkers to be a natural right of man whilst it was seized from the citizens of France by the absolutist monarchy of King Louis XIV. As an absolute ruler, King Louis XIV held all power and was free to exercise it in all aspects of society, be it religion, economy, or law, without fear of resistance or revolt from the public. That is, until the 18th century, when Enlightenment ideals prevailed and the citizens of France were persuaded by various strong leaders and their ideas of reform to overthrow the current societal institutions. This movement is commonly known as the French Revolution. The rampant progression of the French Revolution was spread through Enlightenment ideals in the Third Estate, the largest demographic of absolute France. Consequently, the Enlightenment ideals of social, political, and religious freedom as manifested in the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau, Francois-Marie Arouet Voltaire, and the Baron de Montesquieu served as catalysts for the French Revolution.

The Enlightenment was an intellectual and cultural movement in the 17th and 18th centuries that ended with a changed Europe by moving science away from religion, using reason, logic, and experiments to answer a question, and led to a new outlook on life. In Europe, there were stronger and more powerful rulers, a growth of trade, and a new awareness of ancient Greek learning. The Renaissance played a crucial role in the development of the Enlightenment. People became more curious about the world around them. Humanists stressed the importance of learning about many new things. Furthermore, the Scientific Revolution, a new understanding of the world around us and how it works, is known as which contributed to the start of the Enlightenment era. Education played an important role in the development of Europe’s society

What cultured such an immense need for reform in France between 1690 C.E. and 1789 C.E.? Geo. H. Lewis argues in his DeFOREST ORATION. CAUSES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION that the extremely high and constricting taxes implemented in France, the conflicts between the nobility and the working class, and the uncooperativeness of the King created a sense of urgency for the general population of France (Lewis, pg. 51-52). Louis Gottschalk attributes this reform to the revolutionary ideas which were formulated by Rousseau during the Enlightenment movement. The Enlightenment movement in France was a product of the Scientific Revolution, a period in which there were new developments in politics, religion, and science which led to new governmental

The enlightenment happened because people wanted to assess the world from a new perspective. They left behind tradition,

Extravagant minds, creators, along with extraordinary thinkers have made, along with, making revolutionary ideas become a reality, changing the world in how it works today. On the contrary, the Enlightenment Period was a period of time, that was just starting to have an extraordinary amount of revolutionary ideas sparked in society. Unlike our world today there were not numerous amounts of geniuses in this time period as of now. These sparks soon cause kingdoms, empires, colonies, along with many other societies to change, undergo reform, an entirely redo on how things run in their societies. During the Enlightenment Period, the philosophes had a game-changing purpose that would soon transform the world entirely on how it functions today, as well as, in the future. Philosophes argued for individual freedom, a thought that allowed people to think, do, and live freely. This resided in government structure, religious interaction, economic functioning, and human equality. This eventually caused the majority of the population to become enlightened by their ideas.