{"id":23658,"date":"2026-08-27T09:54:35","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T14:54:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/?p=23658"},"modified":"2026-08-27T09:54:35","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T14:54:35","slug":"the-age-of-enlightenment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/2026\/08\/27\/the-age-of-enlightenment\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Age of Enlightenment\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hey guys! Welcome back! Today we are going to talk about the Enlightenment and what it accomplished.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Enlightenment is a movement that occurred during the 17th and 18th centuries to emphasize reasoning and logic, which challenged the established traditions and authority (the church). These ideals were drafted from the Scientific Revolution. The Enlightenment had many characteristics that we are going to learn about.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rationalism, reason, is the arbiter of all things.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cosmology, a new concept of the existence of earth in the universe (earth is NOT the center of the universe).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Secularism, an application of the methods of science to religion and philosophy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Scientific Method, consisted of Mathematical Analysis, Experimentation, and Inductive Reasoning.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Utilitarianism, the greatest good for the greatest number of people.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tolerance, meaning everyone can have free ideas and no opinion is worth beating your neighbor over.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Optimism and self-confidence, the belief that man is intrinsically good and the belief in social progress.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Freedom, bringing liberty to all men and making them free to express themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Education of the Masses, this meant that everyone would get an education, not just the rich kids.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Legal Reforms, this means the people were treated with justice and kindness and NOT tortured.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Constitutionalism, there were written constitutions which listed citizens&#8217; rights.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cosmopolitanism, this means we all belong to the global community.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Later on, down the line an English philosopher by the name of Francis Bacon tagged along. He laid the foundation for the Enlightenment by supporting the idea of empiricism, and the idea that knowledge is power. He also supported separation between faith and reason which was a division of science from religion, enabling independent inquiry.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, Ren\u00e9 Descartes saw man\u2019s ability to reason as the proof of their existence. He wrote \u201cDiscourse on Method\u201d in 1637.He rejected all forms of intellectual authority (higher ups telling him what to think) which he used to prove the existence of God.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">English philosopher and mathematician, Thomas Hobbes\u2019 political theory portrayed politics as an exact science like geometry. He<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> was an admirer of Galileo Galilei\u2019s (man put on house arrest for telling the truth about the solar system) ideas concerning the nature of the physical and studies of motion. Hobbes wrote \u201cLeviathan\u201d in 1651.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A whole generation later, English philosopher and physician, John Locke developed a completely different notion of the basic nature of humankind, which was seen as innately good. When he witnessed the almost bloodless,\u201d Glorious Revolution\u201d in England he was convinced that people can live together peacefully.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This concludes today\u2019s blog you guys&#8217; bye!!<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hey guys! Welcome back! Today we are going to talk about the Enlightenment and what it accomplished. \u00a0 The Enlightenment is a movement that occurred during the 17th and 18th centuries to emphasize reasoning and logic, which challenged the established traditions and authority (the church). These ideals were drafted from the Scientific Revolution. The Enlightenment &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/2026\/08\/27\/the-age-of-enlightenment\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;\u201cThe Age of Enlightenment\u201d&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23658"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23658"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23712,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23658\/revisions\/23712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}