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Essay on Enlightenment influence on the French Revolution
Although the intellectual movement called "The Enlightenment" is usually associated with the 18th century, its roots in fact go back much further. But before we explore those roots, we need to define the term. This is one of those rare historical movements which in fact named itself. Certain thinkers and writers, primarily in London and Paris, believed that they were more enlightened than their compatriots and set out to enlighten them.They believed that human reason could be used to combat ignorance, superstition, and tyranny and to build a better world. Their principal targets were religion (embodied in France in the Catholic Church) and the domination of society by a hereditary aristocracy.
During the eighteenth century, the Enlightenment emerged as a social, philosophical, political, and literary movement that espoused rational thought and methodical observation of the world. The term “Enlightenment” refers to the belief by the movement’s contributors that they were leaving behind the dark ignorance and blind belief that characterized the past. The freethinking writers of the period sought to evaluate and understand life by way of scientific observation and critical reasoning rather than through uncritically accepted religion, tradition, and social conventions.
At the center of the Enlightenment were the philosophers, a group of intellectual deists who were centered in Paris. Deists believe in the existence of a creative but uninvolved God, and they believe in the basic goodness, rather than sinfulness, of humankind. Because this view of God contradicted the accepted religious views of the day, the philosophers were considered very dangerous. The church wielded considerable power at the time, so the philosophers were subjected to censorship and restrictive decrees carrying harsh punishments. Still, the philosophers continued to spread their views, and as the church’s political power dwindled over the years, the Enlightenment gained momentum. In fact, by the 1770s, many philosophers collected government pensions and held important academic positions.......
