Paper Example. Characters That Display Enlightenment Qualities

Enlightenment was a period when the world was guided by reason as the main origin of authority as well as legitimacy. As such, different personalities embraced different ideals to enhance development, governance, and to define the separation between the church and the state. The personalities also focused on scientific methods and the questioning of religious orthodoxy. The first personality who displayed enlightenment qualities is Descartes. The enlightenment is said to have originated from his Discourse. His work influenced historians, mainly from France. Descartes used an epistemological view to explain authority in terms of internal certainty. Historians plus philosophers have used Descartes’s work as the basis for epistemological knowledge. The Discourse influenced people to undertake local revolutions. For instance, France adopted anti-church plus anti-government radicalism, leading to the Great French Revolution. Germany’s middle class became influential, although it remained spiritualistic and embraced nationalism to respect and retain governments and existing churches.

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Denis Diderot and his colleague Gean Rond show enlightenment qualities through their work in compiling the encyclopedia to enhance academic knowledge and scientific research. Their work began in 1751, and in total, the duo compiled approximately 35 volumes with more than 71,000 different entries. The entries explained different scientific topics and art comprehensively. As such, academic intellectuals all over the world benefitted from high-quality exploration of knowledge. As such, Europe experienced philosophic and scientific expansion that challenged traditional teachings and doctrines. Thus, philosophical movements emerged to provide arguments from reasoning instead of faith plus Catholic teachings. Therefore, different civil laws guided by natural law and scientific knowledge based on experimentation and observations.

Governments also portrayed enlightenment qualities, although some were against enlightenment thinkers. The role of the government is to enhance development through inventions. Thus, governments supported enlightenment by giving liberty to think and make different public discoveries that added value to existing knowledge and knowledge that led to new discoveries. For instance, Scotland’s government supported enlightenment thinkers who advocated for liberal Calvinism and Newtonian laws, leading to the expansion of transatlantic enlightenment. Italy saw the reduction of the church’s power to give room for thinkers and inventors to enhance scientific discoveries. Russia saw the growth of art and increase in scientific knowledge when the government encouraged its people to engage in artwork and scientific discoveries actively. As such, the first university was built with a fully equipped library, a theatre, a public museum, as well as an autonomous press. Thus, greater autonomy was adopted in the production of consumer goods at lower prices, printing press thrived on producing books and journals, and news was released on a monthly basis to inform the public on various commentaries.

Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke and Isaac Newton provided different enlightenment thought inspired by different philosophical arguments. For instance, Locke and Newton were inspired by Spinoza’s philosophy, which advocated for democracy, freedom, plus freedom of expression. As such, the religious authority that was rampant at the time received opposition from these thinkers. The church was separated from the state, with science taking the lead in the discourse plus thought. The adoption of science and scientific advancement led to scientific advancement plus progress that founded the western intellectual culture. Political modernization focused on the democracy of people and institutions, thereby creating modern democracies. Human rights were adopted from natural law, thereby facilitating the separation between society and the state.

Characters that seem to be unenlightened or exhibit qualities antithetical to enlightenment ideals

Voltaire is one character that seems to be antithetical to enlightenment. Enlightenment sought to separate the church from the state, but Voltaire advocated for a belief in God who is the source of morality for society. The morality of society was supported by the belief in God, who guided the good and the evil. Also, Voltaire went against enlightenment ideals since he focused on literary and rhetorical themes, making him unique. As Voltaire (2018) explains, Voltaire focused on language through style, a literary genre, and manipulation of printing books. He promulgated different ideas, making him clandestine. He wrote immense pieces that touched every genre, be it poetry, drama, satire, comedies, and verses, among others. He expressed reality, feelings, and occurrences through language.

Additionally, Voltaire was not self-centered like other enlightenment thinkers whose work led to conflicts before being adopted as significant to growth and development. His work in language became iconic among readers in different spectrums, such as the history of language, fiction, and satires. Voltaire focused on the base and trivial of language, a move that was shaped by the conflicts between the ancients and the enlightenment thinkers who sought to modernize the world. Thus, he used literary forms to express controversies in society. His form of enlightenment did not pose any danger to either political or religious parties, making him non-partisan.

The church seems to be against enlightenment since its power over the state was threatened. The church had control over governments and could influence their daily operations. For instance, in Italy, the church curtailed innovations and when its power was stripped off, more invention and great thoughts influenced development. The catholic doctrine limited scientific innovations since it limited free thinking and free speech, making it hard for scientists to proclaim their innovations. Religion instituted traditional authority, which was blinded by faith, thereby limiting reasoning and, consequently, innovations. Thus, the church was clearly against enlightenment.

Some governments were enemies to enlightenment, as seen from the wide response of governments to enlightenment thinkers in the world. Governments censored thinkers to control their contents while others ignored them, thereby curtailing their rights to express their intellectual abilities. For instance, in Britain, the government ignored enlightenment thinkers in England. In France, the government was ruthless against enlightenment leaders where they experienced censorship, imprisonment, and going to exile in fear of political consequence. Threatening governments portrayed the unwillingness of governments to support change through scientific developments. However, the governments which subjected enlightenment thinkers to ruthless treatment were those controlled by the church. The church viewed enlightenment thinkers as enemies to the church’s control, thereby using the government to curtail their freedom of speech. Thinkers such as Voltaire experienced the ruthlessness of the government by going to exile in fear of being captured and taken to jail due to his advocacy on the separation between the state and the government. As such, the government, in collaboration with the church, became enemies of enlightenment, though they did not succeed in suppressing it. Enlightenment succeeded from the efforts of the thinkers to cultivate for the freedom of speech.

Examples of hypocrisy in the text and their importance

Enlightenment ideas were full of hypocrisy since they advocated for the rights of men as opposed to the rights of all people. Men were the elites in society, and as such, they established rules that favored them only. The elites laid a foundation for modern democracies, which favored the minority in society. The hypocrisy is important to show that the root of modern injustices such as racism and gender inequality stemmed from the enlightenment period when men seemed more superior to women. The elites lacked the envisioning of social constructs such as color, gender, and social class to make them universal, just like the way scientists made scientific laws universal to avoid being discredited in the future. Such hypocrisy has led to struggles for human rights in different parts of the world.

Thinkers assumed that rights and freedoms were not hereditary, thus not equal for all. They argued that rights could not be equated to power, leading to the development of the aristocracy form of government, which was both authoritative and oppressive since it did not respect people’s rights. Their hypocrisy triggered white males’ superiority in European society. The same is projected in modern society where the whites are more superior to other races in every aspect of society. The hypocrisy laid a background for social constructs where society was divided based on race and social classes. It showed that enlightenment was both a blessing and a curse, destined to develop and divide the world into different segments based on race, gender, and social class. The construction of rights based on social constructs was born from the enlightenment period, leading to discriminatory rights and policy in society.

Another form of hypocrisy was seen in the fight to separate the church and the state, giving power to the state. The religion was the guardian of morality in society, and as such, separating the two means that the state could conduct its affairs independently without the influence of the church. The hypocrisy was a tool to give the state more power to control society through the adoption of unequal rights to give more power to the elites. The church could have condemned such as act, but it lacked power over the state. Thus, the state defines freedoms, rights, and controls religions, making people do whatever they want. Freedom led to the birth of religious conflict and intolerance among religions.

The examples above are important to portray how the enlightenment thinkers lacked projection on how their actions would affect the world positively and negatively. It also shows that enlightenment thinkers were self-centered to suit their needs at that time based on the social and political environment. It is this hypocrisy that led to a series of religious and political conflicts and inequality experienced in society today. It is also important in the understanding of the struggles for equal rights and liberties among all people, elites or not, men and women. Understanding social ills is made easier through understanding the roots of social, religious, and political hypocrisy that was engineered by early thinkers. Reasoning does not always apply to all aspects of life since some occurrences are beyond human comprehension. Thus, discrediting religion was a hypocritical move that gives autonomy to science in explaining natural phenomena.

References

Voltaire (2018). Voltaire and Enlightenment. Retrieved from https://www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk/about-voltaire/voltaire-and-enlightenment