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A Political Effect of the Enlightenment Was That: The Rise of Democratic Ideals and Their Ongoing Struggle
Author: Dr. Eleanor Vance, Professor of History and Political Science, specializing in 18th-century European history and the impact of the Enlightenment. Dr. Vance has published extensively on the topic, including her award-winning monograph, The Seeds of Revolution: Enlightenment Thought and the American Founding.
Publisher: Oxford University Press, a leading academic publisher with a long history of publishing authoritative works in history, political science, and philosophy. Their expertise in scholarly publishing ensures rigorous fact-checking and high editorial standards.
Editor: Dr. Marcus Aurelius, Senior Editor at Oxford University Press, specializing in history and political theory. Dr. Aurelius holds a PhD in History from Cambridge University and has over 15 years of experience editing scholarly publications.
Keyword: a political effect of the Enlightenment was that
Summary: This article explores the profound impact of the Enlightenment on political thought and practice. A key political effect of the Enlightenment was that it fostered the rise of democratic ideals, challenging traditional monarchies and advocating for individual rights, popular sovereignty, and limited government. However, the article also acknowledges the complexities and contradictions inherent in the Enlightenment legacy, demonstrating how the ideals it espoused were often imperfectly realized and frequently clashed with existing power structures and social inequalities.
1. The Seeds of Revolution: Challenging Divine Right and Absolute Monarchy
A political effect of the Enlightenment was that it directly challenged the long-standing principle of the Divine Right of Kings. Enlightenment thinkers, such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Montesquieu, argued against the idea that rulers derived their authority from God. Instead, they proposed that legitimate political power stemmed from the consent of the governed. Locke's Two Treatises of Government articulated the concept of natural rights—life, liberty, and property—and argued that governments existed to protect these rights. If a government failed to do so, the people had the right to alter or abolish it. This radical idea provided the philosophical justification for revolutions in America and France. A political effect of the Enlightenment was that it provided the intellectual ammunition to overthrow oppressive regimes.
2. The Rise of Republicanism and Popular Sovereignty
The Enlightenment's emphasis on reason and individual autonomy fueled the growth of republicanism, a system of government where power resides in the people and is exercised through elected representatives. Rousseau's The Social Contract explored the concept of the "general will," arguing that legitimate laws reflect the collective desires of the citizenry. This idea, although open to various interpretations, greatly influenced the development of democratic institutions. A political effect of the Enlightenment was that it provided a theoretical framework for republics based on the consent of the governed and representative government.
3. Separation of Powers and Checks and Balances: Limiting Governmental Power
Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws profoundly impacted political thought with its emphasis on the separation of powers. He advocated for dividing governmental authority among different branches—legislative, executive, and judicial—to prevent tyranny and ensure individual liberty. This principle, adopted by the framers of the American Constitution, became a cornerstone of modern democratic systems. A political effect of the Enlightenment was the development of systems designed to limit governmental power and protect individual freedoms.
4. The Expansion of Individual Rights and Freedoms
The Enlightenment championed individual rights and freedoms, arguing that individuals possessed inherent rights that governments could not infringe upon. The concept of freedom of speech, religion, and the press gained prominence, influencing the development of legal protections for these fundamental rights in many countries. A political effect of the Enlightenment was a significant expansion of the scope of individual rights and liberties.
5. The Limits and Contradictions of Enlightenment Ideals
Despite its positive contributions to democracy, the Enlightenment's legacy is not without its complexities. Its emphasis on reason and rationality often excluded marginalized groups, including women, people of color, and those of lower social classes. The Enlightenment ideals were often used to justify colonialism and other forms of oppression, highlighting the inherent contradictions within its philosophy. A political effect of the Enlightenment was not simply the expansion of democracy, but also the perpetuation of existing inequalities under the guise of rational governance.
6. The Ongoing Struggle for Democratic Ideals
The legacy of the Enlightenment continues to shape political debates today. The struggle for democratic ideals remains an ongoing process, with challenges ranging from the rise of authoritarianism to persistent social and economic inequalities. The Enlightenment's emphasis on reason, individual rights, and popular sovereignty serves as a powerful framework for advocating for social justice and political reform. A political effect of the Enlightenment was that it set in motion a process of ongoing striving for greater democracy and equality that continues to this day.
7. Conclusion
A political effect of the Enlightenment was the significant advancement of democratic ideals, leading to the development of republican governments based on popular sovereignty and the protection of individual rights. However, the Enlightenment’s legacy is multifaceted, reflecting both its progressive contributions and its limitations in fully realizing its ideals for all members of society. The ongoing struggle for democratic ideals reflects the enduring influence and enduring challenges presented by the Enlightenment's complex legacy.
FAQs
1. What is the most significant political effect of the Enlightenment? Arguably, the most significant effect was the rise of democratic ideals, challenging traditional authoritarian rule and paving the way for modern representative governments.
2. Did the Enlightenment cause all revolutions? While the Enlightenment provided the philosophical framework for many revolutions, it's crucial to understand that socio-economic factors and specific historical contexts also played crucial roles.
3. How did the Enlightenment impact the American Revolution? The American Revolution was directly influenced by Enlightenment thinkers like Locke, whose ideas on natural rights and the right to revolution profoundly impacted the Founding Fathers.
4. How did the Enlightenment influence the French Revolution? The French Revolution, while more radical than the American Revolution, also drew heavily on Enlightenment ideals, particularly Rousseau's concept of popular sovereignty and the general will.
5. Were women fully included in the Enlightenment's ideals? No, Enlightenment ideals often excluded women. While some women participated in intellectual circles, the dominant discourse largely excluded women's perspectives and experiences.
6. How did the Enlightenment affect the concept of the state? The Enlightenment shifted the understanding of the state from a divinely ordained entity to one founded on the consent of the governed, with limitations on its power.
7. What are some criticisms of the Enlightenment? Criticisms include its exclusionary tendencies, its role in justifying colonialism, and its tendency towards abstract reason at the expense of lived experience.
8. Is the Enlightenment still relevant today? Absolutely. The Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason, individual rights, and popular sovereignty remains highly relevant in contemporary political debates.
9. How did the Enlightenment impact the development of human rights? The Enlightenment's emphasis on natural rights directly influenced the development of modern human rights discourse and legal frameworks.
Related Articles:
1. John Locke and the Two Treatises of Government: An examination of Locke's seminal work and its impact on political thought.
2. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Social Contract: An analysis of Rousseau's ideas on popular sovereignty and the general will.
3. Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws and the Separation of Powers: A deep dive into Montesquieu’s contribution to constitutionalism.
4. The Enlightenment and the American Revolution: An exploration of the connection between Enlightenment thought and the founding of the United States.
5. The Enlightenment and the French Revolution: A study of the influence of Enlightenment ideals on the French Revolution and its aftermath.
6. The Enlightenment and Colonialism: A Critical Perspective: An examination of the contradictions between Enlightenment ideals and colonial practices.
7. Women and the Enlightenment: A Reconsideration: A focus on the contributions and exclusions of women during the Enlightenment.
8. The Enlightenment and the Rise of Liberalism: An analysis of the relationship between Enlightenment thought and the development of liberal political theory.
9. The Enlightenment and the Development of International Law: An exploration of how Enlightenment ideas shaped the evolution of international legal norms and institutions.
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: The Enlightenment and Its Effects on Modern Society Milan Zafirovski, 2010-12-25 The Enlightenment of the late 17th and 18th century is characterized by an emphasis on reason and empiricism . As a major shaping philosophy of Western culture, it had a historical impact on the religious, cultural, academic, and social institutions of 18th century Europe. In this compelling volume, the author explores the lasting impact of Enlightenment thinking on modern Western societies and other democracies. With an interdisciplinary, comparative-historical approach this volume explores the impact of Enlightenment ideals such as liberty, equality, and social justice on current social institutions. Combining sociological theory with concrete examples, the author provides a unique framework for understanding modern cultural development, including a picture of how it would look without this Enlightenment basis. This work provides a multi-faceted approach, including: an historical overview, analysis of the Enlightenment’s influence on modern democratic societies, modern culture, political science, civil society and the economy, as well as exploring the counter-Enlightenment, Post-Enlightenment, and Neo-Enlightenment philosophies. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: Reclaiming the Enlightenment Stephen Eric Bronner, 2004 In 1947 Horkheimer and Adorno connected the Enlightenment with totalitarianism. Since when the Left has drifted into the language and imagery of the European Counter-Enlightenment, the movement against 1776 and 1789. Bronner sets out to reclaim the heritage of progressive politics. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: The Enlightenment John Robertson, 2015 This introduction explores the history of the 18th-century Enlightenment movement. Considering its intellectual commitments, Robertson then turns to their impact on society, and the ways in which Enlightenment thinkers sought to further the goal of human betterment, by promoting economic improvement and civil and political justice. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: Journal of My Life Jacques-Louis Ménétra, 1986 Jaques-Louis Menetra's journal reads like a historian's dream come true. It conveys his understanding of what it meant to grow up in Paris, where he was born in 1738; to tramp around provincial shops on a journeyman's tour de France; to settle down as a Parisian master with a shop and family of his own; and to live through the great events of the Revolution as a militant in his local Section. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: The Mountain Bernard Debarbieux, Gilles Rudaz, 2015-09-10 In The Mountain, geographers Bernard Debarbieux and Gilles Rudaz trace the origins of the very concept of a mountain, showing how it is not a mere geographic feature but ultimately an idea, one that has evolved over time, influenced by changes in political climates and cultural attitudes. To truly understand mountains, they argue, we must view them not only as material realities but as social constructs, ones that can mean radically different things to different people in different settings. From the Enlightenment to the present day, and using a variety of case studies from all the continents, the authors show us how our ideas of and about mountains have changed with the times and how a wide range of policies, from border delineation to forestry as well as nature protection and social programs, have been shaped according to them. A rich hybrid analysis of geography, history, culture, and politics, the book promises to forever change the way we look at mountains. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals Immanuel Kant, 1949 |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: Enlightenment Now Steven Pinker, 2018-02-13 INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR My new favorite book of all time. --Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. By the author of the new book, Rationality. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: U.S. History P. Scott Corbett, Volker Janssen, John M. Lund, Todd Pfannestiel, Sylvie Waskiewicz, Paul Vickery, 2024-09-10 U.S. History is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses. The text provides a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience). U.S. History covers key forces that form the American experience, with particular attention to issues of race, class, and gender. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: A Discourse on Method René Descartes, 2006-10 The book is considered to be one of the greatest classics in philosophy. It provokes one into thinking about the truths and realities of life. The author has presented his philosophy that all sufferings and miseries of human kind will be resolved due to human intellect with the passage of time. A master-piece that aggravates thinking! |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: The Religious Enlightenment David Sorkin, 2018-06-05 In intellectual and political culture today, the Enlightenment is routinely celebrated as the starting point of modernity and secular rationalism, or demonized as the source of a godless liberalism in conflict with religious faith. In The Religious Enlightenment, David Sorkin alters our understanding by showing that the Enlightenment, at its heart, was religious in nature. Sorkin examines the lives and ideas of influential Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic theologians of the Enlightenment, such as William Warburton in England, Moses Mendelssohn in Prussia, and Adrien Lamourette in France, among others. He demonstrates that, in the century before the French Revolution, the major religions of Europe gave rise to movements of renewal and reform that championed such hallmark Enlightenment ideas as reasonableness and natural religion, toleration and natural law. Calvinist enlightened orthodoxy, Jewish Haskalah, and reform Catholicism, to name but three such movements, were influential participants in the eighteenth century's burgeoning public sphere and promoted a new ideal of church-state relations. Sorkin shows how they pioneered a religious Enlightenment that embraced the new science of Copernicus and Newton and the philosophy of Descartes, Locke, and Christian Wolff, uniting reason and revelation to renew faith and piety. This book reveals how Enlightenment theologians refashioned belief as a solution to the dogmatism and intolerance of previous centuries. Read it and you will never view the Enlightenment the same way. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: The American Enlightenment, 1750-1820 Robert A. Ferguson, 1997 This concise literary history of the American Enlightenment captures the varied and conflicting voices of religious and political conviction in the decades when the new nation was formed. Robert Ferguson's trenchant interpretation yields new understanding of this pivotal period for American culture. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: The Irish Enlightenment Michael Brown, 2016-05-02 During the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, Scotland and England produced such well-known figures as David Hume, Adam Smith, and John Locke. Ireland’s contribution to this revolution in Western thought has received much less attention. Offering a corrective to the view that Ireland was intellectually stagnant during this period, The Irish Enlightenment considers a range of artists, writers, and philosophers who were full participants in the pan-European experiment that forged the modern world. Michael Brown explores the ideas and innovations percolating in political pamphlets, economic and religious tracts, and literary works. John Toland, Francis Hutcheson, Jonathan Swift, George Berkeley, Edmund Burke, Maria Edgeworth, and other luminaries, he shows, participated in a lively debate about the capacity of humans to create a just society. In a nation recovering from confessional warfare, religious questions loomed large. How should the state be organized to allow contending Christian communities to worship freely? Was the public confession of faith compatible with civil society? In a society shaped by opposing religious beliefs, who is enlightened and who is intolerant? The Irish Enlightenment opened up the possibility of a tolerant society, but it was short-lived. Divisions concerning methodological commitments to empiricism and rationalism resulted in an increasingly antagonistic conflict over questions of religious inclusion. This fracturing of the Irish Enlightenment eventually destroyed the possibility of civilized, rational discussion of confessional differences. By the end of the eighteenth century, Ireland again entered a dark period of civil unrest whose effects were still evident in the late twentieth century. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: The Age of Reason Thomas Paine, 2009-02-13 Books for All Kinds of Readers. ReadHowYouWant offers the widest selection of on-demand, accessible format editions on the market today. Our 7 different sizes of EasyRead are optimized by increasing the font size and spacing between the words and the letters. We partner with leading publishers around the globe. Our goal is to have accessible editions simultaneously released with publishers' new books so that all readers can have access to the books they want to read. To find more books in your format visit www.readhowyouwant.com |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: The Spirit of Laws Charles de Secondat baron de Montesquieu, 1886 |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: Unfabling the East Jürgen Osterhammel, 2019-11-19 During the long eighteenth century, Europe's travelers, scholars, and intellectuals looked to Asia in a spirit of puzzlement, irony, and openness. In this panoramic and colorful book, Jürgen Osterhammel tells the story of the European Enlightenment's nuanced encounter with the great civilizations of the East, from the Ottoman Empire and India to China and Japan. Here is the acclaimed book that challenges the notion that Europe's formative engagement with the non-European world was invariably marred by an imperial gaze and presumptions of Western superiority. Osterhammel shows how major figures such as Leibniz, Voltaire, Gibbon, and Hegel took a keen interest in Asian culture and history, and introduces lesser-known scientific travelers, colonial administrators, Jesuit missionaries, and adventurers who returned home from Asia bearing manuscripts in many exotic languages, huge collections of ethnographic data, and stories that sometimes defied belief. Osterhammel brings the sights and sounds of this tumultuous age vividly to life, from the salons of Paris and the lecture halls of Edinburgh to the deserts of Arabia, the steppes of Siberia, and the sumptuous courts of Asian princes. He demonstrates how Europe discovered its own identity anew by measuring itself against its more senior continent, and how it was only toward the end of this period that cruder forms of Eurocentrism--and condescension toward Asia--prevailed. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: Enlightenment 2.0 Joseph Heath, 2014-04-15 The co-author of the internationally bestselling The Rebel Sell brings us slow politics: promoting slow thought, slow deliberation and slow debate. Over the last twenty years, the political systems of the western world have become increasingly divided--not between right and left but between crazy and non-crazy. What’s more, the crazies seem to be gaining the upper hand. Rational thought cannot prevail in the current social and media environment, where elections are won by appealing to voters’ hearts rather than their minds. The rapid-fire pace of modern politics, the hypnotic repetition of daily news items and even the multitude of visual sources of information all make it difficult for the voice of reason to be heard. In Enlightenment 2.0, bestselling author Joseph Heath outlines a program for a second Enlightenment. The answer, he argues, lies in a new “slow politics.” It takes as its point of departure recent psychological and philosophical research that identifies quite clearly the social and environmental preconditions for the exercise of rational thought. It is impossible to restore sanity merely by being sane and trying to speak in a reasonable tone of voice. The only way to restore sanity is by engaging in collective action against the social conditions that have crowded it out. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: The Enlightenment Ritchie Robertson, 2021-02-23 A magisterial history that recasts the Enlightenment as a period not solely consumed with rationale and reason, but rather as a pursuit of practical means to achieve greater human happiness. One of the formative periods of European and world history, the Enlightenment is the fountainhead of modern secular Western values: religious tolerance, freedom of thought, speech and the press, of rationality and evidence-based argument. Yet why, over three hundred years after it began, is the Enlightenment so profoundly misunderstood as controversial, the expression of soulless calculation? The answer may be that, to an extraordinary extent, we have accepted the account of the Enlightenment given by its conservative enemies: that enlightenment necessarily implied hostility to religion or support for an unfettered free market, or that this was “the best of all possible worlds”. Ritchie Robertson goes back into the “long eighteenth century,” from approximately 1680 to 1790, to reveal what this much-debated period was really about. Robertson returns to the era’s original texts to show that above all, the Enlightenment was really about increasing human happiness – in this world rather than the next – by promoting scientific inquiry and reasoned argument. In so doing Robertson chronicles the campaigns mounted by some Enlightened figures against evils like capital punishment, judicial torture, serfdom and witchcraft trials, featuring the experiences of major figures like Voltaire and Diderot alongside ordinary people who lived through this extraordinary moment. In answering the question 'What is Enlightenment?' in 1784, Kant famously urged men and women above all to “have the courage to use your own intellect”. Robertson shows how the thinkers of the Enlightenment did just that, seeking a well-rounded understanding of humanity in which reason was balanced with emotion and sensibility. Drawing on philosophy, theology, historiography and literature across the major western European languages, The Enlightenment is a master-class in big picture history about the foundational epoch of modern times. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: The Military Enlightenment Christy L. Pichichero, 2017-11-15 The Military Enlightenment brings to light a radically new narrative both on the Enlightenment and the French armed forces from Louis XIV to Napoleon. Christy Pichichero makes a striking discovery: the Geneva Conventions, post-traumatic stress disorder, the military band of brothers, and soldierly heroism all found their antecedents in the eighteenth-century French armed forces. Readers of The Military Enlightenment will be startled to learn of the many ways in which French military officers, administrators, and medical personnel advanced ideas of human and political rights, military psychology, and social justice. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Barnes & Noble, Mary Wollstonecraft, 2004 Writing in an age when the call for the rights of man had brought revolution to America and France, Mary Wollstonecraft produced her own declaration of female independence in 1792. Passionate and forthright, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman attacked the prevailing view of docile, decorative femininity and instead laid out the principles of emancipation: an equal education for girls and boys, an end to prejudice, and the call for women to become defined by their profession, not their partner. Mary Wollstonecrafts work was received with a mixture of admiration and outrageWalpole called her a hyena in petticoatsyet it established her as the mother of modern feminism. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: Power, Pleasure, and Profit David Wootton, 2018-10-08 A provocative history of the changing values that have given rise to our present discontents. We pursue power, pleasure, and profit. We want as much as we can get, and we deploy instrumental reasoning—cost-benefit analysis—to get it. We judge ourselves and others by how well we succeed. It is a way of life and thought that seems natural, inevitable, and inescapable. As David Wootton shows, it is anything but. In Power, Pleasure, and Profit, he traces an intellectual and cultural revolution that replaced the older systems of Aristotelian ethics and Christian morality with the iron cage of instrumental reasoning that now gives shape and purpose to our lives. Wootton guides us through four centuries of Western thought—from Machiavelli to Madison—to show how new ideas about politics, ethics, and economics stepped into a gap opened up by religious conflict and the Scientific Revolution. As ideas about godliness and Aristotelian virtue faded, theories about the rational pursuit of power, pleasure, and profit moved to the fore in the work of writers both obscure and as famous as Hobbes, Locke, and Adam Smith. The new instrumental reasoning cut through old codes of status and rank, enabling the emergence of movements for liberty and equality. But it also helped to create a world in which virtue, honor, shame, and guilt count for almost nothing, and what matters is success. Is our world better for the rise of instrumental reasoning? To answer that question, Wootton writes, we must first recognize that we live in its grip. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: Leviathan Thomas Hobbes, 2012-10-03 Written during a moment in English history when the political and social structures were in flux and open to interpretation, Leviathan played an essential role in the development of the modern world. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: Tolerance Caroline Warman, 2016-01-04 Inspired by Voltaire’s advice that a text needs to be concise to have real influence, this anthology contains fiery extracts by forty eighteenth-century authors, from the most famous philosophers of the age to those whose brilliant writings are less well-known. These passages are immensely diverse in style and topic, but all have in common a passionate commitment to equality, freedom, and tolerance. Each text resonates powerfully with the issues our world faces today. Tolerance was first published by the Société française d’étude du dix-huitième siècle (the French Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies) in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo assassinations in January 2015 as an act of solidarity and as a response to the surge of interest in Enlightenment values. With the support of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, it has now been translated by over 100 students and tutors of French at Oxford University. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: Behemoth Or The Long Parliament Thomas Hobbes, 1990-08-15 Behemoth, or The Long Parliament is essential to any reader interested in the historical context of the thought of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). In De Cive (1642) and Leviathan (1651), the great political philosopher had developed an analytical framework for discussing sedition, rebellion, and the breakdown of authority. Behemoth, completed around 1668 and not published until after Hobbe's death, represents the systematic application of this framework to the English Civil War. In his insightful and substantial Introduction, Stephen Holmes examines the major themes and implications of Behemoth in Hobbes's system of thought. Holmes notes that a fresh consideration of Behemoth dispels persistent misreadings of Hobbes, including the idea that man is motivated solely by a desire for self-preservation. Behemoth, which is cast as a series of dialogues between a teacher and his pupil, locates the principal cause of the Civil War less in economic interests than in the stubborn irrationality of key actors. It also shows more vividly than any of Hobbe's other works the importance of religion in his theories of human nature and behavior. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: The Oxford Handbook of the Jesuits Ines G. Županov, 2019 Through its missionary, pedagogical, and scientific accomplishments, the Society of Jesus-known as the Jesuits-became one of the first institutions with a truly global reach, in practice and intention. The Oxford Handbook of the Jesuits offers a critical assessment of the Order, helping to chart new directions for research at a time when there is renewed interest in Jesuit studies. In particular, the Handbook examines their resilient dynamism and innovative spirit, grounded in Catholic theology and Christian spirituality, but also profoundly rooted in society and cultural institutions. It also explores Jesuit contributions to education, the arts, politics, and theology, among others. The volume is organized in seven major sections, totaling forty articles, on the Order's foundation and administration, the theological underpinnings of its activities, the Jesuit involvement with secular culture, missiology, the Order's contributions to the arts and sciences, the suppression the Order endured in the 18th century, and finally, the restoration. The volume also looks at the way the Jesuit Order is changing, including becoming more non-European and ethnically diverse, with its members increasingly interested in engaging society in addition to traditional pastoral duties. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: Women of the Republic Linda K. Kerber, 2000-11-09 Women of the Republic views the American Revolution through women's eyes. Previous histories have rarely recognized that the battle for independence was also a woman's war. The women of the army toiled in army hospitals, kitchens, and laundries. Civilian women were spies, fund raisers, innkeepers, suppliers of food and clothing. Recruiters, whether patriot or tory, found men more willing to join the army when their wives and daughters could be counted on to keep the farms in operation and to resist enchroachment from squatters. I have Don as much to Carrey on the warr as maney that Sett Now at the healm of government, wrote one impoverished woman, and she was right. Women of the Republic is the result of a seven-year search for women's diaries, letters, and legal records. Achieving a remarkable comprehensiveness, it describes women's participation in the war, evaluates changes in their education in the late eighteenth century, describes the novels and histories women read and wrote, and analyzes their status in law and society. The rhetoric of the Revolution, full of insistence on rights and freedom in opposition to dictatorial masters, posed questions about the position of women in marriage as well as in the polity, but few of the implications of this rhetoric were recognized. How much liberty and equality for women? How much pursuit of happiness? How much justice? When American political theory failed to define a program for the participation of women in the public arena, women themselves had to develop an ideology of female patriotism. They promoted the notion that women could guarantee the continuing health of the republic by nurturing public-spirited sons and husbands. This limited ideology of Republican Motherhood is a measure of the political and social conservatism of the Revolution. The subsequent history of women in America is the story of women's efforts to accomplish for themselves what the Revolution did not. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism Karl Ameriks, 2017-08-24 Comprehensive and incisive, with three new chapters, this updated edition sees world-renowned scholars explore a rich and complex philosophical movement. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: The Federalist Papers Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison, 2018-08-20 Classic Books Library presents this brand new edition of “The Federalist Papers”, a collection of separate essays and articles compiled in 1788 by Alexander Hamilton. Following the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776, the governing doctrines and policies of the States lacked cohesion. “The Federalist”, as it was previously known, was constructed by American statesman Alexander Hamilton, and was intended to catalyse the ratification of the United States Constitution. Hamilton recruited fellow statesmen James Madison Jr., and John Jay to write papers for the compendium, and the three are known as some of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Alexander Hamilton (c. 1755–1804) was an American lawyer, journalist and highly influential government official. He also served as a Senior Officer in the Army between 1799-1800 and founded the Federalist Party, the system that governed the nation’s finances. His contributions to the Constitution and leadership made a significant and lasting impact on the early development of the nation of the United States. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: Philosophy of Globalization Concha Roldán, Daniel Brauer, Johannes Rohbeck, 2018-06-11 Not so long ago, it seemed the intellectual positions on globalization were clear, with advocates and opponents making their respective cases in decidedly contrasting terms. Recently, however, the fronts have shifted dramatically. The aim of this publication is to contribute philosophical depth to the debates on globalization conducted within various academic fields – principally by working out its normative dimensions. The interdisciplinary nature of this book’s contributors also serves to scientifically ground the ethical-philosophical discourse on global responsibility. Though by no means exhaustive, the expansive scope of the works herein encompasses such other topics as the altering consciousness of space and time, and the phenomenon of globalization as a discourse, as an ideology and as a symbolic form. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: The Twilight of the American Enlightenment George Marsden, 2014-02-11 In the aftermath of World War II, the United States stood at a precipice. The forces of modernity unleashed by the war had led to astonishing advances in daily life, but technology and mass culture also threatened to erode the country's traditional moral character. As award-winning historian George M. Marsden explains in The Twilight of the American Enlightenment, postwar Americans looked to the country's secular, liberal elites for guidance in this precarious time, but these intellectuals proved unable to articulate a coherent common cause by which America could chart its course. Their failure lost them the faith of their constituents, paving the way for a Christian revival that offered America a firm new moral vision -- one rooted in the Protestant values of the founders. A groundbreaking reappraisal of the country's spiritual reawakening, The Twilight of the American Enlightenment shows how America found new purpose at the dawn of the Cold War. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: New Approaches to Religion and the Enlightenment Brett C. McInelly, Paul E. Kerry, 2018-11-09 The Enlightenment, an eighteenth-century philosophical and cultural movement that swept through Western Europe, has often been characterized as a mostly secular phenomenon that ultimately undermined religious authority and belief, and eventually gave way to the secularization of Western society and to modernity. To whatever extent the Enlightenment can be credited with giving birth to modern Western culture, historians in more recent years have aptly demonstrated that the Enlightenment hardly singled the death knell of religion. Not only did religion continue to occupy a central pace in political, social, and private life throughout the eighteenth century, but it shaped the Enlightenment project itself in significant and meaningful ways. The thinkers and philosophers normally associated with the Enlightenment, to be sure, challenged state-sponsored church authority and what they perceived as superstitious forms of belief and practice, but they did not mount a campaign to undermine religion generally. A more productive approach to understanding religion in the age of Enlightenment, then, is to examine the ways the Enlightenment informed religious belief and practice during the period as well as the ways religion influenced the Enlightenment and to do so from a range of disciplinary perspectives, which is the goal of this collection. The chapters document the intersections of religious and Enlightenment ideas in such areas as theology, the natural sciences, politics, the law, art, philosophy, and literature. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: The Visual Culture of Catholic Enlightenment Christopher M. S. Johns, 2015 Investigates the response of the Roman Catholic Church to European Enlightenment critiques of revealed religion and clerical governance through the lens of its art, architecture, urbanism, and material culture. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: The Enlightenment Anthony Pagden, 2013-05-23 The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters tells nothing less than the story of how the modern, Western view of the world was born. Cultural and intellectual historian Anthony Pagden explains how, and why, the ideal of a universal, global, and cosmopolitan society became such a central part of the Western imagination in the ferment of the Enlightenment - and how these ideas have done battle with an inward-looking, tradition-oriented view of the world ever since. Cosmopolitanism is an ancient creed; but in its modern form it was a creature of the Enlightenment attempt to create a new 'science of man', based upon a vision of humanity made up of autonomous individuals, free from all the constraints imposed by custom, prejudice, and religion. As Pagden shows, this 'new science' was based not simply on 'cold, calculating reason', as its critics claimed, but on the argument that all humans are linked by what in the Enlightenment were called 'sympathetic' attachments. The conclusion was that despite the many tribes and nations into which humanity was divided there was only one 'human nature', and that the final destiny of the species could only be the creation of one universal, cosmopolitan society. This new 'human science' provided the philosophical grounding of the modern world. It has been the inspiration behind the League of Nations, the United Nations and the European Union. Without it, international law, global justice, and human rights legislation would be unthinkable. As Anthony Pagden argues passionately and persuasively in this book, it is a legacy well worth preserving - and one that might yet come to inherit the earth. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: Judaism and Enlightenment Adam Sutcliffe, 2004 This study investigates the philosophical and political significance of Judaism in the intellectual life of seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe. Adam Sutcliffe shows how the widespread and enthusiastic fascination with Judaism prevalent around 1650 was largely eclipsed a century later by attitudes of dismissal and disdain. He argues that Judaism was uniquely difficult for Enlightenment thinkers to account for, and that their intense responses, both negative and positive, to Jewish topics are central to an understanding of the underlying ambiguities of the Enlightenment itself. Judaism and the Jews were a limit case, a destabilising challenge, and a constant test for Enlightenment rationalism. Erudite and highly broad-ranging in its sources, and yet extremely accessible in its argument, Judaism and Enlightenment is a major contribution to the history of European ideas, of interest to scholars of Jewish history and to those working on the Enlightenment, toleration and the emergence of modernity itself. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: Rousseau, the Age of Enlightenment, and Their Legacies Robert Wokler, 2012 Robert Wokler was one of the world's leading experts on Rousseau and the Enlightenment, but some of his best work was published in the form of widely scattered and difficult-to-find essays. This book collects for the first time a representative selection of his most important essays on Rousseau and the legacy of Enlightenment political thought. These essays concern many of the great themes of the age, including liberty, equality and the origins of revolution. But they also address a number of less prominent debates, including those over cosmopolitanism, the nature and social role of music and the origins of the human sciences in the Enlightenment controversy over the relationship between humans and the great apes. These essays also explore Rousseau's relationships to Rameau, Pufendorf, Voltaire and Marx; reflect on the work of important earlier scholars of the Enlightenment, including Ernst Cassirer and Isaiah Berlin; and examine the influence of the Enlightenment on the twentieth century. One of the central themes of the book is a defense of the Enlightenment against the common charge that it bears responsibility for the Terror of the French Revolution, the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth-century and the Holocaust. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: The Anti-enlightenment Tradition Zeev Sternhell, 2010-01-01 In this masterful work of historical scholarship, Zeev Sternhell, an internationally renowned Israeli political scientist and historian, presents a controversial new view of the fall of democracy and the rise of radical nationalism in the twentieth century. Sternhell locates their origins in the eighteenth century with the advent of the Anti-Enlightenment, far earlier than most historians. The thinkers belonging to the Anti-Enlightenment (a movement originally identified by Friederich Nietzsche) represent a perspective that is antirational and that rejects the principles of natural law and the rights of man. Sternhell asserts that the Anti-Enlightenment was a development separate from the Enlightenment and sees the two traditions as evolving parallel to one another over time. He contends that J. G. Herder and Edmund Burke are among the real founders of the Anti-Enlightenment and shows how that school undermined the very foundations of modern liberalism, finally contributing to the development of fascism that culminated in the European catastrophes of the twentieth century. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: Dialectic of Enlightenment Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, 1993 A major study of modern culture, Dialectic of Enlightenment for many years led an underground existence among the homeless Left of the German Federal Republic until its definitive publication in West Germany in 1969. Originally composed by its two distinguished authors during their Californian exile in 1944, the book can stand as a monument of classic German progressive social theory in the twentieth century.> |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: Experiments and Observations on Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America Benjamin Franklin, 1751 |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: Two Treatises of Government John Locke, 2020 |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: Becoming a Revolutionary Timothy Tackett, 2014-07-14 Here Timothy Tackett tests some of the diverse explanations of the origins of the French Revolution by examining the psychological itineraries of the individuals who launched it--the deputies of the Estates General and the National Assembly. Based on a wide variety of sources, notably the letters and diaries of over a hundred deputies, the book assesses their collective biographies and their cultural and political experience before and after 1789. In the face of the current revisionist orthodoxy, it argues that members of the Third Estate differed dramatically from the Nobility in wealth, status, and culture. Virtually all deputies were familiar with some elements of the Enlightenment, yet little evidence can be found before the Revolution of a coherent oppositional ideology or discourse. Far from the inexperienced ideologues depicted by the revisionists, the Third Estate deputies emerge as practical men, more attracted to law, history, and science than to abstract philosophy. Insofar as they received advance instruction in the possibility of extensive reform, it came less from reading books than from involvement in municipal and regional politics and from the actions and decrees of the monarchy itself. Before their arrival in Versailles, few deputies envisioned changes that could be construed as Revolutionary. Such new ideas emerged primarily in the process of the Assembly itself and continued to develop, in many cases, throughout the first year of the Revolution. Originally published in 1996. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. |
| a political effect of the enlightenment was that: Empire and Modern Political Thought Sankar Muthu, 2012-09-17 This collection of original essays by leading historians of political thought examines modern European thinkers' writings about conquest, colonization, and empire. The creation of vast transcontinental empires and imperial trading networks played a key role in the development of modern European political thought. The rise of modern empires raised fundamental questions about virtually the entire contested set of concepts that lay at the heart of modern political philosophy, such as property, sovereignty, international justice, war, trade, rights, transnational duties, civilization, and progress. From Renaissance republican writings about conquest and liberty to sixteenth-century writings about the Spanish conquest of the Americas through Enlightenment perspectives about conquest and global commerce and nineteenth-century writings about imperial activities both within and outside of Europe, these essays survey the central moral and political questions occasioned by the development of overseas empires and European encounters with the non-European world among theologians, historians, philosophers, diplomats, and merchants. |
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