What was the Enlightenment?

Question

What was the Enlightenment?

Answer 1

WE KNOW THAT BHUDHA GOT ENLIGHTENMENT AND WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT ? MEANING  IS HIDDEN IN IT. IT IS ONE WHO OBTAINS  SUCH A REALITY  FROM DARK NESS TO LIGHT ,UNKOWN TO KNOWN , IGNORANCE TO KNOWLEDGE  BY THE GRACE  OF 'WISDOM' FROM GOD  BY PRCTICING TAPAS  OR DHAYAN  OR RETREAT

Answer 2

An intellectual movement prominent in Europe and the Americas during the 17th and 18th century. Its roots were in scientific discovery.

Newton's discovery of the laws of physics -and other discoveries by others like him- had profound consequences. Previously, it had been taken for granted that God called all the shots and could make the world do whatever He wanted it to do. But now, the idea was being put in to people's heads that the world was governed by rules that could easily be understood by mortal Man.

This caused quite the theological and philosophical stir. It led to Deism -the belief in a distant Creator, who doesn't meddle in day to day human affairs- and to Whiggism, which questioned the rights of kings. This had a big effect in the American colonies, where preachers found themselves being questioned by their congregations and in some cases, thrown out if the people of the town found the sermons distasteful.

Much of the modern libertarian tradition -also known as classical liberalism, though the big-government liberals of today are nothing like the near-anarchists who were the Founding Fathers- has its roots in John Locke's contract theory of government, Montesquieu's theory of the separation of powers, and the effects of Deism.

(Interestingly, the Puritan idea of an all-powerful God had much the same effect as Deism. According to the Puritans, only God was sovereign and called the shots. If God is the only legitimate ruler, what does that make a king? The Puritans were, in some respects, anarchists.)

Look at the wording of the Declaration of Independence. 'When in the course of *human* events..." "the laws of Nature and of Nature's God..." That's very Deistic, naturalistic thinking there. What it's saying is, "We are the masters of our destinies. We can understand nature, and God isn't controlling our every move. You, King George, have no right to rule us."

Now, there were plenty of people who wanted to stay loyal to the crown -a lot of the men who we later came to call the Founding Fathers were originally in that group; John Adams defended the soldiers who shot in to the crowd at the Boston Massacre- and plenty of people, like the Quakers, who stayed stubbornly neutral. Also, the Tea Tax, which we think of as being so terrible and oppressive, was about .5%. For an idea of what they were revolting about, in my state, sales tax is about 8.5%.

Of course, the British were taxing the Americans because the money they needed to service the debt from the Seven Years war -also known as the French and Indian War over here, or sometimes the Great War for Empire- was about 60% of the national income, and they had an Empire to run.

Usually when people ask vague questions about the Enightenment, they're asking about the American Revolution. I hope I didn't give you an irrelevant answer.

Answer 3

It is what Budah came up with. It means to love what you have and not what you want.

Answer 4

An intellectual movement which began in England in the seventeenth century, but then spread to have eventual influence over all sections of the world. The term "Enlightenment," rooted in an intellectual skepticism to traditional beliefs and dogmas, denotes an "illumined" contrast to the supposed dark and superstitious character of the Middle Ages. From its inception, the Enlightenment focused on the power and goodness of human rationality. Some of the more characterisitic doctrines of the Enlightenment are: 1) Reason is the most significant and positive capacity of the human; 2) reason enables one to break free from primitive, dogmatic, and superstitious beliefs holding one in the bonds of irrationality and ignorance; 3) in realizing the liberating potential of reason, one not only learns to think correctly, but to act correctly as well; 4) through philosophical and scientific progress, reason can lead humanity as a whole to a state of earthly perfection; 5) reason makes all humans equal and, therefore, deserving of equal liberty and treatment before the law; 6) beliefs of any sort should be accepted only on the basis of reason, and not on traditional or priestly authority; and 7) all human endeavors should seek to impart and develop knowledge, not feelings or character.

http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/genglo...

Answer 5

The Enlightenment was a term used to term used to describe a phase in western philosophy and cultural life centered apon in the 18th century, the term refers specifically to the intellectual and philosophical developments of that age, developing in Germany, France and Britain the movement spread throughout much of Europe including Russia and Scandinavia.