Age of Enlightenment

 

The Age of Enlightenment was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries and undermined the authority of the monarchy and the Catholic Church and paved the way for the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries, including liberalism and neoclassicism. The Enlightenment emerged out of a European intellectual and scholarly movement known as Renaissance humanism. It is included a range of ideas centered on the sovereignty of reason and the evidence of the senses as the primary sources of knowledge and advanced ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government and separation of church and state which was deeply influential in the political realm.

The distinctive features of the Enlightenment are: first, the compatibility between reform and the traditional systems of power and faith; and second, the radical Enlightenment, advocating democracy, individual liberty, freedom of expression, and the eradication of religious authority. Rationalism and religious belief, individual freedom and political authority, as well as map out a view of the public sphere through private and public reason, were considered in this period. A society based on reason in which women as well as men should be treated as rational beings. The theory of natural rights that individuals have a right to "life, liberty and property" and that their natural right to property is derived from labor, has influenced many political documents.

The law of nature is grounded on mutual security that one cannot infringe on another's natural rights, as every man is equal and has the same inalienable rights. These natural rights include perfect equality and freedom, as well as the right to preserve life and property. Enslaving oneself goes against the law of nature because one cannot surrender one's own rights: one's freedom is absolute and no-one can take it away. Additionally, one person cannot enslave another because it is morally reprehensible.

To sum up, the "Literary politics, which led to the promotion of the discourse of equality and was therefore in fundamental opposition to the monarchy, defines the cultural implications of change in the forms of exercise of power."