The Enlightenment And The American Revolution Essay

Although distinguishing characteristics originated in the eighteenth-century English setting, much of the English Enlightenment was sustained with parallel experiences in British and French society. Four ideas occur in both European and American Enlightenment texts: Modernization, uncertainty, understanding and freedom. Modernization implies that beliefs and institutions from pure ethical, spiritual and governmental authority (, e.g., the divine right of kings and the Ancien Régime) can grow progressively dominated by those based on science, rationality and religious pluralism. Some Enlightenment thinkers—especially that French philosophes, , e.g., Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot—subscribed to some kind of uncertainty, doubting appeals to marvelous, unknowable and magical forces that possibly hold the scope of individual choice and reason.
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This Enlightenment mind urged for equality between people. The privileges of these barons, and royalty were disputed by these thoughts of the Enlightenment. The English Revolution was partially inspired by the thoughts of this Enlightenment. This French change was greatly inspired by this Enlightenment.
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Ï‚· the strand of political, economical and cultural changes that produced within the Enlightenment era inspired the English Revolution, French Revolution and Latin American wars for freedom. Enlightenment authors researched the relation between governments and the people they ruled. The themes they espoused included independence, physical rights, self-determination, special government, permission of the governed and the general good.
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