Enlightenment 2

Want to read the rest of this paper? Join Essayworld today to view this entire essay and over 50,000 other term papers

there were many philosopher and scientists engaged in the enlightenment period bringing new ways of thinking there are only a few that kick open the doors of this way of thinking. Decartes 1597-1650. He changed the way of thinking though the enlightenment period he replaced all other forms of knowledge with a single echoing “Which may be the” truth: Cogito, ergo sum, "I think there for I am". From that point onwards in European culture, subjective truth would hold a higher and more important epistemological place then objective truth; skepticism would be built into every inquiry. The main figures of the enlightenment are well known: Descartes, Pascal, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau. Zinzendorf, Wesley, Vico, and Hume.
During the first half of the 18th century, the leaders of the Enlightenment waged an uphill struggle against considerable odds. Several were imprisoned for their writings, and government censorship and attacks by the Church hampered most. In many ...

Get instant access to over 50,000 essays. Write better papers. Get better grades. Already a member? Login

believed that geometry represented the ideal for all sciences and philosophy. He held that by means of reason alone, certain universal, self-evident truths could be discovered, from which the remaining content of philosophy and the sciences could be deductively derived. He assumed that these self-evident truths were innate, not derived from sense experience. This type of rationalism was developed by other European philosophers, such as the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza and the German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. It was opposed, however, by British philosophers of the empiricist tradition, such as John Locke, who believed that all ideas are derived from ...

Succeed in your coursework without stepping into a library. Get access to a growing library of notes, book reports, and research papers in 2 minutes or less.

CITE THIS PAGE: