Period+5+Connections+to+the+Past

My website resource: The eighteenth century, also known as the year of enlightenment was a time of better understandings and freedom for everyone. New ideas and new approaches to old practices were preparing the world for great revolutions to come. The main figures of the enlightenment are fairly well known: Descartes, Pascal, Bayle, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau. There were others whom we could call antagonists to the dominant note, people like Rousseau, Zinzendorf, Wesley, Vico, and Hume. The pervasive appeal, as expressed by Voltaire, was to the 1. autonomy of reason 2. perfectibility and progress 3. confidence in the ability to discover causality 4. principles governing nature, man and society 5. assault on authority 6. cosmopolitan solidarity of enlightened intellectuals 7. disgust with nationalism.

The people of those times also known as philosophers, made great change in the way their lives were lived, but there was more to them than merely negations and disinfectants. It was primarily a French movement because French culture dominated Europe and because their ideas were expressed in the environment of the Parisian salon. Therefore, it was basically a middle-class movement. They, nevertheless labored for man in general, for humanity.

Clearly the feudal edifice was crumbling, but there was no real antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy as yet. One can detect the bourgeoisie struggling for freedom from state regulations and for liberty of commercial activity. It is also evident that a wave of prosperity brought a greater degree of self-confidence to the bourgeoisie. Great fortunes were made every town. Mercantilism was loosening its hold on the economy. By 1750 the reading public came into existence because of increasing literacy. Yet the philosophes lived a precarious life. They never knew whether they would be imprisoned or courted. Yet they assumed the air of an army on the march. [|__http://mars.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/wc2/lectures/enlightenment.html__]

My thoughts This website informed me in a lot of ways and gave me a better understanding of how the people lived. It showed me the different struggles the middle classmen went through, and helped me understand better the way people were treated. Also from this website learned that even though the philosophers of the past struggled to put their ideas out and be heard, it was great that they were determined and went through with their beliefs because we now live a better life. This internet resource was useful in this situation because it give names, dates, and explains the past in an easy way for me to understand. It places out the information in a short to the point article. Even though this is a connection to the past, much of the information remind me of how we live now. The dictations, how the government responds and how middle classmen were treated. Thankfully we had these great philosophers to defend their ideas and help us understand how we could live a better life today.