Introduction (Answer each question in three sentences.):
What was the “Enlightenment”? What sort of things occurred during this time period?
The “Enlightenment” was a movement that would transform an era of misery and exploitation (the European middle ages) to one of change and intellect. In this period people began to challenge authority, look towards new ideas, and aim for bettering their current lives rather than waiting for the afterlife. The “Enlightenment” not only brought new ways of thinking about government, social values and personal rights, but was the driving force behind action for change and rebellion against authorities. During the Industrial Revolution, for example, the impoverished workers educated themselves in order to be …show more content…
He published a series of documents and accounts including plays, letters, and pamphlets concerning liberty and other enlightenment. The author writes that, “The writings of Voltaire and Diderot electrified a widening public and spurred enlightenment and controversy in Paris, throughout Europe, and across the Atlantic.” [Page 100]. Along with Denis Diderot, who published seventeen volumes of an encyclopedia that documented information on numerous subjects, Voltaire was able to spread enlightenment and inform the French public. This enlightened community was now awakened to the corruption of the government, and the necessity to reform. Additionally, as the author writes, enlightenment “offered a justification of resistance to that regime. It offered, too, the direction for change, both end-goals and means for achieving them, as well as its characteristic optimism, its faith in the ability of men and women to transform their situations.” [Page 102]. Unlike Rousseau, who was not able to give a clear path for the French to produce change, the writings of Voltaire largely contributed to the enlightenment that motivated and allowed the French public to rebel: “more than any single doctrine, it was the spirit of enlightenment that mobilized the French, opened new insights into their society, and excited them with new vistas.” [Page