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Reform Piorities in the Age of Enlightenment

y of the Roman Church, but by the eighteenth century,

Protestantism had achieved quite as much an institutional authoritarianism as Catholicism, and monarchy remained the principal form of government throughout Europe. There were rumblings of social and moral discontent that were to find expression in the American and French Revolutions; it was in large part the atmosphere and content of Enlightenment thought that gave philosophical substance to the sea changes in government that were to occur in America in 1776 and France in 1789. The revolutions in England in 1642, 1660, and 1688 had, after all, traded one absolutist regime for another, at least as far as the American colonies, which were to rely on Enlightenment attitudes for their development, were concerned. What was to occur in the eighteenth century represented a departure in form and substance both, and it was to the Enlightenment that the departure owed much.

How the Enlightenment thinkers derived from one another may be seen in the commonality of treatment of certain themes. This is not to say that they all agreed with one another; the rift between Rousseau and Diderot in particular and Rousseau and almost the whole European intelligentsia in general is only the most obvious expression of disagreement and goes far more strongly to personality conflict than to philosophical rivalry. But disagreements on philosophical points emerge as far less decisive than more or less uniform approaches to the formation and development of Enlightenment moral philosophy itself.

The Enlightenment as a whole appears to owe much to Montesquieu, and Enlightenment commentators who came after Montesquieu appear to acknowledge their debt. This is why when Beccaria criticizes the obscurity of the laws, seeks their uniform application throughout the populace, and suggests that the language of the laws be simplified, he evinces a direct connection to Montesquieu's discussion of the hazar...

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Reform Piorities in the Age of Enlightenment. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 11:40, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1682939.html