Enlightenment Essay

Different Forms of Government during the Enlightenment Period

For about 1000 years, Europeans maintained traditions, the most significant were the traditions held by the Roman Catholic Church, which was the protector of knowledge. Thus, traditional knowledge was embedded in the church. In order to make a transition from the early modern world into the modern world, substantial changes were needed, especially intellectual changes. Thus, it was necessary to change the way that people think about themselves, meaning a radical change in the way of using their intellectual.

The Enlightenment also known as the age of reason is the name giving to an important period of Western civilization that followed the renaissance. The Enlightenment occurred roughly from the mid-sixteenth hundreds up to the end of the seventeenth hundreds, and it was a time where the human ability to reason was glorify. The word enlightenment means a time of illumination. It was a time of an influential group of scholars, writes, artists, and scientists actively sought to use the reason over the superstition. As a result of their efforts, tremendous improvement in the understanding of mathematics and science occurred. And whole new ideas regarding basic human rights and democracy were developed. As a result of the age of Enlightenment, there were changes in European and Euro-American understandings of sovereignty, as to who should have the power and lead a society, and the relation between the leaders and their subjects.

During the Enlightenment period, the principles of absolutism were practiced, which envisioned complete sovereignty in the hands of a monarch. The best way to express the ideals of Enlightenment was to work through the people who were the most po...

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...ny by choosing their representatives.

Therefore, the Enlightenment age was an important time in the history of both Europe and America. The ideas of the Enlightenment not only brought new ideas in the way of human thinking, but it also established new understandings of sovereignty and the relation of the leaders to their subjects. First, the Enlightenment absolutism took place. Peter the Great is the most accurate example of this way of governing. In England, the constitutionalism was the way of government. But those kind of governments were not what Enlightened philosophers thought was ideal. After the American and French revolution, a new kind of government emerged, the republican government. Under the republican government, the sovereignty lies on the people. In other words, people are the government, and they have the right to choose their representatives.