Similarities Between Enlightenment And Neoclassicism

The Enlightenment period in literature overlapped with the beginning of the Neoclassical period. Beginning around the second half of the 18th century, it was a period of time during which the philosophical theory and political revolution had exceptional global significance. Even though different, the neoclassical and the enlightenment currents intertwined. While Neoclassicism focused on expressing aesthetic and cultural ideals, the Enlightenment promoted a broader philosophical and political movement having the human condition at its main focus.

Enlightenment thinkers believed that reason should govern within all layers of social existence and not the principles written in sacred texts and traditional values. The widely accepted belief that the sovereign ruled the country by Divine Right was questioned. The belief of the Divine Right was substituted by the belief that both the government and the sovereign ruled by the people’s agreement, an agreement which both the government and the current sovereign had to respect. The diminishing of the value of the sacred texts and refuting the already established moral

The ecclesiastical thought conveys a message of self-sacrifice in the name of humanity and wellbeing. It teaches people to love their enemies, to turn the other cheek when pressured and neglected, to set aside the personal needs and to sacrifice personal happiness for the general wellbeing. The Enlightenment, acting in a radically nihilistic manner, casts away all these teachings and provided a poor replacement which put the egocentric and atheistic human on stage. The “enlightened” and “reasoned” thinkers of the period promoted the era as an age of freedom. Instead, they created a society governed by mediocrity, triviality and false pluralism. These seeds from the Age of Reason have now enrooted deeply into every aspect of the 21st century’s