Voltaire: The Father Of The Enlightenment

According to The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, the Enlightenment was,

“an intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries marked by a celebration

of the powers of human reason.” In its purest form, this movement only lasted

from 1715 to 1789 until the French Revolution sparked the Age of Revolution.

During the Enlightenment, a group of philosophers, known as the Philosophes,

questioned society and rebelled against the beliefs of their fathers. An interest

in ancient philosophy and mythology influenced the emergence of a new style in art

and music known as Neoclassicism, which is sometimes referred to as the rococo

period.

The new humanist style of the arts found its roots in Renaissance

philosophies and theories.

As a young man, he questioned a nobleman which would later lead him to

exile in England. Studying English philosophy, Voltaire became acquainted

with John Locke, a British philosopher. Born in 1644, Voltaire led the French

Enlightenment ,which officially began in 1715. As the founder of the

Enlightenment, he openly rejected moral absolutes and believed that laws

written by the government, known as arbitrary absolutes, would become the

only way to judge right from wrong. The Age of Reason advocated the

human right to freedom, as seen in Voltaire’s writings in which he displayed

his belief of viewing everything with discretion. He believed that everyone

must be skeptical towards all ideas, and oppose all authority because everyone

is free to rule themselves. Arbitrary absolutes were to create new morals that

would later replace the old order to become society’s new foundation.

According to Abeka World History and Cultures, rationalism is, “the idea

that man’s reason is the sole criterion for truth.” Enlightenment men valued

human reason by strongly believing in rationalism. Voltaire’s

Romantic philosophy, another form of

naturalism, is also known as pantheism which is the worship of nature.

Searching all his life, Rousseau set off to find the noble savage which

he believed would become the perfect human. According to romantic philosophy,

uncivilized societies are superior to civilized societies because man is born naturally

good but society corrupts him. Rousseau’s solution for society’s problems was to

devise a system that would stop greed by taking away private property and by instituting

communes. Written in his book “The Social Contract”, his philosophy would later lead

Karl Marx to write his “Das Kapital.”

Romantics and classicists both believed that revolution would lead to a

form of democracy. Their writings on revolution influenced Alexander

Hamilton to write the “Federalist Papers.” As the French Revolution reached

Its apex, the Enlightenment reached its end and the Age of Revolution

commenced. Sadly, after the revolution, French General Napoleon Bonaparte

was crowned emperor in 1804 after the Reign of Terror cost many