Enlightenment Ideas And Politcal Figuers Of The Era

Enlightenment Ideas and

Political Figures of

The Enlightenment Era

The Enlightenment of the 18th century was an exciting period of history. For the first time since ancient Grecian times, reason and logic became center in the thoughts of most of elite society. The urge to discover and to understand replaced religion as the major motivational ideal of the age, and the upper class social scene all over Europe was alive with livid debate on these new ideas.

A French playwright who went by the pseudonym Voltaire is the most recognized and controversial Enlightenment author. Because of his trademark acidic wit, he was forced to flee the country after giving offence to a powerful nobleman. He spent the next two years in England where he came in contact with the pivotal Enlightenment idea of religious freedom and the freedom of the press. When he returned to France, he had some scathing things to say about the less than enlightened policies followed by the French monarchs, especially concerning religious intolerance. Because his ideas were generally offensive to the ruler of his country, the need to be able to leave France quickly to avoid prosecution was a consideration when deciding where he should live, which eventually was on the Swiss boarder. There he continued to treat on society and anything else that caught his imagination.

Along with Voltaire were many other Enlightened thinkers, or philosophes, as they came to be known. A man by the name of Rousseau was also a very influential personality. His essays mainly treated on social inequality and education.

An Italian by the name of Cesare Beccaria also discussed society, but more in terms of social control and matters of crime and punishment. He was an opponent of torture, capital punishment, and of any punishment that was done to excess or didn’t fit the crime that warranted it. He arrived at his conclusions through the logic that was so popular of the day. An excellent example of this logic is in this phrase concerning capitol punishment: “Is it not absurd, that the laws, which detest and punish homicide, should, in order to prevent murder, publicly commit murder themselves?” Rational arguments such as these permeated Enlightened conversations and didn’t fail to be noticed by many of the great national rule...

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...philosophes and their ideas, insomuch that the Voltaire himself was an honored guest of his court for a number of years. Although he made few real reforms in the bureaucracy that was developed by his father before him, he did make some real progress in legal matters. Absolutely necessary to an Enlightened society was a uniform code of laws available and understood by everybody, and this is exactly what Fredrick did in the early years of his reign. Additionally, he ended put severe limitations on the applications of torture and made his state tolerant of all religious practices. Right about here is where his reforms stopped, however. Understanding, like Catherine the Great, that to alienate your nobles was hazardous to your political career (and occasionally your health), he did not attempt to reform the feudal and rigid class stratification that characterized his country. In fact, he even added to the nobles’ power by doing things like denying a commoners ability to rise in status through work in the bureaucracy. Despite this blemish, his reign seemed to produce a fairly decent amount of reforms all the while keeping the peace within his borders and himself firmly in power.