Assignment: Write About Enlightenment in Philosophy (Research Paper Sample)

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In the 17th century, the intellectual movement and the rise of reasoning which is known as the enlightenment era was the event that shaped the western society today. The enlightenment era had changed the way people view government, liberty, science and arts. For the long history of the world, kings ruled over the people with absolute power. However, People did not have a choice due to the common believe that absolute monarchs had their absolute power from god, which is known as the divine rights of kings (Adam Smith From The Wealth of Nations 1776 The Cost of Empire). The age of reason emerged and during that era, numbered of people started to question the concept in which kings had their rights from god to rule over people. Influential group of scholars, writers, artists and scientists began to question the rule of the church in government, science, arts and everyday life. They started to find solution for their life away from church. Therefore, the enlightenment era shifted western society to secularization which led to a dramatic decrease in the rule of religion in daily life. 

The separation of church from state had played a huge role in the western societies. The majority of the Western countries had experienced secularization which influenced politics and common life. For instance, a document was published by roman catholic church in eighteen sixty four to responsed to fledging secularization, as growing acceptance for new religions and the increasing power of social equality was difficult the church power to implement its ideology in Europe”. Therefore, as the world develops morally and acceptance and communal fairness, religion had move toward the forefront, religion, because people preferred to come on agreement on neutral terms.
Those who spearheaded enlightenment thought of reason as a way of freeing humankind from superstitions which brought about religious dominance that resulted to suffering and death of many people in religious wars. Soon the idea of a world without an all-powerful god took over the western world with positive effects in Europe and Jewish people. It came out clearly that the more secular the western world became the more the Jews were treated better as humans. Christians would kill Jews for some reasons; the secularist would not do such a thing on the other hand, because they were not concerned with religious grounds of other people thus offering equal treatment to all people. Secularism which replaced laws based on religious scriptures with civil rights and eliminated all forms of decimation based on religious grounds. It was easily embraced since it was protecting the rights of the minority religious groups in the western world.
As an outcome of Enlightenment came the scientific revolution which explained most of the things that religion failed to give explanation about. As a matter of fact many thinkers of then thought of religion being an intellectual failure since it could not offer the answers to most questions and satisfy the human crave to understand the world that surrounded them. With this a secular culture emerged as an alternative to religion and even today there are people who believe in science in place of religion. Enlightenment scholars also bombarded religious beliefs with philosophical argument while some such as Locke argue that miracles in the Bible may show a divine origin but still say that reason has the last word for them to be explained and acceptable. This was an outright attack on what Christianity religion was based on. Arguments such as Locke’s slowly diverted people into believe in secularism as a way of life.
Alongside secularism, Enlightenment brought about the emphasis on individualism which based on the fact that individual was important and was entitled to receive equal treatment with others. This slowly evolved to the modern civil rights (Kant). The emphasis on the civil rights was good for the Jews in western world and for the first time the Jews were viewed as humans. Edicts of tolerations were given out offering the Jews some rights even if not all the rights. One of the edicts was the one issued by the French government in the early 1790’s. The concept of secularism was easy to adopt since it advocated for a peaceful co-existence of people from different religious backgrounds which was a major differentiating factor in the age of Enlightenment.
With all the influential effects of enlightenment bringing about secularism, the role of religion in daily activities has reduced in the western countries. All that was earlier left...