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The Age of Enlightenment
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During the Age of Enlightenment, ________ scholars believed that Europeans lived in “the best of all worlds”.
What are the things we value most about our modern world? Perhaps the freedom to... enjoy ourselves? To find things out... To express our views!
To argue and discuss… For some of us, these freedoms are such a normal part of life we don’t really think about them. But people haven’t always been free to come up with, or express, their own opinions. For many centuries in Europe, the Church told people what to believe. God was at the centre of everything. There was little room for individuals to have their own ideas.
So what changed? What brought us to the ‘modern life’ Aadesh is living? To find out, let’s go back around 400 years. In the early 1600s, everyday life is changing for many Europeans. Peasants have long lived on the edge of starvation, but now travellers return from the Americas with potatoes and corn.
The peasants start to eat much better. As for the upper classes, they get exciting luxuries like coffee, tea, chocolate, and tobacco. And by this time, tens of thousands of Europeans have travelled the world and seen how other societies organise themselves. Not everywhere, they realise, is as top-down, as hierarchical, as Europe. All these novel experiences give people new bright ideas about what life can be like.
It is The Age of Enlightenment. The period lasts from around the year 1600 to 1800. Over the course of the Enlightenment, people question old ways of doing things. “Must we always live on the edge of starvation?”; “Must life be all work and no play?”; “And should we really give so much power to a small group of people at the top of society?” It’s all very well criticising ‘old fashioned’ ways; but what will replace them? One Enlightenment thinker with plenty of ideas is French writer, Voltaire. Voltaire laughs at the idea pushed by some religious scholars that we all live in the “best of all possible worlds”.
He sees a lot of room for improvement... Voltaire wants the government to be separate from the church. This way, the church will have less power over people’s lives. He also thinks people should be allowed to follow any religion they like and to think for themselves. And he wants everyone to be able to talk about their thoughts freely, without punishment.
Voltaire’s ideas grow more and more popular in some parts of Europe. But the king of France, where Voltaire is from, finds them worrying. The king tries to stop people speaking and writing about these ‘dangerous’ views. He throws many writers, including Voltaire, in jail. Their books are banned.
Are the ideas of the Enlightenment to be silenced? Not so fast… the king cannot completely stop the new ideas spreading. Enlightenment enthusiasts won’t stay quiet! They get together in the homes of wealthy people to discuss the changes happening in the world. They listen to the latest ideas, discuss the latest books, and meet the latest philosophers shaping thought and life —the ‘influencers’ of the time… without the cell phones!
Their gatherings are called salons. Salons pop up across Europe, often organised by upper class women. Some take place with a bust of Voltaire in the room! Eventually, salons in France become a place to plan for the overthrow of the king and a new system of power: The French Revolution! Conversations on a new world order of reason, freedom of religion, and freedom of expression, taking place around the bust of a radical free-thinker...
quite a different picture from those Medieval churchgoers, sitting quietly under the statue of Christ.