Hitchhiker, I apologize for neglecting to reply. I'll be in touch very soon. This little composition is a cut & paste job from the encyclopaedia and other references from the Internet. I’ve duplicated this essay from Writers World forum, my post to a small essay topic about the American Revolution (topic: ‘Plz plz correct my poor grammar thx’). I haven’t bothered to check for grammar or punctuation though I ran it through a spell check. Please add to it refine it or comment on the topic.
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Santa asked, ”what is the universal language of the enlightenment & what is the legacy of enlightenment principles in 21st C USA.
This is topical so I’ll spend some time. Liberalism, the core of American identity, is a Political and intellectual belief that advocates the right of the individual to make decisions, usually political or religious, according to
The dictates of conscience. Its modern origins lie in the 18th-century
Enlightenment. much of the tenor of the Enlightenment survives
in the liberalism, toleration, and respect for law that persists in Northern American and European societies.
Liberalism is an ideology encompassing belief in electoral democracy, civil rights, gender equality, human progress, and/or the abolition of premodern social
hierarchies. Liberalism was introduced to the Islamic world in the nineteenth century by Europeans, then wielded against Europeans by Muslim intellectuals who noted the
discrepancy between liberal ideals and colonial (and later postcolonial) practices. This is relevant to the war in Iraq today. Is the United States fighting for oil and geo-political reasons or for liberal ideals?
It is easier to identify intellectual trends than to define enlightened views, even where, as in France, there was a distinct and self-conscious movement. Clues can be found in the use commonly made of certain closely related cult words such as Reason, Nature, and Providence. From having a sharp, almost technical sense in the work of Descartes, Pascal, and Spinoza, reason came to mean something like common sense, along with strongly pejorative assumptions about things not reasonable. Locke and Jeremy Bentham in England, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Voltaire in France, and Thomas Jefferson in America all contributed to an evolving critique of the arbitrary, authoritarian state and to sketching the outline of a higher form of social organization, based on natural rights and functioning as a political democracy.
The Enlightenment was both a movement and a state of mind. The term represents a phase in the intellectual history of Europe, but it also serves to define programs of reform in which influential literati, inspired by a common faith in the possibility of a better world, outlined specific targets for criticism and proposals for action. The special significance of the Enlightenment lies in its combination of principle and pragmatism. Consequently, it still engenders controversy about its character and achievements.
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