Age Of Lightenment Dbq Essay

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lightenmentValerie Payne 8/27/12 Per. 1 B The Age of Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, was a movement that happened in Western Europe during the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth century. Its main purpose was to understand the world in a new way that wasn’t focused around religion like it previously had been. This movement allowed people to ask questions about thing that the church had told them were sinful to think about. The recent scientific advancement of the time gave the public a sense of an answer for their “taboo” questions. This eventually led to the dispute between those that believe in faith, and those that wanted evidence and proof to back up claims of religion. Since the Enlightenment was all about people not being controlled by religion and being able to think for them, there are very many different takes on the Enlightenment, depending…show more content…
One of the main ideas of the Enlightenment was that the government of a country needed to put the good of the people first, and ironically this was around the time that Great Britain began to tax the colonists with “duties” hence planting the seed of doubt in their minds. The colonist no longer believed that the king couldn’t be contradicted just because he was king, and eventually led the colonists to resent the British monarch and their determination of freedom. If not for the idea of independence that was so closely related to the Age of Enlightenment, the colonists wouldn’t of so quickly and strongly rebelled against Great Britain. Later, philosophers like John Locke, Adam Smith, and Baron de Montesquieu all contributed to the development of the American government and the making of important documents like The Declaration of Independence. All in all, the Age of Enlightenment was the push the colonists needed to open their eyes and realize that they needed to take a stand for
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