DBQ 6: Enlightenment Thinkers and Their Impact on European Rulers The Age of Enlightenment was a time where cultural and intellectual ideas from Western Europe brought reason, analysis, and individualism to the rest of Europe and replaced former traditional authority. The Age of Enlightenment was most frequently known as the Age of Reason because it reformed society from the authority of the church to a society of science and skepticism. The Enlightenment philosophy was promoted by local enlightenment thinkers that stressed liberty, freedom from the church’s authority, and worked to abolish serfdom. A number of the Enlightenment philosophers influenced society by publishing texts. New ideas and beliefs spread through Europe and worldwide and marked a change from only having religious texts to also providing intellectual texts.
Balance of power and natural rights were also ideas birthed during this period. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense embodies each of these ideas from the Enlightenment period. These ideas helped him not only create this literary work, but were the bases and formulation in which he wrote it. The first key idea from the Enlightenment period embraced in Paine’s writing is the idea of freedom from oppression. He tells a brief story of how the British government is being unfair, and treating its people poorly by taxation and other unjust tactics.
# 1– The American vs. French Revolution The leaders of both the American and French Revolutions declared that their goal was to create a new political system based on the principles of liberty and equality. However, the interpretation of those ideas by the American Founding Fathers turned out to be distinctly different from that of the French revolutionaries. How did those different interpretations of the concepts of liberty and equality affect the outcomes and the legacies of both revolutions? Analyze, compare, and contrast “Revolutionary movements require some unifying body of ideas, a common vocabulary of hope and protest, something, in short, like a common ‘revolutionary psychology’.” This quote by George Rude’, a French Revolution historian, applies to both the French and American revolutions from the 18th century. Both wars have similar qualities, as they were focused around liberty and equality.
Explain how Bentham’s version of Utilitarianism may be used to decide on the right course of action. Utilitarianism is a teleological theory of ethics. It is a method that looks at the consequences of an action to deice whether it is right or wrong; this also makes it a consequentialist theory. In the eighteenth century Hutchenson first used the phrase ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ which he used to describe the political systems. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) then decided to develop his idea of Utilitarianism from this quote and apply it to all areas of social activity.
Locke's influence can be seen in documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. Locke’s philosophy of government, freedom, and natural rights challenged the power of England’s monarchy in Europe over the colonies in America. Although the foundations of these documents are highly influenced by John Locke's ideology, there are parts of these documents that stray away from his views. In this paper I will examine certain parts of the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and the Federalist Papers and argue that for the most part, if John Locke were alive today he would be pleased with these documents but I will also highlight parts of these documents that would concern him. The first document I will analyze is The Declaration of Independence which I consider to be the most influenced by Locke's ideology of any document the founders drafted.
By setting the stage and laying out specifics as he did, the author provides a backdrop against which the reader may compare and contrast pre and post revolutionary American society, and understand the magnitude of the change it ushered in. Wood does a thorough job of explaining how patriarchal society worked and how social mores were reflected at all levels, from the dominance of the father in families to that of the king in the monarchy. He explains the dramatic and unforeseen shifts in society that were mirrored by changes in government. It’s Wood’s contention that society and government were interwoven prior to the American Revolution. Modern readers of Patrick O’Brian get a sense of this intermingling of private and governmental concerns in the way Captain Aubrey and other Post Captains were expected to furnish their own ship-board larders, and how O’Brian’s hero even buys much of his own gun powder.
It’s important to know about the past lives and how around the 1800’s the United States started expanding. One of the European ideas was John Locke, who was an English philosopher, and one of the Enlightenment thinkers. John Locke influenced Thomas Jefferson and also the Declaration of Independence. He maintained that people had Natural Rights to Life, Liberty, and Property. Locke had a social contract which meant that people chose their own government as long as the government agrees to protect their natural rights.
By contrast, the American colonists rebelled mainly against British rule. After the revolution, they established laws that protected individual rights balanced with representative national and state governments. The American Revolution was the first of a series of wars for independence that shared some common beliefs. Shared ideas included an emphasis on individual rights and the idea that a government’s power comes from the
An American Empire The ancient, rather generic definition of imperialism has evolved since its introduction by the Persians, Athenians, Macedonians, and Romans. Specifically, imperialism’s evolution may be seen through United States’ foreign policy from the expansionist policies of the Spanish-American War to the current ideological and economic motives behind the War on Terror. Imperialistic intentions may be connected to over a century of war engagements. It is the motives behind these intentions that are in essence responsible for sparking the evolution into a new imperialism. As the political reality of the world changes through history, American foreign policy must respond to these changes in order gain power, maintain power,
In some respects, this revision follows the lead of historian William Appleman Williams who developed the notion of an American informal empire, growing out of nineteenth-century "Manifest Destiny," aggressive protection of free trade and open markets, and finally, into direct confrontation with the old empires of Europe in the twentieth century. [1] Bender's view is slightly different, emphasizing the very long history of American engagement with European Empires--the successful American Revolution was, after all, partly a consequence of the enmity of France and Britain. As Bender concludes: the "American way of empire was even presented as anti-imperialism because it guaranteed openness, in contrast to the exclusivity of the old empires" (p. 233). This statement is an important argument because it links the visionary perspectives of Thomas Jefferson, for example, to the much later engagement of the United States with European colonial empires. It also illustrates an essential point, which is the moral center of the work.