Exercises on Enlightenment

Try to briefly explain why the 18th century came to be known as the “Century of Enlightenment”?

How did Enlightenment thinkers think about the relationship between the State and the Church?

From a scientific point of view, how did the Enlightenment believe it possible to understand an object of study?

Name three Enlightenment thinkers.

Regarding encyclopedism, answer:

a) What was encyclopedism?

b) What are the implications of encyclopedism for the Enlightenment?

Regarding economic liberalism, answer:

How the thinker Adam Smith thought the relationship between the State and the economy.

The idea of ​​“light” or “illumination” symbolized a time when many intellectuals praised the use of reason as an effective means of understanding the world. In this sense, the “light” of reason represented the opposite of the “darkness” imposed by ignorance and mysticism.

In the view of many Illuminati, the Church should not interfere in the political issues of the time. Having their actions aimed at men, political institutions should be guided by a rational model of political organization that did not rely on religious justifications or suffer any kind of clerical interference.

For the Enlightenment, scientific investigation should be guided by the researcher's criticisms, doubts and assumptions. Through this universe of ideas, he would consolidate a method capable of answering his questions. If the method employed proved to be efficient, it would achieve a new form of knowledge.

Among many others, the student can register the names of Baron de Montesquieu, Voltaire, John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Diderot, D'Alembert and Adam Smith.

a) Encyclopedism was a movement that brought together several articles where the most expressive thinkers of the Enlightenment recorded their ideas. Through the gathering of these articles, a great encyclopedia was created capable of gathering the various manifestations of knowledge of the Enlightenment era.

b) The encyclopedist movement was of great importance for the knowledge of scholars and thinkers of that time to be spread in various places in Europe. In this way, the values ​​of the Enlightenment reached different nations and transformed the way of understanding the world, investigating nature and organizing political institutions.

In Adam Smith's view, the economy could only reach its full potential insofar as the State reduced its power of action in this field of human activity. Excess taxes and the regulation of certain activities would be practices that would reduce the development of the economy and the wealth of the nation.