Age Of Reason Dbq Essay

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The Enlightenment: Challenging Beliefs People are always coming up with new ideas. Most are insignificant, but some resonate with people, and stick. The Enlightenment, also referred to as the “Age of Reason,” was a period in which this was constantly happening, where people used logic to refute common beliefs. The ideas of the Enlightenment philosophes were revolutionary because they caused everyone to stop listening to what they were told was right and to start utilizing their own sense and reason. One of the many reasons that the Age of Reason was revolutionary was that people began to advocate freedom instead of the strict monarchy. For example, John Locke wrote, “…what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom” (i.e. Document 1-B). This quote means that men are meant to be free, and several other philosophes agreed with this point of view. Another man, Voltaire, wrote, “We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon our follies […] Tolerance has never brought civil war; intolerance has covered the earth with carnage” (i.e. Document…show more content…
Most people were thinking along the lines of Thomas Hobbes, who wrote, “During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war” (Document B). People relied on the monarchy, and believed that they needed it to survive and to follow God. Any other form of government where the leader was not chosen by a “divine right” was seen as ludicrous. Mary Wollstonecraft, a supporter of women’s rights, wrote, “…men are admitted to the suffrage, there is not a shadow of justification for not admitting women under the same…” (Document F). Saying that women were equal to men and deserved equal rights was incredibly unconventional, even for the Enlightenment, but even so, saying it caused people to start thinking about the issue, and about forming a new
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