The Enlightenment
A Reading in the Salon of Mme Geoffrin, 1755
The Enlightenment was a period of progression in all the fields of a society. European politics, philosophy , science, and communication improved during the 18th century. This period is referred to as the Age of Reason or simply the Enlightenment. This period of time was divided in three major sections the Early Enlightenment, the High Enlightenment and the Late Enlightenment.
It can also be described as an intellectual movement, which stated freedom, democracy, and and reason as the three main principles of the society. This movement started when people started believing that the men's need to be free from ignorance and chose powers from the state, to achieve progress in all the fields that can be found in a society. The image that is shown above depicts a salon, which were art galleries done in noble households. The image shows how during this period the people started to share personal opinions, and ideas over a specific topic. This is important because the exchange of ideas between different fields of knowledge permitted the improvement of society as a whole. |
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
How did Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz effect the Enlightenment?Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, had a more rationalist idea, meaning that he was against the religious beliefs. He had two main principles:
1) The first one is the principle of contradiction, which means that it can't be both "x" and not "x" 2)The second principle of reason is the principle of sufficient reason, which means he thought that everything that happened needed to have a reasoning for happening. Everything that happens has an explanation even though sometimes we don't have enough information and findings to state a fulfilled explanation. Regarding philosophy and the principle of reason this quote specifically states the way Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz thinks in extreme modern way. “By virtue of which we consider that we can find no true or existent fact, no true assertion, without there being a sufficient reason why it is thus and not otherwise, although most of these reasons cannot be known to us” (M 31). It supports the idea that nothing can happen without an explanation behind it. |
Click here if you want to see a video that will explain briefly the contributions of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in the Enlightement:
Did you know that...
- He was the first creator of a mechanical calculator, that could perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and it was called Stepped Reckoner
- When Leibniz attended the first year in college, he was already more educated and knew more than his advanced classmates
- Leibniz had been able to learned Latin and other language with little to no tutoring